When you approach my desk it is okay to take out your ear buds. In fact, if you'd like, though I don't sing well, I can continue singing along to whatever you're listening to in order to not make our interaction interfere with your day. I'm even willing to accompany the singing with an interpretive dance, though I usually cap those at thirty seconds because I have roughly five go to moves including a shoulder shimmy thing and a poor glide step, some light popping can be provided if so desired. I'd encourage you to please play "I Will Always Love You," by Whitney Houston as that's a song on which my voice really shines.
I enjoy occasional eye contact. It's an old-fashioned sort of thing, but it's okay to look at the person you're interacting with. I promise not to hold your gaze for a longer period of time than is comfortable unless you are a male gorilla trying to challenge me for dominance of the library. I will even break the eye contact and go get your book or generally do library related stuff in a timely fashion. If you find it awkward to briefly glance up from your busy day know that you are still secretly loved in the special way that you can only be loved by a person who finds you annoying.
At the conclusion of our transaction it is okay to say thank you. I realize that I'm paid for what I do, but it is still a pretty decent type thing to do. A smile, even a fake one, can serve in lieu of a thank you. I also accept cash gifts, tax returns, and trained orca whales as payment. I also accept some light banter such as, "How is your night going?" and will not take the opportunity to tell you about how my cat died last week or how my aunt has a wonderful collection of rare birds. I will likely say something like, "Fine, and perhaps include an innocuous comment about the weather." This interaction will not lengthen your stay at my service desk, but will serve to pass the time in a manner that I don't hesitate to call congenial.
If, for some reason we are unable to complete the transaction that you desire, or are otherwise impinged in one way or another, it is right to assume that I'm probably doing my best to help you out. This may cease to be true if you are a royal as-, but I can't guarantee that I wouldn't provide good service even to someone I'd like to see slightly mauled by an angry sheep.
Above all know that I deeply care about you not just as a customer but as an individual human being. Okay, that might not be entirely true, however, I'm willing to fake the latter part for the nominal fee that my job pays me to be at this desk. In short, extend to me the common courtesy you'd like extended to yourself if you worked in a similar circumstance. Remember, I am a beautiful snow flake just like you! That's going on my bumper sticker.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
MSN Mondays: 26 Fun, Cheap date ideas
1) Go to the zoo in Washington, DC. It's free and fun! It gets more complicated if you live in say, Omaha, Nebraska, then maybe just go hang out in a corn field or something. But this is the Washington, DC Blog.
2) Go to the Lincoln memorial and climb up into his lap and ask him for Christmas presents before falling to your death. It's fun, and it's cheap.
3) Go to the Smithsonian museum, you know, the one everyone likes, National History Museum and reenact the final scene from Jurassic Park with the banner falling down all dramatically. Note: The banner should be homemade to save money. Have her stand on the second floor and drop the banner dramatically as you sprint full speed into the woolly mammoth to take the thing down.
4) Protest outside the Smithsonian National History Museum. Ask that all date be amended to show the earth's real age of 6,000 years. Call everyone who enters a pagan. Get lunch from one of those hot dog vendors and eat it on the steps. She'll think you're super fun and interesting.
5) Build your own pontoon boat and take her out on the Anacostia river. If you're like me the boat will probably sink, but then you'll have a fun time swimming through sludge and wondering how you get into these crazy capers.
6) Take her to a Nats game, but don't buy tickets. Insist that it's more fun to stand outside the gate and listen to the crowd roar. Bring your own hot dogs as they'll charge you an arm and a leg there.
7) Don't even go out on a date, just stay inside and play video games. Things probably weren't going to work out anyway.
8) Take her to the Washington Monument and bring a lengthy bit of rope, preferably something found in your attic or garage. Begin scaling it until removed by police.
9) Go to Adams Morgan and buy one of those Jumbo Slice pieces of pizza and share it. But don't do it when all the drunks are around doing the same thing.
10) Take her into Anacostia just so she can say she's been there.
11) Go to the national arboretum and play a rousing game of paint ball. Don't tell her that you're playing. Surprise her from behind from shrubbery. She'll probably laugh, or she might not, but that's life.
12) Go and get a bunch of dogs from the pound and say you want to try them out before adopting them. Pretend like you own a really prosperous dog walking business when you meet her. Call them all Fido. Say it makes it easier on them.
13) These were easier to come up with in Santa Barbara because it was so easy to hike or go to the ocean. It wasn't even a joke. You just had cheap date options. Sigh.
14) Tell her you've made reservations at a really nice restaurant but don't. When you show up and they don't have your name launch into a long diatribe about communism and the works of Michel Foucault. Take her home and eat noodles.
15) Talk her into pretending to be homeless and trying to get food from folks on the street. When you get it, make sure she gives it to a real homeless person, or you should probably dump her.
16) Go to someone else's wedding and see if you can sneak in. I've seen it work in movies. Do the entire dance from Dirty Dancing to any rap song that comes on. If anyone mentions the Black Eyed Peas refuse to do the cool move from the dance. It enrages me that I can't embed this video).
17) Take her to Chuck E. Cheese...this actually works, just steal tokens from little kids. They're careless.
18) Take her hang gliding with a pair of brooms and some sheets you've strung together. Make sure you both have good health insurance plans.
19) Take her to a park and talk about how wonderful the sunset is, even if it's raining. If she tries to ruin the moment by asking if you're ever going to dinner, shush her, and tell her to focus on the quality of the light.
20) Coffee
21) Go to a thrift store and pick out outfits for one another. Haggle over the prices. Everyone loves watching people haggle.
22) Go to a fancy store and try on clothes for hours. When it comes time to check out, pretend as though you've lost your credit card.
23) Same sort of premise but plan your wedding. First dates are best for this one.
24) Take her to a waterfront area with a bottle of wine and spend the evening speaking in British accents and polishing it off.
25) Find the highest free point in the city and go there. Look out at things, pretty lights and such. Be happy.
26) Train a bear to attack you without doing any real damage. Take her to Rock Creek Park and have the bear run out and attack you. Fight it off to impress her! Then have a picnic. After, hunt the bear.
2) Go to the Lincoln memorial and climb up into his lap and ask him for Christmas presents before falling to your death. It's fun, and it's cheap.
3) Go to the Smithsonian museum, you know, the one everyone likes, National History Museum and reenact the final scene from Jurassic Park with the banner falling down all dramatically. Note: The banner should be homemade to save money. Have her stand on the second floor and drop the banner dramatically as you sprint full speed into the woolly mammoth to take the thing down.
4) Protest outside the Smithsonian National History Museum. Ask that all date be amended to show the earth's real age of 6,000 years. Call everyone who enters a pagan. Get lunch from one of those hot dog vendors and eat it on the steps. She'll think you're super fun and interesting.
5) Build your own pontoon boat and take her out on the Anacostia river. If you're like me the boat will probably sink, but then you'll have a fun time swimming through sludge and wondering how you get into these crazy capers.
6) Take her to a Nats game, but don't buy tickets. Insist that it's more fun to stand outside the gate and listen to the crowd roar. Bring your own hot dogs as they'll charge you an arm and a leg there.
7) Don't even go out on a date, just stay inside and play video games. Things probably weren't going to work out anyway.
8) Take her to the Washington Monument and bring a lengthy bit of rope, preferably something found in your attic or garage. Begin scaling it until removed by police.
9) Go to Adams Morgan and buy one of those Jumbo Slice pieces of pizza and share it. But don't do it when all the drunks are around doing the same thing.
10) Take her into Anacostia just so she can say she's been there.
11) Go to the national arboretum and play a rousing game of paint ball. Don't tell her that you're playing. Surprise her from behind from shrubbery. She'll probably laugh, or she might not, but that's life.
12) Go and get a bunch of dogs from the pound and say you want to try them out before adopting them. Pretend like you own a really prosperous dog walking business when you meet her. Call them all Fido. Say it makes it easier on them.
13) These were easier to come up with in Santa Barbara because it was so easy to hike or go to the ocean. It wasn't even a joke. You just had cheap date options. Sigh.
14) Tell her you've made reservations at a really nice restaurant but don't. When you show up and they don't have your name launch into a long diatribe about communism and the works of Michel Foucault. Take her home and eat noodles.
15) Talk her into pretending to be homeless and trying to get food from folks on the street. When you get it, make sure she gives it to a real homeless person, or you should probably dump her.
16) Go to someone else's wedding and see if you can sneak in. I've seen it work in movies. Do the entire dance from Dirty Dancing to any rap song that comes on. If anyone mentions the Black Eyed Peas refuse to do the cool move from the dance. It enrages me that I can't embed this video).
17) Take her to Chuck E. Cheese...this actually works, just steal tokens from little kids. They're careless.
18) Take her hang gliding with a pair of brooms and some sheets you've strung together. Make sure you both have good health insurance plans.
19) Take her to a park and talk about how wonderful the sunset is, even if it's raining. If she tries to ruin the moment by asking if you're ever going to dinner, shush her, and tell her to focus on the quality of the light.
20) Coffee
21) Go to a thrift store and pick out outfits for one another. Haggle over the prices. Everyone loves watching people haggle.
22) Go to a fancy store and try on clothes for hours. When it comes time to check out, pretend as though you've lost your credit card.
23) Same sort of premise but plan your wedding. First dates are best for this one.
24) Take her to a waterfront area with a bottle of wine and spend the evening speaking in British accents and polishing it off.
25) Find the highest free point in the city and go there. Look out at things, pretty lights and such. Be happy.
26) Train a bear to attack you without doing any real damage. Take her to Rock Creek Park and have the bear run out and attack you. Fight it off to impress her! Then have a picnic. After, hunt the bear.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Politics Hour
Number of members of Congress among the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans by net worth: 57
R: Those fat cats in Washington.
D: Let's redistribute that wealth.
M: How many people are in Congress?
Estimated number of jobs created by every 1,000,000,000 of military spending: 11,000
R: That's why we need to spend more on the military, creating jobs, keeping America safe for our children and our children's children.
D: Is that number high? I'm not even sure. What if we spent it on aid work instead?
M: Shi- that's a lot of zeroes. Is that like ten thousand or something?
By the same amount devoted to education: 27,000
R: Yeah, but those fat cat teachers would just unionize and prevent our kids from being the best in the world. We're falling behind China and India in math and science.
D: And that's why everyone should get a college degree and be learned and effete.
M: Oh. So, yeah, let's do that instead. I think I'll start my own Three Cups of tea program, but it'll be four cans of Dr. Pepper or something that the kids love. At some point we'll start ripping people off.
Minimum global population of robots, excluding toys and household appliances: 1,107,000
R: And do you know who's building those robots? Kids in China doing math!
D: I think we can learn to peacefully coexist with the robots through a series of welfare programs and acceptance of our differences in views about the future of the human race as slaves.
M:
Minimum amount by which Facebook is overvalued, according to a November study: 70,000,000,000
R: Think how many military jobs we could create with that money?
D: You can't put a value on fomenting revolution, but if we could, this seems a bit high.
M: S, do you think there will be facebook in heaven?
Estimated percentage of comatose patients diagnoses as vegetative who are actually minimally conscious:
R: Death panels. Did I hear someone singing the Kenyan national anthem?
D: We respect life in all forms and read even to our comatose pets at night.
M: Oh, so, what does this mean? Also, how bout that dad from Regarding Henry? He really turned it around. Isn't Harrison Ford lovable?
Minimum number of Tibetan monks and nuns who have self-immolated last year in protest against Chinese rule: 12
R: Are they losing to them in math and science as well? We should put a base there. It will promote job growth.
D: We respect the Tibetans right to freedom and will encourage China to cease and desist through a chain letter campaign.
M: Oh. So, yeah, people setting themselves on fire is drastic, yeah?
Average number of U.S. veterans who commit suicide each day: 18
R: Shi-
D: Shi-
M: Shi-
Percentage of Americans who believed our culture is superior to others in 2002: 60 percent
R: That's what's wrong with America. How is that number so low? I want it at 110.
D: Clearly these 60 percent of people didn't get liberal arts degrees, or we'd be closer to 0.
M: Huh.
Percentage now: 49 percent
R: I blame Obama and Clinton in some way. This never would have happened if we'd amended the Constitution and made Regan king like we should have.
D: Finally we're getting the population educated. Socialized medicine here we come!
M: Oh.
