Saturday with Sadie

7:30-9:00 P.M. August 8. For some crazy reason, perhaps being tired, I decided that it would be fine if s fell asleep next to me in the big bed. On the bright side, I slept for at least forty five non-consecutive minutes. On the down side, I spent the majority of the time being pelted with pillows, asked to change sides of the bed and other general abuses.

9-9:30 P.M.-I finally move s into her room for sleep. Whereby, she asks for: a book to be read, a ladybug light to be given to her, a drink of water, to be tucked in, to sleep in the drawer, to have her door left open, before finally giving up the ghost.

My brief nap screwed up my sleep cycle, so I went to bed at 1.

6:25 A.M. I woke up daddy! I cannot communicate to you how ugly these words are after 5.5 hours of sleep. Like any good parent, I whipped out the iPad, put on a Winnie the Pooh cartoon and tried to go back to sleep. Failure.

Of course, it was fine that we were up early because we were meeting a couple of friends at the zoo at nine sharp. And, after factoring time in for breakfast, preparing snacks, changes of clothes, bartering over which shoes to wear, (she won), I figured it would take roughly 2 hours for both of us to get ready. She picked out a panda shirt and we were off.

Zoo time.

I've often said that we always do the zoo wrong. We park at the top and walk down, when we're full of energy and excited to see animals. By the time we've reached the bottom we're exhausted, mostly tired of animals, a lion, oh, I think we have one of those at our house, and the slog back up is more a test of will than an enjoying walk.

Of course, s spent the first part of the day sprinting downhill, pushing the stroller with aplomb. She, like everyone else in the world, spends the most time admiring the river otters. Though, to be honest, she's mostly just concerned with pushing the stroller and running. We finally get to the big moment when she'll get a chance to see giant pandas. She's wearing the panda shirt. It's like she's going to a big concert. Of course, the giant panda is sitting at the back of the enclosure, pretty much half a mile away. However, I lift her up, triumphantly on my shoulder and point off into the distance.

M: Can you see the panda honey?
S: Is that the panda? (Points to a tree).
M: No, look there.
S: Is that the panda? (Points to the same tree).
M: No, look way in the back.
S: I see him. (looks at tree).

By the time we all reach the petting zoo she's laughing to herself manically, and you can just tell that the next transition is going to be a melt down, which I mention to one of my friends, so she won't be surprised when I swoop s up and carry her like a sack of potatoes from whatever ill is about to befall us. I coax her into the stroller and we stop to get a soda. She sees the candy machine, and honestly, it could have been anything, but that's what sets her off. She loves candy. Who doesn't? But candy is made by the devil, so we don't eat it. She spends the next few moments screaming.

We can just keep walking, but we're so close to the big cats. You can't pass up lions and tigers when you get the chance. On the way we pass a carousel. Carousels are probably the greatest thing in the world for a child, but I'm hungry, and it's time to move. She screams for a while and eventually talks me into letting her out of the stroller. She looks around for a moment, like a deer preparing to cross a road and then sprints away saying, "I'm going to ride the carousel!" I grab her like a sack of potatoes and carry her away from the big cats on a path that leads us right by the carousel. She tries to make a break for it again, does the limp child thing, before I pick her up like a sack of potatoes and carry her away.

After a few more minutes of crying and cajoling she asks to be carried to brunch. Brunch is roughly 1.5 miles away, all uphill, so I consent. On the way she says things like, "Daddy, I love you with all my heart." And I'm reminded again how caring for a tired toddler is like shepherding a very drunk friend out of the bar. You're thinking, thanks for telling me buddy, but let's just get you home.

At brunch, things even out. Sure she takes off her shoes and demands that all the napkins be folded into flowers, but I'm okay with that. She tells the waiter that she wants pancakes and bacon. A woman after my own heart. (I forgot to mention earlier, but my two friends do a wonderful job of ignoring the whole meltdown scenario, pretending as though I am not scooping up a shrieking little girl multiple times, which was nice. It's the equivalent of being in a thunder storm and saying, "Oh, it's raining. I hadn't noticed).

