My Wednesday night men's group is talking about dreams this week, and they say that writing them out makes it easier to see what's going on. These three dreams occurred within a few days of each other, so I'm thinking of them as parts I, II, and III of a single narrative in somebody's bildungsroman.
I.
I have company at a house where I am a visitor. A bunch of people have dropped by all at once, some of whom I recognize from long ago in college, so I have to scramble a bit to find a place for everyone to sit down. Since I don't even live in this house, it was tricky, but we find an upstairs room with enough chairs. I asked everyone what they would like to drink - water, juice, beer - and everyone wanted beer. Luckily the fridge was well-stocked with several kinds of beer, so I brought two different brands in tiny bottles. Then everyone dispersed to different parts of this big, rambling, multi-story house. My son Jessi Golly showed me around, since he was more familiar with the place, and when I found the bathroom, I was joined there by several other people who live in the house.
II.
I'm taking a bus ride with a young girl in my care, and she is pushing the boundaries of safety, which is annoying the surly female busdriver. At one point I look up from my seat and the girl is leaning out the window to touch a passing car, and I quickly pull her back in. A minute later she's leaning even further out, fully extended so she is putting her weight on the other car. I leap up, but too late, as the car passes the bus, and the girl falls to the ground, sliding along the pavement. Miraculously, she is okay, but the bus takes off, leaving us both to walk.
We pass a roadhouse bar with a few suspicious characters standing outside, but they appear to be harmless as long as we ignore them, except the last one, who spits over a barbed wire fence in our direction. As it gets dark, we hitch a ride with the first car to pass. The next thing I know we've arrive safely at our destination and go to sleep in the upstairs room of an old house. During the night, Jessi arrives and unrolls his sleeping bag in the hallway, smiling.
III.
Jessi and I are in Capetown, South Africa, getting ready to board a train going north. The station is a large, busy place with travelers, porters, clerks, and baggage going here and there. We don't have much time, but we do have our tickets. I go back to my car, parked outside the station, to get some clothes, and on the way back I pause to fold and carry them properly, knowing I'm using up precious time, and when I get back to the station, our train is pulling out with Jessi on it. I walk outside and up a long stairway, just in case there's a way to intercept the train, and I watch the train traverse a long hill as a crowd of people go about their business. When I return to the station to try to find out when the next train leaves, the clerks have either left for the day or don't speak English, but Flipper, a friend from my office, is in the station and helps me figure out what to do next.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
Dog Day Afternoon
When it's 55 degrees Fahrenheit on a late-January morning, you know something is askew. It's not exactly The Day the Earth Stood Still, but still a little unreal and just plain wrong, for a midwestern boy like me, to go outside in shirtsleaves the last weekend in January.
Legend has it that on this day in the winter of '51, the mercury dropped to 35 below zero in the farming village of Spring Grove, Minnesota, formerly known as Norwegian Ridge. I should know, because I was there. Or at least that's what my mom said.
Meanwhile, back in Central Swingstate, I forego the longjohns and let the fire go out, and I drink my morning coffee outside on the patio. There's a woodpecker perched upside-down on the apple tree, looking for breakfast, and the guy across the street is out playing with power tools trimming his hedge.
It ain't natural. I should be shoveling the walk, waxing my skis, and gliding up the trail on barrel staves. But my skis sit idle while the glaciers melt. I did the usual Saturday things - swept floors, baked break, recycled stuff - and made a second assault on the garage that thinks it's a storage space. In the process I unearthed some things worth salvaging - books and records we still haven't unpacked since our last move, desk implements I have managed just fine without, and the beach umbrella.
So it's late afternoon and still unbelievably balmy, almost time for a cold drink with a wedge of lime, so I set up the umbrella that's been packed away since we brought it home from Carolina Beach four years ago. Turns out the little round disk in the middle of the green plastic patio table pops right out, and the wooden pole, which once stuck in the sand, fits right through the table and anchors nicely in a little bucket of gravel. Eureka!
The whimsical red, yellow, green, blue, and purple striped umbrella really jazzes up the otherwise dormant yard. Bare trees, heavily mulched flower beds with dry remnants of perennials standing vigil, a garishly bright cloth umbrella hovering above the table, and me sipping my drink.
I had to take it down, of course, before the rain and wind hit later that night, but it was worth it just to put it up as a brief reminder on the eve of the lunar Year of the Dog, that summer will be here before long, and when it is I will be ready with my multicolored, sun-deflecting patio umbrella.
