Goodbye to Our Lady
Sunday's weather: a veneer of freezing rain last night has given way to wintry sun dancing with dark clouds. Cold and blustery, a day for staying in and eating beef.
Sunday's drink: a glass of Chimay at Saint Ex 'round the corner, to be had soon over dinner.
Sunday's thought: those important who come into our life, be they human or animal, come with lessons for us to learn; the best that can be said is that when they leave, their lesson has been learned.
There's very little of art in today's post, but very much heart. This is the weekend C and I said goodbye to Scout the greyhound.
The details of what preceded her leaving us, curled up at her favorite spot on her favorite couch, surrounded by her guys and her docs, are as a million other similar stories. Several months of declining energy coming with increasing signs of discomfort (soon to become pain), uncertainty as to its cause, various treatments including pills, diets, and surgery failing to cure the problem, and a report on Friday from an oncologist of a large sarcoma in her throat. Prognosis - at best - detailing major surgery, a difficult recovery, and likelihood of a return in the future. C and I, faced with the only certainty of prolonged suffering for our Scout, came to our decision fairly quickly.
Mostly. There was of course discussion, choked at times, of uncertainties. Of quality of life vs. seeing an option through, of doing what had to be done vs. doing what needed to be done. Strangely, it was while C was on the phone with his sister M - a vet herself - that Scout again began crying out, as she had been with increasing frequency. She did it because she hurt. But in it I heard it as my answer: I cannot bear to let my greyhound suffer anymore - or watch C's suffering at her pain.
The decision was made. And we began a 22-hour sit with impending death. Strangely, not nearly as morbid as that sentence makes it sound.
Her eyes had grown dim. While happy to see me at the door, she could barely muster getting up and giving a couple wags. Treasured hallowed walks no longer held any appeal. Even food was rejected. Scout was clearly saying goodbye to us, closing up shop and pulling down the curtains.
I carried her downstairs and we ate pizza. Watched a little TV. Cried some more. Our and Scout's best friends - D & F & M & M - came over to sit and share stories. Everyone seated on the couch (but me, I had to sleep), Scout too. She always loved company.
I woke to hear C and Scout come upstairs. He sat with her, she eeped a bit but loved her goodnight time with her Dad. We held each other that night, and I was the first to wake. As much as her goodnight time, she loved her good morning time with her Doug. Almost always in silence, as I had for years, I got down and gently rubbed her snout, scratched her head, gave her long strokes down her back to her haunches, gently tugged from her chest down her legs to her paws - holding them as you would hold a hand.
She managed, somehow, to eat some breakfast - a slush of her favorites: chicken, scrambled egg, rice, a bit of cheese. We had an unusually long and sniffy walk, letting her choose just where she wanted to go as we had so many mornings before. She stopped twice, again in pain, and we held her close on the street until she trotted off again to home, undoubtedly for the last time.
Once home, she jumped up on her couch, spun around twice, then sat down, laying her head on her favorite pillow. And there she stayed for three hours, not inclined to move at all, curled into a greyhound ball. And we sat with her, for three hours not leaving her side. Sometimes petting her back, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing at how improbable this fuzzy thing was and what she had come to be in our lives.
At 1pm, Doc K and an assistant came over. We thought Scout might want to lie on her favorite bed, but she had clearly chosen her spot. Non dog owners will scoff, but she knew. A dog's principal function is to live with us, and they read us and our emotional states more clearly than we do each other. And, in cases where you really bond, you come to read them. You communicate - the most basic things likely, but clearly and meaningfully communicate. Even if we weren't ready, she was.
The four of us sat close around Scout for a while, trading stories and even laughing some. She was never more safe or more loved. A quick sedative administered to help ease any potential jitters, a pink needle was inserted into her right rear ankle, where the veins are large. I couldn't watch what Doc K did, but sat together with C - holding him and Scout. Watching her face...breathing, looking up. And then there was a final, deep breath in, and a long...long exhale. The exact same exhale she gave her first night home with C when she finally decided she was safe and could sleep; the same exhale she gave after a long day of travel and hubbub and doctors and could finally relax. The very same exhale should would give some nights upstairs, all of us in bed, the room dark and quiet except for a long breath in, and then pronounced exhale that said "goodnight, guys."
So it was she gave us her last gift - a goodbye and, perhaps, a thank you. Moments later Doc. K placed her stethoscope here and there and said simply, "she's gone."
And that was it. So very very fast. Her eyes still looking upward, just as fuzzy and warm as she had always been. There, but gone. And gone for good.
The 26 hours since have been difficult, but different. Good moments and bad. Never any looking back, though, so that's a blessing. Now, mostly the emptiness. No one to scoot upstairs at night, no one to play the "bone game" with, no one to wake up and carry down the stairs in the morning. There will be a thousand emptinesses that haunt us both for some time.
And yet, if anyone reading this should ever think "I could never go through that," my only response - written now with eyes again blurred with tears - is that I wouldn't have changed one single thing. Not a one.
She made our lives immeasurably richer, and that you never have to say goodbye to.
I guess our dogs - our loved dogs, our members of the family, our special ones we bond with - are only ours on loan. The point is to value and love and enjoy them as much as possible with every moment possible before we have to return them. And maybe, learn a thing or two from having them in our lives as well.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Writing My Friend's Obit
Monday's weather: moderating after Friday's arctic blast; winds are down but there's moisture in the air. Probably rain tonight, and mid-temp blahs to follow for a week. Basil dead, sage hanging on, thyme OK, rosemary healthy. Who knows what's up with the oregano.
Monday's drink: I'm not drinking save for today, and stress, and my choice. Vodka and orange juice. Healthy and deadly. I don't really care.
Monday's link: The topic of tonight's post.
Look, none of us are immune to loss. Sitting on a bar stool this Saturday, wedged in between drunken Georgetown students cheering on Lord knows what, I learned that my friends JM, JB and B aren't friends by choice. We're family - whether we knew it or not - of the Gigantic Fantastic Green Plastic Travelling Family Love Buggy. One of us has had several divorces, one of us is adopted, one of us is plowing through a disintigrating relationship, and one of us lived mostly as a vagabond in our youth - staking our tent in this yard and that. There's a reason we're all so smart. And attached.
So there I was, watching my Spartans go down in brave and decisive defeat, picking up free Georgetown clothing that was scattered on the floor, jostling with collegiate-sized chunks of drunken testosterone, watching the younger Hoyas fade...fade...fade into alcohol stupor. And having a great time. Trading notes on who's seeing who, what's provoking what, where what the who came from. And sharing things I shouldn't.
Things about the turmoil in my life. Not that any of this is bad. But turmoil, whatever the result, is what it is. I promised myself I wouldn't say a thing. I promised myself again at the bar. This, clearly, was not a promise, as I spilled the beans. About the great forest I find myself happily lost in, again, after many years.
There was an elevation from said bean-spilling, although short lived. Before DrinksWithHoyas, I met with DG...perhaps one of my closest of chosen family. He's as smart as I am...and I'm confessing a lot with that. The message of our lunch: we age, we understand more. A loving man with HIV, DG said it most clearly when he heard my story and said: "You know, most gay men are afraid of aging, it's the terror that ends life. For those of us who have sat on our death's bed...well, we look forward to aging."
End of life means something else entirely. So it was when I went into work today that I knew I would have to deal with a friend's life ended. Brent Hurd, sometime *** employee, sometime journalism teacher, always optimistic bulldozer in my life. He died on a bike, hit by a bus. Apparently just coming home from the swim club he frequented in Bangalore. The news reports say his death was instantaneous.
I don't know if that gives me comfort or nightmares.
Brent muscled out into the world in a way I haven't. But weirdly, he never gave up hope that I might join him along the path someday; that I, too, was worthy of adventure and courage and striking out on life's razor's edge.
And today, I had to write his obituary. Write it, gather the video, edit it, time it all out, then deliver it on camera.
Fraud. That's what I'm saying to myself while I deliver this item on camera, if you watch the video. And you should. Oh, not him. Me. Fraud.
"You had no intention of going out on an adventure, fraud," it says. "You never believed in the rightness of journalism, did you?," it pokes. "You're all about comfort and complicity and stuffing dollars into your stockings," it mocks. 'It', my therapist would remind me, would be 'me.'
So I did my level best. I tried not to inflate him beyond his measure, nor tap him as a salestool for our company. To listen to him - through the years, and through his videos - and try to relate why his loss is important to my audience. If they care.
Who knows. But today, I wrote, edited and delivered my friend's obituary. He was alive and how, and now he's not. But I am.
And we are. And if anything is to come of this it's what I make it. So here's to being alive:
*to all the random meetings that grow like tropical fruit in the sun,
*to lifting a tankard, or a hand, with those you were meant to be with,
*to cherishing those who are your true family,
*to rebirth and renewal and everything that Shiva tears down.
Goodbye, and peace to you, Brent. And for the rest of us: goodness and no rest until the end.
Monday's weather: moderating after Friday's arctic blast; winds are down but there's moisture in the air. Probably rain tonight, and mid-temp blahs to follow for a week. Basil dead, sage hanging on, thyme OK, rosemary healthy. Who knows what's up with the oregano.
Monday's drink: I'm not drinking save for today, and stress, and my choice. Vodka and orange juice. Healthy and deadly. I don't really care.
Monday's link: The topic of tonight's post.
Look, none of us are immune to loss. Sitting on a bar stool this Saturday, wedged in between drunken Georgetown students cheering on Lord knows what, I learned that my friends JM, JB and B aren't friends by choice. We're family - whether we knew it or not - of the Gigantic Fantastic Green Plastic Travelling Family Love Buggy. One of us has had several divorces, one of us is adopted, one of us is plowing through a disintigrating relationship, and one of us lived mostly as a vagabond in our youth - staking our tent in this yard and that. There's a reason we're all so smart. And attached.
So there I was, watching my Spartans go down in brave and decisive defeat, picking up free Georgetown clothing that was scattered on the floor, jostling with collegiate-sized chunks of drunken testosterone, watching the younger Hoyas fade...fade...fade into alcohol stupor. And having a great time. Trading notes on who's seeing who, what's provoking what, where what the who came from. And sharing things I shouldn't.
Things about the turmoil in my life. Not that any of this is bad. But turmoil, whatever the result, is what it is. I promised myself I wouldn't say a thing. I promised myself again at the bar. This, clearly, was not a promise, as I spilled the beans. About the great forest I find myself happily lost in, again, after many years.
There was an elevation from said bean-spilling, although short lived. Before DrinksWithHoyas, I met with DG...perhaps one of my closest of chosen family. He's as smart as I am...and I'm confessing a lot with that. The message of our lunch: we age, we understand more. A loving man with HIV, DG said it most clearly when he heard my story and said: "You know, most gay men are afraid of aging, it's the terror that ends life. For those of us who have sat on our death's bed...well, we look forward to aging."
End of life means something else entirely. So it was when I went into work today that I knew I would have to deal with a friend's life ended. Brent Hurd, sometime *** employee, sometime journalism teacher, always optimistic bulldozer in my life. He died on a bike, hit by a bus. Apparently just coming home from the swim club he frequented in Bangalore. The news reports say his death was instantaneous.
I don't know if that gives me comfort or nightmares.
Brent muscled out into the world in a way I haven't. But weirdly, he never gave up hope that I might join him along the path someday; that I, too, was worthy of adventure and courage and striking out on life's razor's edge.
And today, I had to write his obituary. Write it, gather the video, edit it, time it all out, then deliver it on camera.
Fraud. That's what I'm saying to myself while I deliver this item on camera, if you watch the video. And you should. Oh, not him. Me. Fraud.
"You had no intention of going out on an adventure, fraud," it says. "You never believed in the rightness of journalism, did you?," it pokes. "You're all about comfort and complicity and stuffing dollars into your stockings," it mocks. 'It', my therapist would remind me, would be 'me.'
So I did my level best. I tried not to inflate him beyond his measure, nor tap him as a salestool for our company. To listen to him - through the years, and through his videos - and try to relate why his loss is important to my audience. If they care.
Who knows. But today, I wrote, edited and delivered my friend's obituary. He was alive and how, and now he's not. But I am.
And we are. And if anything is to come of this it's what I make it. So here's to being alive:
*to all the random meetings that grow like tropical fruit in the sun,
*to lifting a tankard, or a hand, with those you were meant to be with,
*to cherishing those who are your true family,
*to rebirth and renewal and everything that Shiva tears down.
Goodbye, and peace to you, Brent. And for the rest of us: goodness and no rest until the end.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Don't Dream It's Over
Friday's weather: moist and unusually warm in the air. 68 today and the hound is on her toes, taking me on super walks. Trees across DC now at peak; this town is lovely in autumn. Pumpkin on porch, not looking so lovely anymore. Oh, and my fall crocus are up and ready to bloom while the basil is all gone.
Friday's drink: again, water.
Friday's crush: on Joel McHale, star of "The Soup" and now doing live shows - C and I are going tonight to see him.
(ed note: most of what follows is basically copied from something I wrote and posted on another blog I write for. But as that's a private group thing, I wanted to offer this to friends here at the bar. Sorry, JR)
Hey everybody. I wish I could say this is going to be something smart, but I feel the need to be current more than smart right now. And smart was never my trump.
In these weeks leading up to the election, we all must have felt - whichever candidate we were supporting and whatever our ultimate goals - a tingle passing through the body of America. That feeling like nerve stimulation: awake aware, but what is it?
Each of us, no doubt, has our story to tell. Mine is two-fold. Quick, but two fold.
First: I was the primary anchor for ***'s live radio/tv simulcast for this event. Being ***, everything was fucked up, but we stumbled through. Election night is always the same: spurts of news, filling in between. I was filling in between when the bulletin crossed the computer/wire at the desk. I glanced up to my trusted colleague Jim, he saw it, caught my eye, and jumped right in.
"Doug, I think you have some important news to report."
(geez, I'm getting teary writing this. press on...)
So I had the great honor of announcing to the world - well, that tiny portion of it that was listening or watching to us, but still...millions of people - that Barack Obama had won the presidential contest and was now the next President-elect of the United States.
Of course the blah-blah and what-not and screw-ups continued: to McCain's concession, to Obama's valedictory. Only at the very end, as I queried all our guests/contributors about the evening, and turned finally to Jim did I really get it. Jim's comments - as always - were crisp, poignant, and, rare for him, at the very end, shaded by the emotion of the moment. He turned to me and said: "Doug, tonight we have not only witnessed history, we've had the unique privilege to be its clarion." As he did so he looked me hard in the eye, and I heard that unique signal only broadcasters hear: "help me out here. I can't talk anymore because I'm going to get choked up."
I, too, began to choke. But I had a job in the moment. "And there's no one I would rather have joined me to chronicle this moment but you," I said. Or something like that. Who knows. wrap! wrap! they're yelling in my ear. I wrapped and was out.
Which leads me to my second story. This has been a long ... very long ... campaign for me. At it's end I felt something best described as exhaustion. This is due in some measure to the big changes I'm going through, and instabilities and hopes and questions I have. To have them in such a profound way about your nation at the same time? It's like nausea.
The newsroom was popping corks as I left the studio. I came in and everyone (generously) gave a big hurrah, slurped a tiny bit of champagne and was out the door, as I had to be in early next morning.
Driving home I wondered. What just happened? Horns were sounding all throughout Washington. People on the streets waving, lights flashing, fireworks going up. I made it home through to discover perhaps the biggest crowd was at my feet. The U Street center - 13, 14th streets - was over-run with people. DC police just blocked it off: no cars, just revelers. Still, horns everywhere. Strangers embracing. The din of a crowd that has just won a World Series; oh, but even more. Cameras flash flash, whoooo's! rising and falling. A mob of joyous abandon.
I wandered in the mob for a while, still in my now slightly wrinkled tv suit and tie, makeup still caked on. No-one cared. "WHOOOO!" they'd say before just grabbing you by the shoulders. "YES WE CAN!" as they planted a kiss on your cheek. Is this what it is to win a war, I thought?