After a while the novelty of the food wears off, and she starts to get crazy eyes. When she has crazy eyes, you don't know what's going to happen, but you know it won't be good. She spends the latter portion of brunch trying to run away, briefly succeeding, while blocking the waiter's access to the cash register. Success. We all walk back to the car, and I offer them a ride home. They respond with a no, which is nice, because I can tell that they're just trying to get away from the ticking time bomb that has hopped out of her car seat and is sitting in the driver's seat, testing the pedals.

We got home without incident. And, we jointly went upstairs to use the bathroom. In the next room, I heard the toilet flush, and I went to tell her how proud I was.
S;  "I pooped," she said.
M: "In the toilet?" I asked, innocently, hopefully, sweetly.
S: In my pants.

There is nothing quite so sobering as being elbow deep in someone else's feces. It makes you start to question all of your life choices, and I was somewhere between crying and retching. Luckily, I finished cleaning them without vomiting and put her in the bath. And, then I went to take a break on the computer. Moments later I discovered that she'd emptied a brand new bottle of shampoo into her bath, because, why not. I'm not mad, though I do point out that better uses of shampoo exist.
S: I made bubbles.
M: I can see that.

Finally, she goes down for a nap, and I watch the first episode of Breaking Bad.

In the evening, I pull her around on a blanket, which she asks for by saying,
S: Slay me.
M: Okay, but I want to use the blanket to avoid making a mess.
S: Sleigh me.
M: Okay. (Humor is wasted on the young)

We go outside to pick some weeds for roughly six minutes and are bitten by mosquitoes about ten times each. We retreat.

Inside, we have a little bit of time to kill, so we make some dance videos. Because, if you had time to kill with a two and half year old little girl, you'd make dance videos too.







After they're over it's time for bed. She keeps saying she wants chocolate but refuses to eat her dinner. I am the world's greatest parent, so I send her to bed hungry. But not before we watch this video, which she calls the funny video.



Then we head upstairs. Only, she doesn't want to go upstairs and is picked up like a sack of potatoes and taken upstairs screaming, kicking. She says she wants to wear only one type of pants and tries to kick over the lamp. As she screams, I sing "Get Lucky" and do some head bobbing to avoid going insane. I'm not sure she felt valued and listened too, but I'm also sure that it was the only way to stay sane. And, after being told to go downstairs to get a particular book and read it to her, she's off to bed. Easy as 1, 2, 3. Okay, she isn't sleeping yet, but I know it's coming soon.

Passing rather than wasting time

I parted my hair differently today, in order to affect some change. I did it away from any reflective services, so I could approach a mirror later and the day and be greeted by a stranger. Who is that in the mirror? He's going to change things. To tell you the truth, it looked like me, but with my hair parted in a slightly different way.

Outside, the sky is shades of blue and grey behind puffs of smoky clouds. I am sitting on a bench, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, looking calm, a book open in my lap. Inside, I assure you, is where the real story is being told.

Sometimes I don't sweep the floor for weeks, because it seems to get dirty again so quickly. Perhaps that is the native state of the floor. Who am I to change its customs?

Like a flower, perhaps one day I too will bloom. Though, if one starts to think in such terms you can't help but remember the wilting. That will happen too, one day, I suppose.

It would be nice to know the hour of my death. I think, with that small piece of knowledge, I could finally get on with the business of living.

We should be in love, you and I. Not for any good reason. But, as you know, reason has little to do with love.

Short Stories Written on the bus ride home

The maple on the corner that is dying has turned red, reminding us all of fall. The days are still long and hot, and we complain of them to our neighbors. We talk of little else. But when we pass the tree we can almost feel the moisture emptying itself from the air. The air begins to smell of something pumpkin baking in the kitchen. Perhaps this is what is meant by a noble death.