Legend has it that on this day in the winter of '51, the mercury dropped to 35 below zero in the farming village of Spring Grove, Minnesota, formerly known as Norwegian Ridge. I should know, because I was there. Or at least that's what my mom said.
Meanwhile, back in Central Swingstate, I forego the longjohns and let the fire go out, and I drink my morning coffee outside on the patio. There's a woodpecker perched upside-down on the apple tree, looking for breakfast, and the guy across the street is out playing with power tools trimming his hedge.
It ain't natural. I should be shoveling the walk, waxing my skis, and gliding up the trail on barrel staves. But my skis sit idle while the glaciers melt. I did the usual Saturday things - swept floors, baked break, recycled stuff - and made a second assault on the garage that thinks it's a storage space. In the process I unearthed some things worth salvaging - books and records we still haven't unpacked since our last move, desk implements I have managed just fine without, and the beach umbrella.
So it's late afternoon and still unbelievably balmy, almost time for a cold drink with a wedge of lime, so I set up the umbrella that's been packed away since we brought it home from Carolina Beach four years ago. Turns out the little round disk in the middle of the green plastic patio table pops right out, and the wooden pole, which once stuck in the sand, fits right through the table and anchors nicely in a little bucket of gravel. Eureka!
The whimsical red, yellow, green, blue, and purple striped umbrella really jazzes up the otherwise dormant yard. Bare trees, heavily mulched flower beds with dry remnants of perennials standing vigil, a garishly bright cloth umbrella hovering above the table, and me sipping my drink.
I had to take it down, of course, before the rain and wind hit later that night, but it was worth it just to put it up as a brief reminder on the eve of the lunar Year of the Dog, that summer will be here before long, and when it is I will be ready with my multicolored, sun-deflecting patio umbrella.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
An open letter to NPR
Another Wednesday morning, another barrage of bloviating bluster from our wistful but erudite expert on all things sporting, Frank Deford. How fortunate I am to be driving down County Line Road at just the right time to be edified on the deeper, subtler truths to be found in the world of sport, as seen by rich, white, octogenarian New Yorkers reporting from the Olympian heights of WPUD in Fairfield, Connecticut. Why? Because they know better than you and me, having written holy scripture (Sports Illustrated) back when men were men and women were broads.
Uncle Frank's sore spot of the week is power over finesse. Have you heard this one before? Has it been recycled every season in every sport for every generation since the heavyweight title bout between Achilles and Hector? It must be the sports columnist's drunken desperation strategy number 1: when it's deadline and you really have nothing to say, give 'em the old lamentation about the decline of civilization due to youth and power overcoming experience and guile. How very original!
Poignant anecdote du jour: Ain't it a shame that Michelle Kwan in her dotage can't quite measure up to the skating feats of the younger, stronger, more skilled skaters? (Go figure!) Furthermore, ain't it just tragic that the five-foot-seven Martina Hingis can't compete on the tennis court anymore against taller, faster players ten years younger who hit the ball harder. And just to throw a bone to our listeners up the pike in Boston, ain't it noble how that plucky little runt Doug Flutie is finally retiring after hanging in there all these years dodging the bigger, faster athletes in the NFL. And they said he was too short for a pro quarterback, but he showed them - he made a drop-kick his swan song! No doubt that will play well with his future employers on the nostalgia circuit.
Face it, Frank. Talent will out. Each game, set, and match is a test of who's got game, who's on their game, and who's lost it. Why not argue that it's morally wrong for LeBron to out-play smaller, slower, older guys who can't jump? When Lew Alcindor was at UCLA, dinosaurs like Deford were saying they should raise the basket to 12 feet because Alcindor (aka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) had an unfair advantage over the poor developmentally challenged six-foot-ten guys. They did succeed in banning the dunk for a few years, which was like banning the forward pass in football, embarrassing themselves in the name of the purity of the two-hand set shot.
That's it! Just get a roomful of geezers together and turn back the clock, eh Frank? Maybe adopting the old girls rules will make basketball more quaintly interesting for the Defords of the world. No more than two dribbles, guards stay out of the offensive end, center jump after a basket, nice....and....slow. Honey, I think it's time for my medication. Ban jumps from figure skating, and impose a speed limit on serves in tennis.
If only the natural order of things governed radio commentary, as it does athletic competition, there might be a cogent thought or two on the radio. Then a fresh, informed voice could take to the airwaves on Wednesday morning, and the over-the-hill gang could be put out to pasture somewhere in Connecticut.
