Fuck 9-11
by Isonomist
09/10/2010, 9:56 AM #
I was standing on 5th Avenue with a crowd of New Yorkers from all walks of life,watching the biggest buildings in one of the biggest cities in the world burn like candles. No one knew what had happened for the first hour or so. Once we knew it wasn't an accident and the city began shutting down like a fort under seige, we began dialing family and friends and the schools where our kids were trapped by untrained administrators, getting dial tones and terrifyingly calm computer voices telling us the lines were down. No one panicked, you can see the footage. We did what we had to do. Boats poured across the Hudson from New Jersey to ferry people out of harm's way. People put their kids' schoolmates up for the night, companies closed, neighborhoods were blocked off, there were lines wrapped around the hospitals to donate blood.
The next day the stench was unbearable and unavoidable. I'm reminded of it today because down the block from my office, a restaurant is on fire as I type. The sickening smell of burning meat and building materials and ozone is all too familiar. We were out on the streets, collecting things to donate to the rescue responders. There were no trucks, no food or supplies could come into the city then. We were in lockdown. On my street, rescue workers walked from store to store looking for bottled water and food, covered to their hips in thick grey dust.
Within days, when the city was running again, but the fire was still burning and ash floating all over us, we went back to work. My route took me past the armory, the local operations for the rescue effort. On the walls of buildings surrounding it, were photos of the missing, smiling out at the camera. I felt myself in the very shoes of the family member or friend who had taken that photo in a moment of joy, and now had to xerox it onto a leaflet begging to know if this happy face still lived. I cried as I passed this part of town. We cried at my office. My kids wore paper dust masks to go outside. The dust and ash blew through our windows. The stench didn't abate for months.
It was March before the fires were completely out. And years before the hole was emptied. New Yorkers flinched at the sight of low flying planes. We stayed away from the site, or trepidatiously peered, in full knowledge that we were walking on sidewalks strewn with the ash of our neighbors' remains. We were angry at photos of tourists taking photos of the site with smiles on their faces. Fuck them. We tried to be tolerant when family members visited and wanted to see it. Like asking to see fresh scars from some near fatal collision.
The annual 9-11 ceremonies were tasteful, heartbreaking, and at some point, too boring to watch. When 9-11 was renamed Patriots' Day, when politicians started using it to scare people into voting for them, when radio talk show hosts and cheap tin pastors started using it to boost their audience ratings, when people who had never been there and had no right to wrap themselves in it began doing so, 9-11 ceased to be sacred. Now it's just another insincere glow in the dark plastic trinket holiday, co-opted by people who say we, who lived this horror, are not real Americans. The people who died on 9-11, and the people who ran in to save them, we're not patriots. The people who died together: Arab, Hindu, Christian, Jew, European, African, Latin, Asian, Indian--every strain of human bloodline, every religion or lack thereof-- and the people who ran in to save them, recover their bodies, and mourn them, all of us, are now the sworn enemies of the people who hold 9-11 up as their rallying cry. We're atheist godless, idol worshiping terorrist lefty liberal New York assholes who hate the constitution and the country and our troops and real Americans, and unborn babies and fuck you.
I'm done with that three ring circus.
Showing posts with label writers on the fray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers on the fray. Show all posts
10 September 2010
03 April 2010
That f'ing bird....
That f'ing bird....
by NickD
04/03/2010, 12:45 AM #
It was a seasons beginning much like this one. A warm day with sun and low humidity. The wind was a nuisance but not so much that it drove anyone indoors or away. In fact it was the stiff breeze from the south that had brought the new spring weather we were enjoying. Sure the trees and daffodils had begun to bloom but the weather had remained just cool enough to keep everyone inside until now.
The several warm days in a row after the long hard winter had lured all of us out to the lake for an impromptu Saturday barbecue and to enjoy some cold beers and horse shoes. A few of the fellows played catch with their baseballs and a couple of other guys had brought their rods for a bit of fishing. The girls all sat around the picnic tables in the pavilion where earlier we had all shared in the rapidly devoured foodstuffs.
A few cars sat at different locations with their speakers pulled out and set on top of the roofs to provide music for the occasion and of course they were all tuned to the same FM radio station. One of them was mine, it was my second car, a white Ford Gran Torino. It wasn’t the fastest car there but it was the fastest car that had not been purchased by someone’s daddy, and that situation made me a little bit more than proud.
Anyway, it wasn’t a big lake, to many who were more traveled it would have been deemed a large pond. But to us it was a really nice lake and it had all the amenities we could have wanted. A pavilion, cooking pits, a dock and a couple of well made horse shoe pits. Even a large field where a pick-up game of baseball or softball could be played.
A gravel road led away to another section of the park where restroom facilities were available for the girls while a wooded area offered the privacy we sought for ourselves. A few strategically located drums were set about to hold our trash and most of it actually made it inside of them. Of course as was normal for the times, cigarette butts and pull tabs littered the ground and were both more prevalent and invisible than the rapidly spreading dandelion blooms.
In the middle of the little lake, maybe about 3 or 4 hundred feet from shore a small gaggle of geese swam lazily in circles seemingly oblivious to the group of young people having a wonderful spring Saturday afternoon. Their white feathers reflecting the afternoon sunlight much like a Norman Rockwell painting. Small laps of water pushed by the strong breeze slapped at the mud and branches lining the shore.
There wasn’t a beach on this side of the lake, it was on the other side where rafts yet to be deployed for the summer still sat high and dry. Steel floats bared with dried moss hanging from their bottoms. Three in all, where teenagers and young adults would spend lazy summer afternoons trying to impress each other. The boys showing their taut muscular frames while the bronzed girls posed in their bathing suits as they tried to make each other jealous or attract the attentions of the preening young males. But that annual rite of summer was still a few months away and the beach area remained closed and abandoned.
The action was all on the other side of the lake for now. Our stereos filled the early spring air and the clink of horseshoes against poles set apart by careful measure with shout the occasional shout of triumph after each score.
All in all it was a picture perfect day. All of us young and in love with our lives and each other. Sure we were sometimes a little rowdy, that was just a healthy part of who we were. But none of us really ever caused any trouble for other people. Even Rick, the slightly oddball fellow that always hung around with us. He never seemed at ease and was always doing different things to impress everyone that didn’t really impress anyone. And this afternoon wouldn’t be any different.
As the day wore on into the early evening and the sun fell low in the horizon the pangs of the ever present hunger of youth began to once again take hold. Talk of food once again began the main subject of most conversation, and it looked as if the gathering would be breaking up into separate groups searching their suppers in whatever direction they would take.
Rick called a few of us out to the dock with a wave of his hand and a puzzling low voice that seemed to speak of intrigue. We walked down curious to what he was planning to do because whatever he usually planned to do was usually very curious to begin with. Of course he held true to form.
The geese were no longer near the middle of the little lake and were now only about 100 or 150 feet from the dock. Rick looked over at my buddy and asked him if he was hungry, and of course he said he was as were all were quite hungry by this time. Well Rick said he had a plan and if we would clean it we were going to have a goose for supper. I reminded him there was no shooting allowed in the park and it wasn’t in season anyway. He waved me away with a look as if I were suddenly struck daft. No, No he said quietly and with his low tone of intrigue, “You know how good of a swimmer I am right?” He asked. Of course I had never seen him swim and had no idea so I gave him a blank look and said nothing.
He looked over at my buddy and outlined his plan. Once again Rick seemed to think he was going to impress everyone and once again I figured no one was going to be impressed. Still I thought to myself, this is going to be quite entertaining. And it was, at least for awhile.
Rick lowered himself into the water off the end of the dock and I could see that he was already beginning to shiver as we were not that far removed from the harsh winter weather. The cold water and combined effect of the sinking sun left the air on the dock more than just a little bit chilly. I watched as Rick slowly began to move away from the dock in a silent breast stroke towards the small family of birds now sitting still in the water.
I wondered aloud if he would really go through with this and how he could possibly stand to be out in the cold water for so long. My buddy just looked at me and shrugged. So we stood there and watched him slowly approach the birds. “He might actually do it” my buddy said aloud to no one and I thought to myself that since the geese aren’t looking directly at him maybe he would.
As Rick approached within about ten feet of the largest bird I realized how small his head appeared next to the giant bird and realized what a stupid thing we had just let him do and I thought about yelling out to stop him. It was about that time Rick’s head disappeared below the surface of the water and my buddy hit me in the arm and looked at me with a look of dread that I felt deep to the bone.
A second or two later the evening air filled with violent splashing along with the loudest honking I had ever heard from a goose. The smaller geese rapidly swam away flapping their wings and making a huge scene of themselves while the lone big bird began stabbing into the water furiously with its long neck and beak. If Rick had been an alligator in warm water his plan would have made perfect sense, but he was a human in icy cold water trying to drown a huge waterfowl while he was treading water or just underneath holding his breath. The water was extremely cold and his body had to be freezing, but Rick was one to never stop once he set a plan into motion. It never seemed to matter how is plans were proceeding or what they were, he always went forward to what ever conclusion was going to happen regardless of what he had set in motion.
We stood on the dock for what seemed like an eternity watching things unfold. I am sure it was only several seconds but eventually and what was really only what could be called inevitably Rick started screaming for help. The big bird was biting and beating him to death with its beak, each time he would get close enough to the surface to draw breath the bird would strike him over and over again. Even as he tried to swim away from the large goose the bird followed him intently striking him over and over.
My buddy ran up and away from the dock yelling back over his shoulder that he was going to grab his shotgun from the truck and for me to not just stand there but to do something. “Shit“, I shouted, and then, “what can I do out there” so I ran from the dock to the shore line to find anything I could to throw at the big bird that looked as if it were going to successfully kill our friend. Of course in the Midwest our lakes are seldom lined with natural rocks but I was able to find a few pieces of large rip rap that had been placed many years before in an unsuccessful attempt at weed control. I did my best to throw these at the bird but they were too bulky and heavy to have accuracy and I was genuinely concerned about breaking my friends skull with one of them.
Suddenly three loud shot gun blasts occurred behind me and even though I knew my friend had gone to retrieve his gun the first shot nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. The large bird honked and violently began flapping its wings as it clumsily left the water and flew inches off the surface to the far end of the lake to join the rest of the small gaggle.
Several of us shouted in relief as the bird flew away from where it had been attacking our friend in the cold water but we soon fell silent as we couldn’t see Rick anywhere. Get a boat somebody yelled from back by the pavilion and someone else replied there was one not too far down the shore.
I stood on the shore staring intently at the place in the lake where I thought I had last seen our friend. At first I wished silently to see his head and soon I was shouting his name hoping to hear a reply. There was nothing.
A few minutes later a small square bowed john boat was hurriedly pushed into the water towards the area where Rick had last been seen. I shouted directions to the rower and within another minute they were on top of the place we had last seen our friend. “Where is he” they yelled back and with that, every person left on the scene started shouting his name. And for an hour our calls were answered only by silence and the cries of a few of the girls still back by the cars.
A few of the girls had gone into town to summon help, but no one had yet arrived. So the scene had become quite frantic as everyone was screaming Rick’s name and hoping to get an answer. But after awhile it became apparent that he wasn’t going to answer. I think maybe that was the first time as a young man that I actually cried in front of other people. It wasn’t a blubbering wail but the tears were too full to pretend they weren’t there.
Why did we let him do that? I asked aloud, though mostly to myself as we sat on the tables under the pavilion. Sirens were finally within earshot of our now small group and I knew there were going to be a lot of people asking us a lot of questions. We were not of a legal drinking age and while folks generally admonished our actions they did so with a wink and a nod, though this time one of us was dead and there wasn’t going to be any funny stories to go along with our antics.
We sat on the tables with a deputy while the firemen and the other police searched the surface of the lake with their boats and spot lights. The air was full of flashing lights from about a dozen varied emergency vehicles and the sounds of concerned onlookers intermingled with the echoes of voices from the various radios. It was a nightmarish scene that I knew would be burned into my brain for the rest of my life. I was scared and mad and full of so many emotions that I didn’t notice the dark shadow emerging onto the patio under the pavilion roof at first.
"Oh my God" screamed one of the girls sitting closest to me and I looked up to see a fellow with a face covered in blood and that looked as if it had been attacked with an axe. It was Rick, alive, completely bewildered and shivering uncontrollably. He had managed to get back to shore but had fallen unconscious into the tall weeds and laid there unseen by all of the searchers still on the water.
He looked at one of the fireman and said, “that fucking bird kicked my ass“, and fell face first into a blanket left from earlier in the afternoon......
by NickD
04/03/2010, 12:45 AM #
It was a seasons beginning much like this one. A warm day with sun and low humidity. The wind was a nuisance but not so much that it drove anyone indoors or away. In fact it was the stiff breeze from the south that had brought the new spring weather we were enjoying. Sure the trees and daffodils had begun to bloom but the weather had remained just cool enough to keep everyone inside until now.
The several warm days in a row after the long hard winter had lured all of us out to the lake for an impromptu Saturday barbecue and to enjoy some cold beers and horse shoes. A few of the fellows played catch with their baseballs and a couple of other guys had brought their rods for a bit of fishing. The girls all sat around the picnic tables in the pavilion where earlier we had all shared in the rapidly devoured foodstuffs.
A few cars sat at different locations with their speakers pulled out and set on top of the roofs to provide music for the occasion and of course they were all tuned to the same FM radio station. One of them was mine, it was my second car, a white Ford Gran Torino. It wasn’t the fastest car there but it was the fastest car that had not been purchased by someone’s daddy, and that situation made me a little bit more than proud.
Anyway, it wasn’t a big lake, to many who were more traveled it would have been deemed a large pond. But to us it was a really nice lake and it had all the amenities we could have wanted. A pavilion, cooking pits, a dock and a couple of well made horse shoe pits. Even a large field where a pick-up game of baseball or softball could be played.
A gravel road led away to another section of the park where restroom facilities were available for the girls while a wooded area offered the privacy we sought for ourselves. A few strategically located drums were set about to hold our trash and most of it actually made it inside of them. Of course as was normal for the times, cigarette butts and pull tabs littered the ground and were both more prevalent and invisible than the rapidly spreading dandelion blooms.
In the middle of the little lake, maybe about 3 or 4 hundred feet from shore a small gaggle of geese swam lazily in circles seemingly oblivious to the group of young people having a wonderful spring Saturday afternoon. Their white feathers reflecting the afternoon sunlight much like a Norman Rockwell painting. Small laps of water pushed by the strong breeze slapped at the mud and branches lining the shore.
There wasn’t a beach on this side of the lake, it was on the other side where rafts yet to be deployed for the summer still sat high and dry. Steel floats bared with dried moss hanging from their bottoms. Three in all, where teenagers and young adults would spend lazy summer afternoons trying to impress each other. The boys showing their taut muscular frames while the bronzed girls posed in their bathing suits as they tried to make each other jealous or attract the attentions of the preening young males. But that annual rite of summer was still a few months away and the beach area remained closed and abandoned.
The action was all on the other side of the lake for now. Our stereos filled the early spring air and the clink of horseshoes against poles set apart by careful measure with shout the occasional shout of triumph after each score.
All in all it was a picture perfect day. All of us young and in love with our lives and each other. Sure we were sometimes a little rowdy, that was just a healthy part of who we were. But none of us really ever caused any trouble for other people. Even Rick, the slightly oddball fellow that always hung around with us. He never seemed at ease and was always doing different things to impress everyone that didn’t really impress anyone. And this afternoon wouldn’t be any different.
As the day wore on into the early evening and the sun fell low in the horizon the pangs of the ever present hunger of youth began to once again take hold. Talk of food once again began the main subject of most conversation, and it looked as if the gathering would be breaking up into separate groups searching their suppers in whatever direction they would take.
Rick called a few of us out to the dock with a wave of his hand and a puzzling low voice that seemed to speak of intrigue. We walked down curious to what he was planning to do because whatever he usually planned to do was usually very curious to begin with. Of course he held true to form.
The geese were no longer near the middle of the little lake and were now only about 100 or 150 feet from the dock. Rick looked over at my buddy and asked him if he was hungry, and of course he said he was as were all were quite hungry by this time. Well Rick said he had a plan and if we would clean it we were going to have a goose for supper. I reminded him there was no shooting allowed in the park and it wasn’t in season anyway. He waved me away with a look as if I were suddenly struck daft. No, No he said quietly and with his low tone of intrigue, “You know how good of a swimmer I am right?” He asked. Of course I had never seen him swim and had no idea so I gave him a blank look and said nothing.
He looked over at my buddy and outlined his plan. Once again Rick seemed to think he was going to impress everyone and once again I figured no one was going to be impressed. Still I thought to myself, this is going to be quite entertaining. And it was, at least for awhile.
Rick lowered himself into the water off the end of the dock and I could see that he was already beginning to shiver as we were not that far removed from the harsh winter weather. The cold water and combined effect of the sinking sun left the air on the dock more than just a little bit chilly. I watched as Rick slowly began to move away from the dock in a silent breast stroke towards the small family of birds now sitting still in the water.
I wondered aloud if he would really go through with this and how he could possibly stand to be out in the cold water for so long. My buddy just looked at me and shrugged. So we stood there and watched him slowly approach the birds. “He might actually do it” my buddy said aloud to no one and I thought to myself that since the geese aren’t looking directly at him maybe he would.
As Rick approached within about ten feet of the largest bird I realized how small his head appeared next to the giant bird and realized what a stupid thing we had just let him do and I thought about yelling out to stop him. It was about that time Rick’s head disappeared below the surface of the water and my buddy hit me in the arm and looked at me with a look of dread that I felt deep to the bone.
A second or two later the evening air filled with violent splashing along with the loudest honking I had ever heard from a goose. The smaller geese rapidly swam away flapping their wings and making a huge scene of themselves while the lone big bird began stabbing into the water furiously with its long neck and beak. If Rick had been an alligator in warm water his plan would have made perfect sense, but he was a human in icy cold water trying to drown a huge waterfowl while he was treading water or just underneath holding his breath. The water was extremely cold and his body had to be freezing, but Rick was one to never stop once he set a plan into motion. It never seemed to matter how is plans were proceeding or what they were, he always went forward to what ever conclusion was going to happen regardless of what he had set in motion.
We stood on the dock for what seemed like an eternity watching things unfold. I am sure it was only several seconds but eventually and what was really only what could be called inevitably Rick started screaming for help. The big bird was biting and beating him to death with its beak, each time he would get close enough to the surface to draw breath the bird would strike him over and over again. Even as he tried to swim away from the large goose the bird followed him intently striking him over and over.