I am jealous of the neighbor's lawn, thick, short, and uniform. His wife, bears the same qualities, and I am not so jealous of her.

She and I argued last night again, after supper. In the next room, the baby was playing with a blue spiky ball. And now I am up before everyone, sipping coffee and looking out the window at a fly who has gotten himself caught in the corner and is banging himself senseless against the glass. He, so desperate to get in, and me, desperate to get out.

Sometimes the things I desire are so small. It seems a shame not to have them. I want you to look up at me, looking at you, and smile.

--the crape myrtle in bloom and a host of small brown nameless birds, startling as I hurry to catch the bus. Watching them, I see that their whole day is made up of a series of startlings.

I feel peaceful, I say, crossing the street on a day filled with warm and generous sun, as if I have accomplished something for once by not turning something beautiful into ruins.

You have a gift, someone told me. Do not waste it. I have spent my life wasting gifts, money, youth, happiness. Why should I not waste this one as well?

Sometimes, I take dynamite into the living room. I place it on the floor and light the fuse. Then I step away and wonder if I have made a mistake. I think what I meant to say is that I sometimes want to be elsewhere, and the fact that I am here, with that thought, distresses me. I did not mean to light the dynamite. I only wanted to cause movement.

The houses that line the street are ornate. They have gables and eaves and wide, ornately designed windows. They are so nice that it is tempting to start wondering who might live in such fine houses, what they might do on a particular evening, how they go about playing a game of Monopoly, whether they allow people to trade properties or put the fine money in the middle of the game board. But I am too tired right now to imagine things. Instead, I convince myself that the houses are all empty, row upon row of houses, tended in the morning by gardeners and visited by birds, so that we might have a pleasant view from our seats on the bus.

--thick green leaves, then wires, strips of cirrus, then pure sky, above that, a row of angels playing a card game, bored stiff, but still not willing to show their hand.

Hunger

There comes a time, nearly every evening, when I find myself eating a piece of chocolate, or cookie dough, or some other dessert, and, often as much, I will say to myself, "I don't particularly care for this fruity chocolate or strange cookie dough, or bag of cheap chocolate chips." And then, minutes will pass, sometimes and hour, I'll watch a television show, or read articles on the computer about the top ten cute pets, or lovely cities, and then I will walk to the kitchen and take another piece of chocolate, or bit of dough, and I will eat it. Then, usually without even going back to sitting down, I will have another piece, and perhaps another, sometimes saying to myself that by finishing the item I will have removed the temptation and will no longer be bothered by it. I suppose Adam and Eve shared a similar fate, sure child birth was horrible and the land brought thistles up, but at least they didn't have that apple gnawing at the back of their mind's anymore.

I write this because I have just been to the kitchen to have another small scoop of cookie dough that isn't particularly good. So, why? Is it enough to blame biology? My body is constantly telling me to eat fats and delicious foods on the off chance that a global apocalypse happens tomorrow and food becomes scarce. In this line of thinking, my body is so much more pessimistic than I am, a sack of stupid meat, while, in my mind, my beautiful mind, I know that the global apocalypse is probably not happening. Although, I'm pretty sure that it is my brain, my stupid energy loving brain that is telling my body to get more cookie dough, so that it can feed itself more. My brain wants to make sure that it has enough energy to develop and accurate critique of this season of the Bachelorette, or Before Midnight, or it wants to weary itself by rewinding the events of the day, replaying mistakes, missed chances, as if it could change things.

I suffer from a lack of self-control. Marcus Aurelius would be disappointed. If you don't know who he is, he was a Roman general who wrote a book about not being moved by anything, though, to be sure, he obviously cared a bit too much about writing and his legacy if he devoted a portion of his life to writing a book. If my attempts at writing are any indication, it would take someone fifteen to twenty lifetimes to construct one very poor book.