Yes, it is. I am very very tired now. Exhausted physically and emotionally. Just keeping myself from crying jags at inappropriate moments. To be clear: crying mostly for what this moment is, for where we may go, for belief in hope, and for the dizzying position of, perhaps, having been the voice that first broke the news to someone living in Nigeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Brazil, Kenya.
Tonight I had hoped to come home, make some tea, shut off and uplug every TV and just sit in the quiet of my house. And I expect break down sobbing. That's not a bad thing. It's just, I guess, what you do to process a moment of history. However there's comedy to hear tonight, and friends to meet tomorrow fresh off the campaign trail with their own stories to hear.
So I'll just say that I am very, very proud to call myself a citizen of the United States, and to number so many of you my friends.
Friday's weather: moist and unusually warm in the air. 68 today and the hound is on her toes, taking me on super walks. Trees across DC now at peak; this town is lovely in autumn. Pumpkin on porch, not looking so lovely anymore. Oh, and my fall crocus are up and ready to bloom while the basil is all gone.
Friday's drink: again, water.
Friday's crush: on Joel McHale, star of "The Soup" and now doing live shows - C and I are going tonight to see him.
(ed note: most of what follows is basically copied from something I wrote and posted on another blog I write for. But as that's a private group thing, I wanted to offer this to friends here at the bar. Sorry, JR)
Hey everybody. I wish I could say this is going to be something smart, but I feel the need to be current more than smart right now. And smart was never my trump.
In these weeks leading up to the election, we all must have felt - whichever candidate we were supporting and whatever our ultimate goals - a tingle passing through the body of America. That feeling like nerve stimulation: awake aware, but what is it?
Each of us, no doubt, has our story to tell. Mine is two-fold. Quick, but two fold.
First: I was the primary anchor for ***'s live radio/tv simulcast for this event. Being ***, everything was fucked up, but we stumbled through. Election night is always the same: spurts of news, filling in between. I was filling in between when the bulletin crossed the computer/wire at the desk. I glanced up to my trusted colleague Jim, he saw it, caught my eye, and jumped right in.
"Doug, I think you have some important news to report."
(geez, I'm getting teary writing this. press on...)
So I had the great honor of announcing to the world - well, that tiny portion of it that was listening or watching to us, but still...millions of people - that Barack Obama had won the presidential contest and was now the next President-elect of the United States.
Of course the blah-blah and what-not and screw-ups continued: to McCain's concession, to Obama's valedictory. Only at the very end, as I queried all our guests/contributors about the evening, and turned finally to Jim did I really get it. Jim's comments - as always - were crisp, poignant, and, rare for him, at the very end, shaded by the emotion of the moment. He turned to me and said: "Doug, tonight we have not only witnessed history, we've had the unique privilege to be its clarion." As he did so he looked me hard in the eye, and I heard that unique signal only broadcasters hear: "help me out here. I can't talk anymore because I'm going to get choked up."
I, too, began to choke. But I had a job in the moment. "And there's no one I would rather have joined me to chronicle this moment but you," I said. Or something like that. Who knows. wrap! wrap! they're yelling in my ear. I wrapped and was out.
Which leads me to my second story. This has been a long ... very long ... campaign for me. At it's end I felt something best described as exhaustion. This is due in some measure to the big changes I'm going through, and instabilities and hopes and questions I have. To have them in such a profound way about your nation at the same time? It's like nausea.
The newsroom was popping corks as I left the studio. I came in and everyone (generously) gave a big hurrah, slurped a tiny bit of champagne and was out the door, as I had to be in early next morning.
Driving home I wondered. What just happened? Horns were sounding all throughout Washington. People on the streets waving, lights flashing, fireworks going up. I made it home through to discover perhaps the biggest crowd was at my feet. The U Street center - 13, 14th streets - was over-run with people. DC police just blocked it off: no cars, just revelers. Still, horns everywhere. Strangers embracing. The din of a crowd that has just won a World Series; oh, but even more. Cameras flash flash, whoooo's! rising and falling. A mob of joyous abandon.
I wandered in the mob for a while, still in my now slightly wrinkled tv suit and tie, makeup still caked on. No-one cared. "WHOOOO!" they'd say before just grabbing you by the shoulders. "YES WE CAN!" as they planted a kiss on your cheek. Is this what it is to win a war, I thought?
Yes, it is. I am very very tired now. Exhausted physically and emotionally. Just keeping myself from crying jags at inappropriate moments. To be clear: crying mostly for what this moment is, for where we may go, for belief in hope, and for the dizzying position of, perhaps, having been the voice that first broke the news to someone living in Nigeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Brazil, Kenya.
Tonight I had hoped to come home, make some tea, shut off and uplug every TV and just sit in the quiet of my house. And I expect break down sobbing. That's not a bad thing. It's just, I guess, what you do to process a moment of history. However there's comedy to hear tonight, and friends to meet tomorrow fresh off the campaign trail with their own stories to hear.
So I'll just say that I am very, very proud to call myself a citizen of the United States, and to number so many of you my friends.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
The End of Days
Sunday's weather: Seasonably cool and cloudy, but not in keeping with the last several days of sun and warmth. No rain in sight, making next week dry. The maple out front is about 1/2 turned; all leaves edged in orange, yellow and red, with a few leaves keep crimson in the center.
Sunday's drink: water, as per keeping with the new regimen from personal trainer Will.
Sunday's link: To a new documentary made by my friends Simone and Rich. Labored over, more like, for several years of their lives. An enviable accomplishment - everyone take a peek.
Our friend - social friend - JJG threw a masquerade party last night. He's got a wicked cute house with a double-sized backyard, and the evening was, as always at his place, well done. Everyone enjoyed themselves.
Well, except not. Again and again the economic train-wreck that is our nation at present kept coming up. Unbidden - people were just volunteering comments, policy prescriptions, blame, and worry. Double up on the worry.
Mind you, this is a fancy Arlington house, on a lovely evening, sitting among friends in the landscaped yard amid the firepots and ponds, wine glasses in hand, lights strung overhead, all of us decked out in the adult game of masks. A decidedly privileged experience in a world of so much want; but the kind of privilege people have come not even to notice. Like the sky: always there, but rarely seen.
Last night I saw a level of nervousness in people that I've not seen before. The phrase "the end of days" came up on several separate occasions. One friend (who I don't think I should even tag with initials for privacy) who I care for greatly (though have fallen somewhat apart from in years) admitted to losing 20 pounds in two months - all because of worry of how bad things will - not may - get. This has been an unusually clear-eyed person; to hear such fright knocked me for a blow.
C has taken to using the subtitle of this blog - "...the capital of a crumbling empire" in conversations and I'm quite fine with that. I chose it for a reason: I have for sometime believed ours is a largely economic empire that is unspooling and we - we have neither the will to acknowledge this and disengage from it nor the ability to control it to our favor anymore.
OK, lah-dee-dah. But what the hell do I know, right? So when friends with more experience and wisdom of the world begin agreeing with me, without qualifications...well now I'm starting to worry.
This comes at a bad time. Like there's a good one. Nationwide people are just tweaked out by the election. Washington has a ginormous case of the jitters because whatever happens, this town will be a swirl of job-changing over the next year. And me? Well, 1 1/2 years in therapy have put me on a path of openness to change and emotion...neither of which can be controlled. Opening up to some change is often an invitation for change in other areas you didn't ask for it. Opening up to emotion means that they will arise as their own force - whether you want them to or not. After several years asleep I am a jangle of movement. I just can't predict where.
So you can see: not really loving the "end of days" meme. But it's coming up again and again.
Where are we at, and where are we headed?
Sunday's weather: Seasonably cool and cloudy, but not in keeping with the last several days of sun and warmth. No rain in sight, making next week dry. The maple out front is about 1/2 turned; all leaves edged in orange, yellow and red, with a few leaves keep crimson in the center.
Sunday's drink: water, as per keeping with the new regimen from personal trainer Will.
Sunday's link: To a new documentary made by my friends Simone and Rich. Labored over, more like, for several years of their lives. An enviable accomplishment - everyone take a peek.
Our friend - social friend - JJG threw a masquerade party last night. He's got a wicked cute house with a double-sized backyard, and the evening was, as always at his place, well done. Everyone enjoyed themselves.
Well, except not. Again and again the economic train-wreck that is our nation at present kept coming up. Unbidden - people were just volunteering comments, policy prescriptions, blame, and worry. Double up on the worry.
Mind you, this is a fancy Arlington house, on a lovely evening, sitting among friends in the landscaped yard amid the firepots and ponds, wine glasses in hand, lights strung overhead, all of us decked out in the adult game of masks. A decidedly privileged experience in a world of so much want; but the kind of privilege people have come not even to notice. Like the sky: always there, but rarely seen.
Last night I saw a level of nervousness in people that I've not seen before. The phrase "the end of days" came up on several separate occasions. One friend (who I don't think I should even tag with initials for privacy) who I care for greatly (though have fallen somewhat apart from in years) admitted to losing 20 pounds in two months - all because of worry of how bad things will - not may - get. This has been an unusually clear-eyed person; to hear such fright knocked me for a blow.
C has taken to using the subtitle of this blog - "...the capital of a crumbling empire" in conversations and I'm quite fine with that. I chose it for a reason: I have for sometime believed ours is a largely economic empire that is unspooling and we - we have neither the will to acknowledge this and disengage from it nor the ability to control it to our favor anymore.
OK, lah-dee-dah. But what the hell do I know, right? So when friends with more experience and wisdom of the world begin agreeing with me, without qualifications...well now I'm starting to worry.
This comes at a bad time. Like there's a good one. Nationwide people are just tweaked out by the election. Washington has a ginormous case of the jitters because whatever happens, this town will be a swirl of job-changing over the next year. And me? Well, 1 1/2 years in therapy have put me on a path of openness to change and emotion...neither of which can be controlled. Opening up to some change is often an invitation for change in other areas you didn't ask for it. Opening up to emotion means that they will arise as their own force - whether you want them to or not. After several years asleep I am a jangle of movement. I just can't predict where.
So you can see: not really loving the "end of days" meme. But it's coming up again and again.
Where are we at, and where are we headed?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
We Still Miss You, Paul
Saturday's weather: moist and rainy; strong winds giving way to a cool heavy damp air. If you were shooting a movie, today would be a "sad day" sky.
Saturday's drink: none.
No link today other than this video. It was six years ago today that Paul, Sheila and Marcia Wellstone went down in a plane crash in northern Minnesota, ending their lives. Also on board were Tom Lapic, Mary McEvoy, Will McLaughlin and the two pilots; they also all died.
I had the great honor of working not once but twice for Senator Wellstone here in Washington DC. I was far from the best staffer, but he always saw the good in what I and all our staff did.
Don't mistake: Paul had a temper. Every senator does. And I think the thing today that might make him angriest is if I just threw up my hands, said "We Miss You Paul" and left it at that. No, there's no leaving it at that with Paul. If you're sad about something, go do something about it. If you're mad about something, fight to fix it. If you miss someone, pick up their work and carry it forward.
In my time there was no other figure in the U.S. Senate like Paul Wellstone. I always used to say: "If Paul didn't exist, they'd have to invent him." Truth is Paul invented himself, never stopped giving what he had to help others, and never ever lost faith that people are good and that collectively we can do better by each other.
The Wellstone/Domenici mental health parity act finally passed this Congress, albeit attached to the $750 billion bailout bill. Whatever, it's done and it would have never happened without Paul and Sheila, and their work carried on by sons David and Mark.
I still miss you, Paul. And today your memory reawakens all those things I know I need to do. I hope it does for others, too.
And that's a pretty damn good legacy.
Saturday's weather: moist and rainy; strong winds giving way to a cool heavy damp air. If you were shooting a movie, today would be a "sad day" sky.
Saturday's drink: none.
No link today other than this video. It was six years ago today that Paul, Sheila and Marcia Wellstone went down in a plane crash in northern Minnesota, ending their lives. Also on board were Tom Lapic, Mary McEvoy, Will McLaughlin and the two pilots; they also all died.
I had the great honor of working not once but twice for Senator Wellstone here in Washington DC. I was far from the best staffer, but he always saw the good in what I and all our staff did.
Don't mistake: Paul had a temper. Every senator does. And I think the thing today that might make him angriest is if I just threw up my hands, said "We Miss You Paul" and left it at that. No, there's no leaving it at that with Paul. If you're sad about something, go do something about it. If you're mad about something, fight to fix it. If you miss someone, pick up their work and carry it forward.
In my time there was no other figure in the U.S. Senate like Paul Wellstone. I always used to say: "If Paul didn't exist, they'd have to invent him." Truth is Paul invented himself, never stopped giving what he had to help others, and never ever lost faith that people are good and that collectively we can do better by each other.
The Wellstone/Domenici mental health parity act finally passed this Congress, albeit attached to the $750 billion bailout bill. Whatever, it's done and it would have never happened without Paul and Sheila, and their work carried on by sons David and Mark.
I still miss you, Paul. And today your memory reawakens all those things I know I need to do. I hope it does for others, too.
And that's a pretty damn good legacy.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Dream Time
Monday's weather: Canadian high pressure settled over us for several days has brought cloudless skies, crisp mornings down near 45 and cool abundant sunshine hitting out around 60. Herbs and garden are drying out, but there's probably only 30 days tops growning left anyway. For a month the windows have been open (more in a later post), but now they're getting closed at night.
Monday's drink: None, really. A Bordeaux with dinner, and maybe a little of the beer that goes into the cassoulet I'm making. (A ragout, more aptly, but whatever.)
Monday's link: My Flickr PhotoStream. Nothing to write home about. Just a little bit of life from where I sit.
Therapy has taught me several things. It's too expensive. It's slow, it's highly valuable. And pay attention to dreams. Not the little winglets that circle around, but those that land you back into consciousness with a thump.
I have a whole storybook of recurring dreams that are as familiar and useful as falling autumn leaves: I know exactly what they are, I like looking at them, but apart from making compost they really don't serve any purpose. These mostly occur in about six or seven distinct settings: a town that's supposed to be East Lansing (but of course isn't), a complex that' supposed to be WKAR Radio (and, again, isn't), a house that's an amalgam of the homes I lived in growing up...you get it. In each case they're instantly familiar not for their relation to reality but as recognized symbols for the actual things they represent. ... wait, it's really not that confusing. Think of it like this: they're stage sets I rotate in and out from the theater's wings. I see the set for what it represents in my dreamlife, recognize that I must be in a dream, and just carry on to enjoy the play.
A play which, obviously, I also authored. Fun! But then...then there are dreams so big, and often for me so frightening, they can only be from another's pen. There's nothing fun about watching these, or worse playing a role in them. They're too big and too bad for me to want any authorship. Dreams I don't so much have but feel are inserted into me.
Last night was one of those dreams. Rare for me, I can't recall any detail other than being in what was an NBC skybox, crummy awards lining the shelves and shallow people filling the room. The next thing I can recall is a feeling...I can only call it obliteration. Like being erased; a physical sensation of being pulled backward into a void which would swallow me if I couldn't hang on. So I reached out to the only two things I felt were keeping me in this world: the feeling of the sheets in my hands and the sound of C breathing. I'm convinced those two things saved me.
Clearly I avoided obliteration. But not the lingering feeling which hangs over me this day. Now I'm writing this because ususally, when I have one of the big bad dreams, I get what's going on in a flash. The dream where mature tree was cut from the sun by someone putting a roof over it, the dream where an unknown man was hanging outside the window of every room I stepped in, the dream with the faceless family and the door that no longer existed to the basement even though I know it was there...my language is unambiguous, the emotional residue is decisive, the meaning is a clear and urgent warning to me. From me.