My buddy ran up and away from the dock yelling back over his shoulder that he was going to grab his shotgun from the truck and for me to not just stand there but to do something. “Shit“, I shouted, and then, “what can I do out there” so I ran from the dock to the shore line to find anything I could to throw at the big bird that looked as if it were going to successfully kill our friend. Of course in the Midwest our lakes are seldom lined with natural rocks but I was able to find a few pieces of large rip rap that had been placed many years before in an unsuccessful attempt at weed control. I did my best to throw these at the bird but they were too bulky and heavy to have accuracy and I was genuinely concerned about breaking my friends skull with one of them.
Suddenly three loud shot gun blasts occurred behind me and even though I knew my friend had gone to retrieve his gun the first shot nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. The large bird honked and violently began flapping its wings as it clumsily left the water and flew inches off the surface to the far end of the lake to join the rest of the small gaggle.
Several of us shouted in relief as the bird flew away from where it had been attacking our friend in the cold water but we soon fell silent as we couldn’t see Rick anywhere. Get a boat somebody yelled from back by the pavilion and someone else replied there was one not too far down the shore.
I stood on the shore staring intently at the place in the lake where I thought I had last seen our friend. At first I wished silently to see his head and soon I was shouting his name hoping to hear a reply. There was nothing.
A few minutes later a small square bowed john boat was hurriedly pushed into the water towards the area where Rick had last been seen. I shouted directions to the rower and within another minute they were on top of the place we had last seen our friend. “Where is he” they yelled back and with that, every person left on the scene started shouting his name. And for an hour our calls were answered only by silence and the cries of a few of the girls still back by the cars.
A few of the girls had gone into town to summon help, but no one had yet arrived. So the scene had become quite frantic as everyone was screaming Rick’s name and hoping to get an answer. But after awhile it became apparent that he wasn’t going to answer. I think maybe that was the first time as a young man that I actually cried in front of other people. It wasn’t a blubbering wail but the tears were too full to pretend they weren’t there.
Why did we let him do that? I asked aloud, though mostly to myself as we sat on the tables under the pavilion. Sirens were finally within earshot of our now small group and I knew there were going to be a lot of people asking us a lot of questions. We were not of a legal drinking age and while folks generally admonished our actions they did so with a wink and a nod, though this time one of us was dead and there wasn’t going to be any funny stories to go along with our antics.
We sat on the tables with a deputy while the firemen and the other police searched the surface of the lake with their boats and spot lights. The air was full of flashing lights from about a dozen varied emergency vehicles and the sounds of concerned onlookers intermingled with the echoes of voices from the various radios. It was a nightmarish scene that I knew would be burned into my brain for the rest of my life. I was scared and mad and full of so many emotions that I didn’t notice the dark shadow emerging onto the patio under the pavilion roof at first.
"Oh my God" screamed one of the girls sitting closest to me and I looked up to see a fellow with a face covered in blood and that looked as if it had been attacked with an axe. It was Rick, alive, completely bewildered and shivering uncontrollably. He had managed to get back to shore but had fallen unconscious into the tall weeds and laid there unseen by all of the searchers still on the water.
He looked at one of the fireman and said, “that fucking bird kicked my ass“, and fell face first into a blanket left from earlier in the afternoon......
23 January 2010
"Flaming Posse"
"Flaming Posse"
by Schmutzie
01/23/2010, 3:33 PM #
A screenplay by Schmutzie.
Directed by Alan Smithee.
Setting- Fairplay, Colorado. The year is 1867.
Cast-
Davey- A lonely poet who lives in the hills. Married 9 times, Davey is growing increasingly dissatisfied with the women in his life.
Deanna- An elderly divorced school teacher who spends her days teaching creative writing to the children of the town in a one-room schoolhouse. At night, she goes to the Spittoon Saloon and flirts with men. She has a fondness for Civil War veterans.
Dr. Archie O'Donnelly- One of Colorado's leading scientists. A recently released book by a man named Darwin has changed Archie's life. He finds himself ostracized by the Church of Fairplay, and he has come under attack by the local preacher during his Sunday sermons.
Father Joey Vittles XII- The 12th Vittles to serve as Fairplay's preacher, Joey teaches the people of Fairplay that the Holy Bible is the one true word, and that anyone who disagrees with him will be struck down with smallpox, then the plague, then rickets, then scurvy, and then finally he says, "You will burn in hell!"
Judge Frank Early- A man who has very little patience for the people of Fairplay, whom he sees mainly as a bunch of rubes. He dispenses justice with a fair hand, and spends his off hours hunting the elusive coyotes.Hangin' Frank they call him, and it is said that he once sentenced a man to 60 days for farting in court. Frank likes to go commando under his robe.
Myra Deepwell- A crusader for justice who dispenses free legal advice. Deepwell's efforts in cases like Deepwell v Illinois in 1873, and later her appeal to the US Supreme Court pave the way for women lawyers everywhere. Despite losing both cases, she presses on and becomes the first woman admitted to Illinois bar in 1892, before moving back to Fairplay where she eventually is elected Mayor. She enjoys riding horses and playing something she calls "lawn tennis," a sport she discovered while traveling on the Continent.
Marshall Ike Darrow- A wry sort of man, with a quick gun and quicker wit. He doesn't enjoy the killin', but his skill has forced him into the job. He'd rather out-argue than outdraw, but the local cemetery is littered with the corpses of those who chose to draw down on him. He used to work at the gypsum mill, and his paper on desulfurization caused a change in the industry. Ike grew bored with gypsum, and took up law enforcement after selling the copyrights to his gypsum deselfulization paper to Henry Bryan, owner of a small Minnesota mining company.
Jimmy Laredo- An old, dimwitted, pot-bellied gunslinger who has seen better days. Once the 317th fastest gun in Texas, he now spends most of his days eating beef jerky, and his nights flirting with Deanna at the Spittoon. He hates Marshall Darrow, and has sworn he's going to gun him down. Jimmy hasn't seen his penis nor his toes in 15 years, and his XXXXL gun-belt was custom made by the local saddle maker.
Jenny Laredo- Jimmy's wife.
Western Belle- The local madam. Belle runs an honest brothel, and makes a pretty penny on the side playing cards with the drunks at the Spittoon. She has recently emptied the pockets of Jimmy with a royal flush to his pair of threes. She knew he was bluffing the whole time.
Morning Dove- Formerly one of Belle's girls, who traded her black lace garters for a pair of overalls. Dove is the the first woman west of the Mississippi to own 4000 acres, and spends most of her time raising horses. Recently wed, Dove is a no-nonsense type, who will kick a man in the balls if he calls he "darlin'"
Dr. Jay- The Fairplay physician and Morning Dove's husband. The townfolk call him Rambunctious J. He specializes in treating gunshot wounds, but also believes that the "human mind is capable of amazing healing power." Davey the lonely poet likes to throw rocks through Dr. Jay's office windows out of spite and envy. (Davey longs for the attention of Morning Dove.)
Michael Masterson- A Civil War vet who carries with him dark memories of the conflict. He longs for peace and quiet, and lives in a ranch on the outside of town with his wife. He is the object of Deanna's almost obsessive attention, but wants no part of that. He is a married man, who is faithful to his wife. To him, honesty is everything.
Helen- A deeply disturbed woman who lives in a small cabin with 13 cats. The only time Helen comes out of her cabin is to shout obscenities at the passing stagecoach.
Tupelo Tom- A transplant from Mississippi who runs the local eatery. His recipe for flank steak is kept in a strong box in Marshall Darrow's office. Tom is a deeply spiritual man, who believes in tolerance of all faiths, and is therefore hated by Joey Vittles XII. Vittles has condemned Tupelo Tom to hell, which caused Tom to pray for Joey Vittles.
Keistus- The Fairplay blacksmith. A man with the power to crush a human skull with his bare hands, but who uses his power for good. Keistus lives with his wife and daughters, and enjoys trips to the seashore. Since the seashore is 2 weeks away by coach, Keistus looks forward to his first train ride on the newly laid Overland Route.
Nomo Isonista- A latin beauty who writes for the Fairplay Fair Player. Her 5 part series on outdoor living and recreation won the Colorado Outdoor Living and Recreation Award for outstanding writing. Nomo loves her family, travels extensively, and enjoys swimming in the nude. Her moonshine is said to be useful for removing rust from wagon wheel axles.
Smithers- A local farmer who built a log cabin using only his hands. His tomatoes are much sought after, and it is said that the hemp dungarees he makes can also be used as heating fuel. Once a year the entire town of Fairplay (except for Jimmy Laredo who has never been invited) puts on their finest and turns up at Smithers' cabin for "BLT Day." Smithers serves up what he calls "Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato sandwiches" and mason jars full of Isonista's moonshine before the big square dance. It's always the event of the year.
Lobo- A transplant from the Arizona Territory. Nobody knows much about Lobo, although he has an abiding love of his country and looks forward to trips into the mountains with his family. He had an eye shot out in the Mexican-American War and was an original signer of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Monducmo- The bartender and owner of the Spittoon. Keeps a sawed off shotgun under the counter. Never cuts his booze. Once was asked the difference between whiskey and whisky to which he replied "Whiskey is Hibernian and whisky is hibernating in Scotland. Have an Irish whiskey here, or have a whisky there."
Seamus O'Dublin- Writer and cooper. His barrels are said to be the finest on earth, and he ships butter churns, hogsheads, firskins, rundlets and puncheons to places as far away as China and Johannesburg. Quality is his trademark, and it is said that he will smash a hogshead if it's off by so much as a quarter of an imperial gallon. His writing is his passion along with his family, and woe to any man who threatens either. Legend holds that he once held a hungry wolverine at bay for two days using a single barrel stave,.. at one point in the standoff his father sipped a pint of Guinness and asked "What's taking so long? This procrastination is postively criminal ya gobshite. Kill the damned thing and let's eat!"
Other characters-
Tartan Tim- The editor of the Fairplay Fair Player
Shocked Quartz- One of Belle's girls.
Heartful Gold- Another of Belle's girls.
Brilliant Blondie- Golden haired owner of the dry goods store.
Thank Goddness- One of Ike's trusted deputees.
Don Toronto- Transplanted Canadian fur trapper
Elizabeth "Bitty" Tweet- Author and part-time bouncer at the Spittoon.
Jackson Dee- One armed lawyer who defends horse thieves and cattle rustlers.
Dr. Nome- Fairplay dentist, Alaskan transplant who left in protest of Seward's Folly.
Sorvus- Stagecoach driver
Simon Freud- Fairplay treasurer, and poker dealer at the Spittoon.
Schmalz- The town carpenter
"Flaming Posse"
Act I- A dark, run down cabin on the hill. Davey looks into a broken mirror.
Davey- I hate you.
(Davey puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. The gun misfires. Davey begins crying.)
Act II- Late night at the Spittoon. Smoke filled room. Keistus is playing rags on an old upright piano with several missing keys.
Jimmy Laredo- I'm tellin' ya Lincoln had it comin'! Next thing ya know them darkies'll be a votin'. Hiya hot britches. What's yer name?
Monducmo- You ever going to pay yer tab Jimmy?
Jimmy- My wife has all my money. I'll get you next time. C'mere Deanna. Anyone ever tell you that you've got beautiful eyes?
Deanna- Oh Jimmy. You are such a gentleman. How about you do that thing for me tonight?
Jimmy- If I told ya once I told ya a hunnert times, I don't do that.
(Deanna walks away dejected. Ike Darrow enters. Jimmy stares at him with fire in his eyes.)
Ike- (sniffing the air)- I swear Jimmy, if I didn't know better I'd think we were in the midst of a desulfurization run. Dear god man, don't you ever bathe?
Jimmy- I took me a bath on Monday you rascal. If I wasn't wearin' my Sunday go-to-meetin' pants I'd take you outside and teach you a thing or two.
(Jenny Laredo enters the bar and sees her slovenly husband flirting with Deanna. She runs out crying.)
Jimmy (to Deanna)- Aw don't worry 'bout that one. She'll get over it. I keep her fed n' watered. I'm a fine upstandin' husband by my definition. Gimme a kiss honey...uh, you did gargle right?
(Jimmy sees Ike turn away and, intending to shoot the Marshall in the back reaches for his gun. His arms can't reach that far, and his fingers dangle at his side a good 8 inches from his holster.)
(Seeing this in the mirror behind Monducmo, Ike wheels around and draws his Colt.)
(Jimmy pisses his pants, a smelly yellow pool forming between his boots. Keistus stops playing and, expecting a shootout, dives behind the piano.)
Ike- Seem to be coming up a bit short there Jimmy. Why don't you back away real slowly, and I won't shoot you full the dense, ductile, very malleable element known as lead.
Jimmy- Huh?
(Ike smiles and walks up to the bar. He sits down on one of the fine oak O'Dublin bar stools.)
Ike- Whiskey if you please, and send one to the carpenter over in the corner.
(Monnducmo delivers the whiskey to Schmalz, and tells him it's from Ike. Schmalz looks over at Ike and nods his appreciation. They hoist their glasses and toast from across the room.)
To be continued....
by Schmutzie
01/23/2010, 3:33 PM #
A screenplay by Schmutzie.
Directed by Alan Smithee.
Setting- Fairplay, Colorado. The year is 1867.
Cast-
Davey- A lonely poet who lives in the hills. Married 9 times, Davey is growing increasingly dissatisfied with the women in his life.
Deanna- An elderly divorced school teacher who spends her days teaching creative writing to the children of the town in a one-room schoolhouse. At night, she goes to the Spittoon Saloon and flirts with men. She has a fondness for Civil War veterans.
Dr. Archie O'Donnelly- One of Colorado's leading scientists. A recently released book by a man named Darwin has changed Archie's life. He finds himself ostracized by the Church of Fairplay, and he has come under attack by the local preacher during his Sunday sermons.
Father Joey Vittles XII- The 12th Vittles to serve as Fairplay's preacher, Joey teaches the people of Fairplay that the Holy Bible is the one true word, and that anyone who disagrees with him will be struck down with smallpox, then the plague, then rickets, then scurvy, and then finally he says, "You will burn in hell!"
Judge Frank Early- A man who has very little patience for the people of Fairplay, whom he sees mainly as a bunch of rubes. He dispenses justice with a fair hand, and spends his off hours hunting the elusive coyotes.Hangin' Frank they call him, and it is said that he once sentenced a man to 60 days for farting in court. Frank likes to go commando under his robe.
Myra Deepwell- A crusader for justice who dispenses free legal advice. Deepwell's efforts in cases like Deepwell v Illinois in 1873, and later her appeal to the US Supreme Court pave the way for women lawyers everywhere. Despite losing both cases, she presses on and becomes the first woman admitted to Illinois bar in 1892, before moving back to Fairplay where she eventually is elected Mayor. She enjoys riding horses and playing something she calls "lawn tennis," a sport she discovered while traveling on the Continent.
Marshall Ike Darrow- A wry sort of man, with a quick gun and quicker wit. He doesn't enjoy the killin', but his skill has forced him into the job. He'd rather out-argue than outdraw, but the local cemetery is littered with the corpses of those who chose to draw down on him. He used to work at the gypsum mill, and his paper on desulfurization caused a change in the industry. Ike grew bored with gypsum, and took up law enforcement after selling the copyrights to his gypsum deselfulization paper to Henry Bryan, owner of a small Minnesota mining company.
Jimmy Laredo- An old, dimwitted, pot-bellied gunslinger who has seen better days. Once the 317th fastest gun in Texas, he now spends most of his days eating beef jerky, and his nights flirting with Deanna at the Spittoon. He hates Marshall Darrow, and has sworn he's going to gun him down. Jimmy hasn't seen his penis nor his toes in 15 years, and his XXXXL gun-belt was custom made by the local saddle maker.
Jenny Laredo- Jimmy's wife.
Western Belle- The local madam. Belle runs an honest brothel, and makes a pretty penny on the side playing cards with the drunks at the Spittoon. She has recently emptied the pockets of Jimmy with a royal flush to his pair of threes. She knew he was bluffing the whole time.
Morning Dove- Formerly one of Belle's girls, who traded her black lace garters for a pair of overalls. Dove is the the first woman west of the Mississippi to own 4000 acres, and spends most of her time raising horses. Recently wed, Dove is a no-nonsense type, who will kick a man in the balls if he calls he "darlin'"
Dr. Jay- The Fairplay physician and Morning Dove's husband. The townfolk call him Rambunctious J. He specializes in treating gunshot wounds, but also believes that the "human mind is capable of amazing healing power." Davey the lonely poet likes to throw rocks through Dr. Jay's office windows out of spite and envy. (Davey longs for the attention of Morning Dove.)
Michael Masterson- A Civil War vet who carries with him dark memories of the conflict. He longs for peace and quiet, and lives in a ranch on the outside of town with his wife. He is the object of Deanna's almost obsessive attention, but wants no part of that. He is a married man, who is faithful to his wife. To him, honesty is everything.
Helen- A deeply disturbed woman who lives in a small cabin with 13 cats. The only time Helen comes out of her cabin is to shout obscenities at the passing stagecoach.
Tupelo Tom- A transplant from Mississippi who runs the local eatery. His recipe for flank steak is kept in a strong box in Marshall Darrow's office. Tom is a deeply spiritual man, who believes in tolerance of all faiths, and is therefore hated by Joey Vittles XII. Vittles has condemned Tupelo Tom to hell, which caused Tom to pray for Joey Vittles.
Keistus- The Fairplay blacksmith. A man with the power to crush a human skull with his bare hands, but who uses his power for good. Keistus lives with his wife and daughters, and enjoys trips to the seashore. Since the seashore is 2 weeks away by coach, Keistus looks forward to his first train ride on the newly laid Overland Route.
Nomo Isonista- A latin beauty who writes for the Fairplay Fair Player. Her 5 part series on outdoor living and recreation won the Colorado Outdoor Living and Recreation Award for outstanding writing. Nomo loves her family, travels extensively, and enjoys swimming in the nude. Her moonshine is said to be useful for removing rust from wagon wheel axles.
Smithers- A local farmer who built a log cabin using only his hands. His tomatoes are much sought after, and it is said that the hemp dungarees he makes can also be used as heating fuel. Once a year the entire town of Fairplay (except for Jimmy Laredo who has never been invited) puts on their finest and turns up at Smithers' cabin for "BLT Day." Smithers serves up what he calls "Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato sandwiches" and mason jars full of Isonista's moonshine before the big square dance. It's always the event of the year.
Lobo- A transplant from the Arizona Territory. Nobody knows much about Lobo, although he has an abiding love of his country and looks forward to trips into the mountains with his family. He had an eye shot out in the Mexican-American War and was an original signer of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Monducmo- The bartender and owner of the Spittoon. Keeps a sawed off shotgun under the counter. Never cuts his booze. Once was asked the difference between whiskey and whisky to which he replied "Whiskey is Hibernian and whisky is hibernating in Scotland. Have an Irish whiskey here, or have a whisky there."
