More of this or that

http://youtu.be/_97U5e_iE0c

In the summer’s she’d get him to take a week off work, and she, and their two young sons would travel out to the country, and spend the week living in a small cottage that adjoined the land that they’d sold, and that the new owners let them have once year, gratis, for just such an occasion. And the boys would run out in the fields and stare at the horses breathing cold air, snorting in the morning, they’d cut through the tall grass waving swords or shooting rifles while the man and his wife stayed on the front porch, sipping tea, and watching them quietly, long past the point when words were necessary to describe the sort of feeling that they shared for one another. The sky was pastel, the mountains in the distant, pale blue. A vulture might fly overhead, and they’d watch it descend in lazy circles, hands occasionally clasped, happy to be in the country.

The rest of his family was at the manor during the first shelling. They had risen in the early morning, packed, and disappeared down the dry cobble stone street. The shoe maker could not remember if he’d said goodbye to each one of them before they left, didn’t know if he’d laid hands on his youngest child, a boy of eight, before they disappeared forever. How was he to have known that it would be the last time that he’d see them? Such vagaries of the world are of the sort that confound mortal men. It was strange to pass so many days with life one way, his wife and children in his company, and then to have them blotted out forever one hazy afternoon, and all the days that followed would now become normal instead.

He’d stayed an extra evening to finish packing up his shoes, his perfect little creations. It was important to him, as it would be to any craftsman, that his shoes not be ruined. He worked after they’d left for hours, moving things into the basement. Surely the rumored shelling would not come. Such things had been promised before and not come to fruition. He had sent them off to a safer place. In the evening, he wandered outside and stood on the street to watch a burning golden sun set itself on fire against the background of old poplars, and it’s hard not to want to stop him at that moment in time, the day’s work done and done well, and his life still comprised of the various puzzle pieces that he’d brought together through years of toil, thinking that it was a rock that he’d been building, not knowing that it could be scattered like a pile of leaves by an autumn wind. 

This all came before

http://youtu.be/YTdCzIduUb4

He was told a story of a shoe maker who lived in Poland during the second world war, but it wasn’t one of those stories where the shoe maker winds up hiding Jews somewhere in his floor, or developing an awareness of his centrality or general likeness to his fellow humankind. No, the story was about the really fine shoes that this particular man in Poland made throughout the war. And, even after Warsaw was sacked and the man’s shop was reduced to rubble, he showed up the next day and began sweeping as if nothing had changed, when clearly everything had changed. And he was reminded vaguely of people going on about their business and saying, “If we don’t, we’re letting the terrorists win,” but this turned out to be only partially true. People always went on living after tragedy; it was an essential part of the human condition, a flaw in the argument of human exceptionalism, perhaps a strange kind of proof that God didn’t exist after all. There was nothing special about humans, they were born, ate, drank, and then died in one manner or another and other humans continued living. It was no amazing thing for people to go on trading stocks or flying across the country to appraise a set of antiques, or staying up until 2 A.M. to buy a set of China on QVC. No, the amazing thing was that the world stopped at all. And not unnecessary that was not what he was thinking. Frost had written a poem about it years ago, and certainly the Stoics and the Greeks must have had something to say about it as well. The untimely death of another is rarely the cause of your own death; it is merely a brief reminder of our insubstantial temporality.

The shoe maker felt, he was told, that making a particular type of shoe perfectly was his calling in the world, and to abandon that because of the onset of a war, or the killing of thousands of Jews would be silly. It was his job, as given to him by God, he believed, to make extremely fine shoes the likes of which could not be found in all the rest of Poland. And so he slowly fixed up the shop and started to make shoes for people who never came to his shop, and for all those people who didn’t really care about shoes anymore, who cared about things like bread and water and whether the Germans were ever going to leave, and all this time he worked feverishly on shoes, creating new types and varieties, the likes of which had never been seen. Shoes that would allow a man to walk on water, the likes of which had not been seen since the time of Christ; shoes that allowed a man to jump from the ground to the tops of houses. Shoes that allowed a man to float just above the surface of the ground, like Icarus wings, shoes that changed colors with the season and briefly bloomed in the late stages of spring with beautiful red flowers that the man had crossbred during the three years he spent working on his shoes, shoes that would remember to take you back home, such that a man could finally and fully enjoy a walk, take in his surroundings, enjoy the lovely bent neck of a woman, the fragrance of knockout roses, because his shoes would walk him home and deposit him on his door step without anyone the wiser.