Sometimes, I will avoid eating the extra piece of chocolate, or shoving down a half bag of crappy chocolate chips. I will sit downstairs, watching a television show, congratulating myself on being so good. And, as I watch the show, it will become gradually very clear that I am starving, that my stomach is shrinking, and I'll attempt to avoid the feeling, reminding my stomach and mind how good it feels to restrain, how we're bettering ourselves. They never listen. By show's end I'm back upstairs, opening cabinets, dumping bits of cinnamon sugar on the tip of my tongue in an attempt to have something, anything, sweet. Tomorrow, tomorrow I remind myself will be the day that I begin to work on billboard abs. Tonight, and for the foreseeable future, I'll be pawing my way through cookie dough, vaguely dissatisfied at the taste, but no longer hungry, at least for a moment, though moments pass so quickly.

Sleeping Early

I recently decided, as I often decide, that it was time for a change. I decided that I was going to start going to bed early. Like most goals I set, I plan on failing, rather spectacularly.

The first night I was in bed by 10:23. It takes the average human being seven minutes to go to bed. I am not, if you ask me, in any way shape or form an average human being. I think it usually takes me ten minutes or so. I've no idea if this makes me above or below average. I'd like to think above average, though, if all the research about sleep is correct, in terms of controlling weight gain and concentration, I guess it makes me below average. Though I'd contest, and I often do, that my failure to fall asleep is symptomatic of my active mind. I stay awake for an extra three minutes, or sometimes and hour and a half, because I am intelligent. Or so I'd have myself believe. Self-deception is an important part of living.

Anyhow, I was in bed at 10:23, and asleep before eleven. Of course, the related reason that I'm going to bed early is my intent to wake up early to accomplish things. I've long suffered under the misapprehension that people who rise early are always smug, because they know something the rest of us don't. There is nothing that makes a person seem quite so smug as when they're sitting at the kitchen table at nine, drinking coffee, after having gone for a morning run, contemplated the cosmos, and made you a pot of coffee. They are so unpleasant. Obviously, it's my strong desire to become one of these people, which is why I'm planning on waking up at six every morning. If you see me at eight, I want you to know that I'll have already been awake, done some writing, drank some coffee, contemplated the cosmos, and spent half an hour perfecting the smug smile that I'm currently wearing on my face.

The issue, as I'm sure you've already guessed, is that six in the morning is really early in the morning. It's earlier than you think it is. Much earlier. Imagine what you think six A.M. looks like, then double it. Get up at three in the morning and try to function. That's what it's like to wake up at six. The point is, I, like any reasonable person, turned off my alarm. I woke up at 7:45 after an amazing night of sleep. I highly recommend going to bed early, though I can't yet speak of waking up early.

Night #2

I'm feeling tired by 10:12. 10:12! I'm excited about how quickly my body is learning. My body is like the body of Rocky after all the training. It's like it's already climbed the steps after one night. Then I go to bed. I am lying in bed for ten minutes or so before I realize that I'm not even remotely tired. I can literally see the miles and miles of water between myself and sleep. I'm going to have to travel. I try sleeping with the covers half on, then half off, then off. I try sleeping on my side, on my other side, on my stomach, on my back, on top of all the blankets. Nothing works. By the end of the night it's nearing midnight, and though I've composed an amazing letter that I need to dash off, I'm not sure that it worked. In the morning, I wake at eight, somewhere, some smug person is smiling.

Tonight, it's 11:20. If I'm asleep before midnight, and up before eight, I'll deem it a success. 

Review: The Fun Stuff by James Wood

I found, How Fiction Works, by James Wood, my first introduction to the author, to be kind of obnoxious. Fiction does not "work" by using one particular style. Fiction has not always been extant in the novel form, nor is it likely it will remain that way. It functions just as well as realistic tales, fabulist stories, or reportage and travel writing, mixed with essays. If nothing else, the book can act as a good reading list, Norman Rush's books, Mating and Mortals, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Calvino's Cosmicomis, Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, Lydia Davis short stories, Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners.  Of course, I made up the majority of that list. 