Seamus O'Dublin- Writer and cooper. His barrels are said to be the finest on earth, and he ships butter churns, hogsheads, firskins, rundlets and puncheons to places as far away as China and Johannesburg. Quality is his trademark, and it is said that he will smash a hogshead if it's off by so much as a quarter of an imperial gallon. His writing is his passion along with his family, and woe to any man who threatens either. Legend holds that he once held a hungry wolverine at bay for two days using a single barrel stave,.. at one point in the standoff his father sipped a pint of Guinness and asked "What's taking so long? This procrastination is postively criminal ya gobshite. Kill the damned thing and let's eat!"
Other characters-
Tartan Tim- The editor of the Fairplay Fair Player
Shocked Quartz- One of Belle's girls.
Heartful Gold- Another of Belle's girls.
Brilliant Blondie- Golden haired owner of the dry goods store.
Thank Goddness- One of Ike's trusted deputees.
Don Toronto- Transplanted Canadian fur trapper
Elizabeth "Bitty" Tweet- Author and part-time bouncer at the Spittoon.
Jackson Dee- One armed lawyer who defends horse thieves and cattle rustlers.
Dr. Nome- Fairplay dentist, Alaskan transplant who left in protest of Seward's Folly.
Sorvus- Stagecoach driver
Simon Freud- Fairplay treasurer, and poker dealer at the Spittoon.
Schmalz- The town carpenter
"Flaming Posse"
Act I- A dark, run down cabin on the hill. Davey looks into a broken mirror.
Davey- I hate you.
(Davey puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. The gun misfires. Davey begins crying.)
Act II- Late night at the Spittoon. Smoke filled room. Keistus is playing rags on an old upright piano with several missing keys.
Jimmy Laredo- I'm tellin' ya Lincoln had it comin'! Next thing ya know them darkies'll be a votin'. Hiya hot britches. What's yer name?
Monducmo- You ever going to pay yer tab Jimmy?
Jimmy- My wife has all my money. I'll get you next time. C'mere Deanna. Anyone ever tell you that you've got beautiful eyes?
Deanna- Oh Jimmy. You are such a gentleman. How about you do that thing for me tonight?
Jimmy- If I told ya once I told ya a hunnert times, I don't do that.
(Deanna walks away dejected. Ike Darrow enters. Jimmy stares at him with fire in his eyes.)
Ike- (sniffing the air)- I swear Jimmy, if I didn't know better I'd think we were in the midst of a desulfurization run. Dear god man, don't you ever bathe?
Jimmy- I took me a bath on Monday you rascal. If I wasn't wearin' my Sunday go-to-meetin' pants I'd take you outside and teach you a thing or two.
(Jenny Laredo enters the bar and sees her slovenly husband flirting with Deanna. She runs out crying.)
Jimmy (to Deanna)- Aw don't worry 'bout that one. She'll get over it. I keep her fed n' watered. I'm a fine upstandin' husband by my definition. Gimme a kiss honey...uh, you did gargle right?
(Jimmy sees Ike turn away and, intending to shoot the Marshall in the back reaches for his gun. His arms can't reach that far, and his fingers dangle at his side a good 8 inches from his holster.)
(Seeing this in the mirror behind Monducmo, Ike wheels around and draws his Colt.)
(Jimmy pisses his pants, a smelly yellow pool forming between his boots. Keistus stops playing and, expecting a shootout, dives behind the piano.)
Ike- Seem to be coming up a bit short there Jimmy. Why don't you back away real slowly, and I won't shoot you full the dense, ductile, very malleable element known as lead.
Jimmy- Huh?
(Ike smiles and walks up to the bar. He sits down on one of the fine oak O'Dublin bar stools.)
Ike- Whiskey if you please, and send one to the carpenter over in the corner.
(Monnducmo delivers the whiskey to Schmalz, and tells him it's from Ike. Schmalz looks over at Ike and nods his appreciation. They hoist their glasses and toast from across the room.)
To be continued....
19 January 2010
Once and for all folks
Once and for all folks---there IS a Heartstorm Press.
by Inkberrow
01/19/2010, 7:07 PM #
I think everyone can agree it is well-past time to write the ending to this sordid chapter of Fray history, and with this post I propose to do just that. Despite some uncharitable suggestions to the contrary over the years, I have learned not only that Heartstorm Press is a legitimate publishing house, but that its very name reflects the heroic struggle of its primary contributor to overcome seemingly unbearable heartbreak and loss, as the result of a painful divorce in late middle age. Loneliness, self-doubt, apprehension, anger, a gnawing sense of inadequacy and failure----these are the wages of virtually any divorce, under the best of circumstances. Now imagine the impact of unwished-for divorce upon a person who is otherwise the perfect person and spouse in every imaginable way. How does reconciling oneself to the Single Life Again in middle age really work for a beautiful, trim, slim, curvaceous, preternaturally youthful, witty, patriotic, progressive, multilingual, worldly, sophisticated, humor-filled, loving, generous, educated feminist yet insufficiently beloved spouse, who also happens to be a talented poet and a well-respected Fray regular?
The answer? Violent, wholesomely aggressive catharsis, by way of serial sexual improprieties and codependence with men of doubtful sincerity and worthiness, so as to inculcate a new feelings of superiority. And violent, aggressive catharsis in the form of heart-rending, stormy, lyric verse .....for Heartstorm Press, a legitimate publishing house created specifically to help pass the gall stone of divorce through creative visualization. Yea, the kidney stone of cruel failure, in the romantic relationship that matters most of all. (But let none call it a failure! More at mutual utility, if anything, a result to celebrate) Here once again after a long absence, is that signature poem which more than any other poem, by the writer who more than any other writer, made Heartstorm Press. The powerful piece which follows, by this woman, whose grit, single-mindedness, and raw courage unites with astonishing sensitivity and an undeniable poetic gift, will take the reader, like it or not, at breakneck speed through the very gamut of human emotions. And for those of us Fray regulars, a triumphant, celebrated career oeuvre is simultaneously explained and justified to anyone's satisfaction. Let no one henceforth dare question why she is what she is, or does what she is does. She shall tell us what is and is not, and we shall be the better for it, if within her ambit and good graces we are permitted to remain. Here, then, somewhat long, but well-worth the trip, is......
"N" is for Nightmares, by Colopoete (a nom de plume)
In Memoriam connubium, 2/15/98
Some nights are better
those nights when men
will come and stay,
blessing me with some company,
a respite from all this, but
some nights, men will not
come, or they come, but do not stay.
In their place slips the insidious
reminder, the chalk white
outline of Him from
the clouds, as white
as the White Cliffs of Dover,
chalky as White Sands---
though gypsum---
which so resembles tzatziki,
seen from thirty-thousand feet.
Then from the right side
of the three a.m. eye screen,
always from the right,
always one hand,
my dark quick hand
sleekly slides
the thin silver blade
(always from the right)
of a freshly sharpened knife
(like a midnight assassin, though
it is just before nine a.m.)
deftly across the neck of my
once-husband, our faithless
hawk-eyed pilot who wanted
nothing more than to fly his
elegant purple bird
across gleaming silver-blue
skies, sunny and cloud-lit,
to any place where I was not.
My dark hand completes
its slice, an elegant motion
corrupted by its deadly
mission, and
grabs the joystick
of his purple plane
as it heads for the hangar
of his glittering paramour
then, it falls to the cock-pit
floor, as my gleaming silver bird
knifes precisely into his
stunning, imperious lover,
Osterizer now.
The white neck slit,
the foul usurper's smirk
the deep blood flowing
the upscale catered food
and carafes of
Napa Valley red....all fall
together and melt,
Along with the now
black cloud, my melted
heart, complexes of
bitterness and hate,
thousands of days
thousands of nights
ten of thousands of posts
to unworthy posters on
unworthy fray boards
All surprised, all ash now
all bone, all gray now
all cloud. All dust now
one vast Cremation urn
on the mantle of a once-husband
caught fatally unaware.
Copyright Colopoete 2001, Heartstorm Press
Dedicated to all those who did not survive my marriage, and to my ex-husband, who did.
inkberrow
by Inkberrow
01/19/2010, 7:07 PM #
I think everyone can agree it is well-past time to write the ending to this sordid chapter of Fray history, and with this post I propose to do just that. Despite some uncharitable suggestions to the contrary over the years, I have learned not only that Heartstorm Press is a legitimate publishing house, but that its very name reflects the heroic struggle of its primary contributor to overcome seemingly unbearable heartbreak and loss, as the result of a painful divorce in late middle age. Loneliness, self-doubt, apprehension, anger, a gnawing sense of inadequacy and failure----these are the wages of virtually any divorce, under the best of circumstances. Now imagine the impact of unwished-for divorce upon a person who is otherwise the perfect person and spouse in every imaginable way. How does reconciling oneself to the Single Life Again in middle age really work for a beautiful, trim, slim, curvaceous, preternaturally youthful, witty, patriotic, progressive, multilingual, worldly, sophisticated, humor-filled, loving, generous, educated feminist yet insufficiently beloved spouse, who also happens to be a talented poet and a well-respected Fray regular?
The answer? Violent, wholesomely aggressive catharsis, by way of serial sexual improprieties and codependence with men of doubtful sincerity and worthiness, so as to inculcate a new feelings of superiority. And violent, aggressive catharsis in the form of heart-rending, stormy, lyric verse .....for Heartstorm Press, a legitimate publishing house created specifically to help pass the gall stone of divorce through creative visualization. Yea, the kidney stone of cruel failure, in the romantic relationship that matters most of all. (But let none call it a failure! More at mutual utility, if anything, a result to celebrate) Here once again after a long absence, is that signature poem which more than any other poem, by the writer who more than any other writer, made Heartstorm Press. The powerful piece which follows, by this woman, whose grit, single-mindedness, and raw courage unites with astonishing sensitivity and an undeniable poetic gift, will take the reader, like it or not, at breakneck speed through the very gamut of human emotions. And for those of us Fray regulars, a triumphant, celebrated career oeuvre is simultaneously explained and justified to anyone's satisfaction. Let no one henceforth dare question why she is what she is, or does what she is does. She shall tell us what is and is not, and we shall be the better for it, if within her ambit and good graces we are permitted to remain. Here, then, somewhat long, but well-worth the trip, is......
"N" is for Nightmares, by Colopoete (a nom de plume)
In Memoriam connubium, 2/15/98
Some nights are better
those nights when men
will come and stay,
blessing me with some company,
a respite from all this, but
some nights, men will not
come, or they come, but do not stay.
In their place slips the insidious
reminder, the chalk white
outline of Him from
the clouds, as white
as the White Cliffs of Dover,
chalky as White Sands---
though gypsum---
which so resembles tzatziki,
seen from thirty-thousand feet.
Then from the right side
of the three a.m. eye screen,
always from the right,
always one hand,
my dark quick hand
sleekly slides
the thin silver blade
(always from the right)
of a freshly sharpened knife
(like a midnight assassin, though
it is just before nine a.m.)
deftly across the neck of my
once-husband, our faithless
hawk-eyed pilot who wanted
nothing more than to fly his
elegant purple bird
across gleaming silver-blue
skies, sunny and cloud-lit,
to any place where I was not.
My dark hand completes
its slice, an elegant motion
corrupted by its deadly
mission, and
grabs the joystick
of his purple plane
as it heads for the hangar
of his glittering paramour
then, it falls to the cock-pit
floor, as my gleaming silver bird
knifes precisely into his
stunning, imperious lover,
Osterizer now.
The white neck slit,
the foul usurper's smirk
the deep blood flowing
the upscale catered food
and carafes of
Napa Valley red....all fall
together and melt,
Along with the now
black cloud, my melted
heart, complexes of
bitterness and hate,
thousands of days
thousands of nights
ten of thousands of posts
to unworthy posters on
unworthy fray boards
All surprised, all ash now
all bone, all gray now
all cloud. All dust now
one vast Cremation urn
on the mantle of a once-husband
caught fatally unaware.
Copyright Colopoete 2001, Heartstorm Press
Dedicated to all those who did not survive my marriage, and to my ex-husband, who did.
inkberrow
12 October 2009
Signs of Life
Signs of Life
by JackDallas
10/12/2009, 7:58 AM #
I often wake up very early, sometimes around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and can’t go back to sleep. This morning I descended the stairs and headed for the kitchen to get a glass of milk, check on the dogs and just look around.
In the foyer my foot hits an object and sends it scooting across the floor and, in the dark and quiet house, a familiar tune disturbs the silence, as red and green lights start flashing. The tune was Popeye The Sailor Man, not the words but the tink tink of electronic cords that emanated from the little plastic toy.
A few days ago it was raining and my shoes were muddy when I came home. I took them off in the mud room, next to the kitchen, and left them there to dry so I could go back later and knock the mud off. When I returned, one shoe was missing. Annoyed but not mad, I searched the house and found the shoe in the toy box, laces untied and pulled out except for the two bottom holes where I tie them in a knot.
Last night I left the TV remote control on the side of my chair while I went to the bathroom. When I came back the clicker was gone. An extensive search found the thing under my chair with the batteries missing. An even more extensive search discovered the batteries in the arm rest pocket of my chair.
He knows how to open the cabinet doors just enough to reach in and unhook the mechanism that is supposed to prevent his entry. Pots and pans are always on the kitchen floor and often are found in other parts of the house.
I was not too surprised to see a small handprint, in jelly, on the window by the patio. Chairs are now being used to ascend to the tops of tables and are being dragged over to counters to facilitate the experience of discovering things once out of reach. The gate, that was intended to keep him from climbing the stairs to the marvelous mysteries of that nether region, now merely slow him down for a moment. He often shows up in my upstairs office, unannounced and looking for trouble.
He must have a bite or a sip of anything I eat or drink. He insists on sitting in my recliner with me. He never stays long but comes and goes as he pleases. He wears a shirt with a message on it that says, Blame it on the dog.
He is fifteen months old now. Two years ago he did not exist. I could not imagine him. I was not thinking of him; I was not hoping for him. I did not long for him or even want him; but to live without him now is not an option. The beat of his heart sustains mine and his smile makes me want to live forever.
Jack Dallas
by JackDallas
10/12/2009, 7:58 AM #
I often wake up very early, sometimes around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and can’t go back to sleep. This morning I descended the stairs and headed for the kitchen to get a glass of milk, check on the dogs and just look around.
In the foyer my foot hits an object and sends it scooting across the floor and, in the dark and quiet house, a familiar tune disturbs the silence, as red and green lights start flashing. The tune was Popeye The Sailor Man, not the words but the tink tink of electronic cords that emanated from the little plastic toy.
A few days ago it was raining and my shoes were muddy when I came home. I took them off in the mud room, next to the kitchen, and left them there to dry so I could go back later and knock the mud off. When I returned, one shoe was missing. Annoyed but not mad, I searched the house and found the shoe in the toy box, laces untied and pulled out except for the two bottom holes where I tie them in a knot.
Last night I left the TV remote control on the side of my chair while I went to the bathroom. When I came back the clicker was gone. An extensive search found the thing under my chair with the batteries missing. An even more extensive search discovered the batteries in the arm rest pocket of my chair.
He knows how to open the cabinet doors just enough to reach in and unhook the mechanism that is supposed to prevent his entry. Pots and pans are always on the kitchen floor and often are found in other parts of the house.
I was not too surprised to see a small handprint, in jelly, on the window by the patio. Chairs are now being used to ascend to the tops of tables and are being dragged over to counters to facilitate the experience of discovering things once out of reach. The gate, that was intended to keep him from climbing the stairs to the marvelous mysteries of that nether region, now merely slow him down for a moment. He often shows up in my upstairs office, unannounced and looking for trouble.
He must have a bite or a sip of anything I eat or drink. He insists on sitting in my recliner with me. He never stays long but comes and goes as he pleases. He wears a shirt with a message on it that says, Blame it on the dog.
He is fifteen months old now. Two years ago he did not exist. I could not imagine him. I was not thinking of him; I was not hoping for him. I did not long for him or even want him; but to live without him now is not an option. The beat of his heart sustains mine and his smile makes me want to live forever.
Jack Dallas
10 August 2009
As the Trailer Court Turns
As the Trailer Court Turns
by Fritz Gerlich
08/10/2009, 8:30 PM #
Gregor Samsa runs one of the biggest identity-theft rings in the United States. It's made him very, very wealthy. He's considering seeking the Republican nomination for governor of his state.
seasquirt had a brief affair with Demosthenes2. It ended with each blaming the other for wrecking his/her marriage. seasquirt has since joined an evangelical church. Demo is in treatment for sex addiction.
To rejuvenate his flagging career, Archaeopteryx started claiming sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker. He also sold a fake stuffed ivory-bill to a Saudi prince for $15,000.
another liberal is an associate minister in an evangelical megachurch. He is currently agonizing over his furtive gay affair with one of the young adult leaders.
TenaciousK is a BATF agent currently posted in Provo, Utah. His specialty is arson.
Camille Claudel is afraid of flying. In his spare time, he likes popping bubble wrap. Also, putting cornstarch in a pan, covering it with water, and then slowly letting his fingers sink into it.
Angel of Dearth has been a paraplegic since Desert Storm. He lives in Berkeley, California, where he is a legendary go player in public parks.
Dawn Coyote spent time in juvy after a suspicious fatal accident killed her little sister. They didn't charge her with anything, though. Not enough evidence.
topazz is a compulsive credit card binger. Two bankruptcies, to date. She also goes to confession compulsively. The priests shudder when they see her coming.
TheBell, a once-successful personal injury lawyer, is now almost totally ruined by his drinking. He's tried rehab, AA, hypnosis, you name it. Nothing works.
skitch is one of those TSA guys that opens your luggage. He likes to feel ladies' underwear.
Schmutzie's got a clever thing going. The window business is just a front. He sets up turnkey meth labs and sells them to gangs--for a cool $75K cash, each.
Isonomist got fired from her last job for sending—from her work computer--e-mails containing threats and obscenity to candidates for public office.
Fritz Gerlich operates a motel-gift shop outside Wasilla, where he grows, smokes, and sells a lot of pot. He’s also tried selling bogus stories about the Palin family to the media.
daveto is a bigshot businessman and a transvestite. He posts pictures of himself in drag on a website called "The Me I'd Like To Be." He favors frilly wedding gowns.
biteoftheweek is a fat Mormon lady who spends all day in front of the computer in haircurlers. She loves to fantasize about having a "cute husband."