But this one...I've never had this before. No memory of anything but my annihalation. I do know that it's clearly telling me - I'm clearly telling me - I'm at a fulcrum moment. I am tipping to one thing, or another, and I need to pay attention and decide to what's true to my heart and spirit. Or else...what? I'll cease to be?
This makes no sense. Unless it's a warning so dire that my existance depends on answering the riddle correctly. Which, you know, nothing like a little pressure to make the intuitive juices flow.
So I'm asking a question. What does this mean? Guess. Take a stab ... er, not literally. I don't know anything that could be wrong because I have no sense of what's right. But maybe I'm too close. So you tell me. What does it mean to have a dream where you actually feel yourself dying?
Monday's weather: Canadian high pressure settled over us for several days has brought cloudless skies, crisp mornings down near 45 and cool abundant sunshine hitting out around 60. Herbs and garden are drying out, but there's probably only 30 days tops growning left anyway. For a month the windows have been open (more in a later post), but now they're getting closed at night.
Monday's drink: None, really. A Bordeaux with dinner, and maybe a little of the beer that goes into the cassoulet I'm making. (A ragout, more aptly, but whatever.)
Monday's link: My Flickr PhotoStream. Nothing to write home about. Just a little bit of life from where I sit.
Therapy has taught me several things. It's too expensive. It's slow, it's highly valuable. And pay attention to dreams. Not the little winglets that circle around, but those that land you back into consciousness with a thump.
I have a whole storybook of recurring dreams that are as familiar and useful as falling autumn leaves: I know exactly what they are, I like looking at them, but apart from making compost they really don't serve any purpose. These mostly occur in about six or seven distinct settings: a town that's supposed to be East Lansing (but of course isn't), a complex that' supposed to be WKAR Radio (and, again, isn't), a house that's an amalgam of the homes I lived in growing up...you get it. In each case they're instantly familiar not for their relation to reality but as recognized symbols for the actual things they represent. ... wait, it's really not that confusing. Think of it like this: they're stage sets I rotate in and out from the theater's wings. I see the set for what it represents in my dreamlife, recognize that I must be in a dream, and just carry on to enjoy the play.
A play which, obviously, I also authored. Fun! But then...then there are dreams so big, and often for me so frightening, they can only be from another's pen. There's nothing fun about watching these, or worse playing a role in them. They're too big and too bad for me to want any authorship. Dreams I don't so much have but feel are inserted into me.
Last night was one of those dreams. Rare for me, I can't recall any detail other than being in what was an NBC skybox, crummy awards lining the shelves and shallow people filling the room. The next thing I can recall is a feeling...I can only call it obliteration. Like being erased; a physical sensation of being pulled backward into a void which would swallow me if I couldn't hang on. So I reached out to the only two things I felt were keeping me in this world: the feeling of the sheets in my hands and the sound of C breathing. I'm convinced those two things saved me.
Clearly I avoided obliteration. But not the lingering feeling which hangs over me this day. Now I'm writing this because ususally, when I have one of the big bad dreams, I get what's going on in a flash. The dream where mature tree was cut from the sun by someone putting a roof over it, the dream where an unknown man was hanging outside the window of every room I stepped in, the dream with the faceless family and the door that no longer existed to the basement even though I know it was there...my language is unambiguous, the emotional residue is decisive, the meaning is a clear and urgent warning to me. From me.
But this one...I've never had this before. No memory of anything but my annihalation. I do know that it's clearly telling me - I'm clearly telling me - I'm at a fulcrum moment. I am tipping to one thing, or another, and I need to pay attention and decide to what's true to my heart and spirit. Or else...what? I'll cease to be?
This makes no sense. Unless it's a warning so dire that my existance depends on answering the riddle correctly. Which, you know, nothing like a little pressure to make the intuitive juices flow.
So I'm asking a question. What does this mean? Guess. Take a stab ... er, not literally. I don't know anything that could be wrong because I have no sense of what's right. But maybe I'm too close. So you tell me. What does it mean to have a dream where you actually feel yourself dying?
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Day Trip
Tuesday's weather: surprisingly warm for a cool, near-autumnal day. Sunny with few clouds that evaporated at sunset, low humidity, fresh wind. My basil and rosemary still producing, the thyme is dying back and the sage saggy.
Tuesday's drink: Jolly Green Giant, although it's really not so giant. Making me jolly, tho'.
Tuesday's link: OK, I Want In On This.
It's 6:08pm and I still have stuff to do. Every moment, practically, of nearly every day has a little floating list of things to do. Waah.
It just struck me this morning, packing up my gym bag with a, b, c, that it was as if I was taking a little day trip.
Day trips. Remember those? I took one last weekend: out to the Bay Saturday afternoon around 3:30p, catching up with P & G, collecting late harvest in the garden, searching through the bad movies for later, appetizer, dip into the hottub as the sun fell, dry off and out to light the bonfire, watch it blaze, blaze, down, down, down to reasonable, inside to prep a little dinner, garlic-coated steak roast over campfire, potatoes, onion shallot and oil reduction over top and garden fresh salad, "Diary of the Dead" (Lord it's dreadful), a dessert scotch and more fire and into and out of the pool, ice cream and "Whitest Kids U Know", off to sleep.
Wake in forest still, watch the room lighten as the sun wakes the birds, fresh walk (hike) to mailbox for Sunday paper and back, coffee going, quiet of morning paper coffee sunshine on Bay, boys wake and make breakfast, off back to town at 11:30, home again to make summer tomato sauce (there's no link! email me for recipe!!!), fresh sauce and pasta dinner with basil, oregano and tomato from yard, time on the couch with C, asleep by 9p.
Packed a lot in there. Mostly tedium for the reader. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The end of this: waking today at 6p, turn alarm off before it rings, sneak downstairs setting bedroom door ajar, swap out dog water old for new, prep and make coffee, contemplate Cheerios for breakfast and decline, watch for weather on tv and shut it off, two cups of coffee and upstairs, one beside C when he wakes, the other inside the bathroom, shower shave eyes in brush teeth cologne on more coffee, root around for clothes to wear, down on floor for a few minutes of pets with STG, put on bare esstentials, carry STG downstairs, take her our and prepare her breakfast, back upstairs for more coffee, kiss C, finish dressing, pack gym bag with togs, letter to mail, iPod, ID for work, hunt for rings and phone, grab wallet and keys, stow sneaks in bag, grab suit to take to cleaners, one last taste of C, out the back to take out recycling, suit to cleaners buy paper on Metro mail letter buy breakfast wrap sit down at desk and toss down gym bag.
I write this not to bore you *ahem* but just to observe. Spend a moment watching the pattern. Is this normal? Is this what people do? Is this what I imagined life to be? Is this life, or the holding pattern until I find it? Is there meaning in the doing? Am I the sum of my habits and patterns, or more? And if more - what then? Am I fully in the moment in these activities? If not - what am I losing?
You see, everything is complicated with me.
Tuesday's weather: surprisingly warm for a cool, near-autumnal day. Sunny with few clouds that evaporated at sunset, low humidity, fresh wind. My basil and rosemary still producing, the thyme is dying back and the sage saggy.
Tuesday's drink: Jolly Green Giant, although it's really not so giant. Making me jolly, tho'.
Tuesday's link: OK, I Want In On This.
It's 6:08pm and I still have stuff to do. Every moment, practically, of nearly every day has a little floating list of things to do. Waah.
It just struck me this morning, packing up my gym bag with a, b, c, that it was as if I was taking a little day trip.
Day trips. Remember those? I took one last weekend: out to the Bay Saturday afternoon around 3:30p, catching up with P & G, collecting late harvest in the garden, searching through the bad movies for later, appetizer, dip into the hottub as the sun fell, dry off and out to light the bonfire, watch it blaze, blaze, down, down, down to reasonable, inside to prep a little dinner, garlic-coated steak roast over campfire, potatoes, onion shallot and oil reduction over top and garden fresh salad, "Diary of the Dead" (Lord it's dreadful), a dessert scotch and more fire and into and out of the pool, ice cream and "Whitest Kids U Know", off to sleep.
Wake in forest still, watch the room lighten as the sun wakes the birds, fresh walk (hike) to mailbox for Sunday paper and back, coffee going, quiet of morning paper coffee sunshine on Bay, boys wake and make breakfast, off back to town at 11:30, home again to make summer tomato sauce (there's no link! email me for recipe!!!), fresh sauce and pasta dinner with basil, oregano and tomato from yard, time on the couch with C, asleep by 9p.
Packed a lot in there. Mostly tedium for the reader. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The end of this: waking today at 6p, turn alarm off before it rings, sneak downstairs setting bedroom door ajar, swap out dog water old for new, prep and make coffee, contemplate Cheerios for breakfast and decline, watch for weather on tv and shut it off, two cups of coffee and upstairs, one beside C when he wakes, the other inside the bathroom, shower shave eyes in brush teeth cologne on more coffee, root around for clothes to wear, down on floor for a few minutes of pets with STG, put on bare esstentials, carry STG downstairs, take her our and prepare her breakfast, back upstairs for more coffee, kiss C, finish dressing, pack gym bag with togs, letter to mail, iPod, ID for work, hunt for rings and phone, grab wallet and keys, stow sneaks in bag, grab suit to take to cleaners, one last taste of C, out the back to take out recycling, suit to cleaners buy paper on Metro mail letter buy breakfast wrap sit down at desk and toss down gym bag.
I write this not to bore you *ahem* but just to observe. Spend a moment watching the pattern. Is this normal? Is this what people do? Is this what I imagined life to be? Is this life, or the holding pattern until I find it? Is there meaning in the doing? Am I the sum of my habits and patterns, or more? And if more - what then? Am I fully in the moment in these activities? If not - what am I losing?
You see, everything is complicated with me.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The Odometer Moves Again
Wednesday's weather: Finally fall! Almost. Beautiful sunshine and cool, dry temps. The leaves in the back have been turning piecemeal for about a month; now they begin in earnest. Herbs are dry, and windows are open.
Wednesday's drink: Something limey and a little froo-froo. It's my birthday for G-d's sake! Like that's ever made a difference.
Wednesday's meaningless link: Why, it's my year ahead! And it must be true! It's a horoscope!
So I know therapy is helping. Today is my birthday and I don't care who knows I'm 44.
A decade ago I doubt I was telling anyone how old I was. I would mumble about being in my "early thirties" (how long did I use that line?) or maybe even outright lie, shaving a year or two off. More if I thought I could get away with it.
Of course, this was still a time when I could get away with it. I did legitimately look younger than my years. And fairly hot, too...within a reasonably small universe.
Ten years is such a short passing of time. But looking back I'm genuinely shocked to think I was even on the air...on basic cable at least. "Hey everyone! It's Doug, on the teevee! Change the channel."
Sure I was no Rob Marciano, but I had my fans. And I had my friends, and my boyfriends. My friend M. who came to visit one wintery day met me at a local hotel. He was one level up and I was bustling in the main lobby to meet him at the bar. He said I looked like a million bucks: great black longcoat, jaunty scarf, tugging my leather gloves as I moved confidently into the room. And then, the telling detail, I apparently knew just how and when to unbutton my suit jacket as I sat as if to say: "I know exactly who I am and what I'm capable of."
But I was not happy. Really, most days, I was not happy in the least. I might fake it well - I could even almost fool myself. Thinking on it now: I don't know at all what was wrong.
Well, OK, that's a big fat lie. I know the roots of what was wrong, but I still don't see how they were manifest then. Not that it's worth dwelling on.
Today I tell my therapist of the last 18 months that we are drawing to a close, he and I. I'm of many emotions about this, but see the need and practicality. Foremost among the good stuff is appreciation for his help and pride in my accomplishments. Somewhere in the murky middle is that weird sense of saying goodbye to someone who knows you so well, but is in no way a friend.
I was thinking of the old Melville metaphor in "Moby Dick" - the leviathan (great whale) is so large that you can't see him all in one view. The most you can ever grab are pieces and parts. A tail fluke, a fin, teeth and mouth, great lolling eye, a snowy fountain on the horizon. I feel like that to him: he sees me in pieces and parts, but not all together.
A better metaphor might be the internet. I, any of us really, exist as clouds of information scattered on a thousand computers across the net. My address, my favorite movies, my grocery purchases and political contributions: a million unconnected bits that, connected, make a pointillistic portrait of me. But even with that, there is one very secure computer that holds eyes-only, top-secret classified files. This computer is not connected to the net; this information does not float aimlessly through the internet's tubes. This is the computer he has had access to.
And of course, that's the point. Perhaps only one or two other people shall ever see what's in there. (Sort of like David Addington's safe.) But looking back, 18 months into therapy, 44 years into life, I wish he and the many others I know had a better sense of those clouds, that portrait, that represents me.
Wednesday's weather: Finally fall! Almost. Beautiful sunshine and cool, dry temps. The leaves in the back have been turning piecemeal for about a month; now they begin in earnest. Herbs are dry, and windows are open.
Wednesday's drink: Something limey and a little froo-froo. It's my birthday for G-d's sake! Like that's ever made a difference.
Wednesday's meaningless link: Why, it's my year ahead! And it must be true! It's a horoscope!
So I know therapy is helping. Today is my birthday and I don't care who knows I'm 44.
A decade ago I doubt I was telling anyone how old I was. I would mumble about being in my "early thirties" (how long did I use that line?) or maybe even outright lie, shaving a year or two off. More if I thought I could get away with it.
Of course, this was still a time when I could get away with it. I did legitimately look younger than my years. And fairly hot, too...within a reasonably small universe.
Ten years is such a short passing of time. But looking back I'm genuinely shocked to think I was even on the air...on basic cable at least. "Hey everyone! It's Doug, on the teevee! Change the channel."
Sure I was no Rob Marciano, but I had my fans. And I had my friends, and my boyfriends. My friend M. who came to visit one wintery day met me at a local hotel. He was one level up and I was bustling in the main lobby to meet him at the bar. He said I looked like a million bucks: great black longcoat, jaunty scarf, tugging my leather gloves as I moved confidently into the room. And then, the telling detail, I apparently knew just how and when to unbutton my suit jacket as I sat as if to say: "I know exactly who I am and what I'm capable of."
But I was not happy. Really, most days, I was not happy in the least. I might fake it well - I could even almost fool myself. Thinking on it now: I don't know at all what was wrong.
Well, OK, that's a big fat lie. I know the roots of what was wrong, but I still don't see how they were manifest then. Not that it's worth dwelling on.
Today I tell my therapist of the last 18 months that we are drawing to a close, he and I. I'm of many emotions about this, but see the need and practicality. Foremost among the good stuff is appreciation for his help and pride in my accomplishments. Somewhere in the murky middle is that weird sense of saying goodbye to someone who knows you so well, but is in no way a friend.
I was thinking of the old Melville metaphor in "Moby Dick" - the leviathan (great whale) is so large that you can't see him all in one view. The most you can ever grab are pieces and parts. A tail fluke, a fin, teeth and mouth, great lolling eye, a snowy fountain on the horizon. I feel like that to him: he sees me in pieces and parts, but not all together.
A better metaphor might be the internet. I, any of us really, exist as clouds of information scattered on a thousand computers across the net. My address, my favorite movies, my grocery purchases and political contributions: a million unconnected bits that, connected, make a pointillistic portrait of me. But even with that, there is one very secure computer that holds eyes-only, top-secret classified files. This computer is not connected to the net; this information does not float aimlessly through the internet's tubes. This is the computer he has had access to.
And of course, that's the point. Perhaps only one or two other people shall ever see what's in there. (Sort of like David Addington's safe.) But looking back, 18 months into therapy, 44 years into life, I wish he and the many others I know had a better sense of those clouds, that portrait, that represents me.
Monday, September 08, 2008
St. Paul and Second Bananas
Monday's weather: Started cool and dry but late-summertime warm in the afternoon. The air is still and the ground saturated. It feels like summer's last.