Projected percentage increase in food production required by 2050 in order to sustain the world's population: 70
R: And that's why we need to abolish the EPA and elect Monsanto, who is now an individual, as Speaker of the House.
D: Victory gardens people. I want you all to buy seeds and clear a little plot of land. Make sure to have your soil tested and...
M: Maybe we should only have two kids. What does that cut the percentage by?
Percentage of Americans who believed in anthropogenic global warming in 2001: 75
R: Liberal media.
D: Yay Al Gore!
M: What does anthropogenic mean? Is that some sort of thing you can pay a..never mind.
Now: 44 percent
R: The liberal media is brainwashing is being reversed.
D: Wait, really? Is it the whole multiple war thing?
M: Down with science.
R: Those fat cats in Washington.
D: Let's redistribute that wealth.
M: How many people are in Congress?
Estimated number of jobs created by every 1,000,000,000 of military spending: 11,000
R: That's why we need to spend more on the military, creating jobs, keeping America safe for our children and our children's children.
D: Is that number high? I'm not even sure. What if we spent it on aid work instead?
M: Shi- that's a lot of zeroes. Is that like ten thousand or something?
By the same amount devoted to education: 27,000
R: Yeah, but those fat cat teachers would just unionize and prevent our kids from being the best in the world. We're falling behind China and India in math and science.
D: And that's why everyone should get a college degree and be learned and effete.
M: Oh. So, yeah, let's do that instead. I think I'll start my own Three Cups of tea program, but it'll be four cans of Dr. Pepper or something that the kids love. At some point we'll start ripping people off.
Minimum global population of robots, excluding toys and household appliances: 1,107,000
R: And do you know who's building those robots? Kids in China doing math!
D: I think we can learn to peacefully coexist with the robots through a series of welfare programs and acceptance of our differences in views about the future of the human race as slaves.
M:
Minimum amount by which Facebook is overvalued, according to a November study: 70,000,000,000
R: Think how many military jobs we could create with that money?
D: You can't put a value on fomenting revolution, but if we could, this seems a bit high.
M: S, do you think there will be facebook in heaven?
Estimated percentage of comatose patients diagnoses as vegetative who are actually minimally conscious:
R: Death panels. Did I hear someone singing the Kenyan national anthem?
D: We respect life in all forms and read even to our comatose pets at night.
M: Oh, so, what does this mean? Also, how bout that dad from Regarding Henry? He really turned it around. Isn't Harrison Ford lovable?
Minimum number of Tibetan monks and nuns who have self-immolated last year in protest against Chinese rule: 12
R: Are they losing to them in math and science as well? We should put a base there. It will promote job growth.
D: We respect the Tibetans right to freedom and will encourage China to cease and desist through a chain letter campaign.
M: Oh. So, yeah, people setting themselves on fire is drastic, yeah?
Average number of U.S. veterans who commit suicide each day: 18
R: Shi-
D: Shi-
M: Shi-
Percentage of Americans who believed our culture is superior to others in 2002: 60 percent
R: That's what's wrong with America. How is that number so low? I want it at 110.
D: Clearly these 60 percent of people didn't get liberal arts degrees, or we'd be closer to 0.
M: Huh.
Percentage now: 49 percent
R: I blame Obama and Clinton in some way. This never would have happened if we'd amended the Constitution and made Regan king like we should have.
D: Finally we're getting the population educated. Socialized medicine here we come!
M: Oh.
Projected percentage increase in food production required by 2050 in order to sustain the world's population: 70
R: And that's why we need to abolish the EPA and elect Monsanto, who is now an individual, as Speaker of the House.
D: Victory gardens people. I want you all to buy seeds and clear a little plot of land. Make sure to have your soil tested and...
M: Maybe we should only have two kids. What does that cut the percentage by?
Percentage of Americans who believed in anthropogenic global warming in 2001: 75
R: Liberal media.
D: Yay Al Gore!
M: What does anthropogenic mean? Is that some sort of thing you can pay a..never mind.
Now: 44 percent
R: The liberal media is brainwashing is being reversed.
D: Wait, really? Is it the whole multiple war thing?
M: Down with science.
Pulphead
John Jeremiah Sullivan
"Statistically speaking, my bout with Evangelicalism was probably unremarkable. For white Americans with my socioeconomic background (middle to upper-middle class), it's an experience commonly linked to the teens and moved beyond once one reaches twenty. These kids around me at Creation--a lot of them were like that. How many even knew who Darwin was? They'd learn. At least once a year since college, I'll be getting to know someone, and it comes out that we have in common a high school "Jesus phase." That's always an excellent laugh. Except a phase is supposed to end--or at least give way to other phases--not simply expand into a long preoccupation...My problem is not that I dream I'm in hell..It isn't like I feel psychologically harmed. It isn't even that I feel like a sucker for having bought it all. It's that I love Jesus Christ.
Why should He vex a person? Why is His ghost not friendlier? Why can't I just be a good child of the Enlightenment and see in His life a sustaining example of what we can be, as a species?
Once you've known Him as a God, it's hard to find comfort in the man. The sheer sensation of life that comes with a total, all pervading notion of being--the pulse of consequence one projects onto even the humblest of things--the pull of that won't slacken.
And one has doubts about one's doubts."
From another essay
"He appeared to me only once afterward, and that was two and a half years later, in Paris. It's not as if Paris is a city I know, or have even visited more than a couple of times. He knew it well. I was coming up the stairs from the metro in the sunshine with the girl, whom I later married, on my left arm, when my senses became intensely alert to his presence about a foot and half to my right. I couldn't look directly at him: I had to let him hang back in my peripheral vision, else he'd slip away. It was a bargain we made in silence. I could see enough to tell he wasn't young but was maybe twenty years younger than when I'd known him, wearing black framed engineer's glasses he'd worn at just that time in his life, looking up and very serious, climbing the steps to the light, where I lost him."
From an essay on Michael Jackson
"His physical body is arguably, even inarguably, the greatest piece of postmodern American sculpture."
He writes about the first moment when he moonwalks. It happens at 3:36.
From an essay about animals attacking humans
"But I'm not sure we'll ever say the world is ours again, not sure we'll every really feel at home here again. That may be for the best. Being brave, after all, means saying in every situation, "I'll comport myself as I think honorable, no matter the risk and no matter what the voice of frowning power have to say about it. That's the kind of thinking that'll get you raped by a rhino."
Jamaican dance hall music recommended by Sullivan after visiting with Bunny Wailer of Bob Marley fame.
From Tessa Hadley's London Train
She wouldn't say anything, unless Robert asked. She would watch and see what he wanted. The night ahead was a brimming dish she had to carry without spilling it.
"Statistically speaking, my bout with Evangelicalism was probably unremarkable. For white Americans with my socioeconomic background (middle to upper-middle class), it's an experience commonly linked to the teens and moved beyond once one reaches twenty. These kids around me at Creation--a lot of them were like that. How many even knew who Darwin was? They'd learn. At least once a year since college, I'll be getting to know someone, and it comes out that we have in common a high school "Jesus phase." That's always an excellent laugh. Except a phase is supposed to end--or at least give way to other phases--not simply expand into a long preoccupation...My problem is not that I dream I'm in hell..It isn't like I feel psychologically harmed. It isn't even that I feel like a sucker for having bought it all. It's that I love Jesus Christ.
Why should He vex a person? Why is His ghost not friendlier? Why can't I just be a good child of the Enlightenment and see in His life a sustaining example of what we can be, as a species?
Once you've known Him as a God, it's hard to find comfort in the man. The sheer sensation of life that comes with a total, all pervading notion of being--the pulse of consequence one projects onto even the humblest of things--the pull of that won't slacken.
And one has doubts about one's doubts."
From another essay
"He appeared to me only once afterward, and that was two and a half years later, in Paris. It's not as if Paris is a city I know, or have even visited more than a couple of times. He knew it well. I was coming up the stairs from the metro in the sunshine with the girl, whom I later married, on my left arm, when my senses became intensely alert to his presence about a foot and half to my right. I couldn't look directly at him: I had to let him hang back in my peripheral vision, else he'd slip away. It was a bargain we made in silence. I could see enough to tell he wasn't young but was maybe twenty years younger than when I'd known him, wearing black framed engineer's glasses he'd worn at just that time in his life, looking up and very serious, climbing the steps to the light, where I lost him."
From an essay on Michael Jackson
"His physical body is arguably, even inarguably, the greatest piece of postmodern American sculpture."
He writes about the first moment when he moonwalks. It happens at 3:36.
From an essay about animals attacking humans
"But I'm not sure we'll ever say the world is ours again, not sure we'll every really feel at home here again. That may be for the best. Being brave, after all, means saying in every situation, "I'll comport myself as I think honorable, no matter the risk and no matter what the voice of frowning power have to say about it. That's the kind of thinking that'll get you raped by a rhino."
Jamaican dance hall music recommended by Sullivan after visiting with Bunny Wailer of Bob Marley fame.
From Tessa Hadley's London Train
She wouldn't say anything, unless Robert asked. She would watch and see what he wanted. The night ahead was a brimming dish she had to carry without spilling it.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Other things I enjoy
Short drives near sundown, the bottom of clouds painted in dying light, the skeletal fingers of trees frame bits of orange sky mired in a sea of blue black. The spires of old churches rising from green hills where soldiers used to tread, the sunlight drapes itself on half of an old brick and block building. In the foreground, children are sitting on black bikes, half arguing over some part of the now spent day. All this in a mere instant, and so much more that is left untold, while I gaze out the window of my car, music blaring.
That's at least an attempt at describing one of the things I enjoy: the freedom of a solo car ride on any day off. Something about being able to roll down the windows, slide my elbow onto the frame and feel the wind rustling through my hair, sliding across my bare skin, reminds me of endless summer days from long ago, when I'd drive up the coast in Santa Barbara, the sun slipping slowly into the ocean, or so it seemed, purple clouds, and music.
I like driving in the car listening to music at obscene levels. I don't sing well, and I don't like doing it all the time. However, on the right day, the right song can send what one might call a soul into a kind of ecstasy, where it suddenly occurs to me that every bit of the world around me is delicate and exquisite, somehow reminiscent of the scene created in a glass Christmas globe held in a child's warm hands, and I know that I must cling to it, the sparse branches of bare trees, leaves piled in the sluice, magnificent houses standing like sentries over the now darkening park. My God, what a gift to be alive!
That's at least an attempt at describing one of the things I enjoy: the freedom of a solo car ride on any day off. Something about being able to roll down the windows, slide my elbow onto the frame and feel the wind rustling through my hair, sliding across my bare skin, reminds me of endless summer days from long ago, when I'd drive up the coast in Santa Barbara, the sun slipping slowly into the ocean, or so it seemed, purple clouds, and music.
I like driving in the car listening to music at obscene levels. I don't sing well, and I don't like doing it all the time. However, on the right day, the right song can send what one might call a soul into a kind of ecstasy, where it suddenly occurs to me that every bit of the world around me is delicate and exquisite, somehow reminiscent of the scene created in a glass Christmas globe held in a child's warm hands, and I know that I must cling to it, the sparse branches of bare trees, leaves piled in the sluice, magnificent houses standing like sentries over the now darkening park. My God, what a gift to be alive!
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Some things I enjoy, a reminder and request
1) Travel-I like to walk around in a museum with a guide book and appreciate the use of light in a Vermeer. I like to approach a statue from afar, marveling at the exquisite beauty that had lain trapped in stone. I enjoy waking up early with a long itinerary and stare out the window at old courtyards and apple trees dusted in light. I like to walk in the rain without an umbrella. I find that when I just give in to the beads of water on skin, the cooling rain on my scalp, that I don't mind so much. I like to wander up streets that snake like rivers, and buy ice cream or gelato from street vendors at midday. And I like to sit in the plaza and eat as people stream by. In the evening I like to journal about what I've done during the day. It is the beginning of savoring the memory, like the first sip of good wine or taste of fine chocolate. And when sleep takes me, slipping quietly in the window, I like to know that my day has been seized. This list was supposed to be longer, but the day has overtaken me again. I'll take comments on things that people enjoy. Note: not things you do, but things you actually enjoy. Lord knows I do about a number of things that I don't enjoy, and I also have a bunch of things that I want to enjoy. I'm more interested in those things people actually enjoy.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Tuesdays with Sadie
6:15 A.M.-Faint cries fall on ears that I wish were a little less able. Luckily her mother attends to her for a while, and she doesn't start trumpeting her unhappiness again until 6:50, which is still obscenely early to be honest.