DallasNE used to be big in Tom DeLay campaigns. Now he’s trying, without much success, to market himself to the Ron Paul outfit.
run75567 has been trying to get his Marine Corps discharge upgraded to "honorable" for almost 40 years.
august’s wife has twice had him arrested twice on domestic violence charges. He says the anger management classes are helping, but his wife still doesn't want him back in the apartment.
Inkberrow has a well-regarded political commentary blog. He supports it by writing soft porn for young ladies under the pseudonym "Candy Standish."
ThyGoddess is a checkout clerk in a PigglyWiggly store. She had a nice little dominatrix sideline for quite a few years, but she's getting too old for that now.
MaryAnne is a cocaine mule, reputedly one of the best in the business.
Dr. No. manages a convenience store in Pecan Acres, Texas. His real passion is attending Star Trek conventions.
Schadenfreude is a defrocked priest currently teaching freshman composition at a minor campus in Alberta. His real passion is drinking himself to death.
RonB52 is a retired championship motocross racer. He has trophies, plaques and medals all over his house. He loves it when his grandchildren visit and he can tell them stories of his most thrilling races.
artandsoul is married to a Cuban whose business she never asks about.
Urquhart is an African-American personal care attendant in Cookeville, Tennessee. He is so skilled, thoughtful and courteous that the agency who books him has long had to maintain a waiting list for his services.
skeptical2 has been a patient at Bridgewater State Hospital since he was involuntarily committed 51 years ago (for no other reason, apparently, than that he was publicly intoxicated). He has been trying ever since, without success, to get a court to review his commitment order.
fritz gerlich
by Fritz Gerlich
08/10/2009, 8:30 PM #
Gregor Samsa runs one of the biggest identity-theft rings in the United States. It's made him very, very wealthy. He's considering seeking the Republican nomination for governor of his state.
seasquirt had a brief affair with Demosthenes2. It ended with each blaming the other for wrecking his/her marriage. seasquirt has since joined an evangelical church. Demo is in treatment for sex addiction.
To rejuvenate his flagging career, Archaeopteryx started claiming sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker. He also sold a fake stuffed ivory-bill to a Saudi prince for $15,000.
another liberal is an associate minister in an evangelical megachurch. He is currently agonizing over his furtive gay affair with one of the young adult leaders.
TenaciousK is a BATF agent currently posted in Provo, Utah. His specialty is arson.
Camille Claudel is afraid of flying. In his spare time, he likes popping bubble wrap. Also, putting cornstarch in a pan, covering it with water, and then slowly letting his fingers sink into it.
Angel of Dearth has been a paraplegic since Desert Storm. He lives in Berkeley, California, where he is a legendary go player in public parks.
Dawn Coyote spent time in juvy after a suspicious fatal accident killed her little sister. They didn't charge her with anything, though. Not enough evidence.
topazz is a compulsive credit card binger. Two bankruptcies, to date. She also goes to confession compulsively. The priests shudder when they see her coming.
TheBell, a once-successful personal injury lawyer, is now almost totally ruined by his drinking. He's tried rehab, AA, hypnosis, you name it. Nothing works.
skitch is one of those TSA guys that opens your luggage. He likes to feel ladies' underwear.
Schmutzie's got a clever thing going. The window business is just a front. He sets up turnkey meth labs and sells them to gangs--for a cool $75K cash, each.
Isonomist got fired from her last job for sending—from her work computer--e-mails containing threats and obscenity to candidates for public office.
Fritz Gerlich operates a motel-gift shop outside Wasilla, where he grows, smokes, and sells a lot of pot. He’s also tried selling bogus stories about the Palin family to the media.
daveto is a bigshot businessman and a transvestite. He posts pictures of himself in drag on a website called "The Me I'd Like To Be." He favors frilly wedding gowns.
biteoftheweek is a fat Mormon lady who spends all day in front of the computer in haircurlers. She loves to fantasize about having a "cute husband."
DallasNE used to be big in Tom DeLay campaigns. Now he’s trying, without much success, to market himself to the Ron Paul outfit.
run75567 has been trying to get his Marine Corps discharge upgraded to "honorable" for almost 40 years.
august’s wife has twice had him arrested twice on domestic violence charges. He says the anger management classes are helping, but his wife still doesn't want him back in the apartment.
Inkberrow has a well-regarded political commentary blog. He supports it by writing soft porn for young ladies under the pseudonym "Candy Standish."
ThyGoddess is a checkout clerk in a PigglyWiggly store. She had a nice little dominatrix sideline for quite a few years, but she's getting too old for that now.
MaryAnne is a cocaine mule, reputedly one of the best in the business.
Dr. No. manages a convenience store in Pecan Acres, Texas. His real passion is attending Star Trek conventions.
Schadenfreude is a defrocked priest currently teaching freshman composition at a minor campus in Alberta. His real passion is drinking himself to death.
RonB52 is a retired championship motocross racer. He has trophies, plaques and medals all over his house. He loves it when his grandchildren visit and he can tell them stories of his most thrilling races.
artandsoul is married to a Cuban whose business she never asks about.
Urquhart is an African-American personal care attendant in Cookeville, Tennessee. He is so skilled, thoughtful and courteous that the agency who books him has long had to maintain a waiting list for his services.
skeptical2 has been a patient at Bridgewater State Hospital since he was involuntarily committed 51 years ago (for no other reason, apparently, than that he was publicly intoxicated). He has been trying ever since, without success, to get a court to review his commitment order.
fritz gerlich
06 August 2009
The Fray Mutiny
[click image for a better view]
The Fray Mutiny
by Schmutzie
08/06/2009, 11:03 AM #
What a vile creature. What a snake in the grass, that Lt. Tom Keefer.
Always there, but hiding from plain sight. Lurking in the shadows, afraid of the light of day.
Lt. Tom Keefer's behind the scenes meddling was the source of much misery in Herman Wouk's book, The Caine Mutiny. Misery for Capt. Queeg, and misery for those who fell for his mind games. Many thought Keefer was looking out for the good of the Caine, and considered his advice when he urged them to relieve Queeg of command. Keefer called Queeg a "textbook paranoid" after Queeg ordered a top to bottom search of the vessel to locate what he was sure were some missing strawberries.
Initially they were reluctant, but when confronted by a terrible storm, Lt Stephen Maryk and Willie Kieth (the first person narrator in the book) finally acted on Keefer's advice, and siezed control of the Caine. They were charged with mutiny.
At the trial, Keefer testifies that he had no role in the "mutiny" and implies that he tried to talk Keith and Maryk out of taking over the ship. A classic coward captured beautifully by Wouk.
Only at the end, and grudgingly, does the lawyer Lt Barney Greenwald trash the career of Queeg in order to protect his client Maryk. He breaks him down on the stand until the only thing left were 3 stainless steel ball bearings. Greenwald feels much guilt for breaking a lifetime naval officer, but he had to protect his client.
In the book, Greenwald shows up at Maryk's celebration party, drunk. He unloads on Keefer in front of everyone, telling them of Keefer's about-face on the stand. He then throws yellow wine in Keefer's face (the symbolism a reference to Queeg's nickname Old Yellowstain) and calls Keefer the "true author of the Caine Mutiny." (In the movie, Jose Ferrer as Greenwald throws what looks to be a martini.)
You just knew it had to happen. It was only a matter of time, and the only question was "When?"
Well now it's all out there isn't it?
The martini has been thrown in Keefer's face so many times here that I'm surprised Tom can even see.
This would be a good time to exit the stage Tom. There is no smoothing over this one. You have been exposed by one of your former shipmates. The disgrace is total, and if you have any dignity left you'll pack it in your seabag and head for shore.
You are the true Yellowstain.
schmutzie
22 July 2009
Laudator temporis actis
Laudator temporis actis
by Fritz Gerlich
07/22/2009, 1:10 AM #
It started years ago, when first boys, and then young men, and then even middle-aged men, began wearing their baseball caps backward. I simply cannot imagine anything that could make a man look stupider. What, what is wrong with them, I wondered. A generation of zombies.
Actually, the whole baseball cap thing, forwards and backwards, was and remains weird to my generation. Aside from some Little League caps, the only such cap I ever wore in my life was in the U.S. Army, and that was a badge of servitude. I remember one of my buddies, a New York wit, sarcastically thanking the Army for the blessings it had showered on him: "Why, Sam gave me three hats! Three! When I was on the block I didn't even own one!" It's said that my generation never took to hats because John Kennedy, whose tousled, boyish look was his trademark, was almost never photographed wearing one.
So, there's hats, of all types and usages not required to protect the head from freezing.
Then they started handing you your change wrong. They announce the amount--say,$6.59--lay a five and a one together in your palm, and immediately dump a couple of quarters, a nickle, and four pennies on top of them. Now, if you're right-handed, you're probably still holding your wallet in your left hand, and you take the change with your right hand. At this point, your choices are:
1. Set your wallet on the counter, slide the coins to your left hand, put them into your pocket, pick the wallet up with your left hand, and put the bills in it.
2. If the coins are just a couple of pennies, and you can open your wallet easily with your left hand, slide the coins and the bills together into the wallet. (You will promptly forget the coins and they will fall out on the floor the next time you open your wallet.)
3. Crumple the bills around the coins and stick the whole mess in your right pocket to sort out later. That works for untidy minds. Not mine.
Although coin dispensers, which some stores have, are depressingly automated, they actually work better for the customer, who is free to put his bills away first and then pick up his coins. But what really gets me is how the old-fashioned method of counting the change out onto the counter has been so utterly lost. It's not the counting but the convention of placing the money on the counter that I miss. In that system, the customer first picks up his coins and puts them in his pocket, then puts the bills away.
I've occasionally just left my right hand at my side when the cashier begins to offer my change. What I get then is a look that says, "Don't you want your change?" I suppose I could say, "Put it on the counter, please." Yeah, sure. Then the guy looks at me like, "Do I have Ebola virus or something?" or maybe he just hits the holdup button under his cash register. No, the problem is that the old amenities have been lost. Lost.
And then there's death. Now I understand that death is sad. People really feel loss (and I must acknowledge that I have not had to feel my fair share of it, so far). But it is also a fact that sooner or later everybody, without exception, dances with the Reaper. This is why, in earlier times, most deaths and most mourning were perforce treated as relatively private matters. By "private," I mean that family and friends shared their mourning, but they did not attempt to spread it beyond the customary ceremonies and acts of kindliness posited by their culture. (Posting about the death of a loved one here, which I like many others have done, falls within the circle-of-friends rule.) Leader and celebrity deaths have always been different, for obvious reasons. But the stereotypical gangster funeral of a couple of generations ago, in which the burial of a man important only to his own "family" was treated as worthy of a spectacle, was considered the height of bad taste, a gauche attempt to manufacture respectability out of mere show.
Keeping the memory of the dead has been important in every culture, and of course family and friends have always done that in some way, usually most visibly by visiting the grave on a few special days. But, in these debased times, the lower classes (yes, I'm sure it's a class phenomenon) have taken to a brazen type of public memorialization of death that presumes that the individual they mourn is of interest to the rest of us--when in fact, he or she isn't (cf. the Reaper Rule). I refer to two types of displays that have become distressingly common where I live.
One is the roadside memorial of plastic flowers, sometimes very elaborate, with a placard bearing the name and date of death of the dear departed. It is usually in the shape of a cross, but I suppose that might vary with faith. I assume these displays mark the spots that fatal accidents occurred, but they do pop up in the most unexpected places. There is one far back on a cross-country ski trail I use, and the point at which it sits could not possibly have been the site of, say, a wipeout or high-speed collision (it's right at the top of a hill). These things are quite a visual distraction to drivers, and I understand that they have actually been banned by law in some states. But few state legislators, at least hereabouts, have the cojones to support something so "unfeeling."
The other type of display is the car window decal, usually on the rear window, reading something like, "Kanyon Kristopher Kinnock, 9/16/05 - 3/9/06, He Is Still Loved." I'm sorry, but that's just pathetic. If Kanyon were my son (or daughter?), the only thing I could do for him is vow that his/her memory would not perish while I lived. I promised Meletus that (little as it is), and so far I've kept that promise. But beyond that?--is not in my power. Nor, even if it were in my power, would it be right to thrust my testimony of loss before an undifferentiated public that didn't know Kanyon. Ah, you say: what about tombstones? Do you disapprove of those? No, of course not. I earned my kneepads in cemetery crawling long, long ago. I'm quite sure that people visiting cemeteries not only expect to see such epitaphs, they often enjoy them. But that is because they are in a cemetery, where they are expected. They are not in a mall parking lot, where they only strike a discordant note.
I intended to end this with my showpiece lament about audience behavior: how contemporary audiences don't feel bound by any rules of decorum, feel free to hold conversations at normal volume while the speaker is speaking or the performer is performing, answer their cellphones unselfconsciously, or simply get up and wander out--slowly, conspicuously, not as if they suddenly feel ill and must seek assistance--right in the middle of remarks that some invited guest might have labored over.
Of course there is a vocational angle to this; I'm used to something quite different. But I also feel that the simple ritual of being together as an audience has been lost, utterly lost. I remember taking my son, then about eight years old, to a big martial arts show at a major venue in Anchorage. I remember the kids jumping, from the auditorium, onto the stage (a traditional, curtained kind of stage with a proscenium), and thinking "That's not right." What was wrong with it? The stage is a sacred place, a place waiting to be filled with those who have been entrusted with a special, communal, purpose. Its separateness is integral to the meaning of what the performers will do. The illusion of that separateness is destroyed when members of the audience feel free to invade it, even before the performance begins. Of course, I couldn't explain these things to my son. I did my best to enjoy the excellent demonstrations that followed. I remember that one performer was a Chinese teacher. I remember his extraordinary gracefulness, so understated, so polite, in introducing his students. I remember thinking that I had never seen anybody who so completely fit any meaningful definition of "gentleman" I had ever heard. And I thought: what have we lost? Or is it only a dream that we ever had it?
fritz gerlich
by Fritz Gerlich
07/22/2009, 1:10 AM #
It started years ago, when first boys, and then young men, and then even middle-aged men, began wearing their baseball caps backward. I simply cannot imagine anything that could make a man look stupider. What, what is wrong with them, I wondered. A generation of zombies.
Actually, the whole baseball cap thing, forwards and backwards, was and remains weird to my generation. Aside from some Little League caps, the only such cap I ever wore in my life was in the U.S. Army, and that was a badge of servitude. I remember one of my buddies, a New York wit, sarcastically thanking the Army for the blessings it had showered on him: "Why, Sam gave me three hats! Three! When I was on the block I didn't even own one!" It's said that my generation never took to hats because John Kennedy, whose tousled, boyish look was his trademark, was almost never photographed wearing one.
So, there's hats, of all types and usages not required to protect the head from freezing.
Then they started handing you your change wrong. They announce the amount--say,$6.59--lay a five and a one together in your palm, and immediately dump a couple of quarters, a nickle, and four pennies on top of them. Now, if you're right-handed, you're probably still holding your wallet in your left hand, and you take the change with your right hand. At this point, your choices are:
1. Set your wallet on the counter, slide the coins to your left hand, put them into your pocket, pick the wallet up with your left hand, and put the bills in it.
2. If the coins are just a couple of pennies, and you can open your wallet easily with your left hand, slide the coins and the bills together into the wallet. (You will promptly forget the coins and they will fall out on the floor the next time you open your wallet.)
3. Crumple the bills around the coins and stick the whole mess in your right pocket to sort out later. That works for untidy minds. Not mine.
Although coin dispensers, which some stores have, are depressingly automated, they actually work better for the customer, who is free to put his bills away first and then pick up his coins. But what really gets me is how the old-fashioned method of counting the change out onto the counter has been so utterly lost. It's not the counting but the convention of placing the money on the counter that I miss. In that system, the customer first picks up his coins and puts them in his pocket, then puts the bills away.
I've occasionally just left my right hand at my side when the cashier begins to offer my change. What I get then is a look that says, "Don't you want your change?" I suppose I could say, "Put it on the counter, please." Yeah, sure. Then the guy looks at me like, "Do I have Ebola virus or something?" or maybe he just hits the holdup button under his cash register. No, the problem is that the old amenities have been lost. Lost.
And then there's death. Now I understand that death is sad. People really feel loss (and I must acknowledge that I have not had to feel my fair share of it, so far). But it is also a fact that sooner or later everybody, without exception, dances with the Reaper. This is why, in earlier times, most deaths and most mourning were perforce treated as relatively private matters. By "private," I mean that family and friends shared their mourning, but they did not attempt to spread it beyond the customary ceremonies and acts of kindliness posited by their culture. (Posting about the death of a loved one here, which I like many others have done, falls within the circle-of-friends rule.) Leader and celebrity deaths have always been different, for obvious reasons. But the stereotypical gangster funeral of a couple of generations ago, in which the burial of a man important only to his own "family" was treated as worthy of a spectacle, was considered the height of bad taste, a gauche attempt to manufacture respectability out of mere show.
Keeping the memory of the dead has been important in every culture, and of course family and friends have always done that in some way, usually most visibly by visiting the grave on a few special days. But, in these debased times, the lower classes (yes, I'm sure it's a class phenomenon) have taken to a brazen type of public memorialization of death that presumes that the individual they mourn is of interest to the rest of us--when in fact, he or she isn't (cf. the Reaper Rule). I refer to two types of displays that have become distressingly common where I live.
One is the roadside memorial of plastic flowers, sometimes very elaborate, with a placard bearing the name and date of death of the dear departed. It is usually in the shape of a cross, but I suppose that might vary with faith. I assume these displays mark the spots that fatal accidents occurred, but they do pop up in the most unexpected places. There is one far back on a cross-country ski trail I use, and the point at which it sits could not possibly have been the site of, say, a wipeout or high-speed collision (it's right at the top of a hill). These things are quite a visual distraction to drivers, and I understand that they have actually been banned by law in some states. But few state legislators, at least hereabouts, have the cojones to support something so "unfeeling."
The other type of display is the car window decal, usually on the rear window, reading something like, "Kanyon Kristopher Kinnock, 9/16/05 - 3/9/06, He Is Still Loved." I'm sorry, but that's just pathetic. If Kanyon were my son (or daughter?), the only thing I could do for him is vow that his/her memory would not perish while I lived. I promised Meletus that (little as it is), and so far I've kept that promise. But beyond that?--is not in my power. Nor, even if it were in my power, would it be right to thrust my testimony of loss before an undifferentiated public that didn't know Kanyon. Ah, you say: what about tombstones? Do you disapprove of those? No, of course not. I earned my kneepads in cemetery crawling long, long ago. I'm quite sure that people visiting cemeteries not only expect to see such epitaphs, they often enjoy them. But that is because they are in a cemetery, where they are expected. They are not in a mall parking lot, where they only strike a discordant note.
