On Idleness

On Idleness

                I’ve no belief in the private citizenry of our fair nation. Have you? I mean the question sincerely, no begging, if the term is being used properly, tricky one, that. It arises out of a profound distrust of humanity surrounded by a distrust of myself. Of course, one could fairly argue that I’m basing my political views from an entirely self-centered position, and therefore my whole argument is devoid of any deeper thought. However, I believe that Descartes began and almost ended this argument long ago. I think therefore I am. And yet, I am denied access to your brain, dear friend, and therefore I have only my own visceral human experience upon which to base my, in your estimation, subjective thoughts. This is all just a long way of saying that I don’t trust myself, and that I’m unlikely to trust you either, either because of my own personal understanding of human nature, or the fact that, you reader, are merely a projection of my mind. This, however, presents me with the same problem because if my mind is capable of deceiving itself enough to create an entire universe for my own enjoyment, I can hardly trust it to create a race of altruistic citizens. I hope you see my point. 

Reworking the classics: 5 secret ways a guy is judging you on a first date

Thank goodness MSN finally has a manageable list for me to blog about. I was getting tired of writing blogs about 77 ways to dress for success. Anyhow, this week's blog is all about first dates. And since I haven't been on a first date in roughly forever, I think I'm a pretty good candidate to give women an idea of what men think on a first date. Without further ado:

5 secret ways a guy is judging you on a first date

1) Mathematically. For a long period time there has been a fallacy that men are better or more interested in math than women. This was largely supported by engineering programs that had roughly one female for every fifty short sleeved collar shirted male. However, in recent years colleges have discovered that women are better at almost everything school related because they are better at things like paying attention and being disciplined. The point is, every guy is secretly judging your math skills. Like when you're relaying a story about how you went to the mall with a couple of your girlfriends and one of them got pumps. A normal guy will probably ask you for a break down of the per use value in shekels for that pair of shoes. If you're not up to date on shekels or estimating per use values on shoes you're probably falling behind. Bear in mind that if the dude is really judging you he might ask you to measure the velocity and time it will take for a five dollar bill to hit the floor from his seated position. Anyhow, brush up on math because every man is judging you for it on a date.

2) The Caucasus regions. Dudes love history. Do you have an uncle/father? Guess what? He probably reads really long books about the childhood of James A. Garfield in his spare time, and asks you all at family get together's if you knew Garfield was a smashing chess player. That's right, dudes are going to judge you on random historical or political errata. Everyone knows that Africa has big problems, and the middle east is now so pase. So don't think your date is going to want to talk about those things. No. This is a man who at one time in his life spent fifteen hours straight trying to find enough gold to buy a scimtar so he could kill the golden orc. This dude loves random stuff. And he is going to know his shi- when it comes to the Caucasus regions, and he'll expect you to as well. He'll probably have a small pull out map that he'll pull out, and he'll expect you to identify potential areas of ethnic disturbances. He's going to expect you to be able to identify Azerbaijan and talk about its Tungsten output i the last decade. If you can't do this, you're already in trouble. This dude means business when it comes to eastern Europe.

3) Things in his past that he's posted on facebook. This dude doesn't just want to get to know you. He wants to know that you've been stalking him for weeks on facebook and looking at photos of his girlfriend from when he was sixteen and comparing yourself to her at sixteen. He wants to hear from you that he looked really cute at his eighth birthday party, and that you're happy his mom, who you don't know but already love, posted it. This dude wants to feel special. He wants to know that when he's sleeping at night you're feverishly going over his wall posts to see if he's interested in some other girl. He probably isn't, but he likes to know that you're checking. Dudes, unlike most women, are pretty tough to be freaked out. He'll find the level of attention flattering and the photo shopped picture of you with his family in Hawaii three years ago completely charming.

4) The Federal Debt Ceiling. Gone are the days when people would go out on dates and talk about their families and classes they are taking. No, times they are a changing. If you haven't brought up the possibility of a worldwide economic collapse due to the inability of Congress to raise the federal debit ceiling than you are getting judged, harshly. Guys notice things like not talking about the debt ceiling, and it worries them. Why would this girl talk so long about her relationship with her very close sibling when we're about to run the ship of capitalism aground? Is the sort of thing he'll be thinking. If he tries to change the subject be careful to see through his subterfuge and keep bringing it back to possible cuts in spending. Dudes love that.