7:15-We drive mommy to work. S has pointed out that the lil s will think she works at the metro station, since that's actually what "driving her to work entails." I'm thinking of telling lil s that her mom has a lucrative career selling hot dogs on the side of the road.
8:00-9:15 Morning play time takes place downstairs, at first I'm promising myself that I'm going to be a good dad and play games with her, but then I realize that I'm extremely tired, that she has an attention span of roughly thirty seconds and that we don't have much in common when it comes to games. So I'm pretty much just sitting around the living room trying to make sure she doesn't swallow Greenworks bottles and hoping she'll go to sleep. She trundles into the kitchen and disassembles some replacement parts for a Brita filter, proudly pulls out the large glass measuring cup and walks into the living room and generally just brings hurricane like destruction raining down throughout the house.
12:15-1:30 Lil s pretends to behave like a champ, pulling down a set of blocks and meticulously inspecting them. However, after about a half and hour she tires of the game and decides that she wants to climb up three stairs to the landing, and, she proceeds to do this about five thousand times in a row. Every time she leaves the stairs and I get back on the computer, she immediately goes back to the stairs and climbs up rapidly and happily, because it makes me drop whatever I'm doing to make sure she doesn't do a half-gainer off them. Then she tries to climb down the stairs by some combination of walking and holding on to pieces of my face, which I try and discourage because sans my face the activity would result in a face plant and tears. I finally get her to go down backwards once, and she claps for herself, but I think she was just humoring me, because the next time she tried the same face walk.
1:30-I say, "is it nap time?" and lil s crawls up the flight of stairs and stands at the bottom of the baby gate saying "Up." Thank the good Lord for communication! Unfortunately, our communication starts to break down when I get upstairs, and I hear her banging around in her room fifteen minutes or so after we've agreed that she is to go to sleep. Next time I'll have her fill out a contract though she'd probably just try and eat the pen. Anyhow, eventually she seems to have settled down, and I content myself in our warm and fluffy bed reading a book. And it's about that time that I'm realizing how amazing our comforter is, and how easy it would be to take a second nap that she starts crying. Naturally I arrive in the room to discover she's pooped herself awake, and it's just one more reminder to start potty training ASAP.
I decided that I'd been enjoying my book though, so, after changing her diaper, I put in her pacifier, except that I didn't because she threw it across the room, which fine, I'm bigger, so I picked it back up, wrestled her to the crib's bottom and tried plugging with a pacifier while shoving her small blanket next to her face and cocooning her in two other blankets to limit her struggles. Luckily, mid swaddle, not me, but my fourteen month old daughter realizes that what I'm doing can't possibly be the actions of a rational person, so she begins laughing, and, because she's amazingly cute, I start laughing to, and say up for her and carry her out of the purgatory of her crib and let her go nuts playing upstairs. This involves opening random drawers and extracting items like combs, lavander oil and then parading around with them for a while before losing interest in some other room and dropping them immediately. I pity her future boyfriends.
But, as if to remind myself that my parenting hadn't been lax enough I'm reading her a nice book that she suddenly decides to attack, maiming a fox tail in the process, and I tell her no, and take the book away. At which point lil s becomes a ball of rage and follows me down the hallway screaming, and then when I shut the door to get away from her, pushes it open to do some more screaming before heading to the stairs and shaking the gate as if she were a prisoner or a very large primate while I asked her why she was so filled with rage.
Eventually I repaired the book and tossed it back in her room. She followed after me and dug it out from underneath four books that I'd placed on top of it, grumbling the entire time and then carried it with her tear-stained face into the guest bedroom where I was and put it down on the bed for me to read, because kids are both obnoxious and amazingly cute, and they have short memories. So we happily read the tails book together her face lighting up with delight as I made the animal noises for pangolins, lemurs, alligators, skunks, blue whales, tigers etc. a bunch of which, admittedly, I fudged a little, squirrels, lemurs and pangolins all come out sounding remarkably similar, a fact which she didn't hold against me, choosing to laugh instead.
The rest of the day: The most common refrain for the remainder of the day was lil S growling/crying anytime her little will was thwarted. Put down to eat and food isn't immediately available, growl/cry. Get to the top of the stairs and find self impeded by gate, growl/cry. In between playing with toys, growl/cry when not immediately stimulated. Can't find her lovie right away, growl/cry. Anyhow, this turns out to be annoying/representative of human nature. Without the strictures of society to hold us back we'd spend most of our day near tears because our wills weren't constantly being satiated. Thank God she's adorable and also dances with me by spinning in circles/laughs at the table when I belch/shares pita chips with me when we're hungry. It's like a buddy cop movie. I think she's the bad cop.
7:15-We drive mommy to work. S has pointed out that the lil s will think she works at the metro station, since that's actually what "driving her to work entails." I'm thinking of telling lil s that her mom has a lucrative career selling hot dogs on the side of the road.
8:00-9:15 Morning play time takes place downstairs, at first I'm promising myself that I'm going to be a good dad and play games with her, but then I realize that I'm extremely tired, that she has an attention span of roughly thirty seconds and that we don't have much in common when it comes to games. So I'm pretty much just sitting around the living room trying to make sure she doesn't swallow Greenworks bottles and hoping she'll go to sleep. She trundles into the kitchen and disassembles some replacement parts for a Brita filter, proudly pulls out the large glass measuring cup and walks into the living room and generally just brings hurricane like destruction raining down throughout the house.
12:15-1:30 Lil s pretends to behave like a champ, pulling down a set of blocks and meticulously inspecting them. However, after about a half and hour she tires of the game and decides that she wants to climb up three stairs to the landing, and, she proceeds to do this about five thousand times in a row. Every time she leaves the stairs and I get back on the computer, she immediately goes back to the stairs and climbs up rapidly and happily, because it makes me drop whatever I'm doing to make sure she doesn't do a half-gainer off them. Then she tries to climb down the stairs by some combination of walking and holding on to pieces of my face, which I try and discourage because sans my face the activity would result in a face plant and tears. I finally get her to go down backwards once, and she claps for herself, but I think she was just humoring me, because the next time she tried the same face walk.
1:30-I say, "is it nap time?" and lil s crawls up the flight of stairs and stands at the bottom of the baby gate saying "Up." Thank the good Lord for communication! Unfortunately, our communication starts to break down when I get upstairs, and I hear her banging around in her room fifteen minutes or so after we've agreed that she is to go to sleep. Next time I'll have her fill out a contract though she'd probably just try and eat the pen. Anyhow, eventually she seems to have settled down, and I content myself in our warm and fluffy bed reading a book. And it's about that time that I'm realizing how amazing our comforter is, and how easy it would be to take a second nap that she starts crying. Naturally I arrive in the room to discover she's pooped herself awake, and it's just one more reminder to start potty training ASAP.
I decided that I'd been enjoying my book though, so, after changing her diaper, I put in her pacifier, except that I didn't because she threw it across the room, which fine, I'm bigger, so I picked it back up, wrestled her to the crib's bottom and tried plugging with a pacifier while shoving her small blanket next to her face and cocooning her in two other blankets to limit her struggles. Luckily, mid swaddle, not me, but my fourteen month old daughter realizes that what I'm doing can't possibly be the actions of a rational person, so she begins laughing, and, because she's amazingly cute, I start laughing to, and say up for her and carry her out of the purgatory of her crib and let her go nuts playing upstairs. This involves opening random drawers and extracting items like combs, lavander oil and then parading around with them for a while before losing interest in some other room and dropping them immediately. I pity her future boyfriends.
But, as if to remind myself that my parenting hadn't been lax enough I'm reading her a nice book that she suddenly decides to attack, maiming a fox tail in the process, and I tell her no, and take the book away. At which point lil s becomes a ball of rage and follows me down the hallway screaming, and then when I shut the door to get away from her, pushes it open to do some more screaming before heading to the stairs and shaking the gate as if she were a prisoner or a very large primate while I asked her why she was so filled with rage.
Eventually I repaired the book and tossed it back in her room. She followed after me and dug it out from underneath four books that I'd placed on top of it, grumbling the entire time and then carried it with her tear-stained face into the guest bedroom where I was and put it down on the bed for me to read, because kids are both obnoxious and amazingly cute, and they have short memories. So we happily read the tails book together her face lighting up with delight as I made the animal noises for pangolins, lemurs, alligators, skunks, blue whales, tigers etc. a bunch of which, admittedly, I fudged a little, squirrels, lemurs and pangolins all come out sounding remarkably similar, a fact which she didn't hold against me, choosing to laugh instead.
The rest of the day: The most common refrain for the remainder of the day was lil S growling/crying anytime her little will was thwarted. Put down to eat and food isn't immediately available, growl/cry. Get to the top of the stairs and find self impeded by gate, growl/cry. In between playing with toys, growl/cry when not immediately stimulated. Can't find her lovie right away, growl/cry. Anyhow, this turns out to be annoying/representative of human nature. Without the strictures of society to hold us back we'd spend most of our day near tears because our wills weren't constantly being satiated. Thank God she's adorable and also dances with me by spinning in circles/laughs at the table when I belch/shares pita chips with me when we're hungry. It's like a buddy cop movie. I think she's the bad cop.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Cards and the loss of youth
It's hard for me to remember when I first started collecting cards, but it's easy for me to remember that summer when I started saying goodbye. I kept my cards, which were in the thousands, in a large chest. The sort of thing that a pirate would store booty in. And, at some point during my childhood we got two cats, Caspar and Midnight. Beautiful cats. Indoor outdoor, big barn cats that I remembered cradling in the palm of my hand. However, the thing about cats is that they like to poop and pee. And, guess what? A large chest of cards that move handily when you scrape at them with your claws winds up feeling an awful lot like litter or dirt, or other things to poop on. Queue Triumph.
After a few months I'd hear the pitter patter of paws on my cards and run into the room shrieking at them to leave. That's how about half of my cards ended up urine stained or worse. It was time to say goodbye. We parted ways at a garage sale, my childhood and I. I spent a few nights scraping cat feces from cards or attempting to pry apart cards conjoined by dried urine. I put 100 of them in a bag, being careful to take out anything, crap stained or no, that might be worth more than a couple bucks. I hadn't changed that much.
They sold for one dollar a piece, and I made twenty four dollars that day, a killing more than anyone else trying to sell old tables and chairs. I watched as kids younger than I hopped down the sun baked street with a bag of unknown in their hands, watched shadows distort and elongate, watched grandfathers large hairy knuckled hands pull out a dollar or two for these bubbling boys, not willing to pass up on a reminder of their own youth, or tired mothers too harried to mind the loss of a dollar if it meant receiving a bit of piece.
And as I watched this strange tableaux, commerce once again flooding through my veins I did not realize that it was one of those rare definable moments that you say goodbye to childhood, goodbye to the sweet unknown of cards, to the mystery of a card soaring in value, to sitting in my room for hours, having races between my cards to see which team had the most as if they were cars. What I'm trying to say is that I miss them? Or that miss that time? I miss sitting on the beige carpet moving cards along the floor, the sun a fiery bulb hanging from the window. I miss it all, the sweet roughness of a mint condition card, the deals, all those birthday parties full of Benito Santiago's. I miss them so much.
But I realize that I cannot chase down those young boys and tell them to treasure the youth that I'd only just lost without knowing. Time, that old bi-ch keeps passing whether we notice it or not. The last time I went home I remember moving a heavy box to get at some old books, hearing the soft thud of card edges being creased, taken away from near mint. Inside I can tell you is a Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie in a hard case with screws, a Scottie Pippen rookie that I traded for from my best friend. But that's the strange part about going home, hell, about anything in life, how we can just move aside a box of cards that once held the secret to our happiness. It's effing strange.
After a few months I'd hear the pitter patter of paws on my cards and run into the room shrieking at them to leave. That's how about half of my cards ended up urine stained or worse. It was time to say goodbye. We parted ways at a garage sale, my childhood and I. I spent a few nights scraping cat feces from cards or attempting to pry apart cards conjoined by dried urine. I put 100 of them in a bag, being careful to take out anything, crap stained or no, that might be worth more than a couple bucks. I hadn't changed that much.