I intended to end this with my showpiece lament about audience behavior: how contemporary audiences don't feel bound by any rules of decorum, feel free to hold conversations at normal volume while the speaker is speaking or the performer is performing, answer their cellphones unselfconsciously, or simply get up and wander out--slowly, conspicuously, not as if they suddenly feel ill and must seek assistance--right in the middle of remarks that some invited guest might have labored over.
Of course there is a vocational angle to this; I'm used to something quite different. But I also feel that the simple ritual of being together as an audience has been lost, utterly lost. I remember taking my son, then about eight years old, to a big martial arts show at a major venue in Anchorage. I remember the kids jumping, from the auditorium, onto the stage (a traditional, curtained kind of stage with a proscenium), and thinking "That's not right." What was wrong with it? The stage is a sacred place, a place waiting to be filled with those who have been entrusted with a special, communal, purpose. Its separateness is integral to the meaning of what the performers will do. The illusion of that separateness is destroyed when members of the audience feel free to invade it, even before the performance begins. Of course, I couldn't explain these things to my son. I did my best to enjoy the excellent demonstrations that followed. I remember that one performer was a Chinese teacher. I remember his extraordinary gracefulness, so understated, so polite, in introducing his students. I remember thinking that I had never seen anybody who so completely fit any meaningful definition of "gentleman" I had ever heard. And I thought: what have we lost? Or is it only a dream that we ever had it?
fritz gerlich
19 July 2009
The end of verse. Again?
The end of verse.Again?
by Ted Burke
07/19/2009, 10:06 PM #
Newsweek ran a piece not long ago about a the results of a report from The National Endowment for the Arts that was a mix of good news and bad news about American reading habits; people were reading more , with increases in fiction and non fiction alike, but we were, collectively , reading less poetry. The article takes the usual dooming sensationalist slant with the article's title, The End of Verse?People love to read about funerals, I guess, or the cultural echo of re-runs have truly colonized our attention spans. This is the same used car with a new coat of paint.
There is a long history of poets and critics declaring poetry is something completely other than prose, a separate art approximating a form of meta-writing that penetrates the circumscribed certainties of words and makes them work harder, in service to imagination, to reveal the ambiguity that is at the center of a literate population's perception. An elitist art, in other words, that by the sort of linguistic magic the poet generates sharpens the reader's wits; it would be interesting if someone conducted a study of the spread of manifestos , from competing schools of writing, left and right, over the last couple hundred of years and see if there is connecting insistence at the heart of the respective arguments .
What they'd find among other things, I think, is a general wish to liberate the slumbering population from the doldrums of generic narrative formulation and bring them to a higher, sharper, more crystalline understanding of the elusive quality of Truth; part of what makes poetry interesting is not just the actual verse interesting (and less interesting ) poets produce, but also their rationale as to why they concern themselves with making words do oddly rhythmic things. Each poet who is any good and each poet who is miserable as an artists remains, by nature, didactic ,chatty, and narcissistic to the degree that , as a species , they are convinced that their ability to turn a memorable ( or at least striking phrase) is a key with which others may unlock Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The lecturing component is only as interesting as good as the individual writer can be--not all word slingers have equal access to solid ideas or an intriguing grasp on innovative language--but the majority of readers don't want to be edified. They prefer entertainment to enlightenment six and half days out of the week, devouring Oprah book club recommendations at an even clip; the impulse with book buyers is distraction, a diversion from the noise of he world. Poetry, even the clearest and most conventional of verse , is seen as only putting one deeper into the insoluble tangle of experience. Not that it's a bad thing, by default, to be distracted, as I love my super hero movies and shoot 'em ups rather than movies with subtitles, and I don't think it's an awful thing for poetry to have a small audience. In fact, I wouldn't mind at all if all the money spent on trying to expand the audience were spent on more modest presentations. The audience is small, so what has changed?
ted burke
http://ted-burke.blogspot.com/
by Ted Burke
07/19/2009, 10:06 PM #
Newsweek ran a piece not long ago about a the results of a report from The National Endowment for the Arts that was a mix of good news and bad news about American reading habits; people were reading more , with increases in fiction and non fiction alike, but we were, collectively , reading less poetry. The article takes the usual dooming sensationalist slant with the article's title, The End of Verse?People love to read about funerals, I guess, or the cultural echo of re-runs have truly colonized our attention spans. This is the same used car with a new coat of paint.
There is a long history of poets and critics declaring poetry is something completely other than prose, a separate art approximating a form of meta-writing that penetrates the circumscribed certainties of words and makes them work harder, in service to imagination, to reveal the ambiguity that is at the center of a literate population's perception. An elitist art, in other words, that by the sort of linguistic magic the poet generates sharpens the reader's wits; it would be interesting if someone conducted a study of the spread of manifestos , from competing schools of writing, left and right, over the last couple hundred of years and see if there is connecting insistence at the heart of the respective arguments .
What they'd find among other things, I think, is a general wish to liberate the slumbering population from the doldrums of generic narrative formulation and bring them to a higher, sharper, more crystalline understanding of the elusive quality of Truth; part of what makes poetry interesting is not just the actual verse interesting (and less interesting ) poets produce, but also their rationale as to why they concern themselves with making words do oddly rhythmic things. Each poet who is any good and each poet who is miserable as an artists remains, by nature, didactic ,chatty, and narcissistic to the degree that , as a species , they are convinced that their ability to turn a memorable ( or at least striking phrase) is a key with which others may unlock Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The lecturing component is only as interesting as good as the individual writer can be--not all word slingers have equal access to solid ideas or an intriguing grasp on innovative language--but the majority of readers don't want to be edified. They prefer entertainment to enlightenment six and half days out of the week, devouring Oprah book club recommendations at an even clip; the impulse with book buyers is distraction, a diversion from the noise of he world. Poetry, even the clearest and most conventional of verse , is seen as only putting one deeper into the insoluble tangle of experience. Not that it's a bad thing, by default, to be distracted, as I love my super hero movies and shoot 'em ups rather than movies with subtitles, and I don't think it's an awful thing for poetry to have a small audience. In fact, I wouldn't mind at all if all the money spent on trying to expand the audience were spent on more modest presentations. The audience is small, so what has changed?
ted burke
http://ted-burke.blogspot.com/
15 July 2009
Interview with a Coffee Cup
Interview with a Coffee Cup
by august
07/15/2009, 10:31 PM #
Me: Where do you work?
CC: In a diner.
Me: Do you enjoy your work?
CC: In fact I do. It's a pleasant diner. People come in, have eggs or a doughnut, chat. The TV isn't on too loud. Plenty of regulars.
Me: Is it a problem, getting so close to people?
CC: I imagine a number of the customers are bad kissers! (Laughs) No, it's all part of the job. Some folks sip and others slurp, but it's not a problem. You pay your money, the last thing you want is trouble from your coffee cup. I'm happy.
Me: I guess you could get philosophical about it. You're an absence that's also a presence, the emptiness that is filled but never truly filled, like an uncarved block or atman or something. You are the morning negation.
CC: (Laughs)I just don't think you can think that way. It's a job. I mean, I understand how some folks see a noble grandeur or deep meaning or whatever in what they do, and that works for them, but it's not me, you know? I know what I need to do and I do it. At the end of the day, I'm a mug.
Me: You aren't apolitical though. I hear you're an anarchist.
CC: I'm afraid I started that rumor. A guy from Rolling Stone was interviewing me and he was just so annoying I told him I was an anarchist. The idiot believed me. An anarchist coffee cup! He got fired.
Me: So how do you pass the time?
CC: I'm a student of my world, of diners. I like the way people walk in and just start talking to each other. They seem to find the diner safe. It's odd -- objectively the place doesn't look much different from a waiting room, but people react to it much differently. I think their lives are blank, and they find the place comforting.
Me: I think you're right. I tend to go to diners when I'm very tired yet hopped up on coffee, and the place feels calming.
CC: I think people in that state, they tend to throw their emotions onto the world.
Me: Exactly! My dreams are like that. I used to think that they were wholly two-dimensional, and what gave them added dimension was my emotional reaction to them. So if a wall of water appeared, I could perceive no depth, but what made it feel deep was that that flat space signaled profound fears.
CC: I see. Yes, I think people do that with coffee sometimes as well. When they break down, it's rather horrible.
Me: But the diner mostly cancels that out. Formica in two, three dimensions is not going to be a fraught surface. It's not like the surface of the ocean or the eyes of a serial killer. It's just there.
CC: And it has coffee on it! It's true. Mostly people come in, sit down, drink coffee. For the time they are with me they seem collected, contained.
Me: You must get some satisfaction from that.
CC: I do. Absolutely I do. I'm not saying it's all me -- obviously there are a lot of elements that contribute to the effect, but I do my part, and it seems to work.
august
by august
07/15/2009, 10:31 PM #
Me: Where do you work?
CC: In a diner.
Me: Do you enjoy your work?
CC: In fact I do. It's a pleasant diner. People come in, have eggs or a doughnut, chat. The TV isn't on too loud. Plenty of regulars.
Me: Is it a problem, getting so close to people?
CC: I imagine a number of the customers are bad kissers! (Laughs) No, it's all part of the job. Some folks sip and others slurp, but it's not a problem. You pay your money, the last thing you want is trouble from your coffee cup. I'm happy.
Me: I guess you could get philosophical about it. You're an absence that's also a presence, the emptiness that is filled but never truly filled, like an uncarved block or atman or something. You are the morning negation.
CC: (Laughs)I just don't think you can think that way. It's a job. I mean, I understand how some folks see a noble grandeur or deep meaning or whatever in what they do, and that works for them, but it's not me, you know? I know what I need to do and I do it. At the end of the day, I'm a mug.
Me: You aren't apolitical though. I hear you're an anarchist.
CC: I'm afraid I started that rumor. A guy from Rolling Stone was interviewing me and he was just so annoying I told him I was an anarchist. The idiot believed me. An anarchist coffee cup! He got fired.
Me: So how do you pass the time?
CC: I'm a student of my world, of diners. I like the way people walk in and just start talking to each other. They seem to find the diner safe. It's odd -- objectively the place doesn't look much different from a waiting room, but people react to it much differently. I think their lives are blank, and they find the place comforting.
Me: I think you're right. I tend to go to diners when I'm very tired yet hopped up on coffee, and the place feels calming.
CC: I think people in that state, they tend to throw their emotions onto the world.
Me: Exactly! My dreams are like that. I used to think that they were wholly two-dimensional, and what gave them added dimension was my emotional reaction to them. So if a wall of water appeared, I could perceive no depth, but what made it feel deep was that that flat space signaled profound fears.
CC: I see. Yes, I think people do that with coffee sometimes as well. When they break down, it's rather horrible.
Me: But the diner mostly cancels that out. Formica in two, three dimensions is not going to be a fraught surface. It's not like the surface of the ocean or the eyes of a serial killer. It's just there.
CC: And it has coffee on it! It's true. Mostly people come in, sit down, drink coffee. For the time they are with me they seem collected, contained.
Me: You must get some satisfaction from that.
CC: I do. Absolutely I do. I'm not saying it's all me -- obviously there are a lot of elements that contribute to the effect, but I do my part, and it seems to work.
august
11 June 2009
I love you
I love you
by Sawbones
06/11/2009, 4:50 AM #
I've always had a strange set of olfactory associations. You know what I mean, even if you don't: the way certain smells can trigger remembrance, unlocking a cascade of complicated, sometimes contradictory thoughts and emotions. Most of the associations people tend to describe are the positive ones - the aroma of fresh-baked cookies or pie in a kitchen, or of newly-mown grass on a baseball field. On the other hand, I have a friend for whom the smell of whiskey causes almost physical pain, as it recalls his father's breath and the violence associated with the two. My most potent triggers have long been combustion-related; from early childhood, I associated the smell of jet fumes with going somewhere on vacation, and the smell of diesel exhaust still brings to mind thoughts of weekend trips with my high school band (and extracurricular activities on the band bus). To this day, a brief whiff of either puts a smile on my face in the most autonomic, Pavlovian way.
But of late, another smell has come to replace those two in my olfactory hall of fame: the scent of gardenias, the smell of a return from exile. My mother-in-law has a solid wall of them on one side of her yard in New Orleans, and she is hardly alone - in the springtime, it seems that the smell is everywhere in the city. I know that the plant is not unique to the place, but as that was where I first smelled it, its flowers are inextricably bound up in and intertwined with most of my memories of living there. During the time I have been away, there have been moments in which I chanced upon echoes of the scent, either in the form of an actual gardenia growing here in St. Louis or elsewhere, or in some perfume, air freshener, or the like. Now, in these last days before I finally make my way back down south, it seems as if the response is becoming stronger with each passing moment. Sometimes I swear I can feel the sun draped on my shoulders as I watch the Mississippi ooze by from the top of the levee, or the catch of my toe on one of the innumerable sidewalk tiles tilted skyward by plate tectonics and live-oak roots.
It is an odd feeling to be coming back to a place that feels so familiar, yet has changed so thoroughly. For one thing, its local economy is actually doing pretty well; New Orleans always tends to go a bit against the national tide in that respect, but I think this is something different, something deeper. it's not just that business is humming again, not just that people are coming back; rather, it's that an entire new type of person is intentionally coming there to live. Thanks in part to an energetic president who has positioned his university as one of the drivers of the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts, Tulane is overwhelmed with applicants and currently accepts a smaller percentage than any Ivy League university. Loyola next door isn't far behind. And it seems that anyone with an idea for education that hasn't been tried is coming to New Orleans to give it a shot - I can't believe I am actually saying this, but it might be the one American city where I have at least some hope for my son's chances if he goes to a public school.
A dispassionate observer would say that the flooding of 2005 might have been just what the city needed; I don't think I'll ever get to that point, as the sight of FEMA X's on doors and walls still gathers a dark, cold ball in the middle of my stomach. But I can see the logic, as it has given a city that had long been a comfortable failure the chance and the reason to reinvent itself. Even the crime that has received news coverage recently seems a bit different - I don't get the impression that it has really increased, but rather that the flood damage has forced the city's population closer together in the areas that are above sea level, so that now the violence which was once far away in the Ninth Ward is closer to where the pretty people live. Perhaps we finally have a chance to look honestly at the racial and class divisions that were always lurking beneath the surface in pre-Katrina New Orleans, a chance to make some of the wrongs right.
All of this has occupied my restless mind in the wee hours of the morning these recent weeks, and something beyond that. What happens to a love of place that is woven of very specific characteristics, if those traits begin to change? I can love my wife even as I am aware that she will change over time - the underlying assumption is that the essentials, the principles and soul and essence, will still be there even if peripheral characteristics or activities change. But is the same true of a city, particularly one in such a unique situation? Part of my love of New Orleans has always been rooted in its distinctive ethos, cheerfully fatalistic and unapologetically amotivational. They sell "Louisiana: Third World And Proud Of It" t-shirts for a reason. Living there successfully has always required a certain ability to tolerate incompetence, stupidity, slowness and general dysfunction; what will become of this if it becomes a town full of intelligent people steadily making it a better place to live? The trade-off for enduring those things has always been the chance to experience life in a way not available anywhere else in the United States. Will I still be able to eat dinner at Jacques-Imo's at a table for two in the bed of the garishly-decorated pickup truck whose rear tire is permanently perched on the sidewalk outside? When I leave there, will the Rebirth Brass Band's show at the Maple Leaf next door still be the sweaty, frenetic marathon of ass-shaking that it was before? Will people still look for even the tiniest of excuses to dress in outlandish costumes, crack open a beer or twelve, and just generally throw a party? Louisianians in general and New Orleanians in particular have always been a little larger than life, both literally and figuratively - does becoming a respectable city mean I have to lose that part forever?
For now, I am trying to tell myself that this is all going to take a while to unfold. Even if large-scale changes happen, they are going to play out over the course of multiple generations, not in a matter of a few years. In the meantime, I know exactly where to get the best po-boy, which bars have the best beer selection, and where to hear the best live music in the world. In two weeks, I will point my car toward the Gulf of Mexico and just drive. And when we get within the city limits, I'll crack open the car window a bit, feel the warm hug of the humid June air, and breathe deeply through my nose as we pass my mother-in-law's house.
Smells like home.
by Sawbones
06/11/2009, 4:50 AM #
I've always had a strange set of olfactory associations. You know what I mean, even if you don't: the way certain smells can trigger remembrance, unlocking a cascade of complicated, sometimes contradictory thoughts and emotions. Most of the associations people tend to describe are the positive ones - the aroma of fresh-baked cookies or pie in a kitchen, or of newly-mown grass on a baseball field. On the other hand, I have a friend for whom the smell of whiskey causes almost physical pain, as it recalls his father's breath and the violence associated with the two. My most potent triggers have long been combustion-related; from early childhood, I associated the smell of jet fumes with going somewhere on vacation, and the smell of diesel exhaust still brings to mind thoughts of weekend trips with my high school band (and extracurricular activities on the band bus). To this day, a brief whiff of either puts a smile on my face in the most autonomic, Pavlovian way.
But of late, another smell has come to replace those two in my olfactory hall of fame: the scent of gardenias, the smell of a return from exile. My mother-in-law has a solid wall of them on one side of her yard in New Orleans, and she is hardly alone - in the springtime, it seems that the smell is everywhere in the city. I know that the plant is not unique to the place, but as that was where I first smelled it, its flowers are inextricably bound up in and intertwined with most of my memories of living there. During the time I have been away, there have been moments in which I chanced upon echoes of the scent, either in the form of an actual gardenia growing here in St. Louis or elsewhere, or in some perfume, air freshener, or the like. Now, in these last days before I finally make my way back down south, it seems as if the response is becoming stronger with each passing moment. Sometimes I swear I can feel the sun draped on my shoulders as I watch the Mississippi ooze by from the top of the levee, or the catch of my toe on one of the innumerable sidewalk tiles tilted skyward by plate tectonics and live-oak roots.
It is an odd feeling to be coming back to a place that feels so familiar, yet has changed so thoroughly. For one thing, its local economy is actually doing pretty well; New Orleans always tends to go a bit against the national tide in that respect, but I think this is something different, something deeper. it's not just that business is humming again, not just that people are coming back; rather, it's that an entire new type of person is intentionally coming there to live. Thanks in part to an energetic president who has positioned his university as one of the drivers of the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts, Tulane is overwhelmed with applicants and currently accepts a smaller percentage than any Ivy League university. Loyola next door isn't far behind. And it seems that anyone with an idea for education that hasn't been tried is coming to New Orleans to give it a shot - I can't believe I am actually saying this, but it might be the one American city where I have at least some hope for my son's chances if he goes to a public school.