Monday's drink: None, really, today. Water. Maybe using up a little of the "Sam Adams" left over from C's "McCain Viewing Party."
Monday's link: Several. JohnMcCainWriteIn. Or VoteMcCainBiden. More on these later.
Flying is just no longer any fun. The flight from Minneapolis to Washington, all my luggage in tow, stop-overs at O'Hare, inconsistently-applied security rules, stand-by flights, fellow passengers who are just too large to occupy one seat. Coach grows more like the midnight Polish train I took from Gdansk to Nowy Tomysl. Crowded, cold; a jostling smell-fest in the dark in which you are completely powerless and must simply relinquish any illusion of control of your person.
*sigh* Sorry. It is, of course, a great honor to be asked to go and work not one but both conventions, notably in this historic year. There's lots that can (and does) go wrong on the road, so they usually only send out the competent ones.
That's me. A competent one.
I haven't posted in forever and have more more to say but have found myself unable to make it happen at home. Also, for reasons of smartness, not doing it from work. Which leaves a dearth of other options. Perhaps I should blog wirelessly while waiting for my therapy appointment? I would look creepy - pardon, creepier - if I blogged in the gym locker room. I'd go to a local park and sit in the trees, but then I can't see the screen.
Of course there is a deep question here. Why the inability to blog from home? All I can say is something isn't right there, yet. Certainly not between C and I: there's little that could be going better. Perhaps it's a physical space thing. Or something more hidden.
While I AM online in a safe place I'll say what I've been wanting to say about St. Paul. Denver was all exuberance; St. Paul was all safety. Literally - the Ramsey County sheriff had troops out on the streets to beat the bands. And of the protests I saw: calling them protests seems lame. Generally modest, orderly people of heart-felt passions and convictions doing something that seems less that quaint in our overly security conscious state: expressing their opinion publicly and their disagreement with their elected leaders. Sad. Honestly people: what has become of us when we're afraid how our leaders will respond to our opinions? Who's in charge anymore?
Oh wait, I think I know the answer. Anyway, St. Paul. I'll describe the city with my friend - and Minnesota resident - Brian Strub. (Sorry Brian.) St. Paul is very much like Brian: smart but not showy.
Both are unpredictable mixes of civic progressive and social conservative, both are curiously open and guarded at the same time, both can surprise with moments of pointed clarity and generosity. And both are...well, handsome but not in a look-at-me kind of way. That may seem like a mean thing to say, but it's not meant to be at all. St. Paul is just always a quiet surprise.
Second bananas. That's how I'll remember both of these conventions. In Denver, the unintentional standouts - even more than the grandest-of-grand speech settings for Sen. Obama - were the Clintons. Unquestionably: in the hall, they killed. BOTH of them. I heard more than my share of youngsters saying things like "wow, I never really knew he was that good!" or something. Yeah, you have. We oldsters said it. You just didn't listen.
And of course St. Paul was the Sarah Show. In an interview with an overseas media operation, I described it: "For two days Republicans were wondering when their party would start. Well, Rudy Giuliani lit the fuse and Sarah Palin was the rocket that ignited the hall." Frankly, it was a brilliant moment of description. So of course, I share it now here with you all.
I'm fast running out of time where/when I can blog now, so let's just leave it with my moment of brilliance. And I'll work on finding a good space to write, so I can write much more often.
Hoorah! More blog posts! Oh...wait...
Monday's weather: Started cool and dry but late-summertime warm in the afternoon. The air is still and the ground saturated. It feels like summer's last.
Monday's drink: None, really, today. Water. Maybe using up a little of the "Sam Adams" left over from C's "McCain Viewing Party."
Monday's link: Several. JohnMcCainWriteIn. Or VoteMcCainBiden. More on these later.
Flying is just no longer any fun. The flight from Minneapolis to Washington, all my luggage in tow, stop-overs at O'Hare, inconsistently-applied security rules, stand-by flights, fellow passengers who are just too large to occupy one seat. Coach grows more like the midnight Polish train I took from Gdansk to Nowy Tomysl. Crowded, cold; a jostling smell-fest in the dark in which you are completely powerless and must simply relinquish any illusion of control of your person.
*sigh* Sorry. It is, of course, a great honor to be asked to go and work not one but both conventions, notably in this historic year. There's lots that can (and does) go wrong on the road, so they usually only send out the competent ones.
That's me. A competent one.
I haven't posted in forever and have more more to say but have found myself unable to make it happen at home. Also, for reasons of smartness, not doing it from work. Which leaves a dearth of other options. Perhaps I should blog wirelessly while waiting for my therapy appointment? I would look creepy - pardon, creepier - if I blogged in the gym locker room. I'd go to a local park and sit in the trees, but then I can't see the screen.
Of course there is a deep question here. Why the inability to blog from home? All I can say is something isn't right there, yet. Certainly not between C and I: there's little that could be going better. Perhaps it's a physical space thing. Or something more hidden.
While I AM online in a safe place I'll say what I've been wanting to say about St. Paul. Denver was all exuberance; St. Paul was all safety. Literally - the Ramsey County sheriff had troops out on the streets to beat the bands. And of the protests I saw: calling them protests seems lame. Generally modest, orderly people of heart-felt passions and convictions doing something that seems less that quaint in our overly security conscious state: expressing their opinion publicly and their disagreement with their elected leaders. Sad. Honestly people: what has become of us when we're afraid how our leaders will respond to our opinions? Who's in charge anymore?
Oh wait, I think I know the answer. Anyway, St. Paul. I'll describe the city with my friend - and Minnesota resident - Brian Strub. (Sorry Brian.) St. Paul is very much like Brian: smart but not showy.
Both are unpredictable mixes of civic progressive and social conservative, both are curiously open and guarded at the same time, both can surprise with moments of pointed clarity and generosity. And both are...well, handsome but not in a look-at-me kind of way. That may seem like a mean thing to say, but it's not meant to be at all. St. Paul is just always a quiet surprise.
Second bananas. That's how I'll remember both of these conventions. In Denver, the unintentional standouts - even more than the grandest-of-grand speech settings for Sen. Obama - were the Clintons. Unquestionably: in the hall, they killed. BOTH of them. I heard more than my share of youngsters saying things like "wow, I never really knew he was that good!" or something. Yeah, you have. We oldsters said it. You just didn't listen.
And of course St. Paul was the Sarah Show. In an interview with an overseas media operation, I described it: "For two days Republicans were wondering when their party would start. Well, Rudy Giuliani lit the fuse and Sarah Palin was the rocket that ignited the hall." Frankly, it was a brilliant moment of description. So of course, I share it now here with you all.
I'm fast running out of time where/when I can blog now, so let's just leave it with my moment of brilliance. And I'll work on finding a good space to write, so I can write much more often.
Hoorah! More blog posts! Oh...wait...
Friday, August 29, 2008
Hope Has Left Denver
Friday's weather: in Denver, dry and warm around 87; clear skies a little sooty in the morning but mountains clearly visible at sunset, going down to 60 tonight. Open windows night.
Friday's drink: Big Horn Blonde, 25 oz.
Friday's artist: video artist Bjorn Melhus. His website is crappy, and you have to really hunt for coverage of him. Check him out.
Friday night, 8:30pm Mountain Time. I'm in the Overlook Hotel.
OK, not really. I'm in the Savannah Suites hotel in Westminster, Colorado: a long strip mall that calls itself a town. With perfect green grass. We're right across the street from Avaya headquarters, in a building that could easily substitute for SkyNet headquarters.
This hotel, ahem, is but four months old say the staff. I think that's even pushing it. The entire place smells of fake Orange disinfectant. Yet, strangely, that's not what disturbs me tonight. You see, I'm the last one. The only one left.
Seriously: several members of the staff, seeing me bundle my dirty clothes to and from the wash area today, commented along the lines of: "Wow, I didn't know anyone was left! I thought the place was completely empty!"
Turns out it is. The hotel is completely empty, save for me. I could go naked bowling down the big hallway and no-one would be the wiser. Save the creepy hotel ghosts that hang out in the hallways.
Tomorrow I, like most of my colleagues today, head to Minneapolis. It's been a full week in Denver. Today was my first break in about 2 weeks. (boo-hoo.) I spent much of the day in downtown Denver - a significant chunk of that at the Denver Art Museum. A sidenote on Denver: it seems a town that gets the idea of civic space, planning and investment. I can't really say much having been here a week - and not even in the town for most of that - but I'm impressed.
The DAM features a slick and menacing new Libeskind gallery that every up-and-coming city wants:
a slick, weird, assault of a building that commands attention to itself above any sense of it's place. A building so out of human sense (standing on the fourth floor balcony and looking out over the cacophonous atrium is enough to induce serious vertigo) that being inside or anywhere near it diverts all attention from anything except the massive polished steel cuckoo-house that calls itself post-modern.
I went through a preview of the newly acquired Clyfford Still collection, which was intriguing, and the modern collection, which was provocative, as much modern art is. It was refreshing, but not nearly as much as the brief but encompassing exhibit of native Northwest Kwakwaka'wakw creations such as masks, house posts, massive story poles and more. The fragrance of old wood and fur and leather, mingling with the appropriate lighting and sounds of the Pacific Northwest were enough to transport me to a place I've never been to.
But I've been to Minneapolis, which is where my mind's eye is fixed now. Half way through a two week roadtrip, doing my thing all by myself, alone, on the road. I feel like I should go have some rough trucker sex.
No, I don't. But I do feel alone. Alone at work - where people either don't get what I'm doing, resent me for doing it, or feel they need to muck about and change it to their, i.e., 1973, tastes. Look at me now: I produce, shoot, host, edit and post-produce the whole shebang. It's too much. Or I'm not enough.
For those of you asking: my father has apparently returned home. I'm not inquiring more than that, as I am mostly unconnected other than that. C is well and I miss him, and I'm missing my close friends lately, also. Therapy has succeeded in what I set at it: melting the ice I stand on so I can access my past. Unfortunately, when ice melts it does so unevenly, and occasionally a foot pokes through the ice into the lake beneath at the wrong moment (work, gym, etc.) I'm hunting for a temporary shelter - a sanctuary where I can go to fall through the ice in safety.
I suppose I should put something in here about the week in Denver. What can I say? I'm immune to sweeping spectacle. More accurately: I distrust it in the realm of politics. I remember 1991 when EVERYONE supported the Gulf War (no they didn't.) I remember October 2001 when EVERYONE supported the Afghan War (not really.) And 2003? Forget it: it was show and stage and prodding the public in obvious but effective ways that before we knew it, we were at war.
I guess my take-away is that things can change for the better, and the government run by people who believe in its uses is much preferable to government run by people who hate it. But tempering that: a sense that many of us, again, are being swept up in something not of our making. Something that plays on our better angels, but that seeks merely it's own victory. All of us who were swept up in 1991, in 2001, and on: we bear some responsibility, also. In the end we always know we're being swept away by something: we go with it when it comports with our ideals and fight against it when it doesn't, but we go with it. But 'it' is not us. 'It' is not our ideals or aspirations: it is only a path to power.
So my thought as I sit, alone, in an empty hotel, ready to leave for another week of this is: we owe it to our nation to always examine, critically, those big things we feel to be right. After all, there is no harm that can come of it. Goodness welcomes good thinking.
Friday's weather: in Denver, dry and warm around 87; clear skies a little sooty in the morning but mountains clearly visible at sunset, going down to 60 tonight. Open windows night.
Friday's drink: Big Horn Blonde, 25 oz.
Friday's artist: video artist Bjorn Melhus. His website is crappy, and you have to really hunt for coverage of him. Check him out.
Friday night, 8:30pm Mountain Time. I'm in the Overlook Hotel.
OK, not really. I'm in the Savannah Suites hotel in Westminster, Colorado: a long strip mall that calls itself a town. With perfect green grass. We're right across the street from Avaya headquarters, in a building that could easily substitute for SkyNet headquarters.
This hotel, ahem, is but four months old say the staff. I think that's even pushing it. The entire place smells of fake Orange disinfectant. Yet, strangely, that's not what disturbs me tonight. You see, I'm the last one. The only one left.
Seriously: several members of the staff, seeing me bundle my dirty clothes to and from the wash area today, commented along the lines of: "Wow, I didn't know anyone was left! I thought the place was completely empty!"
Turns out it is. The hotel is completely empty, save for me. I could go naked bowling down the big hallway and no-one would be the wiser. Save the creepy hotel ghosts that hang out in the hallways.
Tomorrow I, like most of my colleagues today, head to Minneapolis. It's been a full week in Denver. Today was my first break in about 2 weeks. (boo-hoo.) I spent much of the day in downtown Denver - a significant chunk of that at the Denver Art Museum. A sidenote on Denver: it seems a town that gets the idea of civic space, planning and investment. I can't really say much having been here a week - and not even in the town for most of that - but I'm impressed.
The DAM features a slick and menacing new Libeskind gallery that every up-and-coming city wants:
a slick, weird, assault of a building that commands attention to itself above any sense of it's place. A building so out of human sense (standing on the fourth floor balcony and looking out over the cacophonous atrium is enough to induce serious vertigo) that being inside or anywhere near it diverts all attention from anything except the massive polished steel cuckoo-house that calls itself post-modern.
I went through a preview of the newly acquired Clyfford Still collection, which was intriguing, and the modern collection, which was provocative, as much modern art is. It was refreshing, but not nearly as much as the brief but encompassing exhibit of native Northwest Kwakwaka'wakw creations such as masks, house posts, massive story poles and more. The fragrance of old wood and fur and leather, mingling with the appropriate lighting and sounds of the Pacific Northwest were enough to transport me to a place I've never been to.
But I've been to Minneapolis, which is where my mind's eye is fixed now. Half way through a two week roadtrip, doing my thing all by myself, alone, on the road. I feel like I should go have some rough trucker sex.
No, I don't. But I do feel alone. Alone at work - where people either don't get what I'm doing, resent me for doing it, or feel they need to muck about and change it to their, i.e., 1973, tastes. Look at me now: I produce, shoot, host, edit and post-produce the whole shebang. It's too much. Or I'm not enough.
For those of you asking: my father has apparently returned home. I'm not inquiring more than that, as I am mostly unconnected other than that. C is well and I miss him, and I'm missing my close friends lately, also. Therapy has succeeded in what I set at it: melting the ice I stand on so I can access my past. Unfortunately, when ice melts it does so unevenly, and occasionally a foot pokes through the ice into the lake beneath at the wrong moment (work, gym, etc.) I'm hunting for a temporary shelter - a sanctuary where I can go to fall through the ice in safety.
I suppose I should put something in here about the week in Denver. What can I say? I'm immune to sweeping spectacle. More accurately: I distrust it in the realm of politics. I remember 1991 when EVERYONE supported the Gulf War (no they didn't.) I remember October 2001 when EVERYONE supported the Afghan War (not really.) And 2003? Forget it: it was show and stage and prodding the public in obvious but effective ways that before we knew it, we were at war.
I guess my take-away is that things can change for the better, and the government run by people who believe in its uses is much preferable to government run by people who hate it. But tempering that: a sense that many of us, again, are being swept up in something not of our making. Something that plays on our better angels, but that seeks merely it's own victory. All of us who were swept up in 1991, in 2001, and on: we bear some responsibility, also. In the end we always know we're being swept away by something: we go with it when it comports with our ideals and fight against it when it doesn't, but we go with it. But 'it' is not us. 'It' is not our ideals or aspirations: it is only a path to power.
So my thought as I sit, alone, in an empty hotel, ready to leave for another week of this is: we owe it to our nation to always examine, critically, those big things we feel to be right. After all, there is no harm that can come of it. Goodness welcomes good thinking.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
On The Road!
Saturday's weather: moist in the air but still no rain, leaving the ground very dry. Alternately cloudy and sunny, warm and fresh - an end of summer day.