They sold for one dollar a piece, and I made twenty four dollars that day, a killing more than anyone else trying to sell old tables and chairs. I watched as kids younger than I hopped down the sun baked street with a bag of unknown in their hands, watched shadows distort and elongate, watched grandfathers large hairy knuckled hands pull out a dollar or two for these bubbling boys, not willing to pass up on a reminder of their own youth, or tired mothers too harried to mind the loss of a dollar if it meant receiving a bit of piece.
And as I watched this strange tableaux, commerce once again flooding through my veins I did not realize that it was one of those rare definable moments that you say goodbye to childhood, goodbye to the sweet unknown of cards, to the mystery of a card soaring in value, to sitting in my room for hours, having races between my cards to see which team had the most as if they were cars. What I'm trying to say is that I miss them? Or that miss that time? I miss sitting on the beige carpet moving cards along the floor, the sun a fiery bulb hanging from the window. I miss it all, the sweet roughness of a mint condition card, the deals, all those birthday parties full of Benito Santiago's. I miss them so much.
But I realize that I cannot chase down those young boys and tell them to treasure the youth that I'd only just lost without knowing. Time, that old bi-ch keeps passing whether we notice it or not. The last time I went home I remember moving a heavy box to get at some old books, hearing the soft thud of card edges being creased, taken away from near mint. Inside I can tell you is a Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie in a hard case with screws, a Scottie Pippen rookie that I traded for from my best friend. But that's the strange part about going home, hell, about anything in life, how we can just move aside a box of cards that once held the secret to our happiness. It's effing strange.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Screw it all I'm doing is writing about baseball cards
We used to drop in on small shops, low squat buildings that used to be dentist offices or old hotels. The parking lots never had more than eight or so spaces, concrete blocks watched over intently by old trees still held onto by old wooden sticks from their misspent youth. We'd duck in the double doors, never clear on the push or pull, and talk with old men in beards and glasses over glass cases that we'd later, and with much less intensity pick out rings for our wives, cases filled with cards, arbitrary prices scribbled in the corner. We'd talk over the cost, wander in off the street to gawk, just to get a feel. Sometimes we'd buy things, packs usually, and then open them feverishly in the parking lot. We subscribed to Becket Monthly. We watched our little Ken Griffey Jr. card go from 15 dollars to 180 in a matter of three or so years. We were making money.
It was in these giddy years, the early nineties, that we were all making a killing on baseball cards. We'd go to card shows and sell them old Bob Gibson's for a hundred bucks. Everyone was making money. We didn't ask ourselves if it was wrong that the three dollar cards of our youth were now going for thirty, we just hoarded more of them, gathering our wealth in the pictures of our heroes. Though, to be fair, as time went by the relationship became a bit more vexed. This is pre-fantasy sports mind you. But we were the original fantasy sports players. We knew that if Bonilla went for 35 homeruns that our card could be worth five dollars more. In retrospect, we all wish Jr. had taken steroids and destroyed Aaron's record like Bond did. We'd have made a killing, hell, even the ubiquitous fleer card could have been worth something. We started buying packs of Score, trusting Donruss, it was all gold.
And then the market crashed. We should have seen it coming. We had to know that the deals we'd been making in those small shops, always empty of natural light, in back rooms and back alleys could not last forever. Camelot was gone. Just like that our cards all started dropping in each month's Beckett. Our fortune had been built upon a lie. Roberto Alomar wasn't even a first ballot hall of Famer, how could we have thought his rookie card was worth seventeen dollars? What were we thinking? Investing all those hours we could have spent playing video games or working on our jump shot just frittering away over cards? We were going to sell boxes of them to pay for college. We were all going to be rich and retire and buy small islands off the coast of Spain.
It had all gone wrong, and we saw that we had only ourselves to blame. We knew those shifty eyed guys in the old apartment building had been selling us magic beans that would never grow, but we didn't want to admit it to ourselves. We wanted to believe that a Billy Ripken bat that said fu--face on it was going to put us through our first year at Ivy. That we were going to sleep with Jose Canseco's under our pillows and wait for the card fairy to bring us piles of cash. That's why anyone who traded cards in the early nineties should have seen this coming. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
It was in these giddy years, the early nineties, that we were all making a killing on baseball cards. We'd go to card shows and sell them old Bob Gibson's for a hundred bucks. Everyone was making money. We didn't ask ourselves if it was wrong that the three dollar cards of our youth were now going for thirty, we just hoarded more of them, gathering our wealth in the pictures of our heroes. Though, to be fair, as time went by the relationship became a bit more vexed. This is pre-fantasy sports mind you. But we were the original fantasy sports players. We knew that if Bonilla went for 35 homeruns that our card could be worth five dollars more. In retrospect, we all wish Jr. had taken steroids and destroyed Aaron's record like Bond did. We'd have made a killing, hell, even the ubiquitous fleer card could have been worth something. We started buying packs of Score, trusting Donruss, it was all gold.
And then the market crashed. We should have seen it coming. We had to know that the deals we'd been making in those small shops, always empty of natural light, in back rooms and back alleys could not last forever. Camelot was gone. Just like that our cards all started dropping in each month's Beckett. Our fortune had been built upon a lie. Roberto Alomar wasn't even a first ballot hall of Famer, how could we have thought his rookie card was worth seventeen dollars? What were we thinking? Investing all those hours we could have spent playing video games or working on our jump shot just frittering away over cards? We were going to sell boxes of them to pay for college. We were all going to be rich and retire and buy small islands off the coast of Spain.
It had all gone wrong, and we saw that we had only ourselves to blame. We knew those shifty eyed guys in the old apartment building had been selling us magic beans that would never grow, but we didn't want to admit it to ourselves. We wanted to believe that a Billy Ripken bat that said fu--face on it was going to put us through our first year at Ivy. That we were going to sleep with Jose Canseco's under our pillows and wait for the card fairy to bring us piles of cash. That's why anyone who traded cards in the early nineties should have seen this coming. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
MSN 9 things you didn't know about dreams
1) Dreams can come true. No really. You know that dream you had where you showed up at work in your underwear but that kid you used to sit next to in second grade was in your cube, and also, your boss turned out to be someone who was some sort of amalgamation between your mom and your third cousin. Dreams can come true. It's just unlikely that they will.
2) People who try and interpret dreams are bat shi- crazy. This is one of those things that turns out to be true throughout all cultures and times. Most societies have created elaborate positions for people to interpret dreams solely so that Phd candidates can have something to write about for five years at a time.
3) Recurring dreams are a sign that you're going insane. A lot of people are like, "Oh, I keep having this dream about my teeth falling out" and stuff, and some people will try to convince you that it's your subconscious trying to help you process some important stuff in your life. As it turns out, having a recurring dream is just a sign that you might be insane.
4) Dreams are weird. I mean, why did the janitor in that dream have the body of a regular janitor but the head of a bald eagle. WTF subconscious?
5) It's impossible to control your dreams. Anyone who accidentally watched the Nightmare on Elm Street movies at too young of an age due to some weird neighborhood parents with equally strange kids, knows that you can't really control your dreams without a guy with a messed up face and long razors for hands showing up to murder you. It's best just to let the dreams do their thing.
6) Dreams don't actually happen at all. People just like to have things to talk about in the morning, or during a boring time at work. Dreams are your mind's way of faking that your night of sleep has been more interesting than it actually has been. I mean, nobody likes talking in the morning, it's the morning. That's why your conscious minds makes up these elaborate and weird things like you gave birth to a panda bear in a dream just to keep you interested in sleeping, otherwise we'd all just take meth.
7) Anytime someone says to you, "Hey, I had a dream last night" it's best to answer with, "How was I?" This joke is timeless and home or office appropriate.
8) The most common type of dream is that you're an ancient Egyptian pharaoh accidentally sealed in a giant pyramid with 900 cats. Apparently this dream is shared across cultures and time.
9) I remember about two dreams a year, so I'm guessing that that's about how many dreams the average person has per year. Two. Science.
2) People who try and interpret dreams are bat shi- crazy. This is one of those things that turns out to be true throughout all cultures and times. Most societies have created elaborate positions for people to interpret dreams solely so that Phd candidates can have something to write about for five years at a time.
3) Recurring dreams are a sign that you're going insane. A lot of people are like, "Oh, I keep having this dream about my teeth falling out" and stuff, and some people will try to convince you that it's your subconscious trying to help you process some important stuff in your life. As it turns out, having a recurring dream is just a sign that you might be insane.
4) Dreams are weird. I mean, why did the janitor in that dream have the body of a regular janitor but the head of a bald eagle. WTF subconscious?
5) It's impossible to control your dreams. Anyone who accidentally watched the Nightmare on Elm Street movies at too young of an age due to some weird neighborhood parents with equally strange kids, knows that you can't really control your dreams without a guy with a messed up face and long razors for hands showing up to murder you. It's best just to let the dreams do their thing.
6) Dreams don't actually happen at all. People just like to have things to talk about in the morning, or during a boring time at work. Dreams are your mind's way of faking that your night of sleep has been more interesting than it actually has been. I mean, nobody likes talking in the morning, it's the morning. That's why your conscious minds makes up these elaborate and weird things like you gave birth to a panda bear in a dream just to keep you interested in sleeping, otherwise we'd all just take meth.
7) Anytime someone says to you, "Hey, I had a dream last night" it's best to answer with, "How was I?" This joke is timeless and home or office appropriate.
8) The most common type of dream is that you're an ancient Egyptian pharaoh accidentally sealed in a giant pyramid with 900 cats. Apparently this dream is shared across cultures and time.
9) I remember about two dreams a year, so I'm guessing that that's about how many dreams the average person has per year. Two. Science.
Friday, January 20, 2012
The last bit on cards
I don't remember the year I talked my best friend into trading me a collection of cards, Mark McGwire included from his complete set of Donruss. Let's say that I was nine, though I may have been eight or eleven. The truth is it's hard to remember when I finally lost interest in collecting cards. Around the time I stopped collecting cards I'd become such an aficionado that I was primarily collecting minor league upper deck cards, hoping to cash in on the coming glory of guys in single A ball riding around on buses in the dead of night in Omaha. Like most people who delve too far into a pastime I'd needed increasingly esoteric cards to satiate my desire. This is the same reason people end up making drinks from the 1600's or smoking unfiltered cigarettes stolen from the grave sites of people from Jamestown. The thrill diminishes with increased exposure. Having four future star cards of Gregg Jeffries just didn't do it anymore.
But that's at least a few years past the time that I'm talking about. Whether I was eight or ten is kind of immaterial. You see, I knew, as most serious collectors knew, that a complete set of cards was worth a hell of a lot more than a set that was missing some. It would be like putting a crack in a diamond. Anyhow, my best friend would sometimes pull out his set of 1987 Donruss cards for the two of us to appreciate, and we'd go through and look at the Mark McGwrire rated rookie card and ponder the pre-android skinny McGwire, bat held over his right shoulder or was it his left, like a kid in little league, barely older than a kid himself then, though ten or eleven years older than us at the time and ten or eleven years younger than I am now, though the card itself remains unchanged like all pictures, reminders of misspent or even well spent youth.
The problem with having a complete set of cards is that the glory of having cards is trading them, moving product. After a while it becomes like the difference between starting at a woman in a magazine versus actually having one in the flesh and blood. It's hard to ever want to go back. And so, we'd stared at those cards all summer, brutally long and hot days, think wisps of clouds, more just there for show rather than to provide any real shade. And upstairs, in his room, we'd admire that set. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but it did. A few cards exchanged hands and suddenly the diamond went from being perfect to being flawed, and yet, in that flaw, it became somehow more real. I don't mean that as metaphorically as it sounds. I literally believe that cards are meant to be handled, traded, that G.I. Joes should not remain in their boxes to accrue value. (Note: We knew of this kid who's dad bought him a box of cards and made him keep it unopened, so it could go up in value, to which, wtf is that? How fun is it to be a kid who has some imaginary baseball cards in an unopened box? Answer: it isn't).
Okay, the strangest part about this memory is that I don't actually know if it's real. I don't know if I ever talked him into giving up the McGwire or Joyner or the Ripken. (though at that point in time nobody really gave a crap about Cal Ripken, he was just an above average shortstop rather than an icon) Look, what I'm getting at is the feeling of that summer, how badly I wanted him to trade me some cards from that set, how we'd sit cross legged in his room the box open between us, and I'd try to wheel and deal, entice him into giving up a card or two.