A dispassionate observer would say that the flooding of 2005 might have been just what the city needed; I don't think I'll ever get to that point, as the sight of FEMA X's on doors and walls still gathers a dark, cold ball in the middle of my stomach. But I can see the logic, as it has given a city that had long been a comfortable failure the chance and the reason to reinvent itself. Even the crime that has received news coverage recently seems a bit different - I don't get the impression that it has really increased, but rather that the flood damage has forced the city's population closer together in the areas that are above sea level, so that now the violence which was once far away in the Ninth Ward is closer to where the pretty people live. Perhaps we finally have a chance to look honestly at the racial and class divisions that were always lurking beneath the surface in pre-Katrina New Orleans, a chance to make some of the wrongs right.
All of this has occupied my restless mind in the wee hours of the morning these recent weeks, and something beyond that. What happens to a love of place that is woven of very specific characteristics, if those traits begin to change? I can love my wife even as I am aware that she will change over time - the underlying assumption is that the essentials, the principles and soul and essence, will still be there even if peripheral characteristics or activities change. But is the same true of a city, particularly one in such a unique situation? Part of my love of New Orleans has always been rooted in its distinctive ethos, cheerfully fatalistic and unapologetically amotivational. They sell "Louisiana: Third World And Proud Of It" t-shirts for a reason. Living there successfully has always required a certain ability to tolerate incompetence, stupidity, slowness and general dysfunction; what will become of this if it becomes a town full of intelligent people steadily making it a better place to live? The trade-off for enduring those things has always been the chance to experience life in a way not available anywhere else in the United States. Will I still be able to eat dinner at Jacques-Imo's at a table for two in the bed of the garishly-decorated pickup truck whose rear tire is permanently perched on the sidewalk outside? When I leave there, will the Rebirth Brass Band's show at the Maple Leaf next door still be the sweaty, frenetic marathon of ass-shaking that it was before? Will people still look for even the tiniest of excuses to dress in outlandish costumes, crack open a beer or twelve, and just generally throw a party? Louisianians in general and New Orleanians in particular have always been a little larger than life, both literally and figuratively - does becoming a respectable city mean I have to lose that part forever?
For now, I am trying to tell myself that this is all going to take a while to unfold. Even if large-scale changes happen, they are going to play out over the course of multiple generations, not in a matter of a few years. In the meantime, I know exactly where to get the best po-boy, which bars have the best beer selection, and where to hear the best live music in the world. In two weeks, I will point my car toward the Gulf of Mexico and just drive. And when we get within the city limits, I'll crack open the car window a bit, feel the warm hug of the humid June air, and breathe deeply through my nose as we pass my mother-in-law's house.
Smells like home.
sawbones
09 June 2009
Men Yelling.
Men Yelling.
by Isonomist
06/09/2009, 10:23 AM #
It was pouring, thunder, lightning, and dark as night this morning. I waited for the worst to pass and stepped outside with a golf umbrella and knee high galoshes. Not three doors down from mine I could hear a man screaming in fury. "Move it! You fucking assholes! You morons! Move it now you stupid idiots!" and on in that vein as I got closer to the corner store. I looked in the crowd-sized windows and saw an older man standing in front of a line of workers, all, including him holding a long granite countertop, and in front of them, a couple of guys scrambling to move some bakery racks out of the way. The depth of the man's voice was the only thing that kept it from qualifying as a scream, but when I saw him, he seemed almost serene, except for the contortions of his mouth required to make that volume of noise. I didn't stop, but there was plenty of opportunity to hear him continue his berating, enough so that as I turned the corner, another worker entering the store saw my reaction, half-grimaced and rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly, acknowledging my reaction to the abuse.
There was something almost transcendent about the scene. I flashed on a simultaneous history of crappy bosses, cruel teachers, my angry father, my ex, strangers in a rage anywhere, all these angry voices and their contorted faces.
A few blocks up the next street, as I was maneuvering my gigantic umbrella under a leaky scaffolding, a man coming the other way began yelling as he stepped up onto the curb. Not really looking at anyone, just yelling to the rest of us passersby: get the sidewalk clear! Clear the goddamn sidewalk so people can walk!
I have no idea how many of us he was yelling at, holding his elbows up almost to his shoulders and threshing at everyone around him as he walked.
And I thought of an exercise I'd participated in a few weeks ago, something meant to help teachers learn how to speak to children. In it we arranged a set of 8 chairs in a ring, facing outward. 8 adults stood on the chairs. Three other adult participants were told to walk up to each adult "teacher," now several feet taller than us, and say "I'm a child, and I just want to belong."
Those of you who know Rudolf Dreikur's work will be familiar with that idea: kids who are misbehaving are sending you a quite different message than the actual behaviors themselves might indicate. The behaviors and the typical adult reaction are so ingrained that Dreikurs made a chart. If you have x reaction to the child, he's probably doing y for reason z. They pull on your shirt, they throw a tantrum, they sit in a corner dull eyed, they demand attention, all because what they really want is to matter, to be part of what's going on.You may wonder how Dreikurs could categorize children in these neat little boxes; people often asked him that very thing. His response was, "I don't keep putting them there, I keep finding them there."
This exercise was meant to cut away the extraneous distraction of the behavior itself, to get to the deeper meaning: include me. The "teachers" were told to give various dismissive or negative responses, the kind you and I might normally give an annoying or misbehaving child.
You may be able to imagine the effect of seeing a small woman standing before a now 8 foot tall man, her face scared and pleading, "I'm a child, and I just want to belong." You may be able to imagine the effect of this giant yelling back at her, "GET BACK TO YOUR SEAT! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR CRAP! I TOLD YOU ALREADY YOU CAN'T COME UP HERE!" over and over as she cringes before him. But it's not the same as being there, seeing her fear and his fury. Knowing the two of them have been in these roles in life before. Remembering times we'd been in the shoes of either of them. Several of us burst into tears. But we could also see what had happened to this man. That he had lost everything by blowing up at her: his dignity, her trust. Our faith that he was only acting a role. Of all the "teachers" he was the one that stuck in all our minds, troubled us.
We later found out that the two of them were in-laws. He was her sister's husband. She told us that she'd been terrified to go up and say her line to him, because she knew what she was in for.
I thought of the men in that store, and how I felt when bosses treated me like that. How many people I knew who had become saboteurs of their own employers in the face of that, why Office Space had touched a nerve. What the tradeoffs were, for a pleasant boss or parent, for spouses who give up power struggles and the need to win. And I thought of the yelling boss in the store. What he was really saying, and how ignoring his words was the only way his employees could stand to work for him. How frustrated he must be to realize they tune him out. The cycle of ever escalating abuse, trying to get a reaction. Trying to matter. To belong.
How many ways do we undermine ourselves and our relationships because instead of listening to the message, we only hear the words?
isonomist
by Isonomist
06/09/2009, 10:23 AM #
It was pouring, thunder, lightning, and dark as night this morning. I waited for the worst to pass and stepped outside with a golf umbrella and knee high galoshes. Not three doors down from mine I could hear a man screaming in fury. "Move it! You fucking assholes! You morons! Move it now you stupid idiots!" and on in that vein as I got closer to the corner store. I looked in the crowd-sized windows and saw an older man standing in front of a line of workers, all, including him holding a long granite countertop, and in front of them, a couple of guys scrambling to move some bakery racks out of the way. The depth of the man's voice was the only thing that kept it from qualifying as a scream, but when I saw him, he seemed almost serene, except for the contortions of his mouth required to make that volume of noise. I didn't stop, but there was plenty of opportunity to hear him continue his berating, enough so that as I turned the corner, another worker entering the store saw my reaction, half-grimaced and rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly, acknowledging my reaction to the abuse.
There was something almost transcendent about the scene. I flashed on a simultaneous history of crappy bosses, cruel teachers, my angry father, my ex, strangers in a rage anywhere, all these angry voices and their contorted faces.
A few blocks up the next street, as I was maneuvering my gigantic umbrella under a leaky scaffolding, a man coming the other way began yelling as he stepped up onto the curb. Not really looking at anyone, just yelling to the rest of us passersby: get the sidewalk clear! Clear the goddamn sidewalk so people can walk!
I have no idea how many of us he was yelling at, holding his elbows up almost to his shoulders and threshing at everyone around him as he walked.
And I thought of an exercise I'd participated in a few weeks ago, something meant to help teachers learn how to speak to children. In it we arranged a set of 8 chairs in a ring, facing outward. 8 adults stood on the chairs. Three other adult participants were told to walk up to each adult "teacher," now several feet taller than us, and say "I'm a child, and I just want to belong."
Those of you who know Rudolf Dreikur's work will be familiar with that idea: kids who are misbehaving are sending you a quite different message than the actual behaviors themselves might indicate. The behaviors and the typical adult reaction are so ingrained that Dreikurs made a chart. If you have x reaction to the child, he's probably doing y for reason z. They pull on your shirt, they throw a tantrum, they sit in a corner dull eyed, they demand attention, all because what they really want is to matter, to be part of what's going on.You may wonder how Dreikurs could categorize children in these neat little boxes; people often asked him that very thing. His response was, "I don't keep putting them there, I keep finding them there."
This exercise was meant to cut away the extraneous distraction of the behavior itself, to get to the deeper meaning: include me. The "teachers" were told to give various dismissive or negative responses, the kind you and I might normally give an annoying or misbehaving child.
You may be able to imagine the effect of seeing a small woman standing before a now 8 foot tall man, her face scared and pleading, "I'm a child, and I just want to belong." You may be able to imagine the effect of this giant yelling back at her, "GET BACK TO YOUR SEAT! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR CRAP! I TOLD YOU ALREADY YOU CAN'T COME UP HERE!" over and over as she cringes before him. But it's not the same as being there, seeing her fear and his fury. Knowing the two of them have been in these roles in life before. Remembering times we'd been in the shoes of either of them. Several of us burst into tears. But we could also see what had happened to this man. That he had lost everything by blowing up at her: his dignity, her trust. Our faith that he was only acting a role. Of all the "teachers" he was the one that stuck in all our minds, troubled us.
We later found out that the two of them were in-laws. He was her sister's husband. She told us that she'd been terrified to go up and say her line to him, because she knew what she was in for.
I thought of the men in that store, and how I felt when bosses treated me like that. How many people I knew who had become saboteurs of their own employers in the face of that, why Office Space had touched a nerve. What the tradeoffs were, for a pleasant boss or parent, for spouses who give up power struggles and the need to win. And I thought of the yelling boss in the store. What he was really saying, and how ignoring his words was the only way his employees could stand to work for him. How frustrated he must be to realize they tune him out. The cycle of ever escalating abuse, trying to get a reaction. Trying to matter. To belong.
How many ways do we undermine ourselves and our relationships because instead of listening to the message, we only hear the words?
isonomist
11 May 2009
The Greatest Generation
The Greatest Generation
by skitch
05/11/2009, 10:34 PM #
"Drink your water, Bob." My voice is playfully stern, but I'm smiling at the incongruity of ordering this man around.
Bob grins back at me, and, trite as it sounds, his eyes have an honest-to-god twinkle. His grin is wide and inviting. You know the old joke about finding someone's picture in the dictionary? Bob's picture is right there next to "affable". We have to remind him to drink his water because he's collapsed twice now while on vacation: once in Maui, once in Tahoe. Dehydration. The second collapse required a day of hospitalization.
His doctor had admonished him the last time. "You let yourself get too dehydrated, Bob. It'll kill you if you're not careful."
But we still have to remind him or he just won't remember. He can't conceive of his body ever failing him. In his mind he's still 25 years old. The open-mouthed grin is an imp's smile, brimming with the promise of mischief. The teeth are mostly his and somewhat worse for nearly 90 years of wear, but the grin is a contagious one anyway, sculpting his eyes into a permanent, knowing wink. Bob has a way about him that makes you believe you're sharing a joke, a secret, that you're conspiring with him in a perfectly-executed prank moments from its denouement. His ears and eyebrows are both large and bushy (I'm reliably informed by my daughter that these are sure signs of great age). His hair is that rich snowy white I hope my own gray hair will turn out to be when I'm pushing a century rather than the gunmetal gray presently infiltrating my temples and sideburns. His shoulders are stooped now, his spine curved, and the top of his head barely reaches my chin. But he has the easy confident air of a man a good foot taller. His gait is slow but resolute, shaped by the hip replacement without which he wouldn't be able to walk at all. And though his step is slow I sometimes think he could easily outwalk me if challenged. If he stays hydrated, that is. We keep checking in with him to make sure he stays on top of it.
Lieutenant Robert Lucas, Naval Aviator, runs preflight on his F4U Corsair. He can't conceive of his training or his reflexes ever failing him. But even so, he and all his squadron mates take the maintenance of their aircraft very seriously. Nothing wrong with a reality-based foundation to back up your youthful sense of invulnerability. Lt. Lucas is a young man with close-cropped black hair. He and his buddies are all swagger and attitude, part of the most powerful war machine ever assembled in the history of warfare. There's something both thrilling and sobering about that idea that keeps Lucas hovering somewhere between pride and humility. It's a necessary mindset when you're about the business of saving the world.
Today he's flying a routine CAP, or Combat Air Patrol. Again. Although he has accumulated hundreds of hours of flight time running support and escort missions, he has yet to actually see a Zero, or any other enemy aircraft for that matter. For now, his exec has signaled the go sign. "Mount up!"
"Drink up, Bob!" I have to speak loudly. His wits are as sharp as ever but sometimes he looks a little befuddled because he couldn't follow the last few minutes of conversation. It's not that he couldn't understand it, it's just that he couldn't hear it. Sometimes he'll contribute an idea to the ongoing discussion that has already been brought up. If you aren't paying attention this might leave you with a mistaken impression about his frailty and his command of his faculties.
We're strolling through the afternoon heat in Palm Springs. Triple digit temperatures, "but it's a dry heat!" The very infrastructure here resonates with the ghosts of Bob's generation: Bob Hope Drive, Gene Autry Trail, Dinah Shore Drive. And for all that he never actually lived here, except in passing, Bob's personal knowledge base is chock full of local trivia. But that seems to be the case wherever he is. This man has accumulated two lifetime's worth of knowledge and he can seemingly tap it at will. He's even more animated than usual and his excitement is evident. He's assumed the role of host and entertainer for the trip, channeling his heroes. "Sinatra used to eat in this restaurant every weekend; he and Ava Gardner used to shoot out streetlights and store windows just for the hell of it. Liberace lived just up the way here. He had a swimming pool shaped like a piano. Not here, mind you, but in Vegas... Eisenhower went missing from here for a whole day once. They say that's when he was whisked off to make first contact with the aliens. Can you imagine?" He chuckles at the absurdity of aliens palavering with the president in the desert. "I wonder what their golf handicap was?"
In my mind's eye I can see him 40, 50 years younger in a dinner jacket, holding a scotch and a cigarette in one hand and punctuating his conversation with the other. He reminds me of Dino, but without the undercurrent of narcissistic entitlement. He still has a scotch every night (the finer the better, though that's not a requirement). It occurs to me that I've no idea whether he ever smoked. He almost certainly did. Everyone of his generation did. Growing up in that time, a time of historic economic and global instability, they had to grow up faster and embrace their self determination much sooner than their parents did.
Flying a CAP role means your flight has a great deal of tactical flexibility within the assigned objective area. The young men of Lt. Lucas' flight are no different than any other unit marshaled for a martial purpose. That means they're hungry to engage something. Anything. They have to resist the urge to linger on that side of their objective area closest to active combat operations. Predictability is considered a bad thing in time of war and your really top-notch enemies rarely oblige. They dutifully patrol the entirety of their assigned area.
CAP can be mind-numbingly boring, with long periods of rote activity only occasionally punctuated by short bursts of excitement when something out of the ordinary occurs, an unidentified contact, a mechanical malfunction, whatever. Today is no different. There's not even that hoped-for "something out of the ordinary" to break the monotony. Lucas' flight consumes their alloted fuel and mission time and wheels about to return home.
If he's going to save the world, it won't be today.
The world needs more men like Bob. He makes friends with a facility I might envy if I weren't a direct beneficiary. He looks for areas of common interest and rarely has trouble finding some because his own interests are so broad. What can a man his age possibly have in common with a 14 year-old kid? And yet he and my son are fast friends, walking together every morning when we're visiting and emailing one another when we're back home. I treasure the exposure to wisdom and responsibility that his friendship with my son represents. I hope it mitigates the contempt for the elderly that seems to afflict so many kids my son's age. Hell, that afflicts so many kids my age.
He never talks about the war. I only know a scrap of his story because my son interviewed him for the Veterans History Project. I'm going to make it my mission to find out more about his personal history. Somehow I feel that remembrance is the least I owe him.
His has been called the Greatest Generation. Knowing him, I can easily believe it.
skitch
by skitch
05/11/2009, 10:34 PM #
"Drink your water, Bob." My voice is playfully stern, but I'm smiling at the incongruity of ordering this man around.
Bob grins back at me, and, trite as it sounds, his eyes have an honest-to-god twinkle. His grin is wide and inviting. You know the old joke about finding someone's picture in the dictionary? Bob's picture is right there next to "affable". We have to remind him to drink his water because he's collapsed twice now while on vacation: once in Maui, once in Tahoe. Dehydration. The second collapse required a day of hospitalization.
His doctor had admonished him the last time. "You let yourself get too dehydrated, Bob. It'll kill you if you're not careful."
But we still have to remind him or he just won't remember. He can't conceive of his body ever failing him. In his mind he's still 25 years old. The open-mouthed grin is an imp's smile, brimming with the promise of mischief. The teeth are mostly his and somewhat worse for nearly 90 years of wear, but the grin is a contagious one anyway, sculpting his eyes into a permanent, knowing wink. Bob has a way about him that makes you believe you're sharing a joke, a secret, that you're conspiring with him in a perfectly-executed prank moments from its denouement. His ears and eyebrows are both large and bushy (I'm reliably informed by my daughter that these are sure signs of great age). His hair is that rich snowy white I hope my own gray hair will turn out to be when I'm pushing a century rather than the gunmetal gray presently infiltrating my temples and sideburns. His shoulders are stooped now, his spine curved, and the top of his head barely reaches my chin. But he has the easy confident air of a man a good foot taller. His gait is slow but resolute, shaped by the hip replacement without which he wouldn't be able to walk at all. And though his step is slow I sometimes think he could easily outwalk me if challenged. If he stays hydrated, that is. We keep checking in with him to make sure he stays on top of it.