This particular man’s family had been very close to him during the early stages of his career, had worked in the shop, and helped him test out new models of shoes, which he was constantly generating. The man’s wife had come from the landed gentry, and they’d sold the land so that he could pursue his dream of making shoes. And when they did, they were both happy because he was able to follow his dream, and she was able to support him. It really was the loving sort of relationship, though not without its problems, he snored terribly, and she sometimes fantasized about smothering him with a pillow if she was particularly tired, but she never did, and that seemed characteristic of the type of love that this couple shared for one another. 

Shoes

http://youtu.be/2kVrefwjsfU

The shoe maker didn’t know at first how to go about making the shoes. He often stayed up night muttering to himself about the validity of such a plan, but he was always confirmed in his plans by a voice that he was fairly certain was his wife Helen’s, reminding him not to be home late from work that day. And the sound of her voice aroused in him a new vigor to complete the project, to be on about his business, and he set back to work by candle light, dreaming dreams of his wife and children.

For months he told no one of the project. His store fell into disrepair, as did his house. Spiders built cob webs not only in the cornices, but strung up like beads between furniture and shelf space that he no longer used and that customers no longer traversed. The shoes that he had made during the war were soon forgotten as new wonders like that of flight, or trains that ran on time every time, soon took everyone’s interest. If it was possible to fly over the water in a boat at thirty miles an hour what use was there in a pair of shoes that allowed you only to do it a much slower pace? Besides, two children had been given the shoes by their parents and then left to their own devices at the beach, the parents not thinking that the children would walk out into the middle of the lake and, as a test, remove one of the shoes, and the other child, realizing the parents could see from the shore, that if he didn’t remove his shoes as well he’d just be left standing over his now drowning sibling, removed them as well. The boys both drowned and the two parents sued the shoe maker, who never bothered to show up for court and who was fined a few thousand dollars, so that government officers showed up one day and confiscated all the shoes that were left in his little shop and carried them away.

So now the shoe maker worked in an empty store late into the night, occasionally asking for certain design pointers from the interlocutor, who was probably his wife Helen. He made two hundred pairs so far without getting it exactly right. The last pair had managed the right affect, taking him back in time, but it had only been a few minutes that he’d been able to traverse, and so he kept ending up back in the shoe shop, watching himself put the finishing touches on the shoes and then putting them on, not without giving himself a few pointers on how he could make them more aesthetically pleasing, and just how to shorten the conversation that he was now having with himself. 

Verizon 500- Me still zero or didn't you just post a blog give my news feed a break

S: Maybe we should switch internet providers before we have another battle with Verizon?

M: Yeah. (This subtly implies that I'll brook no changing of internet provider until the service is non-functional. It's not rational to quit when Verizon is treating you so well, even if you now they'll just go back to their shoddy ways. It's hard to remember that when they're loading web pages quickly and generally providing decent service).

Aside: Why did she say that? It's the sort of thing like in Salem, during the witch trials, you probably didn't go around, especially if you were an older woman who lived with a bunch of cats or pot bellied pigs or whatever they had back then saying things to the local crop of teenage girls like, "Boy, I hope no one calls me a witch. That would sure be awkward. Sink or swim. Am I right? Am I right young ladies? Come in and pet my cat's tail. His name is Oscar, but he only talks to me." (The internet literally just crapped out again during this post. It's warning me that it can't be saved). Take the cats and run lady!