Saturday's drink: none except water, for the airplane
Saturday's link: www.usavotes2008.com
I'm 1 1/2 hours from planing up for my two-week work flight. Those of you who know who I am and what I do know exactly where I'm going. Those of you who don't, what are you doing reading this anyway? Just kidding, it's not hard to figure out. I will try to update from the road.
For all those who have responded with such warmth and support regarding my last post; your love means the world to me. It has helped as I navigate a difficult period. And in an unexpected way, once this period of intense work focus passes, I actually look forward to being still, looking at some things, emerging from my cocoon as one friend put it.
That's it for now. Bon voyage to me, and check out what I'm up to on the road!
Saturday's weather: moist in the air but still no rain, leaving the ground very dry. Alternately cloudy and sunny, warm and fresh - an end of summer day.
Saturday's drink: none except water, for the airplane
Saturday's link: www.usavotes2008.com
I'm 1 1/2 hours from planing up for my two-week work flight. Those of you who know who I am and what I do know exactly where I'm going. Those of you who don't, what are you doing reading this anyway? Just kidding, it's not hard to figure out. I will try to update from the road.
For all those who have responded with such warmth and support regarding my last post; your love means the world to me. It has helped as I navigate a difficult period. And in an unexpected way, once this period of intense work focus passes, I actually look forward to being still, looking at some things, emerging from my cocoon as one friend put it.
That's it for now. Bon voyage to me, and check out what I'm up to on the road!
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Maybe This Time, They Mean It.
Saturday's weather: Only now a short rainburst has moved in: a little thunder but no wind, rain falling heavy and straight. Once it passes we'll be back to baking in the 90's for a while more.
Saturday's drink: None, except maybe Seltzer water. Maybe a Sam Adams with dinner.
Saturday's question: What ever happened to Mason Reese?
I'll say right now. This is not a fun post, but it is an honest accounting of where I'm at right now. Feeling blue? Tired? Gassy? Enjoy the posted video, stop reading any more, call it a day, and see you soon.
Two long-awaited packages arrived in the mail this week. One was STG's "Peticure" nail grooming thing. It's basically a dremel with some fancy stuff and lots of instructions to make pet owners squeamish about doing their dog's nails (me) feel much better. The battery's charging, and after dinner STG's gettin' herself some nail trimming. I hope.
That was the good package. Friday the bad one came, but one that I had also been waiting on. It was face-down on the floor by the mail-slot; a standard 8 by 11 manila mailer. But I knew, and turning it over to see my father's unmistakable handwriting confirmed that this was the letter (dum-dum-dum!) that had been in the works for some two weeks. Five pages inside, five pages my father must have labored over - with editing from mom - for days. His labor done, mine was now to read it.
It was two weeks ago nearly I phoned the parents to check up, catch up, and have a 1/2 hour of pleasantly passable conversation as part of my son-ly duties. Usually these things drift down the river until I wrap it up with a "...gotta go make some marinara sauce!" or something. Everyone seems happier for it.
But now and again, at unpredictable times but predictably once every 18 to 24 months, it's a bad call. Anger, yelling, often at the outset. This was one of those. I have been dreading these for...well, how old am I? I've never known a time longer than 2 years when I haven't had cause to worry about them, and often feel like shit in the process. Lesson to all young parents out there: do not use your children as garbage dumps for all your crap. They don't want it, but will likely accept it because they love you and feel this is helping. It isn't. It never does.
This time, very soon after hearing the precis of what this explosion was about, I calmly emphasized my continuing and unending love and concern for them both, and wishes for the fortitude to work it out. When one parent, who has angrily dragged me into their problems in the past, again started dragging, I put a stop to it. This time not in a calm voice. No, I would no longer take any part of their relationship. Thats theirs, and I do not want it.
The angry one hung up, clearly to mark me as a bad son. Fine. The calm but confusing one tried to do the...not active dragging, passive pleading maybe?...and again I put an end to it. What I did learn was that a divorce was now likely, and my father would write a letter unloading his soul.
The contents I won't go into, obviously. No need to spread compost around even more. Let's just call it a soul-baring confession of all his apparent failings, atrocities, and unforgivable conduct over the last 49 years of marriage.
Five pages, single spaced, plus a one page addendum.
The content of the letter was upsetting. In most cases, nothing new. In the remainder: nothing I needed to know. But there was something over all that which...I don't quite know. There's something odd about this letter. I'm not sure why he wrote it, why he felt I needed to know it. At moments I doubt I'm even the audience. And worst: I'm not even sure of its voice. I can't say what exactly, but there is an oddness to it all. Oddness, accompanied by waves and waves of nausea and ache.
Most of all I am convinced I am now supposed to say something. Perhaps proclaim my father unfit for the pits of Hell with my mother listening. I don't know. I know mostly that there's nothing I have to say at the moment, and I fear that is only going raise tempers higher.
I'm used to this. I've been disowned...twice is it? You stop counting. I've heard the divorce word a handful of times in the last decade. Maybe this time they mean it. I've been on the receiving end of these eruptions before: they're never good and they always come when your guard is down. I like to think I'm numb from it all.
But I'm not. The evening is approaching and I haven't been able to do a thing all day. Literally: I didn't want to walk, didn't want to drive away, didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to dissolve. "...melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew!" as Elsinore's Prince once said. I could think of nothing else to get away from this renewed worry and ache for my parents; parents whose lives, hanging on this most recent fulcrum, seem to have been for utter loss. It's a rotten thing to carry in your head; worse to have it stuck there.
The rainburst has passed and it's getting brighter outside. So, too, shall it be with me. My big job now is to learn how not to let worry about future storms - and they may be bad ones - interfere with the good weather when it blows in.
I'm open to ideas.
Saturday's weather: Only now a short rainburst has moved in: a little thunder but no wind, rain falling heavy and straight. Once it passes we'll be back to baking in the 90's for a while more.
Saturday's drink: None, except maybe Seltzer water. Maybe a Sam Adams with dinner.
Saturday's question: What ever happened to Mason Reese?
I'll say right now. This is not a fun post, but it is an honest accounting of where I'm at right now. Feeling blue? Tired? Gassy? Enjoy the posted video, stop reading any more, call it a day, and see you soon.
Two long-awaited packages arrived in the mail this week. One was STG's "Peticure" nail grooming thing. It's basically a dremel with some fancy stuff and lots of instructions to make pet owners squeamish about doing their dog's nails (me) feel much better. The battery's charging, and after dinner STG's gettin' herself some nail trimming. I hope.
That was the good package. Friday the bad one came, but one that I had also been waiting on. It was face-down on the floor by the mail-slot; a standard 8 by 11 manila mailer. But I knew, and turning it over to see my father's unmistakable handwriting confirmed that this was the letter (dum-dum-dum!) that had been in the works for some two weeks. Five pages inside, five pages my father must have labored over - with editing from mom - for days. His labor done, mine was now to read it.
It was two weeks ago nearly I phoned the parents to check up, catch up, and have a 1/2 hour of pleasantly passable conversation as part of my son-ly duties. Usually these things drift down the river until I wrap it up with a "...gotta go make some marinara sauce!" or something. Everyone seems happier for it.
But now and again, at unpredictable times but predictably once every 18 to 24 months, it's a bad call. Anger, yelling, often at the outset. This was one of those. I have been dreading these for...well, how old am I? I've never known a time longer than 2 years when I haven't had cause to worry about them, and often feel like shit in the process. Lesson to all young parents out there: do not use your children as garbage dumps for all your crap. They don't want it, but will likely accept it because they love you and feel this is helping. It isn't. It never does.
This time, very soon after hearing the precis of what this explosion was about, I calmly emphasized my continuing and unending love and concern for them both, and wishes for the fortitude to work it out. When one parent, who has angrily dragged me into their problems in the past, again started dragging, I put a stop to it. This time not in a calm voice. No, I would no longer take any part of their relationship. Thats theirs, and I do not want it.
The angry one hung up, clearly to mark me as a bad son. Fine. The calm but confusing one tried to do the...not active dragging, passive pleading maybe?...and again I put an end to it. What I did learn was that a divorce was now likely, and my father would write a letter unloading his soul.
The contents I won't go into, obviously. No need to spread compost around even more. Let's just call it a soul-baring confession of all his apparent failings, atrocities, and unforgivable conduct over the last 49 years of marriage.
Five pages, single spaced, plus a one page addendum.
The content of the letter was upsetting. In most cases, nothing new. In the remainder: nothing I needed to know. But there was something over all that which...I don't quite know. There's something odd about this letter. I'm not sure why he wrote it, why he felt I needed to know it. At moments I doubt I'm even the audience. And worst: I'm not even sure of its voice. I can't say what exactly, but there is an oddness to it all. Oddness, accompanied by waves and waves of nausea and ache.
Most of all I am convinced I am now supposed to say something. Perhaps proclaim my father unfit for the pits of Hell with my mother listening. I don't know. I know mostly that there's nothing I have to say at the moment, and I fear that is only going raise tempers higher.
I'm used to this. I've been disowned...twice is it? You stop counting. I've heard the divorce word a handful of times in the last decade. Maybe this time they mean it. I've been on the receiving end of these eruptions before: they're never good and they always come when your guard is down. I like to think I'm numb from it all.
But I'm not. The evening is approaching and I haven't been able to do a thing all day. Literally: I didn't want to walk, didn't want to drive away, didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to dissolve. "...melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew!" as Elsinore's Prince once said. I could think of nothing else to get away from this renewed worry and ache for my parents; parents whose lives, hanging on this most recent fulcrum, seem to have been for utter loss. It's a rotten thing to carry in your head; worse to have it stuck there.
The rainburst has passed and it's getting brighter outside. So, too, shall it be with me. My big job now is to learn how not to let worry about future storms - and they may be bad ones - interfere with the good weather when it blows in.
I'm open to ideas.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The Day I Was Almost An African-American
But only for an hour....
Saturday's weather: Hot but not unbearably humid with high haze in an otherwise cloudless day. Abundant sunshine warming to upper 80's I reckon. But it feels like change will be blowing in soon.
Saturday's drink: I would make Dark n'Stormy's, but I have neither Goslings rum or ginger beer. Perhaps nothing more than chilled Pinot Grigio.
Saturday's waste-of-time for 80's kids, or for the Gays: Can you believe this?! Lordy.
Well that's a provocative title. It's not meant to be. Really, more just stealing a headline idea from a story a pal of mine, Rich Leiby*, who once wrote: "The Day I Almost Lead the Iraqi Army." If you can find it online, mazel tov.
First, I have to say that C and I went to a movie Saturday afternoon - something rarely done - and he was sweet in bowing to my wishes. We went to my ultimate fanboy movie: The X Files: I Want To Believe. (Yeah, a fanboy is going to link to the site, c'mon.)
It was just fun being in a big dark room full of people clapping the first moment when Scully picked up her phone to hear: "Scully, it's Mulder." I won't reveal any other X-Files-y type moments - real fans should experience this cold. Just like we did sitting in front of our televisions Friday nights in the 90's - the decade that gave us stone cold paranoia for want of any other fear. (Oh, how I wish we could turn the clock back...) Anyway: two fan-boy thumbs up. ("Mulder, it's Scully. Where are you?")
So, Saturday. I'm on the couch, waiting until the 2:15 show time start for X-Files. Waiting for time to dissolve. Sadly, it doesn't. What to do?
Well, I have been rather shaggy of late. My beard was more beardy than I felt comfortable with, and my hair...well, since Tommy at Hair Cuttery 2 was put on leave for facility rehab, I've been on hair strike. Not a wise decision. My hair grows like the national debt, and frankly is less appealing. At least in its intermediate state. But no Tommy? Hmmm.
I ask C if he's ever been in the barber shop on U between 13 and 14. "Edge's Barber and Beauty Shop"...under the store that used to sell porn I think. Been there since I've been in DC and I'd never been. Sure, it was a homeytown old-skool barbering shop. Like in the movies, but without Cedric the Entertainer. But what the heck, barbering is barbering.
I wander in around 12:15. I'd like to say the shop went quiet, but it was already pretty low-level. Hard to make sense of what exactly was going on. Do I give my name to someone? Do I wait in line? I took a chair and asked the guy next to me how long the wait was. "The guy with the cornrows doesn't have anyone next," the woman sitting on my other side said. His customer looked pretty shorn; I decided to wait.
Things I noticed, largely in order: bland white walls, terrible fluorescents and dropped ceiling, Redskins stuff everywhere, loud contemporary gospel. Could never quite tell who was working, who was a customer, and what was going on. People wandering in and out, chairs opening up.
Dude signals me back around 12:45. No worries on time, I think. But not a pair of scissors in sight.
Turns out Edge's, and maybe a lot of African-American barbershops, use only razors. Everyone had like four, with who knows how many attachments. Meh, I think. I tell the kid what I want. "Beard trim, like to three days growth," I say. "Yeah, I'll give you a sweet shade," he says. "Hair cut to about 1/2 inch, bit longer right in front." "1/2 inch?" "Uh, make it an inch."
What follows is 45 minutes of some of the loudest, bawdiest, and most discursive commentary I'd ever been lucky enough to take part in. Hemingway. Ceasar. Lesbians. Obama & McCain. The human soul. More lesbians. It was, again, loud; but with its only rolling cadence and not off-putting. I largely held my tongue. New kid in the hood and all that.
Most surprising was the politics talk. Universal agreement that Bush was the worst fraud to occupy the office. No surprise. Liked Clinton's kick-ass-itude, but lover her more for having a player as a husband. But for Obama: surprising sour mood. Hot-dogger. Dissin' the vets in Iraq. Don't know what he'll do. Agreement he's the biggest risk, but still, "I'm votin' for him. First time. Probably the last!"
Someone says Obama being set up to have the worst administration ever. This sets off a round. "This'll be the last time anyone asks if America's ready to vote for a black man!" "Ain't no-one going to be asking that again for a loooong time!" "Enjoy Jimmy Carter Obama while you can!" Hooting all around.
In the end, I got a great cut. (Those of you who know what I do can check me out online Monday! Those of you who don't, get bent.) 20 bucks, plus 10 tip. Lots of fun. Walked out of the shop feeling I had a taste of a traditional, and largely unexperienced to white-folk, aspect of urban black life. The raucous barber shop. And had great fun.
Got a sweet shade, too.
*I'm using Rich's full name here, unlike the tradition of DWD, as abbreviating it with an initial seems silly.
But only for an hour....
Saturday's weather: Hot but not unbearably humid with high haze in an otherwise cloudless day. Abundant sunshine warming to upper 80's I reckon. But it feels like change will be blowing in soon.
Saturday's drink: I would make Dark n'Stormy's, but I have neither Goslings rum or ginger beer. Perhaps nothing more than chilled Pinot Grigio.
Saturday's waste-of-time for 80's kids, or for the Gays: Can you believe this?! Lordy.
Well that's a provocative title. It's not meant to be. Really, more just stealing a headline idea from a story a pal of mine, Rich Leiby*, who once wrote: "The Day I Almost Lead the Iraqi Army." If you can find it online, mazel tov.
First, I have to say that C and I went to a movie Saturday afternoon - something rarely done - and he was sweet in bowing to my wishes. We went to my ultimate fanboy movie: The X Files: I Want To Believe. (Yeah, a fanboy is going to link to the site, c'mon.)
It was just fun being in a big dark room full of people clapping the first moment when Scully picked up her phone to hear: "Scully, it's Mulder." I won't reveal any other X-Files-y type moments - real fans should experience this cold. Just like we did sitting in front of our televisions Friday nights in the 90's - the decade that gave us stone cold paranoia for want of any other fear. (Oh, how I wish we could turn the clock back...) Anyway: two fan-boy thumbs up. ("Mulder, it's Scully. Where are you?")
So, Saturday. I'm on the couch, waiting until the 2:15 show time start for X-Files. Waiting for time to dissolve. Sadly, it doesn't. What to do?