Lieutenant Robert Lucas, Naval Aviator, runs preflight on his F4U Corsair. He can't conceive of his training or his reflexes ever failing him. But even so, he and all his squadron mates take the maintenance of their aircraft very seriously. Nothing wrong with a reality-based foundation to back up your youthful sense of invulnerability. Lt. Lucas is a young man with close-cropped black hair. He and his buddies are all swagger and attitude, part of the most powerful war machine ever assembled in the history of warfare. There's something both thrilling and sobering about that idea that keeps Lucas hovering somewhere between pride and humility. It's a necessary mindset when you're about the business of saving the world.
Today he's flying a routine CAP, or Combat Air Patrol. Again. Although he has accumulated hundreds of hours of flight time running support and escort missions, he has yet to actually see a Zero, or any other enemy aircraft for that matter. For now, his exec has signaled the go sign. "Mount up!"
"Drink up, Bob!" I have to speak loudly. His wits are as sharp as ever but sometimes he looks a little befuddled because he couldn't follow the last few minutes of conversation. It's not that he couldn't understand it, it's just that he couldn't hear it. Sometimes he'll contribute an idea to the ongoing discussion that has already been brought up. If you aren't paying attention this might leave you with a mistaken impression about his frailty and his command of his faculties.
We're strolling through the afternoon heat in Palm Springs. Triple digit temperatures, "but it's a dry heat!" The very infrastructure here resonates with the ghosts of Bob's generation: Bob Hope Drive, Gene Autry Trail, Dinah Shore Drive. And for all that he never actually lived here, except in passing, Bob's personal knowledge base is chock full of local trivia. But that seems to be the case wherever he is. This man has accumulated two lifetime's worth of knowledge and he can seemingly tap it at will. He's even more animated than usual and his excitement is evident. He's assumed the role of host and entertainer for the trip, channeling his heroes. "Sinatra used to eat in this restaurant every weekend; he and Ava Gardner used to shoot out streetlights and store windows just for the hell of it. Liberace lived just up the way here. He had a swimming pool shaped like a piano. Not here, mind you, but in Vegas... Eisenhower went missing from here for a whole day once. They say that's when he was whisked off to make first contact with the aliens. Can you imagine?" He chuckles at the absurdity of aliens palavering with the president in the desert. "I wonder what their golf handicap was?"
In my mind's eye I can see him 40, 50 years younger in a dinner jacket, holding a scotch and a cigarette in one hand and punctuating his conversation with the other. He reminds me of Dino, but without the undercurrent of narcissistic entitlement. He still has a scotch every night (the finer the better, though that's not a requirement). It occurs to me that I've no idea whether he ever smoked. He almost certainly did. Everyone of his generation did. Growing up in that time, a time of historic economic and global instability, they had to grow up faster and embrace their self determination much sooner than their parents did.
Flying a CAP role means your flight has a great deal of tactical flexibility within the assigned objective area. The young men of Lt. Lucas' flight are no different than any other unit marshaled for a martial purpose. That means they're hungry to engage something. Anything. They have to resist the urge to linger on that side of their objective area closest to active combat operations. Predictability is considered a bad thing in time of war and your really top-notch enemies rarely oblige. They dutifully patrol the entirety of their assigned area.
CAP can be mind-numbingly boring, with long periods of rote activity only occasionally punctuated by short bursts of excitement when something out of the ordinary occurs, an unidentified contact, a mechanical malfunction, whatever. Today is no different. There's not even that hoped-for "something out of the ordinary" to break the monotony. Lucas' flight consumes their alloted fuel and mission time and wheels about to return home.
If he's going to save the world, it won't be today.
The world needs more men like Bob. He makes friends with a facility I might envy if I weren't a direct beneficiary. He looks for areas of common interest and rarely has trouble finding some because his own interests are so broad. What can a man his age possibly have in common with a 14 year-old kid? And yet he and my son are fast friends, walking together every morning when we're visiting and emailing one another when we're back home. I treasure the exposure to wisdom and responsibility that his friendship with my son represents. I hope it mitigates the contempt for the elderly that seems to afflict so many kids my son's age. Hell, that afflicts so many kids my age.
He never talks about the war. I only know a scrap of his story because my son interviewed him for the Veterans History Project. I'm going to make it my mission to find out more about his personal history. Somehow I feel that remembrance is the least I owe him.
His has been called the Greatest Generation. Knowing him, I can easily believe it.
skitch
08 May 2009
Craigs List: breaking down cultural barriers
Craigs List: breaking down cultural barriers
by Isonomist
05/08/2009, 6:02 PM #
I honestly couldn't understand a word the woman said. She called herself Maria, Merieme, Maryam, Marie, depending on when she called or emailed. She wanted my stove. Or rather, I wanted someone to buy it, and she looked like my best prospect. I can't tell you what country she was from, but I would have guessed somewhere in Northern Africa. Egypt? Algeria? Hard to tell. These negotiations require phone calls and at least 5 emails before anyone shows up at your house. I could pretty much tell by her voice she'd be wearing a veil.
At first she was going to come alone. Then she called back, and I could almost make out that she was sending her husband. I swear to God, his name was Osama. I don't react, I live in New York. So I say fine, send Osama over. I gave them my address and turned on the tv in the bedroom so it would sound like there were other people here, then I plugged in the stove. I know how to live dangerously.
Of course they're late. People buying stuff on Craigs List are apparently, as a whole unable to show up within an hour of whatever time they agree to. Once before, selling my old portable dishwasher, a French artist named Rodolphe, after heavy email/phone negotiating, showed up a day late, inspected the dishwasher, ran it (it worked perfectly) called it an old piece of crap and offered me half what I was asking. I sent him away. I'd rather keep it. It's still in the bathroom.
Finally she calls me. She's downstairs. Literally right downstairs, at my door. But she's forgotten apparently that you have to ring doorbells to get people to come to their doors. So I try to make sense of the endless babble, half English, half something (I have no idea, but it's not Arabic, at least not Middle Eastern style). She can't seem to get a sentence to come out straight. It starts off ok with a subject and somewhere on its way to a predicate the words collapse into themselves and some other topic interferes somehow until neither of us can remember exactly what we'd started with. Strategically, I begin to respond to the sentence I think she meant to state, that is, what a normal person would say under such circumstances, such as "I'm right downstairs, how do I get up to your apartment?"
I'm not trying to be rude, but she's standing down there in front of the ground floor restaurant (which is packed, and loud, so she probably can't even hear me) in her veil and her jumbled English, unable to take the step of pressing the button that will activate my buzzer system so I can at last buzz her in. Seriously. I can't just pick up the handset and press the button that unlocks the door. She has to ring the bell first, even if she's on fire and drug addicts from the park are actively robbing her, I am helpless to save her unless she can reach the bell. The fact that my landlord thought this kind of buzzer system was a good idea should tell you all you need to know about how this place is run. I guess Osama gives up at this point because the next thing I hear is this deep voice saying, "we're here." So I tell him to ring the doorbell, just like I told her. It crosses my mind they must think I'm an enormous asshole making them ring it when I'm right there at the buzzer. I do kinda feel like one, even though it's not my fault.
She rings, I can see the back of her head on the video monitor, still clutching the cell phone when I let her in. I say, "Take the elevator," but it's faithless. I know damn well that she, like every Craig's List devotee before her, will take the filthy, disgusting hellhole of a stairway. What could possibly be so untrustworthy about the elevator that anyone would choose to climb that cavernous maw? And she calls me again, from about three steps below my stairway door. Which means I have to move three bikes, two pieces of furniture, and a 9 foot high fire door to let her in. Which I do. Because otherwise I'd have to tell her to go all the way back down to the lobby and start all over again, and she already hates me enough with all the hoops I seem to be forcing her to jump.
There's something almost feral about her, I think she must be scared I'm going to pop her in the oven and turn up the heat like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. It's hard not to like scared people, you can see everything in their eyes. She looks maybe her late thirties, forties. Hard lived, however many years. She has the deep, exhausted eyes of Gorki's mother.
She apologizes as she comes in the door, and continues to apologize on and off through the negotiations. I turn the stove on for her. We test the burners. She tries to tell me why she needs it. Something about renting out an apartment or needing to for cash or something, she has four kids, her husband, then she asks me for a job, she'll do anything, babysit, clean house, so I say, you babysit? And she looks at me like I might be insane after all, and says, No, I've never had a job. Finally a declarative sentence. I was so proud of her.
She asked me to cut her some slack on the price, because the stove was old and I didn't have the "book" (what is it with Muslims and books?). So I come down about 20%. No, she says, clear as a bell. She asks for 30% off. I split the difference at 25%. Done. But now I can't tell if she's agreed to her last price or mine, so I end up saying my final price about three times before she heads down to get Osama. I'm starting to talk like her.
Up comes Osama at last. He's got to be seventy, but burly, more African looking than Arab, a little guy, I could probably take him if I had to. His clothes are well broken in, halfway between New York handyman and souq merchant. He sizes up the stove, and me, decides I'm harmless (you can see this work, it's like a toggle in people's minds, whatever their test is, once you pass it, their faces relax and they get down to business). Merieme leaves, and this beautiful kid comes up, their daughter, she looks like maybe ten, and she's helping Daddy. She has no accent but pure northern American newscaster English. She's bubbling over, ready to pick up the stove and throw it over her head if we need it. This is an adventure for her. Dad pulls out a wad of cash the size of a grapefruit, with hundreds on the top. and peels off a few bills. I give him change, and together we load the stove onto the dolly. To him, I'm just part of the business. I prefer that. I don't need Osama's judgment.
His daughter helps us the way kids do at that age, holding the elevator, maneuvering the stove backward, while Dad and I wrangle it through the door, then stealing a ride on the dolly when Dad's in front and cant' see she's not really pushing. She's quick, smart, friendly. We get downstairs and he takes off to tell Merieme to move the monster SUV over to the sidewalk. I can't imagine why, in the fifteen, twenty minutes it took us to get the thing downstairs, it hasn't occurred to her to pull up in front of my building. While he's off doing that the girl says,
"Do you like to live here?"
"It's ok," I glance at the construction mess in the lobby, the fcracked sidewalk.
"It's so noisy!" And I notice as she says it the deafening barrage of chatter coming from the restaurant.
"Oh, I can't hear it upstairs. The floors are solid. But you're right, it's noisy."
"So do you like using Craig's List?" She smiles.
"I like it ok, it's better than eBay."
"I know but like, what about that guy that was killing people? I was so scared for my mom to come I was like, no mom, it's too dangerous, I was so afraid."
This is New York, so I say, "You're smart to think about things like that. It's always a good idea to be careful." (instead of, oh stuff like that never happens here, or whatever lies people tell children out there in suburbia) And now Osama's gotten through to Merieme that their Giant Silver SUV needs to move. They double park and we roll the stove over to the rear. As we're all three struggling to get the stove off the dolly and into the trunk, which means lifting it about three feet up and sliding it onto a sleeping bag put there to protect the new looking carpeting, some guy behind me says, hey, HEY. He's in a van, we're blocking him. "Move that car," he says.
"We will, as soon as we're done."
"No, move it now." He tries to give me the dead eyes, but dude, I have teenage boys. Fuck you. He can sit there for the rest of his life.
"We're almost done." I go back to helping Osama heave the stove up, and realize there are three boys watching us work, sitting in the back seat. I cut them some slack in my mind, because the girl is at least two years older than any of them. The dolly's free so I pick it up and shoulder it.
"Nice to meet you all," I say. When I head back to the house, they're still jockeying the stove around on the new looking sleeping bag in the new looking SUV. They look like they could have just walked out of the desert into Casablanca, dusty, tired and ready to go home.
by Isonomist
05/08/2009, 6:02 PM #
I honestly couldn't understand a word the woman said. She called herself Maria, Merieme, Maryam, Marie, depending on when she called or emailed. She wanted my stove. Or rather, I wanted someone to buy it, and she looked like my best prospect. I can't tell you what country she was from, but I would have guessed somewhere in Northern Africa. Egypt? Algeria? Hard to tell. These negotiations require phone calls and at least 5 emails before anyone shows up at your house. I could pretty much tell by her voice she'd be wearing a veil.
At first she was going to come alone. Then she called back, and I could almost make out that she was sending her husband. I swear to God, his name was Osama. I don't react, I live in New York. So I say fine, send Osama over. I gave them my address and turned on the tv in the bedroom so it would sound like there were other people here, then I plugged in the stove. I know how to live dangerously.
Of course they're late. People buying stuff on Craigs List are apparently, as a whole unable to show up within an hour of whatever time they agree to. Once before, selling my old portable dishwasher, a French artist named Rodolphe, after heavy email/phone negotiating, showed up a day late, inspected the dishwasher, ran it (it worked perfectly) called it an old piece of crap and offered me half what I was asking. I sent him away. I'd rather keep it. It's still in the bathroom.
Finally she calls me. She's downstairs. Literally right downstairs, at my door. But she's forgotten apparently that you have to ring doorbells to get people to come to their doors. So I try to make sense of the endless babble, half English, half something (I have no idea, but it's not Arabic, at least not Middle Eastern style). She can't seem to get a sentence to come out straight. It starts off ok with a subject and somewhere on its way to a predicate the words collapse into themselves and some other topic interferes somehow until neither of us can remember exactly what we'd started with. Strategically, I begin to respond to the sentence I think she meant to state, that is, what a normal person would say under such circumstances, such as "I'm right downstairs, how do I get up to your apartment?"
I'm not trying to be rude, but she's standing down there in front of the ground floor restaurant (which is packed, and loud, so she probably can't even hear me) in her veil and her jumbled English, unable to take the step of pressing the button that will activate my buzzer system so I can at last buzz her in. Seriously. I can't just pick up the handset and press the button that unlocks the door. She has to ring the bell first, even if she's on fire and drug addicts from the park are actively robbing her, I am helpless to save her unless she can reach the bell. The fact that my landlord thought this kind of buzzer system was a good idea should tell you all you need to know about how this place is run. I guess Osama gives up at this point because the next thing I hear is this deep voice saying, "we're here." So I tell him to ring the doorbell, just like I told her. It crosses my mind they must think I'm an enormous asshole making them ring it when I'm right there at the buzzer. I do kinda feel like one, even though it's not my fault.
She rings, I can see the back of her head on the video monitor, still clutching the cell phone when I let her in. I say, "Take the elevator," but it's faithless. I know damn well that she, like every Craig's List devotee before her, will take the filthy, disgusting hellhole of a stairway. What could possibly be so untrustworthy about the elevator that anyone would choose to climb that cavernous maw? And she calls me again, from about three steps below my stairway door. Which means I have to move three bikes, two pieces of furniture, and a 9 foot high fire door to let her in. Which I do. Because otherwise I'd have to tell her to go all the way back down to the lobby and start all over again, and she already hates me enough with all the hoops I seem to be forcing her to jump.
There's something almost feral about her, I think she must be scared I'm going to pop her in the oven and turn up the heat like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. It's hard not to like scared people, you can see everything in their eyes. She looks maybe her late thirties, forties. Hard lived, however many years. She has the deep, exhausted eyes of Gorki's mother.
She apologizes as she comes in the door, and continues to apologize on and off through the negotiations. I turn the stove on for her. We test the burners. She tries to tell me why she needs it. Something about renting out an apartment or needing to for cash or something, she has four kids, her husband, then she asks me for a job, she'll do anything, babysit, clean house, so I say, you babysit? And she looks at me like I might be insane after all, and says, No, I've never had a job. Finally a declarative sentence. I was so proud of her.
She asked me to cut her some slack on the price, because the stove was old and I didn't have the "book" (what is it with Muslims and books?). So I come down about 20%. No, she says, clear as a bell. She asks for 30% off. I split the difference at 25%. Done. But now I can't tell if she's agreed to her last price or mine, so I end up saying my final price about three times before she heads down to get Osama. I'm starting to talk like her.
Up comes Osama at last. He's got to be seventy, but burly, more African looking than Arab, a little guy, I could probably take him if I had to. His clothes are well broken in, halfway between New York handyman and souq merchant. He sizes up the stove, and me, decides I'm harmless (you can see this work, it's like a toggle in people's minds, whatever their test is, once you pass it, their faces relax and they get down to business). Merieme leaves, and this beautiful kid comes up, their daughter, she looks like maybe ten, and she's helping Daddy. She has no accent but pure northern American newscaster English. She's bubbling over, ready to pick up the stove and throw it over her head if we need it. This is an adventure for her. Dad pulls out a wad of cash the size of a grapefruit, with hundreds on the top. and peels off a few bills. I give him change, and together we load the stove onto the dolly. To him, I'm just part of the business. I prefer that. I don't need Osama's judgment.
His daughter helps us the way kids do at that age, holding the elevator, maneuvering the stove backward, while Dad and I wrangle it through the door, then stealing a ride on the dolly when Dad's in front and cant' see she's not really pushing. She's quick, smart, friendly. We get downstairs and he takes off to tell Merieme to move the monster SUV over to the sidewalk. I can't imagine why, in the fifteen, twenty minutes it took us to get the thing downstairs, it hasn't occurred to her to pull up in front of my building. While he's off doing that the girl says,
"Do you like to live here?"
"It's ok," I glance at the construction mess in the lobby, the fcracked sidewalk.
"It's so noisy!" And I notice as she says it the deafening barrage of chatter coming from the restaurant.
"Oh, I can't hear it upstairs. The floors are solid. But you're right, it's noisy."
"So do you like using Craig's List?" She smiles.
"I like it ok, it's better than eBay."
"I know but like, what about that guy that was killing people? I was so scared for my mom to come I was like, no mom, it's too dangerous, I was so afraid."
This is New York, so I say, "You're smart to think about things like that. It's always a good idea to be careful." (instead of, oh stuff like that never happens here, or whatever lies people tell children out there in suburbia) And now Osama's gotten through to Merieme that their Giant Silver SUV needs to move. They double park and we roll the stove over to the rear. As we're all three struggling to get the stove off the dolly and into the trunk, which means lifting it about three feet up and sliding it onto a sleeping bag put there to protect the new looking carpeting, some guy behind me says, hey, HEY. He's in a van, we're blocking him. "Move that car," he says.
"We will, as soon as we're done."
"No, move it now." He tries to give me the dead eyes, but dude, I have teenage boys. Fuck you. He can sit there for the rest of his life.
"We're almost done." I go back to helping Osama heave the stove up, and realize there are three boys watching us work, sitting in the back seat. I cut them some slack in my mind, because the girl is at least two years older than any of them. The dolly's free so I pick it up and shoulder it.