Now this means that I'm going to have to shuffle down two flights of stairs, in the dark, in the middle of the night, on a recently surgically repaired knee, with a doctor's note that says, "No excessive stairs within the first ten days", which, how am I supposed to know what constitutes an excessive amount of stairs. Maybe it's like pornography, you know an excessive amount of stairs when you see it or when your knee collapses and you fall down the stairs like that guy in the movie Misery. If indeed, that happened, as in most scary movies, I closed my eyes for the entire thing.

I'm not in law school, but it's reasonable to ask whether I could send Verizon my hospital bills or whatever. I'm fairly certain their crappy internet service and my fifteen to twenty trips down to the basement each day probably contributed at least in some part to my meniscus tear and plica issues. I'm not thinking of charging them 100 percent, but I think at least a seven percent fee is probably in order. I'd even be willing to go as high as eight.

Anyhow, even now, I'm dreading limping downstairs, in the dark, in my slippery socks, but readers, if I took them off my feet would be cold, to flip the internet. All this with a surgically repaired knee, which I'm dragging around behind me as if a Civil War doctor named MacGruder just took it off below the thigh, and it's really just an arthroscopic surgery, but I'm willing to bet that their Vicodin wasn't the off brand stuff that I'm taking to reign in the pain. Did they have Vicodin in the Civil War. Probably not. Probably just loads and loads of opium.

Verizon has me over a barrel, as I've stated before, not sure why, what does having someone over a barrel mean? Is that an actual saying or did I just make it up? I can't check Wikipedia because I don't have functional internet. I just have to wing it. I kind of imagine this is what it must have felt like for the Wright Brothers to fly only slightly more intense. Let's go with yes. Anyhow, maybe that barrel is full of apples or something, and I can bob for them. When life has you over a barrel just make lemonade or something. The point is, it's a stupid saying.

I'd like to call RCN and have them come out and fix us up with some proper internet, but I'm also scared to leave Verizon. What if Verizon loses weight, gets their crap together and starts delivering high quality internet service right after we leave them. What if Verizon is suddenly going to stop outsourcing all of their call center jobs to people in nineteen different countries. No complaints here, I love good outsourcing, it's just that no one at Verizon ever knows how to connect you with anyone else at Verizon. Jim? Never heard of him. Let me just connect you to our tech support representative...phone dies. Honestly, I think it's just a series of dudes working alone. I don't think they have offices.

This is all in jest. I'm not the sort of guy to give up easily. It's just so hard to keep trying. It's time to flip the switch. This one is for you every person who has ever experienced pretty minor knee pain following a pretty non-invasive surgery. I did it. Sadly, it appears that the internet is just no longer functioning at all. Even if I reset the modem. On the bright side, we pay Verizon for this service. However, you can't always get what you want. Sometimes you go to a restaurant and order food and they bring out an empty plate or like a stray cat or something that you have to adopt, but, as we say when that happens, them's the breaks. We don't actually say that because that never happens, except for that one time with beautiful little Tibs. God rest his little cat soul. Why? Because when you pay someone for a service you expect that service to work! I'm going to open up a gas station that only sometimes fills car, and sometimes just dispenses candy corn. That way either the kids or the adults or happy, and I save a bundle on oil and always get to have candy corn around, which is either delicious, or the sort of thing that would be gross after more than a week or so.

Back downstairs. I'm bringing the computer though. I didn't get an MFA in creative writing for nothing. Mama didn't raise no fool.

10:35 P.M. The internet is thinking about possibly working again. It's had a long day, and no one ever gives breaks to the internet. This is a sad, nay tragic thing about being the internet. And, hallelujah we have service for at least the next eight minutes.