Well, I have been rather shaggy of late. My beard was more beardy than I felt comfortable with, and my hair...well, since Tommy at Hair Cuttery 2 was put on leave for facility rehab, I've been on hair strike. Not a wise decision. My hair grows like the national debt, and frankly is less appealing. At least in its intermediate state. But no Tommy? Hmmm.
I ask C if he's ever been in the barber shop on U between 13 and 14. "Edge's Barber and Beauty Shop"...under the store that used to sell porn I think. Been there since I've been in DC and I'd never been. Sure, it was a homeytown old-skool barbering shop. Like in the movies, but without Cedric the Entertainer. But what the heck, barbering is barbering.
I wander in around 12:15. I'd like to say the shop went quiet, but it was already pretty low-level. Hard to make sense of what exactly was going on. Do I give my name to someone? Do I wait in line? I took a chair and asked the guy next to me how long the wait was. "The guy with the cornrows doesn't have anyone next," the woman sitting on my other side said. His customer looked pretty shorn; I decided to wait.
Things I noticed, largely in order: bland white walls, terrible fluorescents and dropped ceiling, Redskins stuff everywhere, loud contemporary gospel. Could never quite tell who was working, who was a customer, and what was going on. People wandering in and out, chairs opening up.
Dude signals me back around 12:45. No worries on time, I think. But not a pair of scissors in sight.
Turns out Edge's, and maybe a lot of African-American barbershops, use only razors. Everyone had like four, with who knows how many attachments. Meh, I think. I tell the kid what I want. "Beard trim, like to three days growth," I say. "Yeah, I'll give you a sweet shade," he says. "Hair cut to about 1/2 inch, bit longer right in front." "1/2 inch?" "Uh, make it an inch."
What follows is 45 minutes of some of the loudest, bawdiest, and most discursive commentary I'd ever been lucky enough to take part in. Hemingway. Ceasar. Lesbians. Obama & McCain. The human soul. More lesbians. It was, again, loud; but with its only rolling cadence and not off-putting. I largely held my tongue. New kid in the hood and all that.
Most surprising was the politics talk. Universal agreement that Bush was the worst fraud to occupy the office. No surprise. Liked Clinton's kick-ass-itude, but lover her more for having a player as a husband. But for Obama: surprising sour mood. Hot-dogger. Dissin' the vets in Iraq. Don't know what he'll do. Agreement he's the biggest risk, but still, "I'm votin' for him. First time. Probably the last!"
Someone says Obama being set up to have the worst administration ever. This sets off a round. "This'll be the last time anyone asks if America's ready to vote for a black man!" "Ain't no-one going to be asking that again for a loooong time!" "Enjoy Jimmy Carter Obama while you can!" Hooting all around.
In the end, I got a great cut. (Those of you who know what I do can check me out online Monday! Those of you who don't, get bent.) 20 bucks, plus 10 tip. Lots of fun. Walked out of the shop feeling I had a taste of a traditional, and largely unexperienced to white-folk, aspect of urban black life. The raucous barber shop. And had great fun.
Got a sweet shade, too.
*I'm using Rich's full name here, unlike the tradition of DWD, as abbreviating it with an initial seems silly.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
My Plate Overflows
Saturday's weather: Moist heat topping out around 95 with very few clouds to hide the sun. This is the brick oven that is DC summer.
Saturday's drink: home-made limeade with lots of ice.
Saturday's link: This story published in Esquire genuinely disturbed me. I'm no fan of the writing style, I have serious questions about some of the attribution and shifting perspective in this piece, and I'm not sure it does much more than stare dumbfounded into the grave of this messed-up guy. But it hit nearly every empathy button I have.
I got my first fundraising letter from Barack Obama in the mail this week. It's still unopened, sitting in a pile of other unopened mail. Nearly everything else in said pile are bills or some-such. You can see the reason for not opening those. But a donation request? Why not just open it or toss it in the bin and be done with it?
I supposed because I'm not done yet with this winter's politics. Specifically the way the contest played out between Obama and Clinton. And even so, that already ended, I'm not done yet with how Sen. Obama is playing out the general election campaign. Mostly: I'm confused which former Great Man are we to liken him with?
With JFK, for his youth, charisma, appearance of great health and beatific family? With RFK, with whom he shares a great talent to mobilize youth and from whom he constantly borrows inspirational themes and rhetorical flourishes? With Dr. King, for leading a people to the promised land and - just in case we didn't get it - delivering his acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of said speech by said Great Man? With Reagan (whom I don't consider 'great' in goodness by, sadly, in stature and effect on the nation's direction), for his boundless optimism in American Exceptionalism and ability to face down our existential threats (and again, should we not get it) in what will undoubtedly be a Berlin speech where he will exhort against those who build walls of intolerance (get it?) and praise those who tear those walls down?
Which one is it, Senator? Because surely you can't believe that it's them all...and more. Or can you? How many more echoes to other Great Men - FDR for pulling the nation from it's economic knees, Wilson for promoting internationalist policies, surely not Lincoln for binding up the nation's wounds? - will you build into your campaign? Why do think we need all this? And most troublesome: what exactly are you working so hard to prove?
I'm not hinting at all of possible vote directions this November. Perhaps this will be the year I cast a ballot for someone who actually wins the office. (Mondale, Dukakis, Perot, Nader, Gore, Kerry, if you must know.) Certainly with such a track record I can't think any candidate would want to try to win my vote. And remember, too: I live in the District of Columbia, so I might as well vote for Nelson Mandela or Oscar Wilde or Carrot Top for all the impact my voice will have.
But I am concerned. By someone who seems to be working too hard to convince us not to look behind the curtain, and by the frightening swoon some seem to be in. I do not want a leader who makes people swoon. I do not need to find inspiration and salvation in a politician. I just want them to be competent at running government, savvy at working the power levers, and honest in respecting our nation, our laws, our traditions and our voices.
None of which has anything to do with what this post was to be about: namely, my over-full plate. And I'm not just talking at Fogo de Chao this week! My pals J, M, L and I took our pal D out for a birthday feast, and feast we did. It's an old gimmick: set price gets you as much grilled meat and salad bar as you can stomach. But they pull it off. The meat selections range from good to extraordinarily good, and the waiters (don't tell me they're gauchos...I've met gauchos and these pretty things ain't it) practically hover over the tables, ready to carve you off a slice. D almost always has good birthday gatherings, and this was exactly that.
Less literally my time seems to evaporate before me. I have managed, for just a few weeks, to make a somewhat regular habit of going to the gym, which is having a felicitous if barely noticable (yet) effect. I'm making more time to read, often in the evenings before bed, and am trying hard to win 7 or so hours of sleep a night. But the days, well, they blur. I wake and roll out of bed and feed the dog and make the coffee and listen for the weather and I'm out the door to work, where there, too, it's so much the same thing day upon day. (The challenges there are stark: poor resources, fluctuating management, and confused direction.) Another Sunday mostly means another crossword puzzle (where did last week's go?) and another moment of wondering what I actually accomplished.
It's as though I wander endlessly in an all you can eat restaurant: giddy at first at the prospect, appreciative of the bounty, and yet...after a while...it's just one plate of food you can never finish. The boundaries dissolve; it's as though there was no beginning, will be no end. Nothing to start, no way to finish. And what, I wonder, is the meaning of a meal that has no end? It defies meaning; it's purposelessness made flesh. So it paints a picture of me in my life: seated at a table over-full of bounty but lacking purpose.
OK, perhaps I whine a little much. Whiner Nation! There's no debating an overfull plate is so much the better option than an empty one. I'm just not managing it well.
What to do? Yoga? Travel? Shut up and fish? Any ideas?
Saturday's weather: Moist heat topping out around 95 with very few clouds to hide the sun. This is the brick oven that is DC summer.
Saturday's drink: home-made limeade with lots of ice.
Saturday's link: This story published in Esquire genuinely disturbed me. I'm no fan of the writing style, I have serious questions about some of the attribution and shifting perspective in this piece, and I'm not sure it does much more than stare dumbfounded into the grave of this messed-up guy. But it hit nearly every empathy button I have.
I got my first fundraising letter from Barack Obama in the mail this week. It's still unopened, sitting in a pile of other unopened mail. Nearly everything else in said pile are bills or some-such. You can see the reason for not opening those. But a donation request? Why not just open it or toss it in the bin and be done with it?
I supposed because I'm not done yet with this winter's politics. Specifically the way the contest played out between Obama and Clinton. And even so, that already ended, I'm not done yet with how Sen. Obama is playing out the general election campaign. Mostly: I'm confused which former Great Man are we to liken him with?
With JFK, for his youth, charisma, appearance of great health and beatific family? With RFK, with whom he shares a great talent to mobilize youth and from whom he constantly borrows inspirational themes and rhetorical flourishes? With Dr. King, for leading a people to the promised land and - just in case we didn't get it - delivering his acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of said speech by said Great Man? With Reagan (whom I don't consider 'great' in goodness by, sadly, in stature and effect on the nation's direction), for his boundless optimism in American Exceptionalism and ability to face down our existential threats (and again, should we not get it) in what will undoubtedly be a Berlin speech where he will exhort against those who build walls of intolerance (get it?) and praise those who tear those walls down?
Which one is it, Senator? Because surely you can't believe that it's them all...and more. Or can you? How many more echoes to other Great Men - FDR for pulling the nation from it's economic knees, Wilson for promoting internationalist policies, surely not Lincoln for binding up the nation's wounds? - will you build into your campaign? Why do think we need all this? And most troublesome: what exactly are you working so hard to prove?
I'm not hinting at all of possible vote directions this November. Perhaps this will be the year I cast a ballot for someone who actually wins the office. (Mondale, Dukakis, Perot, Nader, Gore, Kerry, if you must know.) Certainly with such a track record I can't think any candidate would want to try to win my vote. And remember, too: I live in the District of Columbia, so I might as well vote for Nelson Mandela or Oscar Wilde or Carrot Top for all the impact my voice will have.
But I am concerned. By someone who seems to be working too hard to convince us not to look behind the curtain, and by the frightening swoon some seem to be in. I do not want a leader who makes people swoon. I do not need to find inspiration and salvation in a politician. I just want them to be competent at running government, savvy at working the power levers, and honest in respecting our nation, our laws, our traditions and our voices.
None of which has anything to do with what this post was to be about: namely, my over-full plate. And I'm not just talking at Fogo de Chao this week! My pals J, M, L and I took our pal D out for a birthday feast, and feast we did. It's an old gimmick: set price gets you as much grilled meat and salad bar as you can stomach. But they pull it off. The meat selections range from good to extraordinarily good, and the waiters (don't tell me they're gauchos...I've met gauchos and these pretty things ain't it) practically hover over the tables, ready to carve you off a slice. D almost always has good birthday gatherings, and this was exactly that.
Less literally my time seems to evaporate before me. I have managed, for just a few weeks, to make a somewhat regular habit of going to the gym, which is having a felicitous if barely noticable (yet) effect. I'm making more time to read, often in the evenings before bed, and am trying hard to win 7 or so hours of sleep a night. But the days, well, they blur. I wake and roll out of bed and feed the dog and make the coffee and listen for the weather and I'm out the door to work, where there, too, it's so much the same thing day upon day. (The challenges there are stark: poor resources, fluctuating management, and confused direction.) Another Sunday mostly means another crossword puzzle (where did last week's go?) and another moment of wondering what I actually accomplished.
It's as though I wander endlessly in an all you can eat restaurant: giddy at first at the prospect, appreciative of the bounty, and yet...after a while...it's just one plate of food you can never finish. The boundaries dissolve; it's as though there was no beginning, will be no end. Nothing to start, no way to finish. And what, I wonder, is the meaning of a meal that has no end? It defies meaning; it's purposelessness made flesh. So it paints a picture of me in my life: seated at a table over-full of bounty but lacking purpose.
OK, perhaps I whine a little much. Whiner Nation! There's no debating an overfull plate is so much the better option than an empty one. I'm just not managing it well.
What to do? Yoga? Travel? Shut up and fish? Any ideas?
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Summer's Harvest
Sunday's Weather: stalled front right over us, meaning the air is at a dead standstill, the humidity is at saturation, and the clouds constantly threaten rain but never make good.
Sunday's Drink: Iced water. Iced tea. Iced coffee.
Sunday's Head-trip: Imaginary Music for Twin Peaks:
The year is at mid-point. The heavy, wet towel that is Washington summer has yet to be come, but we've had a few tastes, that's for sure. Today among them. C and I got STG (the dog) out for an early morning romp through Fort Slocum park. The grass was still wet with last night's rain, and the air cool enough to not hate being outside.
I'm at the tail of a three-day weekend, and the middle of my year. Time to look at what's planted, what's growing, what's failing, and what to do with the fallow ground.
The house is one step closer to being finished, but still months away from last construction (although the lumber is already on my credit card.) The backyard is largely the same as it was at the start of the year, except with more insects and less ice. This is a disappointment, as I had hoped to have begun it's reconstruction. (New fences, old concrete walkway broken up and removed, regraded, flower and vegetable bed built.) Oh, at least the rats seem to have lessened. Last note on this: my herbs (basil, cilantro, rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley and oregano) have mostly grown well. Exceptions: cilantro is a little fussy, and the varegated sage didn't do as well as the standard stuff.) The front yard is tidier, more colorful, and overall more composed than ever. This makes me smile when I walk past.
2008 mid-year: another year I've kicked the job can down the road. Each year around now I see where it came to rest, consider it, and - if past is prologue - give it another swift kick. It's a year almost exactly since I launched a new product and a new phase of my career. The learning has kept me going, my talents are sharper, but I wish to take what I know and grow further. At another spot.
Staring at the can now I realize things are good on paper. I'm paid well, have a good work space, colleagues that are mostly respectful, and I'm not shoveling shit. (Well, critics might argue, but still.) But we don't work on paper. My work needs to have meaning - more meaning than just keeping my therapist paid. At present the only meaning my work provides is what I mine out of it, and I fear the vein is running dry. Mostly, for all of us, our collective situation is more akin to confusion than clarity. This does not create a good feeling at the end of the day. Or the start of a new one.
As for therapy, I'm nearing the end. For now, at least. Guess that plot has yielded its fruit and ready lay fallow a bit. Therapy is a little like house chores: you go to replace a light bulb when you notice the base is loose, and as you screw it tighter you see bad wiring, and as you open up the box you see some water damage...and the next thing you know you know you're tearing out chunks of plaster and replaining the floors. Each memory box is like that for me. Opening one up leads to two more boxes that want for opening. Next thing: I'm a kid at Christmas with a hundred open boxes scattered around me. But, as with Christmas, there's a finite number of boxes you can fit under a tree. And there's only so many memory boxes I carry around that need opening. Overall, this is good.
I haven't yet been to the new Nationals Stadium. I have not enrolled for swim lessons. I did start to go back to the gym, but fell out of the schedule soon after. I still weigh too much (though a bit less), drink too much (same) and blog too little. I have found a good number of new recipes that yield great beauty in the kitchen, have grown a bit happier with others and maybe - maybe - become a little bit better boyfriend. I have not written my friend JR the letter that lies scattered in bits in a folder in a backpack on my bedroom floor. Perhaps it's less a letter and more a rehearsal for a book. Perhaps so is this.
I'm reading more (we'll discuss "All the President's Men" soon and move onto our next DWD book) and remembering more of what I read. I'm not spending enough time with my friends - in person here in DC or online elsewhere. I've gone out to more art and theater, but seen few movies at all.
But most I am looking forward to the harvest. To bags of tomatoes that I will make into slow-cooked summer tomato sauce which I'll use for everything from now until February. I'm looking forward to seeing what several months of diet and exercise can create. I'm looking forward to breaking new sod in work and planting new crops in therapy. I'm looking forward to better ways to take stock and new recipes to make stock. And I'm looking forward to sharing all of these things and more with all my family.
No links in this post! OMG. Just didn't feel I had that much to link about.