"Nice to meet you all," I say. When I head back to the house, they're still jockeying the stove around on the new looking sleeping bag in the new looking SUV. They look like they could have just walked out of the desert into Casablanca, dusty, tired and ready to go home.
29 March 2009
H is for Helicopter
H is for Helicopter
by bright_virago
03/29/2009, 7:55 AM #
Hey, are we allowed to do reruns here?
Originally posted April 2007. For my brightling, who turns seven today.
When we walk into the room, they already have her in pediatric restraints. The nurse says, we had to tie her hands down, she keeps trying to pull out the tubes. Like Michael Lewis, we flew at breakneck speeds up the freeway to the larger hospital, the one with the PICU. We'd been waiting in the surgical waiting room for a couple of hours before I had started to get nervous. Doesn't it seem like it's taking a long time? I asked my husband. Then the nurse came in and took us to another little waiting room. There's been a problem, she said. She's having trouble breathing, she said.
How many kids get their tonsils out every day? Thousands. Right now, a daddy is settling his daughter on a couch somewhere, handing her half of a popsicle. He's sitting down next to her, eating the other half. They're watching a cartoon, he checks her forehead for warmth.
There's something about seeing your child fight that inspires you to love them in a way you can't when they blithely coo in health, in safety. I'm not surprised Lewis found a new, profound way to love and bond with Walker in this installment of Dad Again. It's a reactive airway, the nurse said. After we took the tubes out, she started struggling to breathe. We need to send her to one of the hospitals where they can keep her on a ventilator. I'll take you in to see her now.
Four more nurses and the surgeon greet us and try to make us calm. Somehow, our pediatrician is also there (who called him?) and I vow to never again complain if we're kept waiting for twenty minutes during checkups. You no worry, she be okay, he says in his sweet, elderly, mishmash middle-eastern accent. He pats my arm and asks which hospital we want her to go to. We don't care, whatever, we say. No, no, you must tell what hospital. I take a stab and name one (what’s it called, Saint Whosis?). He nods, yes that one, pleased, and I feel as if I've passed a "know your hospitals" test.
The LifeFlight team strides in, and they remind me of that Far Side cartoon, the one where there's a tree full of hawks wearing sunglasses and listening to walkmans. Birds of prey know they're cool. They ask, who wants to ride in the helicopter with her? We look at each other. Neither of us does. Neither of us can stand the thought of sitting in a helicopter and staring at our daughter in a medically-induced coma while we fly. I will lose my mind. I need to do something. We both do. So we'll each drive the 35 minutes to the new hospital while she flies up there with the team. It's okay, they say. These drugs are amazing, they say. She won't remember any of this.
At the PICU, we watch her for hours through swollen eyes and eventually doze through the beeps and the checks. I struggle out of sleep when I hear her hoarse crying. He wakes up too, we look at each other and then at her. She's got tubes down her throat, she's not supposed to be able to cry. We jump up and look in the bed. She's maneuvered her little hands, tied together on the same side of the bed, up next to her mouth and she's yanked her tubes out. I walk out in the hall, Um, we need someone in here. The PICU nurse says, she extubated herself! I thought we had her in restraints. And I look at her little heroic hands and really, truly love her. I was reminded of that moment when I read Lewis' words: "He's winning the RSV tourney! I look down at him, proudly…" The PICU doctor grudgingly allows that she can remain extubated. She struggles more and more out of her druggy funk. Sometime later, she cries again. I need to go potty. Well, honey, you have a tube, you can just go. No, I want to use the potty. Out came the catheter. Yeah! I grin. My kid is punk rock! By the next morning, she's sitting up in bed, eating a banana. PICU doc stops in to check on her and smiles, surprised. I think you're going home now, he says.
After her checkup two weeks later, she and I are walking through the hospital parking lot, and we stroll across the helipad. The pink loops of her shoelaces are silly against the hard yellow lines. Look, mommy, a H for me! Yes, H is for you. Helicopter for you. Health for you. Happiness for you.
by bright_virago
03/29/2009, 7:55 AM #
Hey, are we allowed to do reruns here?
Originally posted April 2007. For my brightling, who turns seven today.
When we walk into the room, they already have her in pediatric restraints. The nurse says, we had to tie her hands down, she keeps trying to pull out the tubes. Like Michael Lewis, we flew at breakneck speeds up the freeway to the larger hospital, the one with the PICU. We'd been waiting in the surgical waiting room for a couple of hours before I had started to get nervous. Doesn't it seem like it's taking a long time? I asked my husband. Then the nurse came in and took us to another little waiting room. There's been a problem, she said. She's having trouble breathing, she said.
How many kids get their tonsils out every day? Thousands. Right now, a daddy is settling his daughter on a couch somewhere, handing her half of a popsicle. He's sitting down next to her, eating the other half. They're watching a cartoon, he checks her forehead for warmth.
There's something about seeing your child fight that inspires you to love them in a way you can't when they blithely coo in health, in safety. I'm not surprised Lewis found a new, profound way to love and bond with Walker in this installment of Dad Again. It's a reactive airway, the nurse said. After we took the tubes out, she started struggling to breathe. We need to send her to one of the hospitals where they can keep her on a ventilator. I'll take you in to see her now.
Four more nurses and the surgeon greet us and try to make us calm. Somehow, our pediatrician is also there (who called him?) and I vow to never again complain if we're kept waiting for twenty minutes during checkups. You no worry, she be okay, he says in his sweet, elderly, mishmash middle-eastern accent. He pats my arm and asks which hospital we want her to go to. We don't care, whatever, we say. No, no, you must tell what hospital. I take a stab and name one (what’s it called, Saint Whosis?). He nods, yes that one, pleased, and I feel as if I've passed a "know your hospitals" test.
The LifeFlight team strides in, and they remind me of that Far Side cartoon, the one where there's a tree full of hawks wearing sunglasses and listening to walkmans. Birds of prey know they're cool. They ask, who wants to ride in the helicopter with her? We look at each other. Neither of us does. Neither of us can stand the thought of sitting in a helicopter and staring at our daughter in a medically-induced coma while we fly. I will lose my mind. I need to do something. We both do. So we'll each drive the 35 minutes to the new hospital while she flies up there with the team. It's okay, they say. These drugs are amazing, they say. She won't remember any of this.
At the PICU, we watch her for hours through swollen eyes and eventually doze through the beeps and the checks. I struggle out of sleep when I hear her hoarse crying. He wakes up too, we look at each other and then at her. She's got tubes down her throat, she's not supposed to be able to cry. We jump up and look in the bed. She's maneuvered her little hands, tied together on the same side of the bed, up next to her mouth and she's yanked her tubes out. I walk out in the hall, Um, we need someone in here. The PICU nurse says, she extubated herself! I thought we had her in restraints. And I look at her little heroic hands and really, truly love her. I was reminded of that moment when I read Lewis' words: "He's winning the RSV tourney! I look down at him, proudly…" The PICU doctor grudgingly allows that she can remain extubated. She struggles more and more out of her druggy funk. Sometime later, she cries again. I need to go potty. Well, honey, you have a tube, you can just go. No, I want to use the potty. Out came the catheter. Yeah! I grin. My kid is punk rock! By the next morning, she's sitting up in bed, eating a banana. PICU doc stops in to check on her and smiles, surprised. I think you're going home now, he says.
After her checkup two weeks later, she and I are walking through the hospital parking lot, and we stroll across the helipad. The pink loops of her shoelaces are silly against the hard yellow lines. Look, mommy, a H for me! Yes, H is for you. Helicopter for you. Health for you. Happiness for you.
05 March 2009
A Moment
A Moment
by artandsoul
03/05/2009, 7:37 AM #
Edith walked slowly through the automatic sliding door of Publix, making sure to put her cane down firmly with every step of her left foot. She focused on this new three step walking because she had been warned, in not-so-pleasant terms, what disaster awaited should she misstep and fall on her newly installed hip.
Dizzy for a moment from the slap of the humid air and the brightness of the sun, Edith stopped and took a deep breath. Charlie maneuvered the cart around her still form, and paused by her side.
“You okay?” He spoke softly, trying to be patient. He’d been doing the shopping for over a year, and he enjoyed his solitary traipsing up and down the aisles. Charlie thought about how his character was still being built as he wrestled with impatience these days, now that Edith had to exercise that plastic and metal contraption in her hip.
“I’m fine,” Edith breathed. “It just took my breath away, this heat did.”
Edith’s voice was low and rumbly, Charlie has always liked that. Her voice softened his irritation, just as it has done for the last fifty-six years of married life.
“Here, hang on to the side of the cart, I’ll go slow,” Charlie offered.
“No, no, I have to work with this cane. I have to get the hang of it,” Edith said. “You go on to the car, I’ll get there.”
Charlie moved carefully across the lane of traffic, looking both ways and making sure the lunchtime crowds in sedans, college students in sports cars, and moms in SUVs saw him and his cart as he inched toward the silver Buick parked in the first handicapped spot outside the exit. If the drivers slowed down for him, he reasoned, then they’d sure see Edith coming along behind.
Charlie got the groceries loaded into the trunk and shut the lid. He checked on Edith making her way across the parking lot, then he moved toward the driver’s door to get in and get the air conditioning going before helping Edith with her door.
As he glanced back at Edith, things seemed to move fast and slow at the same time.
Shuffling her way to the car, Edith caught her foot on the concrete barrier, swayed gently and then fell to the ground like a tree chopped at the root. Charlie flt the thump in his chest as her body hit the ground, as if something great had struck him in the sternum. Horror wiped his mind blank, and for a split second he froze in place. Next thing he knew he was kneeling next to Edith, looking into her face and touching her softly on the arm, searching for signs of breathing.
“Edith, Edith,” breathlessly Charlie called to her as if she were far away. “Edith, are you alright?” He felt a lump forming in his throat and tear prick his eyelids.
“Oh Lord, Charlie, oh Lord,” was all Edith could say.
Once she caught her breath, Edith strained to get up but nothing seemed to work. The veins and tendons drew taut from neck to shoulder as she lifted her head. Her feet came off the ground two or three inches as, with great exertion, she tried to upright herself. She couldn’t think. All she could do was flex muscles, any muscles, trying to make something work. Heat radiated off the black asphalt and tiny sharp edges of rock and stone bit into the flesh of her lower back where it pressed onto the pavement. Embarrassment pushed her blood pressure higher and Edith felt her bladder release. An even warmer wetness now seeped up her back.
“Oh my God, Charlie, get me up,” Edith pleaded. Tears dripped down the outsides of her eyes, into her ears.
“Yes, yes, of course, just lie here for a minute and make sure you’re okay first.” Charlie felt adrenaline pound into his head.
“Excuse me, sir, may I help?” a soft voice came out of nowhere.
“I’m fine. We’re fine,” Charlie snapped, not knowing who was talking, unable to see the young woman offering to help.
Yvonne Lee was on her way to pick up cabbages and carrots to take to work at the Rice Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant where she worked as a chef. Her heart had leapt into her throat when she saw Eidth fall, and she had immediately rushed over to assist.
At the same time, Greg Nettles came up behind Charlie. Having parked his car, he was on his way into Publix for beer and chips. Greg had also seen Edith fall, and made a beeline toward the couple struggling on the ground.
Knowing he should be grateful for their help, Charlie just felt anger rising in his throat, replacing the sad lump with rage.
“We’re FINE!” he nearly yelled. “We’re just fine, I can do this myself.” Impotence fueled the short, fiery fit of pique and then left Charlie limp.
“Of course you are,” said Yvonne softly. Then to Edith, “Here, rest your head for a moment, ma’am,” and she gently placed her neatly folded apron under Edith’s head.
Greg squatted on the other side of Edith’s head and looked kindly into her eyes. “We’ll have you up and in the car in no time, ma’am, no need to worry.”
Edith closed her eyes.
Charlie felt the lump and the tears again. Sorrow threatened to overwhelm him. Can’t I even take care of my own wife? He moaned to himself, but he nodded at the strangers, and held Edith’s right hand.
Greg looked at Yvonne and they nodded to each other. Some kind of telepathy brought instant recognition to them, a sense of what was needed. Each gently placed a hand under Edith’s shoulders, cradling her neck and head.
“Okay, sir, you gently guide her up to standing and we’ll follow,” Greg said with tender firmness. As if on cue the three of them floated Edith to a standing position.
With her can rigidly held in her hand, Edith commanded her body to stay erect. Waves of pain in her hip, her back and her elbows nearly threatened to blot her out. She felt nausea rising from her gut with humiliation right behind. She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.
“Thank you,” she said simply and quietly.
Being closest to the car, Yvonne opened the passenger door and Charlie slowly turned Edith around and guided her into the seat. Lovingly he lifted her feet and swung them into the car. He positioned the cane along the seat next to her, and carefully pulled the seatbelt across her lap, inserting the metal tip into the buckle by the console.
He cautiously withdrew from the car, and shut the door, turning to thank the strangers who had come to his aid.
They were gone.
Charlie scanned the parking lot, the entrance to Publix. Nothing. He looked down. The woman had taken her apron. Nothing remained of that moment, except a small dark puddle on the shimmering black asphalt. Soon it, too, would evaporate.
artandsoul
by artandsoul
03/05/2009, 7:37 AM #
Edith walked slowly through the automatic sliding door of Publix, making sure to put her cane down firmly with every step of her left foot. She focused on this new three step walking because she had been warned, in not-so-pleasant terms, what disaster awaited should she misstep and fall on her newly installed hip.
Dizzy for a moment from the slap of the humid air and the brightness of the sun, Edith stopped and took a deep breath. Charlie maneuvered the cart around her still form, and paused by her side.
“You okay?” He spoke softly, trying to be patient. He’d been doing the shopping for over a year, and he enjoyed his solitary traipsing up and down the aisles. Charlie thought about how his character was still being built as he wrestled with impatience these days, now that Edith had to exercise that plastic and metal contraption in her hip.
“I’m fine,” Edith breathed. “It just took my breath away, this heat did.”
Edith’s voice was low and rumbly, Charlie has always liked that. Her voice softened his irritation, just as it has done for the last fifty-six years of married life.
“Here, hang on to the side of the cart, I’ll go slow,” Charlie offered.
“No, no, I have to work with this cane. I have to get the hang of it,” Edith said. “You go on to the car, I’ll get there.”
Charlie moved carefully across the lane of traffic, looking both ways and making sure the lunchtime crowds in sedans, college students in sports cars, and moms in SUVs saw him and his cart as he inched toward the silver Buick parked in the first handicapped spot outside the exit. If the drivers slowed down for him, he reasoned, then they’d sure see Edith coming along behind.
Charlie got the groceries loaded into the trunk and shut the lid. He checked on Edith making her way across the parking lot, then he moved toward the driver’s door to get in and get the air conditioning going before helping Edith with her door.
As he glanced back at Edith, things seemed to move fast and slow at the same time.
Shuffling her way to the car, Edith caught her foot on the concrete barrier, swayed gently and then fell to the ground like a tree chopped at the root. Charlie flt the thump in his chest as her body hit the ground, as if something great had struck him in the sternum. Horror wiped his mind blank, and for a split second he froze in place. Next thing he knew he was kneeling next to Edith, looking into her face and touching her softly on the arm, searching for signs of breathing.
“Edith, Edith,” breathlessly Charlie called to her as if she were far away. “Edith, are you alright?” He felt a lump forming in his throat and tear prick his eyelids.
“Oh Lord, Charlie, oh Lord,” was all Edith could say.
Once she caught her breath, Edith strained to get up but nothing seemed to work. The veins and tendons drew taut from neck to shoulder as she lifted her head. Her feet came off the ground two or three inches as, with great exertion, she tried to upright herself. She couldn’t think. All she could do was flex muscles, any muscles, trying to make something work. Heat radiated off the black asphalt and tiny sharp edges of rock and stone bit into the flesh of her lower back where it pressed onto the pavement. Embarrassment pushed her blood pressure higher and Edith felt her bladder release. An even warmer wetness now seeped up her back.
“Oh my God, Charlie, get me up,” Edith pleaded. Tears dripped down the outsides of her eyes, into her ears.
“Yes, yes, of course, just lie here for a minute and make sure you’re okay first.” Charlie felt adrenaline pound into his head.
“Excuse me, sir, may I help?” a soft voice came out of nowhere.
“I’m fine. We’re fine,” Charlie snapped, not knowing who was talking, unable to see the young woman offering to help.
Yvonne Lee was on her way to pick up cabbages and carrots to take to work at the Rice Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant where she worked as a chef. Her heart had leapt into her throat when she saw Eidth fall, and she had immediately rushed over to assist.
At the same time, Greg Nettles came up behind Charlie. Having parked his car, he was on his way into Publix for beer and chips. Greg had also seen Edith fall, and made a beeline toward the couple struggling on the ground.
Knowing he should be grateful for their help, Charlie just felt anger rising in his throat, replacing the sad lump with rage.
“We’re FINE!” he nearly yelled. “We’re just fine, I can do this myself.” Impotence fueled the short, fiery fit of pique and then left Charlie limp.
“Of course you are,” said Yvonne softly. Then to Edith, “Here, rest your head for a moment, ma’am,” and she gently placed her neatly folded apron under Edith’s head.
Greg squatted on the other side of Edith’s head and looked kindly into her eyes. “We’ll have you up and in the car in no time, ma’am, no need to worry.”
Edith closed her eyes.
Charlie felt the lump and the tears again. Sorrow threatened to overwhelm him. Can’t I even take care of my own wife? He moaned to himself, but he nodded at the strangers, and held Edith’s right hand.
Greg looked at Yvonne and they nodded to each other. Some kind of telepathy brought instant recognition to them, a sense of what was needed. Each gently placed a hand under Edith’s shoulders, cradling her neck and head.
“Okay, sir, you gently guide her up to standing and we’ll follow,” Greg said with tender firmness. As if on cue the three of them floated Edith to a standing position.
With her can rigidly held in her hand, Edith commanded her body to stay erect. Waves of pain in her hip, her back and her elbows nearly threatened to blot her out. She felt nausea rising from her gut with humiliation right behind. She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.
“Thank you,” she said simply and quietly.
Being closest to the car, Yvonne opened the passenger door and Charlie slowly turned Edith around and guided her into the seat. Lovingly he lifted her feet and swung them into the car. He positioned the cane along the seat next to her, and carefully pulled the seatbelt across her lap, inserting the metal tip into the buckle by the console.
He cautiously withdrew from the car, and shut the door, turning to thank the strangers who had come to his aid.
They were gone.
Charlie scanned the parking lot, the entrance to Publix. Nothing. He looked down. The woman had taken her apron. Nothing remained of that moment, except a small dark puddle on the shimmering black asphalt. Soon it, too, would evaporate.
artandsoul
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