I don't know why I wanted those cards so much. I don't know if it was those cards themselves, the allure of breaking up the set, of talking him into something, of breaking up a perfectly good set of cards because all I'd ever been able to afford was one of those Topps Traded sets that only had fifty or so in them. Reaching back I could attach all sorts of significance to those distended afternoons, coming in sweaty from playing basketball, or playing sharks and minnows in the pool, point out the differences that seemed to accumulate between us as we grew up and became aware of them, but dammit, a big part of me just wanted those cards, and I've have stayed awake until 2 to get them.
And Brandon, yeah, I vaguely remember getting that Scottie Pippen from you, and I apologize. I think it was a rookie card. I probably traded you a Terrell Brandon and Mookie Blaylock or something for it.
But that's at least a few years past the time that I'm talking about. Whether I was eight or ten is kind of immaterial. You see, I knew, as most serious collectors knew, that a complete set of cards was worth a hell of a lot more than a set that was missing some. It would be like putting a crack in a diamond. Anyhow, my best friend would sometimes pull out his set of 1987 Donruss cards for the two of us to appreciate, and we'd go through and look at the Mark McGwrire rated rookie card and ponder the pre-android skinny McGwire, bat held over his right shoulder or was it his left, like a kid in little league, barely older than a kid himself then, though ten or eleven years older than us at the time and ten or eleven years younger than I am now, though the card itself remains unchanged like all pictures, reminders of misspent or even well spent youth.
The problem with having a complete set of cards is that the glory of having cards is trading them, moving product. After a while it becomes like the difference between starting at a woman in a magazine versus actually having one in the flesh and blood. It's hard to ever want to go back. And so, we'd stared at those cards all summer, brutally long and hot days, think wisps of clouds, more just there for show rather than to provide any real shade. And upstairs, in his room, we'd admire that set. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but it did. A few cards exchanged hands and suddenly the diamond went from being perfect to being flawed, and yet, in that flaw, it became somehow more real. I don't mean that as metaphorically as it sounds. I literally believe that cards are meant to be handled, traded, that G.I. Joes should not remain in their boxes to accrue value. (Note: We knew of this kid who's dad bought him a box of cards and made him keep it unopened, so it could go up in value, to which, wtf is that? How fun is it to be a kid who has some imaginary baseball cards in an unopened box? Answer: it isn't).
Okay, the strangest part about this memory is that I don't actually know if it's real. I don't know if I ever talked him into giving up the McGwire or Joyner or the Ripken. (though at that point in time nobody really gave a crap about Cal Ripken, he was just an above average shortstop rather than an icon) Look, what I'm getting at is the feeling of that summer, how badly I wanted him to trade me some cards from that set, how we'd sit cross legged in his room the box open between us, and I'd try to wheel and deal, entice him into giving up a card or two.
I don't know why I wanted those cards so much. I don't know if it was those cards themselves, the allure of breaking up the set, of talking him into something, of breaking up a perfectly good set of cards because all I'd ever been able to afford was one of those Topps Traded sets that only had fifty or so in them. Reaching back I could attach all sorts of significance to those distended afternoons, coming in sweaty from playing basketball, or playing sharks and minnows in the pool, point out the differences that seemed to accumulate between us as we grew up and became aware of them, but dammit, a big part of me just wanted those cards, and I've have stayed awake until 2 to get them.
And Brandon, yeah, I vaguely remember getting that Scottie Pippen from you, and I apologize. I think it was a rookie card. I probably traded you a Terrell Brandon and Mookie Blaylock or something for it.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Conversations on art and monkeys and hair/vague narcissism
S: I showed Sadie a doll and said, L. And she said, yaya.
M: Yeah, she said something like yeah to me the other day.
S: I think she was trying to say L.
M: It wasn't like a real yeah, but more like that thing where if you 100 monkeys typewriters they'd come up with some esoteric Shakes--
S: The dictionary.
M: No, just a bunch of keyboards and stuff with feces all over them.
S: Do you say, "Here's L" or what when she gets here?
M: I'm usually upstairs, sometimes I've already left if I have like an important meeting or something.
S: I mean, what actually are you doing when she gets here? Does Sadie get excited?
M: Of late usually I'm upstairs changing a diaper when she arrives, and she knocks lightly, so I wind up not quite hearing her, and then I got downstairs like five minutes later, and she's standing on our front porch in the cold eating a sandwich.
S: Really? That's terrible.
M: Well what are we paying her for?
S: To take care of Sadie.
M: I thought it was performance art. Well, this is awkward.
S: Are you blogging or something?
M: I prefer to call it art.
Today was one of those days when my hair was doing exactly what I wanted it to, and I was really excited about it and certain I'd receive lots of compliments, and I practically skipped out the door even though I'm not usually prone to skipping, and I was worried that if I skipped too vigorously that my hair might accidentally fall out of place. Anyhow, I somehow braved the elements and made it to work in one piece only to go through an entire day where I received only two compliments on the quality of my hair. I mean, I know we've got famine in east Africa and somebody's baby, probably mine, just did something cute, but it looked good. Anyhow, the only two compliments I received were ones I gave to myself? Does it count if you steer a conversation towards something about you and then compliment yourself? Is that a real compliment? It's times like that that I fear that I've written a sentence that has that that as part of it and that I'm too self-involved. Also, a hell of a lot of thats in that sentence.
Anyhow, this post was supposed to be about baseball cards and childhood and the word ephemeral was going to be used, but I don't have the energy. I'll get there tomorrow. In the meantime let's all just have a nice laugh. Hahahahahah. That turns out to be more awkward when typed on the internet, though I was fake laughing in my head. The fake laugh wasn't really my laugh but more like the laugh of a friendly bearded guy from a Disney movie crossed slightly with a Japanamation guy. Like a real hearty laugh, just picture the guy from Rudolph claymation Christmas, Yosemite Sam.
Enough narcissistic rambling, it's time to quote someone else.
From the essay "Feet in Smoke" by John Jeremiah Sullivan about the time his brother had a near death experience and was temporarily made a bit off by it.
"While eating lunch on the 24th, suddenly became convinced that I was impersonating his brother. Demanded to see my ID. Asked me, "Why would you want to impersonate John?" When I protested, "But, Worth, don't I look like John?" he replied, "You look exactly like him. No wonder you can get away with it."
"Evening of the 27h. Unexpectedly jumped up from his chair, a perplexed expression on his face, and ran to the wall. Rubbed palms along a small area of the wall, like a blind man. Turned. Asked, "Where's the pinata?" Shuffled into hallway. Noticed a large nurse walking away from us down the hall. Muttered, "If she's got our pinata, I'm going to be pissed."
M: Yeah, she said something like yeah to me the other day.
S: I think she was trying to say L.
M: It wasn't like a real yeah, but more like that thing where if you 100 monkeys typewriters they'd come up with some esoteric Shakes--
S: The dictionary.
M: No, just a bunch of keyboards and stuff with feces all over them.
S: Do you say, "Here's L" or what when she gets here?
M: I'm usually upstairs, sometimes I've already left if I have like an important meeting or something.
S: I mean, what actually are you doing when she gets here? Does Sadie get excited?
M: Of late usually I'm upstairs changing a diaper when she arrives, and she knocks lightly, so I wind up not quite hearing her, and then I got downstairs like five minutes later, and she's standing on our front porch in the cold eating a sandwich.
S: Really? That's terrible.
M: Well what are we paying her for?
S: To take care of Sadie.
M: I thought it was performance art. Well, this is awkward.
S: Are you blogging or something?
M: I prefer to call it art.
Today was one of those days when my hair was doing exactly what I wanted it to, and I was really excited about it and certain I'd receive lots of compliments, and I practically skipped out the door even though I'm not usually prone to skipping, and I was worried that if I skipped too vigorously that my hair might accidentally fall out of place. Anyhow, I somehow braved the elements and made it to work in one piece only to go through an entire day where I received only two compliments on the quality of my hair. I mean, I know we've got famine in east Africa and somebody's baby, probably mine, just did something cute, but it looked good. Anyhow, the only two compliments I received were ones I gave to myself? Does it count if you steer a conversation towards something about you and then compliment yourself? Is that a real compliment? It's times like that that I fear that I've written a sentence that has that that as part of it and that I'm too self-involved. Also, a hell of a lot of thats in that sentence.
Anyhow, this post was supposed to be about baseball cards and childhood and the word ephemeral was going to be used, but I don't have the energy. I'll get there tomorrow. In the meantime let's all just have a nice laugh. Hahahahahah. That turns out to be more awkward when typed on the internet, though I was fake laughing in my head. The fake laugh wasn't really my laugh but more like the laugh of a friendly bearded guy from a Disney movie crossed slightly with a Japanamation guy. Like a real hearty laugh, just picture the guy from Rudolph claymation Christmas, Yosemite Sam.
Enough narcissistic rambling, it's time to quote someone else.
From the essay "Feet in Smoke" by John Jeremiah Sullivan about the time his brother had a near death experience and was temporarily made a bit off by it.
"While eating lunch on the 24th, suddenly became convinced that I was impersonating his brother. Demanded to see my ID. Asked me, "Why would you want to impersonate John?" When I protested, "But, Worth, don't I look like John?" he replied, "You look exactly like him. No wonder you can get away with it."
"Evening of the 27h. Unexpectedly jumped up from his chair, a perplexed expression on his face, and ran to the wall. Rubbed palms along a small area of the wall, like a blind man. Turned. Asked, "Where's the pinata?" Shuffled into hallway. Noticed a large nurse walking away from us down the hall. Muttered, "If she's got our pinata, I'm going to be pissed."
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Cards continued
Most of my memories from childhood involve cards or He-Man. The latter of which is clearly one of those things you don't really remember but just think that you remember. We watched a He-Man holiday Christmas special on Netflix this winter and apparently I didn't even remember that he lived in an alternate universe, or that he wasn't always shirtless. I thought he was always shirtless. His name was Adam. In retrospect, He-Man and I have a lot of catching up to do or the guy is like an effing onion.
But this was supposed to be about cards. I'm not a drug user. Those extremely effective commercials of a guy saying, "this is your brain" and then showing us a nice perfectly oval egg, glinting in kitchen light followed by "this is your brain on drugs" and that crazy sob has shattered the egg and it's just frying in the pan and that guy is on his way to a delicious brain omelette. Anyhow, that was enough. However, I enjoy other things in somewhat of a similar manner that folks enjoy addictive substances. Once I loved baseball cards.
I was in fifth grade and headed over later in the day to my best friend's house for a birthday party. My mom and I, more properly, my mom, had gone out and purchased 15 packs of Upper Deck cards for his birthday. Like any normal kid growing up in the eighties I'd taken to card collecting at an early age, checking out Becket monthly's and moving them back and forth based on their value. It was like Sleeth's hoard minus the ring.
That year I'd scrimped together enough cash from begging my mom to purchase my own fair share of Upper Deck cards. Over the course of the long hot summer, the smell of tar damn near melting, dusty trees with nowhere to hide, aimless walks down the street, I'd managed to accumulate nearly every rookie in their future stars set. I could tell by my Beckett Monthly that I was only two cards shy of getting the entire set. What a conundrum?
There I sat in my quiet room with fifteen packs of cards, each one with the potential to complete the set I'd been working months to complete. That's the genius of cards in a way, packs, that you don't know what they hold inside. It could be anything, it could even be a bunch of crappy utility players who shouldn't even have cards. But that allure, the slick feel of the packs in my hand was a thrill all it's own. The packs tore away in the manner that women shed clothes on the front of romance novels, only better, because instead of just one woman you got twelve amazing baseball cards. Admittedly this would perhaps be revised if you asked me at fourteen.
My room was hot. The afternoon sun in Chico had a tendency to be blazing. His birthday was in April, so it's unlikely I can pin it on heat insanity. But there I was, sitting so close to the completion of something, and the mystery of that journey was lying in fifteen packs on my floor. What if I opened just one? What if that first pack had both cards I'd been looking for? I could be done with minimal harm.
The fist pack is the hardest to open, from there, it's pretty much an orgy. After fifteen minutes or so I was sitting in a pile of useless cards. I'd managed to open fifteen packs without getting either of the cards I'd needed. Now, I just had it to make it to the party without my mom noticing. I don't remember exactly how, but I apparently didn't hide it well. She made me go to the party and watch my friend open a box of already opened baseball cards. I'm certain his level of excitement was dimmed. Who is to say that I hadn't gone through and pulled out all the good ones? I wouldn't have put it past me. Hell, he didn't really get much in those cards, I'd seen them.