However, this book, despite the obsession with the free indirect style, is quite good. When he skewers an author, as he does with Paul Auster, he has some good pull quotes from Auster to prove the point that he's just not a particularly good writer. While I have a disagreement with Woods over his assessment of the writing of David Foster Wallace, by and large, his assessments seem fair, rigorous, and readable. I realize the latter point, actually being able to read someone writing about literature became anathema to literary people about the time that structuralism and post-structuralism began to hold sway in university settings. After that, people stopped reading books and began "reading" them, for power structures, signs or, more accurately, confirmations of what they are looking for. This type of reading is not particularly interesting to people outside of the academy, and, quite frankly, not really for people who enjoy books. In that regard, I'm happy that Wood is so popular. I suspect that he might actually like books. 

Pictures of blank pages

The overwhelming fear of the blank white screen. Not page. NO. Pages are being ripped from the book of time, pages are falling in the wind, pages are drifting down lonely streets after the bombs have fallen. They float down the street, running like a flock of birds from an oncoming storm. But they are running from words, from pens, from typewriters and keyboards, off, off, into the still night, to lie quietly on the Atlantic Ocean, floating like children on the boughs of trees. There are pages that have existed far longer than any human being. I do not fear the white blank page. I fear the page with words scrawled across them, ideas, formulas, intricately drawn pictures of panda bears in postures of repose, pages with dragons flying across burning skies, burning cities, burning plains, burning the very pages that they are a part of.

Every person who has written more than a page or two in a journal must occasionally have this fear, yes? The fear that as you sit, or lie, or lay, on a divan, or a couch, or a chair, or a rooftop, or in the cold, on a fire escape, while the smoke of a stranger touches you from a distant room, the fear that your words will have left you, will have traveled to the Greek Isles, to the Spanish Isles, to the Falklands, to archipelagos and peninsulas and dammit, on a bad day, maybe just a part of the mainland that borders the coast, so brazen have these words that have left you become, reclining now, as you once were, in sun chairs, sipping margaritas and talking amongst themselves because you are no longer there to command them. They are vulgar and dirty. You miss them.

Inside this piece of writing is a message. It’s a clue. If you take very fourth word’s second letter and put them together at the bottom of the page, you will discover what I’m really trying to say. The presumption here being that we’re all special, and that words are just meant for us, when really, words are cheap, inexpensive, derisive, derivative, derelict, defunct, disenchanting bits of noise. The message, because who really wants to go through all that work is klaflaehalflf, which is just another way of saying that I am confused, which you already knew, and didn’t really need an elaborate message to figure it out. In fact, you could just sit down with me and have coffee, and I’d start talking about all the kangaroo road kill in Australia and wondering about the word marsupial, and the little pouch that holds in the babies, and you’d quickly excuse yourself, citing friends you’d just met online who were in imminent need of your presence. I understand.

In the reflection of the mirror lies a painting. The painting is of time, and a clock, and a man riding on horseback shooting at what appear to rabbits. I do not like the painting. At certain hours, I don’t like anything. It’s not a flaw in my nature but a flaw in nature itself, everything becoming so damnably unlikeable all at once. What are the chances? Apparently not so slim as it happens at least once a day. I do not know the man riding on the horse shooting at animals that are probably rabbits but could just be foxes, but I know that I am jealous of him, to be locked in such a scene, the lather of the horse, the blue smoke hanging over the valley, filling his nostrils. Now I am jealous of pictures. See how unlikeable everything has become!

Months ago I saw a mouse coming up the stairs in the middle of the night. We both ran away, terrified of the meeting. The next time I saw him he was dead, lying in the middle of a mouse trap, looking at nothing, or maybe just looking at death, who knows? Tonight a mosquito is buzzing around my head. He has bitten me twice in the forehead. I imagine, by evenings end that he will be dead as well. I do not know what this means about my relationship to the natural world, to death, to words, to the cemetery that we sat at right after we first met, to the words written on the gravestones, to the thin sunlight wrapped in grey clouds, swaddled like a child.