Listen, I hear you, this is not a real problem. Intermittent internet service, worse things are happening in the world. But I'm hear to ask you this provocative question, are they? No, you're probably right, there are. This is not quite up there with Mont Vesuvius erupting and turning a city to ash. It's close mind you but not that...and the Internet is out. But we had a glorious four minute ride didn't we internet? (Pats internet on the head).

10:40 P.M. I've now unplugged the router and plugged it back in. This is roughly equivalent to the sort of in person service that Verizon has offered.

Guy: What I've done sir is unplugged the router from the plug in station and then reapplied the plug after a brief pause. That may or may not fix the problem, but I will need you to be home between the hours of 4 A.M. and 8 P.M. next Monday through the end of February in case we need to stop by to fix your service again.

M; Que?

10:42 Despite my tech abilities, the internet remains down. Come on internet! Get up! You can fight another round. The internet is sleepy. What do you mean limited connectivity? I'm actually sitting inside the router. I've shrunk myself down to a pea size, and I'm actively using my computer inside the machine designed to give me service. How can I have low connectivity? How can a flea sized version of me and my PC not be getting something better than a little yellow exclamation mark that essentially says, "sucks to be you."

10:44 Wait, what if I switch the router on and then off. What is the definition of insanity?

10:45 I'm back. I tried to check the definition of insanity but the internet is still down. I think it's this. And we're back. Handel's Messiah!!!!! Off to post in the four minute window I've got! Wait. should I add a picture. Do I have time to add a picture? Help me internet...

10:51 Verizon, seizing me during a moment's hesitation, decides to drop service before the blog can be posted. Clever Verizon.

10:54 Back online, hopefully long enough to post a blog! 

These were the sorts of shoes that could change things

http://youtu.be/WU_DAQm79eA

After the war ended, and the boys and men trudged home in dirty shoes, looking for older children and gods or dogs to kick, no one wanted to buy the shoe maker’s shoes. The genius of them had now been lost on everyone. Their craftsmanship seemed silly, a waste of something. War had proved that everything in life was ephemeral. Who gave a good damn about a pair of shoes? Of course, none of this seemed to matter to the old man, as I recall. He went near silent after the wary anyhow, but for a few friends. He told them that he was working on a pair of shoes that would allow him to change the world, or at least, he apparently said modestly, a part of it. After a month or two he stopped returning his friend’s visits, preferring to sleep in the basement of his newly restored shop. It was said by passerby’s that he kept a candle burning all night, and that they could hear him hammering and whispering right up through the sun broke the plain of the horizon.  

Those people who were brave enough to enter the shop during those days were often surprised to hear that the shoe maker was not alone. He’d be carrying on a conversation with someone, softly polishing a brown pair of shoes and nodding along to whatever this person was saying. However, when the people, the brave ones, got close enough to him, it became apparent that he was talking to no one at all or, at the very least, that his interlocutor did not exist. When he caught sight of any visitors he went silent, dropping his work, and staring off into the corner. He no longer met inquiries of people who wanted to buy his shoes, waving them to racks and putting a sign on the counter that asked them to leave what they thought the product was worth.

It was a woman from the next city, where the streets are all paved in lead and the children stay up all night that the shoe maker’s interlocutor had a name. “He called her Helen,” she said. This detail helped clarify for the town just who he’d been spending his evenings with. No one wondered anymore if he had a secret mistress, or an assistant in training who hid in the shadows. No. He’d just been driven insane by the death of his wife like many other weak men after the war. This was a time when séances were on the wane, after a noblewoman had died of a heart attack while talking to the ghost of her dead aunt. Though it was considered odd, that a man should invent an apparition in his mind and call her Helen, at least he had not taken to calling on the house of charlatans. And so he was left alone to craft his shoes in the relative peace of his shop. 