Most days don't have lessons, or, if they do, they are opaque or as hard to find as a puzzle piece that the dog has buried in the back yard. But days like that seem relevant, easy to understand. I am a long way from perfect and always will be. The allure of a baseball card is to become the allure of other things as life goes on. It is best, I would go back and tell myself, to let the mystery remain. Nothing is gained but much can be lost.
But this was supposed to be about cards. I'm not a drug user. Those extremely effective commercials of a guy saying, "this is your brain" and then showing us a nice perfectly oval egg, glinting in kitchen light followed by "this is your brain on drugs" and that crazy sob has shattered the egg and it's just frying in the pan and that guy is on his way to a delicious brain omelette. Anyhow, that was enough. However, I enjoy other things in somewhat of a similar manner that folks enjoy addictive substances. Once I loved baseball cards.
I was in fifth grade and headed over later in the day to my best friend's house for a birthday party. My mom and I, more properly, my mom, had gone out and purchased 15 packs of Upper Deck cards for his birthday. Like any normal kid growing up in the eighties I'd taken to card collecting at an early age, checking out Becket monthly's and moving them back and forth based on their value. It was like Sleeth's hoard minus the ring.
That year I'd scrimped together enough cash from begging my mom to purchase my own fair share of Upper Deck cards. Over the course of the long hot summer, the smell of tar damn near melting, dusty trees with nowhere to hide, aimless walks down the street, I'd managed to accumulate nearly every rookie in their future stars set. I could tell by my Beckett Monthly that I was only two cards shy of getting the entire set. What a conundrum?
There I sat in my quiet room with fifteen packs of cards, each one with the potential to complete the set I'd been working months to complete. That's the genius of cards in a way, packs, that you don't know what they hold inside. It could be anything, it could even be a bunch of crappy utility players who shouldn't even have cards. But that allure, the slick feel of the packs in my hand was a thrill all it's own. The packs tore away in the manner that women shed clothes on the front of romance novels, only better, because instead of just one woman you got twelve amazing baseball cards. Admittedly this would perhaps be revised if you asked me at fourteen.
My room was hot. The afternoon sun in Chico had a tendency to be blazing. His birthday was in April, so it's unlikely I can pin it on heat insanity. But there I was, sitting so close to the completion of something, and the mystery of that journey was lying in fifteen packs on my floor. What if I opened just one? What if that first pack had both cards I'd been looking for? I could be done with minimal harm.
The fist pack is the hardest to open, from there, it's pretty much an orgy. After fifteen minutes or so I was sitting in a pile of useless cards. I'd managed to open fifteen packs without getting either of the cards I'd needed. Now, I just had it to make it to the party without my mom noticing. I don't remember exactly how, but I apparently didn't hide it well. She made me go to the party and watch my friend open a box of already opened baseball cards. I'm certain his level of excitement was dimmed. Who is to say that I hadn't gone through and pulled out all the good ones? I wouldn't have put it past me. Hell, he didn't really get much in those cards, I'd seen them.
Most days don't have lessons, or, if they do, they are opaque or as hard to find as a puzzle piece that the dog has buried in the back yard. But days like that seem relevant, easy to understand. I am a long way from perfect and always will be. The allure of a baseball card is to become the allure of other things as life goes on. It is best, I would go back and tell myself, to let the mystery remain. Nothing is gained but much can be lost.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Cards
The kid's name was Drew, so we sort of had that in common. As I recall he had an uncommonly flat face, a large blocky forehead centered around a nose so flat that Columbus would have sailed right off the damn thing. I think he was five. It's hard to remember. I may have been seven. I hadn't yet started to comb my hair, so it just kind of sat atop my head like an ill-constructed rat's nest. I wasn't fond of showering.
My mother was renting a house for herself and the three of us kids. We lived next door to people who turned out to be distant relatives of ours. They had a large RV that was always parked on the cul-de-sac. The point is, we were renters, single parent family with three kids.
That's why the strange part of my memory of Drew is that I had somehow conceived of his family being beneath ours, and I'm not sure how that's possible. My mom did the best she could, but we certainly didn't wake up and practice cotillion before eating poached eggs. Most mornings I'd curl up over the heater on the floor in an old blanket and let it fill with hot air. We were a bit removed from the upper class.
That's why I'm not sure at all why I thought this flat-faced kid was beneath me. I have two guesses. One, perhaps his father smoked, and I conceived of this as some sort of mark that they lacked class. This may or may not be true. My father smoked, not often, and I didn't conceive of him as being low class, so this may be entirely untrue. I remember that he drove a truck.
Okay, I've got three. The second is that I conceived of dads who drove big trucks around as a low class since my primary influence was my best friend's dad who drove a pretty awesome sports car and who was a doctor. Perhaps I'd unwittingly slipped in some class markers with all the time I'd spent at their house.
The third, and most likely, is that he was younger and I'm a grifter at heart. I mean, when you're seven a five year old is vast marks down on the totem pole of intelligence, and I don't think the flatness was helping his cause. Anyhow, I loved baseball cards. Specifically, I loved to trade baseball cards, and I remember sitting in Drew's room, shaggy brown carpet, boxed window, dust motes, and sitting down with his cards and mine and whispering like the devil in his ear.
"I'm going to cut you a deal," I'd tell him, selecting out one of his best cars, Bobby Bonilla or Gary Sheffield, and we're talking more like Upper Deck or Fleer Ultra type stuff, not Donruss, and I'd convince him that though it pained me to do it I'd trade him several Garth Iorg's for one Bobby Bonilla. I don't think I fleeced him entirely. Rather, I generally included a Wally Joyner type guy in the deal who hadn't really ever amounted to anything. And as we spent the afternoon dealing cards I felt the spirit moving in me, commerce, I was born for this.
The point is that I sort of ripped him off, which was considered fair game in trading cards, and that's why I was surprised when his dad showed up on our front porch later that day and asked for Drew's cards back in exchange for mine. It violated all sorts of ethical codes of card trading as well as how one should properly go about raising one's children. If he was dumb enough to trade them then they were rightfully mine. However, his truck driving dad didn't see it that way, and this just confirmed for me that I had been right about the whole family. They were low class. Who would do such a thing?
I stopped hanging out with Drew shortly thereafter. It's tough to be friends with a kid who is two years younger than you anyway, especially one who's family no doubt makes more than yours, but who you have somehow conceived of as lower class. You see, I've been a snob my whole life, even when I didn't have any right to it just like I didn't have any right to those Fleer Ultra Bobby Bonilla's. And as Drew's father left with those baseball cards in his meaty left hand, our crab apple tree making shadows on the long strip of driveway I knew, just like I knew in that dusty room that I'd done something wrong. But the feeling of those cards in their little plastic holders is so sweet. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Very little, I suppose. But, what good will it be for a man if he gains a Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie card, yet forfeits his soul? Ephemeral though it may be, some.
My mother was renting a house for herself and the three of us kids. We lived next door to people who turned out to be distant relatives of ours. They had a large RV that was always parked on the cul-de-sac. The point is, we were renters, single parent family with three kids.
That's why the strange part of my memory of Drew is that I had somehow conceived of his family being beneath ours, and I'm not sure how that's possible. My mom did the best she could, but we certainly didn't wake up and practice cotillion before eating poached eggs. Most mornings I'd curl up over the heater on the floor in an old blanket and let it fill with hot air. We were a bit removed from the upper class.
That's why I'm not sure at all why I thought this flat-faced kid was beneath me. I have two guesses. One, perhaps his father smoked, and I conceived of this as some sort of mark that they lacked class. This may or may not be true. My father smoked, not often, and I didn't conceive of him as being low class, so this may be entirely untrue. I remember that he drove a truck.
Okay, I've got three. The second is that I conceived of dads who drove big trucks around as a low class since my primary influence was my best friend's dad who drove a pretty awesome sports car and who was a doctor. Perhaps I'd unwittingly slipped in some class markers with all the time I'd spent at their house.
The third, and most likely, is that he was younger and I'm a grifter at heart. I mean, when you're seven a five year old is vast marks down on the totem pole of intelligence, and I don't think the flatness was helping his cause. Anyhow, I loved baseball cards. Specifically, I loved to trade baseball cards, and I remember sitting in Drew's room, shaggy brown carpet, boxed window, dust motes, and sitting down with his cards and mine and whispering like the devil in his ear.
"I'm going to cut you a deal," I'd tell him, selecting out one of his best cars, Bobby Bonilla or Gary Sheffield, and we're talking more like Upper Deck or Fleer Ultra type stuff, not Donruss, and I'd convince him that though it pained me to do it I'd trade him several Garth Iorg's for one Bobby Bonilla. I don't think I fleeced him entirely. Rather, I generally included a Wally Joyner type guy in the deal who hadn't really ever amounted to anything. And as we spent the afternoon dealing cards I felt the spirit moving in me, commerce, I was born for this.
The point is that I sort of ripped him off, which was considered fair game in trading cards, and that's why I was surprised when his dad showed up on our front porch later that day and asked for Drew's cards back in exchange for mine. It violated all sorts of ethical codes of card trading as well as how one should properly go about raising one's children. If he was dumb enough to trade them then they were rightfully mine. However, his truck driving dad didn't see it that way, and this just confirmed for me that I had been right about the whole family. They were low class. Who would do such a thing?
I stopped hanging out with Drew shortly thereafter. It's tough to be friends with a kid who is two years younger than you anyway, especially one who's family no doubt makes more than yours, but who you have somehow conceived of as lower class. You see, I've been a snob my whole life, even when I didn't have any right to it just like I didn't have any right to those Fleer Ultra Bobby Bonilla's. And as Drew's father left with those baseball cards in his meaty left hand, our crab apple tree making shadows on the long strip of driveway I knew, just like I knew in that dusty room that I'd done something wrong. But the feeling of those cards in their little plastic holders is so sweet. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Very little, I suppose. But, what good will it be for a man if he gains a Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie card, yet forfeits his soul? Ephemeral though it may be, some.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Friday night
When I was nine I drove up the mountains in the company of a big brother. He wasn't actually my big brother. Let's call him Michael. He had an incredible, retrospectively speaking here, mustache. It was the big brother system where they assign a person to some needy youth. I sort of can't believe this exists in our litigious and scared times. Didn't anyone back then watch the five o'clock news? Nine out of ten people are murderers and drug addicts. It's just math.
The drive took two hours, and I think he kept fiddling with the radio. Perhaps I'd told him that I wanted to listen to a game. I don't really remember. It was a pickup truck with a bench seat in the front, the heater was turned up high enough that I felt sick for a portion of the drive but didn't say anything. The conversation was awkward at best. I wasn't the most gregarious child, so it's tough to blame Michael here.
By the time we reached the snow it was nearly time to go back. We got out of the car for a few minutes, and I remember Michael holding a snow ball. Let's say he threw it a pine, scattering it against it's long suffering trunk. I don't think we threw any snowballs at one another. Rather, we marveled at how cold the snow was in the palm of our hands. I'm just guessing. I've no earthly clue what Michael was thinking, if he had a father of his own that he was trying to emulate, or improve upon, or no father at all. I am older now than that relative stranger who drove me up into the mountains. (I don't mean this to sound creepy or negligent or anything. Times were, in fact, a bit more innocent). And so it's hard to peer backwards through the dust and cobwebs of twenty two years, to brush them aside and remember why we'd gone to see the snow. Perhaps he'd asked me what I'd liked to do, suggested the snow. It was sunny that day, and I remember the jagged streams that ran along the side of the road, cracks in seas of white glass.
No, what I remember most about that day was arriving home in the late afternoon, and my mother asking me where I'd gotten the baseball cards. I told her that Michael had bought them for me at a card shop before we drove up to the snow, and she made me give them back, told him that I wasn't allowed to accept gifts. I don't even remember going to the card show, though at that point in time in my life I was one thousand times more interested in baseball cards than seeing snow. It embarrassed both Michael and I that the cards had to be returned. It was unclear what he'd do with them. I don't think they'd let him sell them back. The strange part is that's the last thing I remember of Michael. Perhaps I saw him a time or two after, but after the baseball cards had been taken away, and we'd not even been able to muster a proper snowball, it was clear that things just weren't going to work out. He went back to being a college student, and I to organizing my baseball cards in meticulous rows by team. Perhaps I was eight.