5) Whether or not you believe the Loch ness monster. They've got like a thousand pictures that prove that a Brontosaurus lives in that lake and you denying it certainly isn't going to help your chances. And don't under any circumstances bring up Jurassic Park because we just can't get dinosaurs from old amber, and it might upset him that you'd even watch that movie without scoffing. Note that you were just kidding and the Loch Ness monster is actually a long distant relative of the plesiosaurs. An added bonus is that you can gently slide the conversation to the Scottish Highlands and to your love of the television show and movie Highlander. If you don't know, you should because it involves ancient beings cutting off one another's heads in order to gain power. This is just the sort of thing that a guy will judge for for not bringing up and talking about extensively. It's okay in these circumstances to mention how good Sean Connery looked, even when he wasn't an old man.

I don't really have five. Be courteous and kind. Laugh easily. And above all, listen and ask good questions. Listen.

On parenting

I tend not to spend a lot of time outside of the house talking about my children. That's not because I'm the world's worst parent. I'm pretty sure some guy in Missouri who is selling his kids to Somalian pirates for feed corn is worse. It's just that children are exhausting.

For example:

The other night, as I was walking upstairs after a nice day of working, followed by putting the kids to bed, cranking through my homework to the best of my ability, I walked upstairs and smelled poop. Now, there are two things you can do in this situation. Okay, there are like 100. I mean, I could have lit my shirt on fire and yelled for help. I could have gone back downstairs and used the internets to order a baby seal. Baby seals are cute. For the purposes of this response let's pretend like those other options don't exist. I could have either pretended to not smell it and go to bed. The consequence is that lil s would wake up with a rash and be sad and spend most of the morning keening like Macbeth's wife after she went crazy about how she has a rash, which turns out not to be the most harmonious way to wake up in the morning. I'd rather be greeted by a monkey clanging cymbals together. He'd also be wearing a bell hop's costume, because, obviously. I miss that guy already. Anyhow, or I could walk in and wake her up for a diaper change.

I opted for number two because I didn't need any feed corn on account of not being a farmer. As such, worn out from work and school, exhausted, ready for bed, I changed her diaper, which was messy, so shi- on the finger. If you don't know, having shi- on your finger isn't all that uncommon with kids, but I still wouldn't call it ideal. Like, I wouldn't use it in lieu of an engagement ring or as a conversation piece. Except now, when I'm using it as a conversation piece. Anyhow, this whole process winds up waking not that lil anymore s up, and she says that she needs a drink, a light, a snuggle, though eventually she just starts shrilling that she needs her mother. When I say shrilling, I mean screaming. I mean loudly screaming. This is one of those times when you have to remind yourself that children are not by nature grateful, or gracious, or thankful, or you know, potty trained, because I'm standing in the room with feces on my hand just trying to be a good dad and I'm getting screamed at. I knew I should have sold you to those Somali pirates, I told her, before calling for S.

Anyhow, having the lil field marshal screaming at you with feces on your hands isn't always something you want to talk about with other folks when you get a moment away. In fact, it may mean sort of avoiding it.

Adventures in Solitude

I stepped into the evening air--walking through the strangeness of a world absent rain. 

The sky is a blanket of darkness wrapped around the figure of a mother, represented by the moon. The puddles are leaves and darkness. 

I am but ideas held up by the carving of bones.

The universe, I've been told, is infinite. The human mind, or so I’ve been told, is also comprised of infinities, but I find myself unable to grasp anymore than toes on grass, made wet by rain. 

The universe is like a spider, spinning galaxies like webs. 

I think in abstractions. 

The universe is a ball of twine, slowly unraveling. The earth is a figment of an Eternal imagination, a dream in the mind of God. Or I dreamed the universe just now, while taking a walk at night, my feet cold and wet. 

I’ve been reading lately of the over effect. It’s something that astronauts experience when they look back on this blue ball from space conceiving its fragility, and the silliness of boundaries and borders, separation.

 I wish you and I and everyone we know could buy a seat on a shuttle to the moon. It’s all I can think of certain nights, sitting next to you, watching the world as it spins on without us.