Sunday's Weather: stalled front right over us, meaning the air is at a dead standstill, the humidity is at saturation, and the clouds constantly threaten rain but never make good.
Sunday's Drink: Iced water. Iced tea. Iced coffee.
Sunday's Head-trip: Imaginary Music for Twin Peaks:
The year is at mid-point. The heavy, wet towel that is Washington summer has yet to be come, but we've had a few tastes, that's for sure. Today among them. C and I got STG (the dog) out for an early morning romp through Fort Slocum park. The grass was still wet with last night's rain, and the air cool enough to not hate being outside.
I'm at the tail of a three-day weekend, and the middle of my year. Time to look at what's planted, what's growing, what's failing, and what to do with the fallow ground.
The house is one step closer to being finished, but still months away from last construction (although the lumber is already on my credit card.) The backyard is largely the same as it was at the start of the year, except with more insects and less ice. This is a disappointment, as I had hoped to have begun it's reconstruction. (New fences, old concrete walkway broken up and removed, regraded, flower and vegetable bed built.) Oh, at least the rats seem to have lessened. Last note on this: my herbs (basil, cilantro, rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley and oregano) have mostly grown well. Exceptions: cilantro is a little fussy, and the varegated sage didn't do as well as the standard stuff.) The front yard is tidier, more colorful, and overall more composed than ever. This makes me smile when I walk past.
2008 mid-year: another year I've kicked the job can down the road. Each year around now I see where it came to rest, consider it, and - if past is prologue - give it another swift kick. It's a year almost exactly since I launched a new product and a new phase of my career. The learning has kept me going, my talents are sharper, but I wish to take what I know and grow further. At another spot.
Staring at the can now I realize things are good on paper. I'm paid well, have a good work space, colleagues that are mostly respectful, and I'm not shoveling shit. (Well, critics might argue, but still.) But we don't work on paper. My work needs to have meaning - more meaning than just keeping my therapist paid. At present the only meaning my work provides is what I mine out of it, and I fear the vein is running dry. Mostly, for all of us, our collective situation is more akin to confusion than clarity. This does not create a good feeling at the end of the day. Or the start of a new one.
As for therapy, I'm nearing the end. For now, at least. Guess that plot has yielded its fruit and ready lay fallow a bit. Therapy is a little like house chores: you go to replace a light bulb when you notice the base is loose, and as you screw it tighter you see bad wiring, and as you open up the box you see some water damage...and the next thing you know you know you're tearing out chunks of plaster and replaining the floors. Each memory box is like that for me. Opening one up leads to two more boxes that want for opening. Next thing: I'm a kid at Christmas with a hundred open boxes scattered around me. But, as with Christmas, there's a finite number of boxes you can fit under a tree. And there's only so many memory boxes I carry around that need opening. Overall, this is good.
I haven't yet been to the new Nationals Stadium. I have not enrolled for swim lessons. I did start to go back to the gym, but fell out of the schedule soon after. I still weigh too much (though a bit less), drink too much (same) and blog too little. I have found a good number of new recipes that yield great beauty in the kitchen, have grown a bit happier with others and maybe - maybe - become a little bit better boyfriend. I have not written my friend JR the letter that lies scattered in bits in a folder in a backpack on my bedroom floor. Perhaps it's less a letter and more a rehearsal for a book. Perhaps so is this.
I'm reading more (we'll discuss "All the President's Men" soon and move onto our next DWD book) and remembering more of what I read. I'm not spending enough time with my friends - in person here in DC or online elsewhere. I've gone out to more art and theater, but seen few movies at all.
But most I am looking forward to the harvest. To bags of tomatoes that I will make into slow-cooked summer tomato sauce which I'll use for everything from now until February. I'm looking forward to seeing what several months of diet and exercise can create. I'm looking forward to breaking new sod in work and planting new crops in therapy. I'm looking forward to better ways to take stock and new recipes to make stock. And I'm looking forward to sharing all of these things and more with all my family.
No links in this post! OMG. Just didn't feel I had that much to link about.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Radio Silence
Thursday's weather: dry air, sun in the morning and clouds in the afternoon. High low 80's, which for near summer in DC is a delight.
Thursday's drink: appletini...because I had them.
Thursday's link: perhaps the worst blog ever. Just linking to them makes me feel good. Except ...I wish I had the IP address.
Bleep, bleep. I've been in radio silence for a couple weeks. The reason is time. Weird strange smelly time.
First and most: I've not forgot about this. Second: I'm still committed to transposing life here, for whatever benefits. Third: I've much to say.
Who doesn't, eh? Still, I've been crimped for time lately. For no one reason, or general set of reasons. And nothing I expect to continue. At 11:12pm Thursday as I type this, I am as bound to this blog as when I set out.
So consider this a "bleep bleep bleep." Yeah, I'm here. Yes, all is OK. No, I'm not on the floor having a seizure while my dog licks my face.
All is good. Many good words and thoughts to come.
Just...just been off the hook for a spell.
xo
Thursday's weather: dry air, sun in the morning and clouds in the afternoon. High low 80's, which for near summer in DC is a delight.
Thursday's drink: appletini...because I had them.
Thursday's link: perhaps the worst blog ever. Just linking to them makes me feel good. Except ...I wish I had the IP address.
Bleep, bleep. I've been in radio silence for a couple weeks. The reason is time. Weird strange smelly time.
First and most: I've not forgot about this. Second: I'm still committed to transposing life here, for whatever benefits. Third: I've much to say.
Who doesn't, eh? Still, I've been crimped for time lately. For no one reason, or general set of reasons. And nothing I expect to continue. At 11:12pm Thursday as I type this, I am as bound to this blog as when I set out.
So consider this a "bleep bleep bleep." Yeah, I'm here. Yes, all is OK. No, I'm not on the floor having a seizure while my dog licks my face.
All is good. Many good words and thoughts to come.
Just...just been off the hook for a spell.
xo
Monday, June 02, 2008
Sidewalks
Monday's weather: Storms on Saturday, warm and surprisingly dry today with sun aplenty. My daisy is full of blooms; my cilantro has flowered and is being cranky. The zebra sage is already delicious and my basil is moving from spindly adolescence to robust adulthood.
Monday's drink: C is making me a 7 and 7...whatever that is. G-d help me.
Monday's music: Pink Floyd, particularly "Us and Them" and "The Great Gig in the Sky." What a very private part of me still sounds like.
First, thanks to all who've been writing. Several thoughts on the book club - which really isn't a book club, more a book suggestion. The idea struck some dull nerve apparently, and although I really don't expect already busy people to fuss about with yet another requirement on their time just because Doug said so, I'm plowing forward. The dear Rob Kellerman is already into another book group - this one studying feminism and oligarchy in medieval times. Rockin'! Actually sounds pretty timely. The brilliant David apparently gave away his copy to a local library, which I consider a noble civic deed, and Leah comments that cyber-discussions are less appealing than actual human discussion...a point noted. Let's leave it here: soon I will be interested in your thoughts on my thoughts on the modern operations of Washington power.
To a hopefully short post now. Short and a little cranky. DC sidewalks. And the people that use - or abuse - them specifically.
Friends D and J and I had a lovely gabfest on D's patio Friday. Totally impromptu, totally mellow. The latest in a long and cherished tradition of summer in DC.
We fell to thoughts on our respective neighborhoods, and how it seems walking a dog knits one closer into a community. This makes a lot of sense: you have a dog you walk more, you walk more you're less of a stranger, you're less of a stranger people are more comfortable with you, the more comfort felt the more conversation back and forth. QED.
Most people know how to behave on a sidewalk. Move forward at a comfortable pace; offer eye contact but not too much to on-comers, be willing to adjust a little for others and expect they'll reasonably adjust a bit for you. Smile if you feel like it; offer up a "Good morning" or other relevant pleasantry when called for. Don't leer. Don't scream across the street and down the alley at someone who's not even there.
Some of these are do's. Some are don'ts and, as usual, it's the don't that create the stress. To the point: DC sidewalk walkers are growing increasingly arrogant, jerky, self-important and - worst - uncivil. We know the characters:
* the over-extended young urbanite who refuses to control their dog as it slobbers and paws and lunges toward you and your dog,
* the high school students who move in clumps, shouting and screaming and carrying on beyond all sense or reason,
*the tools who scowl on their way from or to the Metro and refuses - absolutely reFUses - to give any ground on the entire sidewalk, apparently on the theory that he deserves to own it, and you,
* the shambolic federal worker zombie who, in catatonic stupor, manages to bring all other life within a five foot radius down to their death-like pace,
* the (I shall assume) good-hearted but dense touron who seems to think the entire city and all it's inhabitants exist for their amusement, like penguins at a zoo,
* the "F-U" anger-bots intent only on constantly demonstrating that they - yes they! - control the sidewalks to THEIR city and what the HELL are you doing here you ...
Well, yeah. There are others; far more no doubt if other's posted their thoughts. The point is not a sophomoric taxonomy of people but a plea. Please, people: let's remember that we share the sidewalks. In the analogy of city to body, our sidewalks are our small arteries and veins: not the huge aortas of main roadways, but the tiny arterioles and venules that allow exchange of life-giving civic contact to occur. Let's respect them and the others we share them with, and with luck, they will do likewise. But even if they don't: it's the right thing to do.
Monday's weather: Storms on Saturday, warm and surprisingly dry today with sun aplenty. My daisy is full of blooms; my cilantro has flowered and is being cranky. The zebra sage is already delicious and my basil is moving from spindly adolescence to robust adulthood.
Monday's drink: C is making me a 7 and 7...whatever that is. G-d help me.
Monday's music: Pink Floyd, particularly "Us and Them" and "The Great Gig in the Sky." What a very private part of me still sounds like.
First, thanks to all who've been writing. Several thoughts on the book club - which really isn't a book club, more a book suggestion. The idea struck some dull nerve apparently, and although I really don't expect already busy people to fuss about with yet another requirement on their time just because Doug said so, I'm plowing forward. The dear Rob Kellerman is already into another book group - this one studying feminism and oligarchy in medieval times. Rockin'! Actually sounds pretty timely. The brilliant David apparently gave away his copy to a local library, which I consider a noble civic deed, and Leah comments that cyber-discussions are less appealing than actual human discussion...a point noted. Let's leave it here: soon I will be interested in your thoughts on my thoughts on the modern operations of Washington power.
To a hopefully short post now. Short and a little cranky. DC sidewalks. And the people that use - or abuse - them specifically.
Friends D and J and I had a lovely gabfest on D's patio Friday. Totally impromptu, totally mellow. The latest in a long and cherished tradition of summer in DC.
We fell to thoughts on our respective neighborhoods, and how it seems walking a dog knits one closer into a community. This makes a lot of sense: you have a dog you walk more, you walk more you're less of a stranger, you're less of a stranger people are more comfortable with you, the more comfort felt the more conversation back and forth. QED.
Most people know how to behave on a sidewalk. Move forward at a comfortable pace; offer eye contact but not too much to on-comers, be willing to adjust a little for others and expect they'll reasonably adjust a bit for you. Smile if you feel like it; offer up a "Good morning" or other relevant pleasantry when called for. Don't leer. Don't scream across the street and down the alley at someone who's not even there.
Some of these are do's. Some are don'ts and, as usual, it's the don't that create the stress. To the point: DC sidewalk walkers are growing increasingly arrogant, jerky, self-important and - worst - uncivil. We know the characters:
* the over-extended young urbanite who refuses to control their dog as it slobbers and paws and lunges toward you and your dog,
* the high school students who move in clumps, shouting and screaming and carrying on beyond all sense or reason,
*the tools who scowl on their way from or to the Metro and refuses - absolutely reFUses - to give any ground on the entire sidewalk, apparently on the theory that he deserves to own it, and you,
* the shambolic federal worker zombie who, in catatonic stupor, manages to bring all other life within a five foot radius down to their death-like pace,
* the (I shall assume) good-hearted but dense touron who seems to think the entire city and all it's inhabitants exist for their amusement, like penguins at a zoo,
* the "F-U" anger-bots intent only on constantly demonstrating that they - yes they! - control the sidewalks to THEIR city and what the HELL are you doing here you ...
Well, yeah. There are others; far more no doubt if other's posted their thoughts. The point is not a sophomoric taxonomy of people but a plea. Please, people: let's remember that we share the sidewalks. In the analogy of city to body, our sidewalks are our small arteries and veins: not the huge aortas of main roadways, but the tiny arterioles and venules that allow exchange of life-giving civic contact to occur. Let's respect them and the others we share them with, and with luck, they will do likewise. But even if they don't: it's the right thing to do.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Drinks With Doug Idea: Books With Doug...with drinks!
Thursday's weather: warm and dry, with the smell in the air of heat and humidity to come. Plants still basking in light and rain surplus, but this will not last. Disappointment: my Siberian Iris have not bloomed this year nearly at all.
Thursday's drink: I'm outta good summery booze. Down to whiskey and mixer.
Thursday's dream ticket: Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" tour. Sadly she's not coming to DC, which is a total mystery to me. Still, where-ever you are in the country, go and tell me what you think. Only if it was good.
All the hullaballoo about Scottie McClellan's book as me thinking. The Drinks With Doug family should know so much more about this, and more importantly other abuses of our government. So why not a book club?
Well, not so much a book club, with all the estrogen-laden potentiality. Not...that estrogen is a bad thing. It isn't. I've just never - ever - come across a guy's book club.
So let's start a book read that isn't a club or isn't guys or gals or anything other than the book, and what we learn.
At to that point, I propose a book no doubt all of us have heard of, many of us have referenced, some of us have seen the movie (sigh, Robert Redford's so dreamy) and few of us have actually read top to bottom.
I propose we read: "All The President's Men" by Woodson and Bearnbear. Or someone. The guy that Dustin Hoffman played!
I am going to the DC public library this Saturday to check it out. I ask you do likewise. And let's gather together back in a month.
That's pretty much it. Scott McClellan is a douche and his book is completely uneventful except for the cocaine revelation. And we yet to have the account of the abuse of this administration laid bare such that all can see it for what it is, and hold them accountable.
Thursday's weather: warm and dry, with the smell in the air of heat and humidity to come. Plants still basking in light and rain surplus, but this will not last. Disappointment: my Siberian Iris have not bloomed this year nearly at all.
Thursday's drink: I'm outta good summery booze. Down to whiskey and mixer.
Thursday's dream ticket: Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" tour. Sadly she's not coming to DC, which is a total mystery to me. Still, where-ever you are in the country, go and tell me what you think. Only if it was good.
All the hullaballoo about Scottie McClellan's book as me thinking. The Drinks With Doug family should know so much more about this, and more importantly other abuses of our government. So why not a book club?
Well, not so much a book club, with all the estrogen-laden potentiality. Not...that estrogen is a bad thing. It isn't. I've just never - ever - come across a guy's book club.
So let's start a book read that isn't a club or isn't guys or gals or anything other than the book, and what we learn.
At to that point, I propose a book no doubt all of us have heard of, many of us have referenced, some of us have seen the movie (sigh, Robert Redford's so dreamy) and few of us have actually read top to bottom.
I propose we read: "All The President's Men" by Woodson and Bearnbear. Or someone. The guy that Dustin Hoffman played!
I am going to the DC public library this Saturday to check it out. I ask you do likewise. And let's gather together back in a month.
That's pretty much it. Scott McClellan is a douche and his book is completely uneventful except for the cocaine revelation. And we yet to have the account of the abuse of this administration laid bare such that all can see it for what it is, and hold them accountable.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Drinks With Doug Reviews: #1
Saturday's weather: Sharp blue sky and clear cumulus clouds, dry and pleasant, mabye about 73 today.
Saturday's drink: McDonald's coffee, as it's morning and the coffee-pot has died.
Saturday's interest: the movie "Hunger", recently playing to big boffo at Cannes. Admittedly, leaning toward the IRA over the English in the Troubles. But timely, given what we have not been discussing regarding rendition, Guantanamo, and our never-ending troubles.