Uncle Frank's sore spot of the week is power over finesse. Have you heard this one before? Has it been recycled every season in every sport for every generation since the heavyweight title bout between Achilles and Hector? It must be the sports columnist's drunken desperation strategy number 1: when it's deadline and you really have nothing to say, give 'em the old lamentation about the decline of civilization due to youth and power overcoming experience and guile. How very original!
Poignant anecdote du jour: Ain't it a shame that Michelle Kwan in her dotage can't quite measure up to the skating feats of the younger, stronger, more skilled skaters? (Go figure!) Furthermore, ain't it just tragic that the five-foot-seven Martina Hingis can't compete on the tennis court anymore against taller, faster players ten years younger who hit the ball harder. And just to throw a bone to our listeners up the pike in Boston, ain't it noble how that plucky little runt Doug Flutie is finally retiring after hanging in there all these years dodging the bigger, faster athletes in the NFL. And they said he was too short for a pro quarterback, but he showed them - he made a drop-kick his swan song! No doubt that will play well with his future employers on the nostalgia circuit.
Face it, Frank. Talent will out. Each game, set, and match is a test of who's got game, who's on their game, and who's lost it. Why not argue that it's morally wrong for LeBron to out-play smaller, slower, older guys who can't jump? When Lew Alcindor was at UCLA, dinosaurs like Deford were saying they should raise the basket to 12 feet because Alcindor (aka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) had an unfair advantage over the poor developmentally challenged six-foot-ten guys. They did succeed in banning the dunk for a few years, which was like banning the forward pass in football, embarrassing themselves in the name of the purity of the two-hand set shot.
That's it! Just get a roomful of geezers together and turn back the clock, eh Frank? Maybe adopting the old girls rules will make basketball more quaintly interesting for the Defords of the world. No more than two dribbles, guards stay out of the offensive end, center jump after a basket, nice....and....slow. Honey, I think it's time for my medication. Ban jumps from figure skating, and impose a speed limit on serves in tennis.
If only the natural order of things governed radio commentary, as it does athletic competition, there might be a cogent thought or two on the radio. Then a fresh, informed voice could take to the airwaves on Wednesday morning, and the over-the-hill gang could be put out to pasture somewhere in Connecticut.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Why I hate Saturday
Get up, get dressed, drink coffee, pick up random junk lying around the house. There's no hurry, since it won't make any difference anyway. Unload laundry from the dryer, load dryer with clean laundry left in washer, wash a load of clothes. Repeat. Go outside and close the gate blown open by the wind; formulate a plan to buy bigger hinges and re-hang the gate securely, as I should have in the first place. Start a fire to stave off the chilly, wet, gray central swingstate day. Curse the darkness.
The house begins to warm up. I wash some dishes for the first time in two weeks and make biscuits, but the biscuits are overdone because I waited until the tops were already showing tinges of brown, and by then it's too late. Drink more coffee, eat a couple of dry biscuits with blackberry preserves, making them edible. The sun comes out. Sweep kitchen and den, take out trash and recycling, formulate theory-of-everything. To wit:
1. The world can be divided into child behavior and adult behavior.
a. Child behavior is characterized by emotivism and chaos.
i. Emotivism bases values (right and wrong) on desires (what I want).
ii. Chaos creates disorder out of order by leaving a trail of messes.
b. Adult behavior is characterized by moralism and control.
i. Moralism bases desires (what I want) on values (right and wrong).
ii. Control creates order out of disorder by constantly cleaning up messes.
2. Actual people exhibit both child behavior and adult behavior.
a. Individuals grow and change at irregular, nonlinear, and unpredictable rates in developing from children into adults.
b. Conflicts develop along the fault lines of relationships where it is either unclear or contested who is the adult and who is the child.
Before I abandon this lame, one-dimensional theory altogether, consider:
1. Who cooks supper, who clears the table, who washes the dishes, who puts them away, who decides where "away" is?
2. Where do the potato peelings, orange rinds, egg shells, coffee grounds, cereal boxes, milk bottles, and bread bags go?
3. The role of sanitation workers as everybody's adult caregiver, and the degrees of childishness based on how much stuff we all throw out for them to pick up.
4. The role of retailers, restaurants, packaging manufacturers, advertising, mining companies, logging companies, makers and users of industrial chemicals, etc., in making and cleaning up messes.
Finally, my ugly theory turns on me, as I notice how reductionistic it is, and how I'm not having a good time making everything around me fit into it.