On this particular walk, I think of the infinities that already exist, across a room, the seat of a bus, the car of a train. How content we all are to remain strangers.

Lastly, I think of my son, reddish cheeks and folds of pale skin, a bit of beautiful flesh. I wonder what of me will go on when I am but atoms again? Perhaps, all that will remain of me are the thoughts he’ll have on some lonely night walk, chilled to the bone, tatters of clouds spread across a leaden sky.

 I wonder what universes he’ll create along the way, which bus ride’s silence he’ll pierce with a “hello.”

The places I haven't been

The comet

The comet that’s going to end the world is a beautiful emerald green. They’ve been talking about it on the news for weeks as though it was a monstrosity. Quite simply, it’s beautiful. It’s more like something from a dream rather than reality. The sun is impossibly warm. I stand near some of my neighbor’s out in bathrobes and towels, a couple of older children staying awake past bed time. For once, we don’t talk about our pets, our children, or the local schools. As we stand there, admiring in some small way, our demise. One mother tells her son that it’s time for bed and he dutifully complies. I keep wondering what people will think of me, how I will face this last and greatest test. It’s silly, I know as everyone will be gone, turned to ash and dust. But I can’t shake the feeling that someone will still be watching in the dark that will follow, to see if I faced everything cleanly, if the bits of matter that once comprised this self, floated just so.

Mistranslation

It’s dark now. The Spanish countryside now looks any other countryside. Just shapes in the darkness. I am reading a copy of Swann’s Way, distractedly. A professor of mine once said that you only needed to read a few pages of Proust to understand the whole. It was as good to turn to a paragraph on page 727 as on 343 and dutifully read out the words. I suspect though, that he’d read the entire thing. I find myself, as I read further, obsessed with translation. I read a sentence from page thirty three, Davis’s translation, then from Ortiz, then from Spence, comparing the subtle nuances, the slight changes in diction. How could one person interpret the sentence so differently then another? Perhaps his meaning was always meant to contain multitudes. Or perhaps I should just learn French. Translating, it seems, is a strange business. For instance, as I was leaving you said, “I’ll see you next summer.” But now, looking out into the darkness I fear that I’ve been given a poor translation. The cold window where my cheek is now resting, the darkness outside, and the book in my hand are all suggesting a new meaning to your words; they are saying that you are gone. 

My Neighbor and I

We used to stand, my neighbor and I, behind the red brick wall that separated our houses from the corner store. He smoked, and I did not. We talked often of our children, close in age, mine a mere four months younger than his. His son was better than mine at throwing rocks and kicking soccer balls. His son was good at putting together puzzles and ornate toys. Mine was excellent at drawing pictures of the sun and inventing games. Neither one of us felt we had anything to brag about in our children. They were just ours, and so we loved them. Years later, while reading the morning news, I came across an obituary for his son who had gone off and died in a war. Tears, of the sort I couldn’t control ran down my cheeks and I called my son, grown up and living four states away. He picked up on the third ring and said, “Hello dad.” And suddenly the world lurched back into place, and I asked after his wife and children. It was only after I’d hung up the phone that I thought again of the wall that separated our houses from the store. How my neighbor always kept an ear out for his son, and left at the first noise. “He’ll be up now,” he’d say, stubbing out his cigarette, opening the gate, and disappearing back into the safety of home. 

Kansas City continued

After arising from my strange nap in the car, I was well rested and ready to explore Kansas City. To be clear, when I say explore Kansas City, I meant drive by bars that had been recommended by Trip Advisorm places where we could eat drink and be merry on our brief stopover.  I drove first to the Park Plaza neighborhood, a chic shopping district, sporting the names of fancy stores, as I walked the heat blasted and near empty sidewalks,  but for the occasional women in her forties or sixties, dressed to the nines in heels and short dresses, emulating women twenty to thirty years their juniors, the older women had surgically modified faces to try and finish the effect in full. Halfway down the street I saw  a set of steps that looked, in part, like the Spanish Steps, in Rome. Unfortunately, at the top of the steps there was nothing of note, just an office park.

In a way, it reminded me of Georgetown in Washington, DC, on an empty day, moved from the water and transplanted into middle America. I kept looking around trying to find people with good values, but their values all looked the same from the outside, youth, money, finding a place to sit with air conditioning when it was too hot outside to function.