There was light cloud cover, thin veils over acres of blue sky, and the sun arced down through the snow laden, heavy fingers of trees. I don't know why I remember driving up those serpentine roads one day in late spring. I don't know why I remember many of the things I do.
The drive took two hours, and I think he kept fiddling with the radio. Perhaps I'd told him that I wanted to listen to a game. I don't really remember. It was a pickup truck with a bench seat in the front, the heater was turned up high enough that I felt sick for a portion of the drive but didn't say anything. The conversation was awkward at best. I wasn't the most gregarious child, so it's tough to blame Michael here.
By the time we reached the snow it was nearly time to go back. We got out of the car for a few minutes, and I remember Michael holding a snow ball. Let's say he threw it a pine, scattering it against it's long suffering trunk. I don't think we threw any snowballs at one another. Rather, we marveled at how cold the snow was in the palm of our hands. I'm just guessing. I've no earthly clue what Michael was thinking, if he had a father of his own that he was trying to emulate, or improve upon, or no father at all. I am older now than that relative stranger who drove me up into the mountains. (I don't mean this to sound creepy or negligent or anything. Times were, in fact, a bit more innocent). And so it's hard to peer backwards through the dust and cobwebs of twenty two years, to brush them aside and remember why we'd gone to see the snow. Perhaps he'd asked me what I'd liked to do, suggested the snow. It was sunny that day, and I remember the jagged streams that ran along the side of the road, cracks in seas of white glass.
No, what I remember most about that day was arriving home in the late afternoon, and my mother asking me where I'd gotten the baseball cards. I told her that Michael had bought them for me at a card shop before we drove up to the snow, and she made me give them back, told him that I wasn't allowed to accept gifts. I don't even remember going to the card show, though at that point in time in my life I was one thousand times more interested in baseball cards than seeing snow. It embarrassed both Michael and I that the cards had to be returned. It was unclear what he'd do with them. I don't think they'd let him sell them back. The strange part is that's the last thing I remember of Michael. Perhaps I saw him a time or two after, but after the baseball cards had been taken away, and we'd not even been able to muster a proper snowball, it was clear that things just weren't going to work out. He went back to being a college student, and I to organizing my baseball cards in meticulous rows by team. Perhaps I was eight.
There was light cloud cover, thin veils over acres of blue sky, and the sun arced down through the snow laden, heavy fingers of trees. I don't know why I remember driving up those serpentine roads one day in late spring. I don't know why I remember many of the things I do.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The snow
The snow fell as snow tends too this time of year. I'd describe it, but you know what I mean. Time moves slower when it snows, and everyone knows this. It's related to our ability to perceive, in this sort of snow, each individual flake as it glides from heaven to earth. This sudden perception that the reality that we are swimming through is beautiful, and tangible, wakes us up to ourselves. We stop whatever we are doing, milling flour, fixing cars, idling away at computers, to stand at the window and peer outward rather than inward for a change. In this way the snow acts as a perfect circle, first leading us from our own minor worries and into the world, and then back in again, but this time with the understanding that our lives are something more than we'd thought before the first flake fell.
We remember the clipping of heels on old stone streets, water lying in the low places between cobbles, how the rhythm made us stop and peer up into cold blue skies. We remembered the pale yellow street lamps dropping their spotlights on the slender, freckled arms of women we'd forgotten, the complex smell our fathers pipe tobaccos, delphiniums and light vinegar; we remembered them standing below our cold bedroom windows, less like men than shapes of darkness at the end of orange fuses. They were good men.
And when we got home, slower now, because of the snow, we hugged our wives and husbands, our children and dogs. We curled up with them on the couch trying to keep ourselves warm. And even this brief tenderness does not inoculate us from the morning, when our nostalgia has been wiped clean. In the morning we hunch over our car wheels, hands cold, and wonder what quicksilver dreams, what strands of hair, we'd once held that were now lost in a sea of red lights.
We remember the clipping of heels on old stone streets, water lying in the low places between cobbles, how the rhythm made us stop and peer up into cold blue skies. We remembered the pale yellow street lamps dropping their spotlights on the slender, freckled arms of women we'd forgotten, the complex smell our fathers pipe tobaccos, delphiniums and light vinegar; we remembered them standing below our cold bedroom windows, less like men than shapes of darkness at the end of orange fuses. They were good men.
And when we got home, slower now, because of the snow, we hugged our wives and husbands, our children and dogs. We curled up with them on the couch trying to keep ourselves warm. And even this brief tenderness does not inoculate us from the morning, when our nostalgia has been wiped clean. In the morning we hunch over our car wheels, hands cold, and wonder what quicksilver dreams, what strands of hair, we'd once held that were now lost in a sea of red lights.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
On skin
I've been meaning to tell you something about beauty. No. This is not one of those cheesy letters that you're supposed to read when you're sixteen or something. I'm living between grace and glory and sort of hedging my bets with the Mayan calendar. That is only to say that those sorts of things are presumptions, guesses. If you have something to say it's best to speak now.
All right, so, I have this pithy sort of quote that's been tumbling around in my head for a time. I'm not certain that it's accurate, but it's pithy. And I'm a sucker for things that sound just right. In the afternoon she cries in her yellow room as the refrigerator hums. I've been watching the light through the blinds flicker in the fronds of ferns. If she stops crying I'll listen to car motors three streets away.
The average adult has 22 feet of skin, or, roughly enough to fill up a doorway. If you're picturing a doorway of skin like I am, stop. I don't enjoy horror movies.
They say that Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships. I think we're roughly talking a couple of feet there. So, if it only took two feet of skin to launch a thousand ships just think what we could do with 22?
She coughs. Is it a meaningful I'm awake sort of cough, or a, hey, I'm thinking of sleeping up here, and I just want to get out this last cough cough.
Some of the Biblical narratives do not blame David for seducing Bathsheba. It is fair to say that, seeing all 22 feet of skin he was sort of at her mercy.
She's either clapping or smacking the wall and imitating the calls of monkeys. Sleep is an unconscious gesture of love from child to parent.
For a while she carries a blanket around occasionally placing it over her head and laughing hysterically as she falls. Children are a reminder of the past etched in the stones of the future.
I wonder if the great conversation that the mind carries on with itself is great after all. Perhaps it is just the murmur of someone gone mad.
The term, huzzah.
She is imitating the sounds of squirrels. We are not sleeping.
Skin is all we have to go on, underneath we have too much in common.
In the bright yellow room the plants wave their arms at the grace of central heating.
An easy google search will take you to the secret affairs of Ghandi, which obviously were not secret enough. The flesh is either weak or strong depending on your perspective.
In February of 1847 members of the Donner party survived by living on the flesh of the dead. We can presume that upon reaching the safety of warmer CA they were either rounded up and shot as zombies or began careers writing graphic novels. Forty eight members of the party survived, and I can see that they could teach us about skin, about beauty.
I remember the curve of your hip rising from smooth skin.
after, we’d lie awake and reflect on the aesthetics of a backlit clavicle and the island of shadow in the crease where hip meets waist.
I've lost the thread as you can tell. She is still calling to the ceiling in her despair, not aware yet of the vastness of a universe that is not particularly attentive. Her skin is smooth and young. Perhaps the object lesson is none at all.
All right, so, I have this pithy sort of quote that's been tumbling around in my head for a time. I'm not certain that it's accurate, but it's pithy. And I'm a sucker for things that sound just right. In the afternoon she cries in her yellow room as the refrigerator hums. I've been watching the light through the blinds flicker in the fronds of ferns. If she stops crying I'll listen to car motors three streets away.
The average adult has 22 feet of skin, or, roughly enough to fill up a doorway. If you're picturing a doorway of skin like I am, stop. I don't enjoy horror movies.
They say that Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships. I think we're roughly talking a couple of feet there. So, if it only took two feet of skin to launch a thousand ships just think what we could do with 22?
She coughs. Is it a meaningful I'm awake sort of cough, or a, hey, I'm thinking of sleeping up here, and I just want to get out this last cough cough.
Some of the Biblical narratives do not blame David for seducing Bathsheba. It is fair to say that, seeing all 22 feet of skin he was sort of at her mercy.
She's either clapping or smacking the wall and imitating the calls of monkeys. Sleep is an unconscious gesture of love from child to parent.
For a while she carries a blanket around occasionally placing it over her head and laughing hysterically as she falls. Children are a reminder of the past etched in the stones of the future.
I wonder if the great conversation that the mind carries on with itself is great after all. Perhaps it is just the murmur of someone gone mad.
The term, huzzah.
She is imitating the sounds of squirrels. We are not sleeping.
Skin is all we have to go on, underneath we have too much in common.
In the bright yellow room the plants wave their arms at the grace of central heating.
An easy google search will take you to the secret affairs of Ghandi, which obviously were not secret enough. The flesh is either weak or strong depending on your perspective.
In February of 1847 members of the Donner party survived by living on the flesh of the dead. We can presume that upon reaching the safety of warmer CA they were either rounded up and shot as zombies or began careers writing graphic novels. Forty eight members of the party survived, and I can see that they could teach us about skin, about beauty.
I remember the curve of your hip rising from smooth skin.
after, we’d lie awake and reflect on the aesthetics of a backlit clavicle and the island of shadow in the crease where hip meets waist.
I've lost the thread as you can tell. She is still calling to the ceiling in her despair, not aware yet of the vastness of a universe that is not particularly attentive. Her skin is smooth and young. Perhaps the object lesson is none at all.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
So
I've been trying to write something for days. Every time I start I get interrupted by something. Usually that something is me. Yet, how can this be? How can I be interrupting myself as I'm doing something? Aren't I me? How does one go about interrupting oneself at a task? It's probably fair to say that I need to be medicated, which is to say, I'm a living and breathing American alive and functional and with enough money to have a cable and internet subscription. Thus, the majority of my day is based upon distraction, not focusing, just attending to one small thing after another. Thus, perhaps it is no surprise that my intention to write is so often subsumed by other, easier things.
It is harder to create than to consume.
I sprained my ankle this week. It aches when I stand up or walk for more than a minute or so. I am reading a book on immortality of late that seems a bit too optimistic for the state of my ankles.
We watched a movie last night, Another Earth, which sort of gets into that question of, am I me? Essentially, a parallel world is discovered in which everything is exactly the same, and the question becomes, what would we say to ourselves? Of course, we talk to ourselves all the time. We talk to people we know. We, or at least I, often carry on incredibly verbally expressive conversations with random people who upset me, and later, I create scenarios in which some sort of Chuck Norris style ass kicking takes place. This is not to say that I'd deliver an ass-kicking to myself, but rather that I don't know that I'd have anything to say that I hadn't already said before. Why?
And now I'm sitting here writing this. Me. This person right here and now. This contingent phenomenon that is a result of one million choices or so that have shaped me, (and here I realize that me is contingent too, or, at least, we really have know earthly clue wtf is going on with consciousness) and I am wondering if it's what I intended to write. I started writing three other things, but they didn't take. They were like middling colds, or certain types of women.
It is hard to see beyond the end of one's nose. This task is made a bit harder when you have a lengthy nose like myself, though I believe the gist of the quote is largely metaphorical. It's a minor miracle that I'm not yet asleep. But the weekends, when you work for a living, take on a sort of mythic status that must be lived up to. To go to be early, to be tired, is accepting that life is short and brutal, even relative to the doubling we've seen in this century alone. The short and brutal, at least in industrialized nations, is largely meant metaphorically. I am forever becoming confused if things are metaphorical.
But now I'm sitting here, here being the couch on a certain Saturday night, in a certain year, in which the world will or will not end, which makes it no different than any other year whether you're looking at it from a Judeo-Christian ethic or as a secular humanist. Life itself, not just consciousness, is contingent, either a blip on the radar or something beautiful. Perhaps both. But see now, I've strayed, and I still have to walk up the stairs to soothe a crying one year old, and by the time I reach the top of the stairs my ankle is throbbing in a way that makes me actually say "Ow," out loud, in the obnoxious way of people who are trying to draw attention to themselves, except that I'm by myself, standing in the dark at the top of the stairs, which is not to be taken metaphorically, and so the "ow," if that's how one goes about spelling "ow," is real and more important than wondering about comets or Mayan calendars.
I see her at the edge of the crib, crying. I take the pacifier from her left hand and put it back into her mouth. I shush her, and lay her flat in the crib. I put a blanket over her and tuck it around her tiny body. I smooth her hair, and even though I cannot see her clearly, our shapes are but outlines in this dark, ghosts of things past, I know that she can hear me, and I reach down, cupping her cheek, smoothing her fine hair, and I lean close and say, "I love you." And I don't know if she knows what those words mean, or even what they are supposed to mean. I just know that she lies quietly for the moment as I slip back down the stairs and into the ocean.