Persistence

                But wasn’t that a very American sort of lie…love, or the idea of love that was rooted in a total subjugation or understanding of two selves. It was certainly more complex than that, more involved. People didn’t just travel about the world finding soul mates. No, they found people with whom it was possible to make things work, and then they worked really hard at making it work. The persistent myth seemed strange given how aware most people should have been of their own shortcomings, aware enough he hoped to not expect a kind of perfection from a mate that they would never achieve themselves. And yet, in love, it seemed, self-awareness was not considered a virtue but an impediment to emotion. He listened to friends describe the ways in which their partners was not fulfilling them and rather than feeding into the grand American narrative he’d always ask them if they’d done anything kind lately for their partners, reminded them of their fidelity or love or ability to make wonderful biscuits that rose just perfectly, like angels on the day of Reckoning, those biscuits. The answer had a disturbing tendency to be no. How is it that people expected to be loved in a way that they wouldn’t dream of loving themselves? No. Love was not imperfect. It was a Platonic form, something that provided a goal with which wretched humans could seek to attain while mucking about in the mud.

He wondered after they’d finished talking if he’d said anything irredeemably stupid. He wondered if she’d enjoyed his company as much as he’d enjoyed hers. This was an impossibility, he understood, no two people could ever feel exactly the same way at any point in time, which is why it was a dangerous game that he was playing.

On Monday his boss gave him a project that involved moving information from two separate spreadsheets into one complete spreadsheet. He was encouraged to use the utmost diligence in his task, as it was apparently massively important that the data arrive on this new spread sheet as if it were pure driven snow. In the morning he worked like a banshee, sucking down his morning coffee and deftly sliding the information together like a magician with rings. By 10:14 he felt himself slowing and took a walk around the office looking for anyone interesting. He found no one, and so returned to his cubicle, not refreshed at all, but still faced with a day or more worth of work to do. Was he the only one who was being driven insane by the work? The people around him, in various cubes, seemed to be in various stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of happiness. John was listening to 80’s music and processing new materials, Randy was staring intently at his computer, like it might have stolen something from him, before typing furiously. They were all engaged in work, and seemed to not feel what it is that he was feeling, or he wouldn’t have been the only one walking around the office looking for something to do. It was like one of those zombie movies, being at work on a day like today, when everyone else seemed to be buying the illusion. 

I seen the

It was communion where the problems started to arise. With no one to serve the blessed wine to; the priest was forced to drink the remainder of it himself after concluding the brief prayer of sanctification and taking a sip of the body and the blood. After crossing himself he walked back towards the vestibule, and, behind a pillar he drank the rest of the wine mixed with a bit of water. It was near three cups, and he took it in a single draught. He immediately began to feel the effects of the wine, and stumbled his way back toward the altar. He knew that he just needed to get through the final two songs and the post-communion prayer to be finished. He saw a light at the end of a tunnel, but no, it was no light at all, a man had wandered into the church, skinny with a faint pencil thin mustache.

“Father,” the man said, “Father, can I play you out?”

“Play me out?” the priest asked, too disturbed by the wine and to notice the interruption in the Liturgy.

The man didn’t wait for an answer, he climbed the stairs in nice black shoes that clicked as he mounted the stairs toward the organ. “I only know a few Father,” he called down from the loft, but the priest waved him on anyway.

The organ started, dirge like, before lifting immediately into a tune incredibly familiar to the priest and yet, distant sounding. “That’s not what’s on the board,” he called up, but the man didn’t answer, engrossed in the music as he was.

The priest understood after a few more bars that the man in the loft was playing an old song that his nursery maid had sung him as a child that was some old spiritual about using prayer to keep the devil at bay. “This is a favorite of mine,” the man called down, stopping the song briefly to converse.

By this time the priest was remembering his nursery maid. Helga, had her name been Helga. She’d been Scandanavian and beautiful. Helga had two children of her own that she’d left in the care of her mother to be their nurse made for the summer when he was twelve, and he’d listened to her sing children’s songs, played hide and seek in the small house, because he loved her. Helga. He’d forgotten all about her.

And that was the day my grandfather sang spirituals with the devil.