I was hungry. I grew up in a single parent home, which has a tendency of generating a vexed relationship with money. In that, eating out was going to a McDonald's. I tend to think of eating out then as an extravagance, the equivalent of Cinderella attending the ball, and I have mental fits over whether I should spend five or ten dollars on lunch, and wonder how closely my wife will be watching the credit card bill back home, noting that the grilled Quinoa burger I'm about to eat for lunch was twelve dollars at The Good Cup, when a Cold Cut Trio was just around the corner.

The frugal, or cheap, or whatever is going on with me and money, means I don't drink when I'm out either, which is a shame, as being pleasantly buzzed in the early afternoon is one of life's pleasures. Drinking early in the day, in relative moderation, always makes me more congenial, it makes me feel more like a part of the landed gentry that I've always wanted to be.

Stories about animals

A Cat

The sky, just now, which was blue has started to spit rain. My wife and the children are waiting back home for me to bring back Mr. Jingles. My wife changes his litter box at least every couple of days; my children feed him and keep him company, coaxing him up into their laps before watching television. He and I have never gotten along. He likes to walk across the keyboard when I’m trying to type. He has a habit of butting open the door when I’m trying to find some peace and quiet in the bathroom. Despite our differences, I’m outside in the rain calling his name as one might a lover in some old movie, except, I’m calling it under cars and along fence lines rather than after planes or trains. I suspect that he’s gone for good. But I’m going to keep looking till morning. I could see by the looks in their eyes that my children and wife had asked so little of me when it came to Mr. Jingles, here was the only thing they’d ever asked of me, that I bring him home.

A Dog

I’m waiting for the cable guy to show up and it’s past noon. The arrival time was between 11 and 6 PM, and already I’m getting antsy. I’ve taken the day off from work, a thankless job in an office, so that we might watch our show this evening. It’s a procedural about a man and his dog. They solve crimes together in a way that is reminiscent of Lassie, an old show about a dog who would always communicate via pointing and barking  when trouble arose. Trouble was always arising. By five o’clock, I’m half drunk on an old bottle of wine that was sitting in the back of the fridge and it’s clear that something bad has happened. The cable guy is not coming today. Strangely, I feel myself not upset at the cable guy, but at the dog, for not warning me of this impending disaster. He is sitting on the sofa, contentedly slapping his tail on the cushions, while I waste yet another day. 

An Ark

At what point did he realize that he’d made a mistake? You’d have to think it was when the tigers or lions started eating gazelles or zebras and leaving bits of them about the hull of his monolithic ship. You suppose that his wife might have said, “I suggested to you the inherent difficulties in such an enterprise,” or something more colorful, as they listened to the pained screams of a dying animal. “What would you have us do,” he’d say, “drown like rats?” “The rats were eaten yesterday by the jackals,” she’d say. But of course, it was even before that, perhaps when an elephant, pausing on its way up the ramp, dropped off a boatload of dung. I suspect then, even before the sky turned black, he knew he’d been dealt a shitty hand. 

An inquiry into nothing

Another World

I can imagine another world, similar to this one, in which I am not constantly waking up from a nap, or feeling as though I am in imminent need of a nap. I think the basic functions of this new world, levels of hydrogen, carbon, layers of igneous rocks, would be roughly the same: mankind would have walked out of a garden after eating from a pear tree, or developed extraordinarily large brains after years of being preyed upon in the Great Rift Valley. In 1492, Columbus would have still sailed the ocean blue, "discovering" America and beginning the great conquest of this nation. In this other world, John Wilkes Booth would have still shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, and the gunman on the grassy knoll, JFK. In this other world, bombs would still drop at the end of World War 2, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, President Clinton would still have a fling with Monica Lewinsky in the oval office. The only thing that would be different in this other world is that I'd be going to sleep earlier, around ten or so, waking up feeling well-rested to read about wars in foreign countries and terrorist cells developing in Africa. But imagine how I might great that news, fresh and restored after eight hours of sleep, imagine how good that world might be.