Drinks With Doug is, at its best moments, a chronicle of the thousand events that, together, comprise the events of a life. Or my life, specifically. Part of that life is food I make. Part of it is the work I do, the soap I use, the smell of my dog in the morning, the progress of my herbs, and the events I attend. Today I start DWD Reviews!, exclamation point included. My first stabs at thoughts on events/experiences I've had here that you can have where-ever you are. Movies, concerts, magazine articles, sex toys; it's all fair game. Except the sex toys.
Concert: "Drive - By Truckers" at DC's 930 Club, Saturday May 10.
DWD Rating: two Southern Comforts and a mess o' beers (out of five possible drinks.)
My friend DE suggested this a while back. I've been hearing D and J talk about the Drive By Truckers, and their songs, and their rock opera Southern Rock Opera for years...feeling at times a little left out of the loop of the 70's experience of southern rock concerts, weed, beer, long hair, Stars-n-Bars tees, and all the other whatnot that, I assume, accounts for the bulk of what we may call "southern culture." OK, I'm a little tight-assed Square-head; but the whole Doobie-rock thing always eluded me. Time to give it a try.
Glad I did. Although frankly, I'm not sure when I'll try it again. DBT hit the stage around 11:30pm; much too late for an old man like me. In the words of my friend D: "I love having gone out, I just hate going out." I agree. The opening act was meh, but DBT hit the stage hard and didn't let go until 1am. And that was BEFORE the encore, which lasted well into the wee hours.
At first the songs hit you in the gut - good rock!, you say. Light and dark, good riffs, swampy feel. And, looking around, I think I've never been less intimidated by a concert crowd in my life. On the other side, after a while their tunes meld one into the other. Swamp seeps into swamp, and it becomes a little bit of an endurance contest: you and the guys (and gal) actually making the music.
In the end they won my respect my sheer force (on their part) to make me like them. But they didn't win my icy northern heart.
DVD: "Primer"
DWD Rating: three gin and tonics, and a splash more of Hendricks
"Primer", henceforth referred to without quotes, is the 2004 sci-fi tech-punk mind-fuck that you'll never understand, and wish you did. The work of the intriguing Shane Carruth (he wrote, produced, directed and acted - one more than Orson Welles OR Ed Wood!), Primer charts the totally mundane discover of something shockingly new, and powerfully corrupting, in science. I'll leave it there...mostly because I don't really understand what or how or why or...well, yeah. It's pretty dense - but not in the David Lynch way of weirdness and incomprehensibility for its own sake way. In that 'I don't understand this, but it has enough coherence and internal consistency that I believe I could understand this' way.
Beyond the tech-blather and weed-hungering questions, it also charts the break-down of a very close friendship: something we've all experienced. Worth several viewings.
Concert: "X" 13X31 Tour, Wednesday May 21 at the aforementioned awesome 930 Club.
DWD Rating: four straight scotch (and whatever you can find on the floor.)
What can be said that hasn't been of X over its history? Four amazing musicians - who we know not just by name or face or style but by expression - who together welded the mayhem of LA's punk scene into lasting fierce on-your-fucking-toes musical cocaine. (Not that I know what cocaine is like. Ahem.) C, our friend G and I went, passing (now regrettably) on the Detroit-based opener The Detroit Cobras. Billy Zoom (Paxil-man), Exene (former of King Aragon!), DJ Bonebreak and the aging-but-ageless John Doe: as a set they are history. My history, American music history, our history. I can't say enough.
Event: Art-O-Matic, Friday May 23
DWD Rating: Two sloppy martinis. That's it.
AOM is a somewhat yearly event that I fully support. Heck, I leap up and down at. Hurrah! Art-O-Matic!
It's an un-judged, non-judgemental collection of DC artists' work - often taking over abandoned office buildings and/or intimidating neighborhoods to display the creative output of our area.
No tsk-tsks. No smug chin-scrubbing. No art talk.
It's sappy and sassy and dirty and goofy and provocative in every way creation should be (see previous post!) Walk one floor or eight. Stare or breeze. Laugh - please - and mull. Be yourself.
Art-O-Matic. Why didn't I thing of this?
Saturday's weather: Sharp blue sky and clear cumulus clouds, dry and pleasant, mabye about 73 today.
Saturday's drink: McDonald's coffee, as it's morning and the coffee-pot has died.
Saturday's interest: the movie "Hunger", recently playing to big boffo at Cannes. Admittedly, leaning toward the IRA over the English in the Troubles. But timely, given what we have not been discussing regarding rendition, Guantanamo, and our never-ending troubles.
Drinks With Doug is, at its best moments, a chronicle of the thousand events that, together, comprise the events of a life. Or my life, specifically. Part of that life is food I make. Part of it is the work I do, the soap I use, the smell of my dog in the morning, the progress of my herbs, and the events I attend. Today I start DWD Reviews!, exclamation point included. My first stabs at thoughts on events/experiences I've had here that you can have where-ever you are. Movies, concerts, magazine articles, sex toys; it's all fair game. Except the sex toys.
Concert: "Drive - By Truckers" at DC's 930 Club, Saturday May 10.
DWD Rating: two Southern Comforts and a mess o' beers (out of five possible drinks.)
My friend DE suggested this a while back. I've been hearing D and J talk about the Drive By Truckers, and their songs, and their rock opera Southern Rock Opera for years...feeling at times a little left out of the loop of the 70's experience of southern rock concerts, weed, beer, long hair, Stars-n-Bars tees, and all the other whatnot that, I assume, accounts for the bulk of what we may call "southern culture." OK, I'm a little tight-assed Square-head; but the whole Doobie-rock thing always eluded me. Time to give it a try.
Glad I did. Although frankly, I'm not sure when I'll try it again. DBT hit the stage around 11:30pm; much too late for an old man like me. In the words of my friend D: "I love having gone out, I just hate going out." I agree. The opening act was meh, but DBT hit the stage hard and didn't let go until 1am. And that was BEFORE the encore, which lasted well into the wee hours.
At first the songs hit you in the gut - good rock!, you say. Light and dark, good riffs, swampy feel. And, looking around, I think I've never been less intimidated by a concert crowd in my life. On the other side, after a while their tunes meld one into the other. Swamp seeps into swamp, and it becomes a little bit of an endurance contest: you and the guys (and gal) actually making the music.
In the end they won my respect my sheer force (on their part) to make me like them. But they didn't win my icy northern heart.
DVD: "Primer"
DWD Rating: three gin and tonics, and a splash more of Hendricks
"Primer", henceforth referred to without quotes, is the 2004 sci-fi tech-punk mind-fuck that you'll never understand, and wish you did. The work of the intriguing Shane Carruth (he wrote, produced, directed and acted - one more than Orson Welles OR Ed Wood!), Primer charts the totally mundane discover of something shockingly new, and powerfully corrupting, in science. I'll leave it there...mostly because I don't really understand what or how or why or...well, yeah. It's pretty dense - but not in the David Lynch way of weirdness and incomprehensibility for its own sake way. In that 'I don't understand this, but it has enough coherence and internal consistency that I believe I could understand this' way.
Beyond the tech-blather and weed-hungering questions, it also charts the break-down of a very close friendship: something we've all experienced. Worth several viewings.
Concert: "X" 13X31 Tour, Wednesday May 21 at the aforementioned awesome 930 Club.
DWD Rating: four straight scotch (and whatever you can find on the floor.)
What can be said that hasn't been of X over its history? Four amazing musicians - who we know not just by name or face or style but by expression - who together welded the mayhem of LA's punk scene into lasting fierce on-your-fucking-toes musical cocaine. (Not that I know what cocaine is like. Ahem.) C, our friend G and I went, passing (now regrettably) on the Detroit-based opener The Detroit Cobras. Billy Zoom (Paxil-man), Exene (former of King Aragon!), DJ Bonebreak and the aging-but-ageless John Doe: as a set they are history. My history, American music history, our history. I can't say enough.
Event: Art-O-Matic, Friday May 23
DWD Rating: Two sloppy martinis. That's it.
AOM is a somewhat yearly event that I fully support. Heck, I leap up and down at. Hurrah! Art-O-Matic!
It's an un-judged, non-judgemental collection of DC artists' work - often taking over abandoned office buildings and/or intimidating neighborhoods to display the creative output of our area.
No tsk-tsks. No smug chin-scrubbing. No art talk.
It's sappy and sassy and dirty and goofy and provocative in every way creation should be (see previous post!) Walk one floor or eight. Stare or breeze. Laugh - please - and mull. Be yourself.
Art-O-Matic. Why didn't I thing of this?
Monday, May 19, 2008
It's The Arts
Monday's weather: 60's and dry, partly sunny like September, and rather windy (like me.)
Monday's drink: Not having one, but if I were, I think I'd fancy a White Peach Bellini. Fizzylicious.
Monday's adage: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." (from Al Gore's 2008 commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University.)
This last weekend was chockablock with art in my hood. Art-O-Matic continues apace (C, D F and I will be going this coming Friday) and the now-empty jumpin' Jesus church that occupied a former garage at 14 and T has been converted into an 'edgy' downtowny-artist gallery that Transformer has occupied for the time. It was also Mid-City Artists' weekend whatnot to boot, with two of my neighbors exhibiting. I didn't get out to experience a single one of them, natch.
I did experience, side-note-wise, the new Harris Teeter store up at Kalorama and 18th, the one in the old roller rink. And I feel confident I can state for the record that it is the gayest grocery store, ever, in all of existence. Quite a statement I admit, but empirically true.
Back to art. The weekend, and the work of my friend J*who writes for The Art Newspaper set my mind to art recently. I've always had an uncomplicated relation with much of it. And generally speaking, I prefer more than less, perhaps mostly because I don't expect much from much of art. Not at least on our shared cultural level. The personal: well that's altogether another issue.
Art-O-Matic is a great example. Floor after floor of...what is that? Who did this? WHAT is that supposed to be? Lots of questions cast into the air for us to play with. The questions - the playfullness of it all - and not worrying about answering them is, for me, very stimulating. But then rarely I happen on something that is not playful at all. No predicting what it is or where I'll find it. But it's a something that...not that it demands attention, for I willingly give it. It's something that seeks somehow to come into me and fill me.
I know the language is a little fruity here, so let me try an analogy. Faith is a mutli-level experience for me. Most of it - the theological questions, the existential wandering, the poking about in that cloud of ideas apart from the quantifiable - is for me just fun. The more questions the better: I wish lots of people were asking lots more questions publicly, inviting the rest of us to trade answers back and forth, free from the weight of whether we're getting it right. Like those rainbow beach-balls that get popped from one to another at bad outdoor concerts. It just bumbles along, no direction, free from direction, existing just for us to bop it to someone else, something fun that we share and joins us together.
But then there's the personal layer. Wholly other than the diverting ponderments about abstractions, these are the deep questions of what my life's work is and should be, how I engage with those I love, and whether I allow my spirit - the spirit - to fill me as it should or if I fight it and keep it from its - and my - work. These are the rare moments I open to the fuzzy pink cloud of theology so that it can pour into me - to what end, who knows.
These are profound and scary moments, but at the essence of life. "Sitting with spirit," I refer to it with my shrink. So it is with art. There's a great jumbly mess of ART floating around in which I am perfectly comfortable moving through. It's just fun, and meant to be swatted up to someone else. But there are - rarely - works that I open to and try to come to live with as they fill me. Perhaps I'll share one or two of these in posts to come.
But not now. Life, Gordon Ramsey, and C all call me away from the dread blog. And none too soon.
*I have to give a shout-out to the work the J does, and the better thoughts he has on art that often don't make it to print. The Art biz - meaning the incredibly high-priced, stratospheric world "real" artists inhabit, opposed to those doing good work living down on this plane with us mortals - has become, I perceive, a sham: little else than oddities put out by no-talent ego cases with mendacious sales pitches, work that exists solely to be commoditized where "value" means exactly and only the price it fetches at auction. People who adopt the surface and trappings of real art before them but have nothing to say or, more charitably, little interest in conversing. I won't characterize J's thoughts on this, adding only when I say these things to him, he has a good chuckle. While you're at it, check out the Art Newspaper. Read it for a month, and write back what you learned about the arts world.
Monday's weather: 60's and dry, partly sunny like September, and rather windy (like me.)
Monday's drink: Not having one, but if I were, I think I'd fancy a White Peach Bellini. Fizzylicious.
Monday's adage: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." (from Al Gore's 2008 commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University.)
This last weekend was chockablock with art in my hood. Art-O-Matic continues apace (C, D F and I will be going this coming Friday) and the now-empty jumpin' Jesus church that occupied a former garage at 14 and T has been converted into an 'edgy' downtowny-artist gallery that Transformer has occupied for the time. It was also Mid-City Artists' weekend whatnot to boot, with two of my neighbors exhibiting. I didn't get out to experience a single one of them, natch.
I did experience, side-note-wise, the new Harris Teeter store up at Kalorama and 18th, the one in the old roller rink. And I feel confident I can state for the record that it is the gayest grocery store, ever, in all of existence. Quite a statement I admit, but empirically true.
Back to art. The weekend, and the work of my friend J*who writes for The Art Newspaper set my mind to art recently. I've always had an uncomplicated relation with much of it. And generally speaking, I prefer more than less, perhaps mostly because I don't expect much from much of art. Not at least on our shared cultural level. The personal: well that's altogether another issue.
Art-O-Matic is a great example. Floor after floor of...what is that? Who did this? WHAT is that supposed to be? Lots of questions cast into the air for us to play with. The questions - the playfullness of it all - and not worrying about answering them is, for me, very stimulating. But then rarely I happen on something that is not playful at all. No predicting what it is or where I'll find it. But it's a something that...not that it demands attention, for I willingly give it. It's something that seeks somehow to come into me and fill me.
I know the language is a little fruity here, so let me try an analogy. Faith is a mutli-level experience for me. Most of it - the theological questions, the existential wandering, the poking about in that cloud of ideas apart from the quantifiable - is for me just fun. The more questions the better: I wish lots of people were asking lots more questions publicly, inviting the rest of us to trade answers back and forth, free from the weight of whether we're getting it right. Like those rainbow beach-balls that get popped from one to another at bad outdoor concerts. It just bumbles along, no direction, free from direction, existing just for us to bop it to someone else, something fun that we share and joins us together.
But then there's the personal layer. Wholly other than the diverting ponderments about abstractions, these are the deep questions of what my life's work is and should be, how I engage with those I love, and whether I allow my spirit - the spirit - to fill me as it should or if I fight it and keep it from its - and my - work. These are the rare moments I open to the fuzzy pink cloud of theology so that it can pour into me - to what end, who knows.
These are profound and scary moments, but at the essence of life. "Sitting with spirit," I refer to it with my shrink. So it is with art. There's a great jumbly mess of ART floating around in which I am perfectly comfortable moving through. It's just fun, and meant to be swatted up to someone else. But there are - rarely - works that I open to and try to come to live with as they fill me. Perhaps I'll share one or two of these in posts to come.
But not now. Life, Gordon Ramsey, and C all call me away from the dread blog. And none too soon.
*I have to give a shout-out to the work the J does, and the better thoughts he has on art that often don't make it to print. The Art biz - meaning the incredibly high-priced, stratospheric world "real" artists inhabit, opposed to those doing good work living down on this plane with us mortals - has become, I perceive, a sham: little else than oddities put out by no-talent ego cases with mendacious sales pitches, work that exists solely to be commoditized where "value" means exactly and only the price it fetches at auction. People who adopt the surface and trappings of real art before them but have nothing to say or, more charitably, little interest in conversing. I won't characterize J's thoughts on this, adding only when I say these things to him, he has a good chuckle. While you're at it, check out the Art Newspaper. Read it for a month, and write back what you learned about the arts world.
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