It is harder to create than to consume.
I sprained my ankle this week. It aches when I stand up or walk for more than a minute or so. I am reading a book on immortality of late that seems a bit too optimistic for the state of my ankles.
We watched a movie last night, Another Earth, which sort of gets into that question of, am I me? Essentially, a parallel world is discovered in which everything is exactly the same, and the question becomes, what would we say to ourselves? Of course, we talk to ourselves all the time. We talk to people we know. We, or at least I, often carry on incredibly verbally expressive conversations with random people who upset me, and later, I create scenarios in which some sort of Chuck Norris style ass kicking takes place. This is not to say that I'd deliver an ass-kicking to myself, but rather that I don't know that I'd have anything to say that I hadn't already said before. Why?
And now I'm sitting here writing this. Me. This person right here and now. This contingent phenomenon that is a result of one million choices or so that have shaped me, (and here I realize that me is contingent too, or, at least, we really have know earthly clue wtf is going on with consciousness) and I am wondering if it's what I intended to write. I started writing three other things, but they didn't take. They were like middling colds, or certain types of women.
It is hard to see beyond the end of one's nose. This task is made a bit harder when you have a lengthy nose like myself, though I believe the gist of the quote is largely metaphorical. It's a minor miracle that I'm not yet asleep. But the weekends, when you work for a living, take on a sort of mythic status that must be lived up to. To go to be early, to be tired, is accepting that life is short and brutal, even relative to the doubling we've seen in this century alone. The short and brutal, at least in industrialized nations, is largely meant metaphorically. I am forever becoming confused if things are metaphorical.
But now I'm sitting here, here being the couch on a certain Saturday night, in a certain year, in which the world will or will not end, which makes it no different than any other year whether you're looking at it from a Judeo-Christian ethic or as a secular humanist. Life itself, not just consciousness, is contingent, either a blip on the radar or something beautiful. Perhaps both. But see now, I've strayed, and I still have to walk up the stairs to soothe a crying one year old, and by the time I reach the top of the stairs my ankle is throbbing in a way that makes me actually say "Ow," out loud, in the obnoxious way of people who are trying to draw attention to themselves, except that I'm by myself, standing in the dark at the top of the stairs, which is not to be taken metaphorically, and so the "ow," if that's how one goes about spelling "ow," is real and more important than wondering about comets or Mayan calendars.
I see her at the edge of the crib, crying. I take the pacifier from her left hand and put it back into her mouth. I shush her, and lay her flat in the crib. I put a blanket over her and tuck it around her tiny body. I smooth her hair, and even though I cannot see her clearly, our shapes are but outlines in this dark, ghosts of things past, I know that she can hear me, and I reach down, cupping her cheek, smoothing her fine hair, and I lean close and say, "I love you." And I don't know if she knows what those words mean, or even what they are supposed to mean. I just know that she lies quietly for the moment as I slip back down the stairs and into the ocean.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Some other resolutions
1) I'm going to spend more time on Twitter. I'm going to figure it out. I'm not going to rant and rave about the lowering quality of discourse. I'm going to create an account, get a whole host of followers and tweet things out to them like: just enjoying a decaf frapp., and I'm going to like it. You are too. Join me. Here's my handle. I'm going to become comfortable with people saying things like, "Here's my handle," and not think of it as ridiculous.
2) I'm going to run for the Republican presidential nomination because I'm pretty sure we have just enough time left to squeeze in a meteoric rise or two before the catastrophic fall. I'm going to threaten to abolish the government altogether and to govern naked on Wednesdays. I'm going to claim that we need to tax the lowest 1 percent of the population more and I'm going to insinuate that anyone who opposed me is a communist who doesn't love America as much as I do. I'm going to kick some ass.
3) I'm gong to get back into doing yoga. Hell, living social makes it damn near impossible to pay for yoga. Let's do it America. And, after a couple of weeks we can decide that it's too new age or low impact and go back to watching reality tv shows. We can sit next to each other on the couch, just you and me, and not feel bad about ourselves, but bad about all those chumps doing yoga.
4) I'm going to gamble more. I don't mean this in the sense of--gamble on life, take a chance, Hollywood type stuff--I mean I want to find out where the dog races are and start spending some more time down there. I'm going to grow a wispy mustache and an addiction to over the counter pills. I'm going to call my father-in-law and try to make him write me prescriptions.
5) I'm going to take up baking and then stop doing it when I realize that it takes time. This is your year to take up baking. It's faster than cooking. The result always tastes better, and, well, it creates dishes. Forget I ever brought it up.
6) I'm going to learn how to throw ninja star around a corner. I tried to perfect from the ages of 3-6, but I never quite got it down. I bet it can't be that hard. I'll be on e-bay for the next twenty minutes bidding on ninja stars. I'm back, and I've got four ninja stars arriving in a few days. I'll be taking a week off work to master the art.
7) I'm going to dress up like a small tree and hide in a parking lot and then jump out and scare people. And, if they act surprised, or angry, or scared, I'll just say, "Sorry, I didn't know you wanted me to leave you alone," and we'll have a good laugh and then maybe go out for a drink or three.
8) I'm going to buy power tools. I'm scared of power tools, but I think the first step to knowing how to use them is buying them. I'm going to go into Home Depot and ask the guys wear the stuff that guys in hard hats use is and not be embarrassed.
9) I'm going to learn an esoteric foreign language. I'm going to learn to speak Latin and then form a community group trying to keep all the Latin folk out. I'm going to retranslate the Vulgate.
10) I'm going to do one hundred crunches every day, and I'm going to cheat and go only halfway up, and then I'll remind myself that I'm only cheating myself, and I'll do another ten proper crunches until I realize that it's hard, and then I'll quit and drink old wine.
2) I'm going to run for the Republican presidential nomination because I'm pretty sure we have just enough time left to squeeze in a meteoric rise or two before the catastrophic fall. I'm going to threaten to abolish the government altogether and to govern naked on Wednesdays. I'm going to claim that we need to tax the lowest 1 percent of the population more and I'm going to insinuate that anyone who opposed me is a communist who doesn't love America as much as I do. I'm going to kick some ass.
3) I'm gong to get back into doing yoga. Hell, living social makes it damn near impossible to pay for yoga. Let's do it America. And, after a couple of weeks we can decide that it's too new age or low impact and go back to watching reality tv shows. We can sit next to each other on the couch, just you and me, and not feel bad about ourselves, but bad about all those chumps doing yoga.
4) I'm going to gamble more. I don't mean this in the sense of--gamble on life, take a chance, Hollywood type stuff--I mean I want to find out where the dog races are and start spending some more time down there. I'm going to grow a wispy mustache and an addiction to over the counter pills. I'm going to call my father-in-law and try to make him write me prescriptions.
5) I'm going to take up baking and then stop doing it when I realize that it takes time. This is your year to take up baking. It's faster than cooking. The result always tastes better, and, well, it creates dishes. Forget I ever brought it up.
6) I'm going to learn how to throw ninja star around a corner. I tried to perfect from the ages of 3-6, but I never quite got it down. I bet it can't be that hard. I'll be on e-bay for the next twenty minutes bidding on ninja stars. I'm back, and I've got four ninja stars arriving in a few days. I'll be taking a week off work to master the art.
7) I'm going to dress up like a small tree and hide in a parking lot and then jump out and scare people. And, if they act surprised, or angry, or scared, I'll just say, "Sorry, I didn't know you wanted me to leave you alone," and we'll have a good laugh and then maybe go out for a drink or three.
8) I'm going to buy power tools. I'm scared of power tools, but I think the first step to knowing how to use them is buying them. I'm going to go into Home Depot and ask the guys wear the stuff that guys in hard hats use is and not be embarrassed.
9) I'm going to learn an esoteric foreign language. I'm going to learn to speak Latin and then form a community group trying to keep all the Latin folk out. I'm going to retranslate the Vulgate.
10) I'm going to do one hundred crunches every day, and I'm going to cheat and go only halfway up, and then I'll remind myself that I'm only cheating myself, and I'll do another ten proper crunches until I realize that it's hard, and then I'll quit and drink old wine.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The New Year
This is the the year that I'll be getting in shape. I'll be doing P-90X while taking up marathons and joining every crossfit gym within a fifteen mile radius of my home.
I'm going to finish reading the guardian's old list of the top 100 novels ever. I'm beginning with In Search of Lost Time by Proust.
I'm going to be more forgiving this year. Hell, already I've forgiven myself for lying about reading Proust.
I'm going to fill out a lot of job applications this year, at least seven.
I'm going to stop complaining about things in less the weather is really crappy.
I'm going to write an epic poem, on the order of the Odyseey for all the things that I have loved in silence. I'm going to begin with the pale light of the moon and you.
I'm going to write a novel, beginning with the last chapter. In the end, he dies. That is not quite the first line.
I'm going to dress as if the clothes I wear are not an afterthought.
I'm going to lie about the way I'll probably dress.
I'm going to spend at least half the year complaining about how we never go to the zoo. And then, when we go to the zoo, I'm going to spend half the time complaining about how the zoo isn't as good as it should be.
I'm going to take up sculpting. I'm going to learn to read backwards. I'm going to sleep eight hours a night, stay up late to enjoy the last drought of the evening, and I'm going to wake up early to watch the first bits of red soaking into the eastern sky.
I'm going to write a salacious non-fiction book about my life as a stripper in the mid-eighties.
I'm going to invent a time machine and travel back the mid-eighties and probably do some stripping for artistic integrity, but don't worry, I'll exaggerate bits in the book.
I'm going to learn the names of trees, alder, white birch and birds nuthatch, rock dove, mourning dove.
I'm not going to watch an iota of television.
I'm going to watch all of the best television shows that I've never seen.
But it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll leave all of these things for another day. Hell, maybe another year. Perhaps it's not possible to do everything. Perhaps this year will be about finding one or two things that I can do better, meditate, read, call friends, laugh more frequently. Perhaps the year is not really about resolutions anyhow; perhaps, as time goes by, it is not a time for renewal, but a reminder that the sand in the hourglass does not fall forever. I know. I know. It is time for sleep, but that time always comes before I've done all the things I intended to do, Perhaps that's what this day will have in common with this year.
.
I'm going to finish reading the guardian's old list of the top 100 novels ever. I'm beginning with In Search of Lost Time by Proust.
I'm going to be more forgiving this year. Hell, already I've forgiven myself for lying about reading Proust.
I'm going to fill out a lot of job applications this year, at least seven.
I'm going to stop complaining about things in less the weather is really crappy.
I'm going to write an epic poem, on the order of the Odyseey for all the things that I have loved in silence. I'm going to begin with the pale light of the moon and you.
I'm going to write a novel, beginning with the last chapter. In the end, he dies. That is not quite the first line.
I'm going to dress as if the clothes I wear are not an afterthought.
I'm going to lie about the way I'll probably dress.
I'm going to spend at least half the year complaining about how we never go to the zoo. And then, when we go to the zoo, I'm going to spend half the time complaining about how the zoo isn't as good as it should be.
I'm going to take up sculpting. I'm going to learn to read backwards. I'm going to sleep eight hours a night, stay up late to enjoy the last drought of the evening, and I'm going to wake up early to watch the first bits of red soaking into the eastern sky.
I'm going to write a salacious non-fiction book about my life as a stripper in the mid-eighties.
I'm going to invent a time machine and travel back the mid-eighties and probably do some stripping for artistic integrity, but don't worry, I'll exaggerate bits in the book.
I'm going to learn the names of trees, alder, white birch and birds nuthatch, rock dove, mourning dove.
I'm not going to watch an iota of television.
I'm going to watch all of the best television shows that I've never seen.
But it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll leave all of these things for another day. Hell, maybe another year. Perhaps it's not possible to do everything. Perhaps this year will be about finding one or two things that I can do better, meditate, read, call friends, laugh more frequently. Perhaps the year is not really about resolutions anyhow; perhaps, as time goes by, it is not a time for renewal, but a reminder that the sand in the hourglass does not fall forever. I know. I know. It is time for sleep, but that time always comes before I've done all the things I intended to do, Perhaps that's what this day will have in common with this year.
.
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