City Living

I miss you most on Tuesdays. We used to sort through the mail together, laughing at all the people who read Star magazine. On those mornings, we'd drink coffee together and talk of what we'd done over the weekend. Like most people, usually we'd not done a damn thing worth mentioning, but on Tuesdays, we'd talk about it as though something special had happened, as though going for a ride on the crosstown bus was worth being reported. In a strange way, isn't that all everyone has ever wanted? To have all the moments in our life treated with the same significance that we imbued them with. Tell me a story, you'd say, and I'd talk and talk of the unimportant things that comprise any one single person's life, even immensely important people spend part of their day sitting on toilets. For instance, last week when I was riding that same bus across town, an old man started asking me questions. It took me a while to realize that he was blind. His cane was not immediately visible, tucked beneath the bench seat. I couldn't understand him at first either, perhaps because he was old, or drunk, both, I suppose. Though it became clear after a few moments that he was not drunk. He just had the gravelly voice of someone who had spent many years in this world. He was trying to get to Bethesda, and he wanted to know where the bus ride ended, and I was giving him little bits of information, guessing and gauging what bus might put him in the right direction. Occasionally, I'd stop talking and stare straight ahead, hoping that I might disappear through the simple act of silence. He'd be back at it again, in a moment though, gesturing and asking for mileage counts. I needn't tell you that I couldn't wait to get off the bus, how uncomfortable it made me to be talking to a half-crazed stranger on the bus. When I got to my stop, I jumped off quickly, then turned and told him that he should probably get off as well. It was then that I saw that he was blind, as he reached down for his cane. And as he reached the bus doors started to close, and I could have banged on the door and asked the driver to stop, but I stood there, peering through the glass at this man, who, deep down, I could see now, I'd wanted only to leave behind. I walked on down to my own bus stop, walking hurriedly to make sure that I'd catch my connection, certain that I'd never think of him again.

The truth of the matter

Somebody once asked me a strange question about something I'd written: she asked me if it had really happened. We were smoking cigarettes (I don't smoke) and stubbing them out with the heels of ours shoes. (And, therefore, I have never stubbed out cigarettes with my shoes) I told her the truth, (the truth, writ large, is a nebulous concept, or at least an acknowledged flawed concept, the closest we'd get is a supernatural being who was watching over the universe since its inception, though you figure even It, would probably have developed some biases over the years and maybe a drinking problem) which is that nothing has ever happened to me. (The veracity of this statement is questionable at best). I assured her that when I sit down to write, crossing my arms now to shield off the cold, (It is currently warm here in Washington, DC, and on my couch where I'm writing) I compose everything as if it arrived from a dream. Nothing worth writing about has ever happened to me. (That's either a bald-faced lie, or we need to have a really serious discussion about values when it comes to writing). Rather, everything that I end up writing, fiction, non-fiction, whatever, is an amalgamation. "It's like dreaming," I told her. (I don't remember my dreams). Dreams mix up all the stuff of our every day life into a blender and then spit it out on the canvas of our tired, tired minds. This is basically the same process that my writing follows. If I write in a story, or a non-fiction piece, I loved her, or, I love her that is not drawn from any truth or reality, rather, it is drawn from my idea of the reality that has happened to me. I imagine, nay, suspect that I have, in fact, loved people during my lifetime. However, there is no quantifiable way to verify that this has actually been the case. Language is tricky in that way. Where as, if I say, four times four is sixteen, I'm telling you the truth. (I'm still not attaching a capital T to that statement as I suspect a better world exists in which I take naps and four times four is 17). She was done listening by then, already imagining the other places she'd like to be. "The strangest part," I told her, "is that some mornings I'll wake up and try and remember what I've written the night before, and it will come to me like a dream, through veils of fog, and I'll try and pick it apart the next day, make some sort of connection with the entity that was up the night before, staring at a blinking cursor on a white screen, trying to bring himself into being." Anyhow, we parted ways shortly thereafter, and I was left only with the bright stars (Washington, DC has severe light pollution) and crisp wind. (It is still hot here). The strangest part is that I find myself, as if it were a dream, only tangentially connected to the person who was writing that night before. I find, by morning, that most of my needs have changed, that all it took was a simple rest to turn the world from dark to light again. I suppose I should be no less amazed by this than I am by the perpetual rising and setting of the sun, which is probably worth being greeted with much more wonder. Nothing happens to me. I create it all, and in a flash, some day, it will be gone.