The house begins to warm up. I wash some dishes for the first time in two weeks and make biscuits, but the biscuits are overdone because I waited until the tops were already showing tinges of brown, and by then it's too late. Drink more coffee, eat a couple of dry biscuits with blackberry preserves, making them edible. The sun comes out. Sweep kitchen and den, take out trash and recycling, formulate theory-of-everything. To wit:
1. The world can be divided into child behavior and adult behavior.
a. Child behavior is characterized by emotivism and chaos.
i. Emotivism bases values (right and wrong) on desires (what I want).
ii. Chaos creates disorder out of order by leaving a trail of messes.
b. Adult behavior is characterized by moralism and control.
i. Moralism bases desires (what I want) on values (right and wrong).
ii. Control creates order out of disorder by constantly cleaning up messes.
2. Actual people exhibit both child behavior and adult behavior.
a. Individuals grow and change at irregular, nonlinear, and unpredictable rates in developing from children into adults.
b. Conflicts develop along the fault lines of relationships where it is either unclear or contested who is the adult and who is the child.
Before I abandon this lame, one-dimensional theory altogether, consider:
1. Who cooks supper, who clears the table, who washes the dishes, who puts them away, who decides where "away" is?
2. Where do the potato peelings, orange rinds, egg shells, coffee grounds, cereal boxes, milk bottles, and bread bags go?
3. The role of sanitation workers as everybody's adult caregiver, and the degrees of childishness based on how much stuff we all throw out for them to pick up.
4. The role of retailers, restaurants, packaging manufacturers, advertising, mining companies, logging companies, makers and users of industrial chemicals, etc., in making and cleaning up messes.
Finally, my ugly theory turns on me, as I notice how reductionistic it is, and how I'm not having a good time making everything around me fit into it.
Monday, January 23, 2006
To-not-do list
1. Go to church (didn't);
2. Take walk at Alumni Creek, do qigong by the water (didn't);
3. Buy new bike tire, fix flat, go for ride (didn't);
4. Sort through boxes stored in garage: (a) bring in desk supplies, (b) clear space, set up shelves, unpack books, (c) arrange tools on bench where accessible (didn't);
5. Prune stray limbs off maple, pear, and apple trees (didn't);
6. Set (3) posts to reinforce woodshed (didn't);
7. Rewire light fixture in laundry room (didn't).
8. Write exhaustive list of other things that should be done (didn't).
Ever have one of those days when you don't feel like doing anything? You barely get started on a project and find out it can't be done until something else is done first, but the something else requires someone else to do something, so neither thing gets done. Or you get organized to begin another task but are interrupted by something else and never get back to the first task, then lose interest altogether.
On those days, I find it helpful to make a to-not-do list. It's easy. Just write down and, if you're really ambitious, prioritize all the things you would do today if you were going to do anything. Go into as much detail as you feel is necessary to adequately articulate the nature of the task to not do, but don't get bogged down in minutae. Above all, be creative. Let your mind range as far afield as it wants to in identifying the bounteous store of things that could be done (or not). It's highly therapeutic, and hey, it's something to do.
Postscript: I did accomplish a couple of things eventually. I read three sections of the Sunday Times, I watched a few minutes of the Sixers-Timberwolves game on TV (both teams looked bad), and later a few minutes of the Seattle-Carolina game (Seahawks dominated early) and the Steelers-Broncos game. Gotta love the Steelers rolling into Detroit with the old running back and the young quarterback. I'd call that a highly productive day.
2. Take walk at Alumni Creek, do qigong by the water (didn't);
3. Buy new bike tire, fix flat, go for ride (didn't);
4. Sort through boxes stored in garage: (a) bring in desk supplies, (b) clear space, set up shelves, unpack books, (c) arrange tools on bench where accessible (didn't);
5. Prune stray limbs off maple, pear, and apple trees (didn't);
6. Set (3) posts to reinforce woodshed (didn't);
7. Rewire light fixture in laundry room (didn't).
8. Write exhaustive list of other things that should be done (didn't).
Ever have one of those days when you don't feel like doing anything? You barely get started on a project and find out it can't be done until something else is done first, but the something else requires someone else to do something, so neither thing gets done. Or you get organized to begin another task but are interrupted by something else and never get back to the first task, then lose interest altogether.
On those days, I find it helpful to make a to-not-do list. It's easy. Just write down and, if you're really ambitious, prioritize all the things you would do today if you were going to do anything. Go into as much detail as you feel is necessary to adequately articulate the nature of the task to not do, but don't get bogged down in minutae. Above all, be creative. Let your mind range as far afield as it wants to in identifying the bounteous store of things that could be done (or not). It's highly therapeutic, and hey, it's something to do.
Postscript: I did accomplish a couple of things eventually. I read three sections of the Sunday Times, I watched a few minutes of the Sixers-Timberwolves game on TV (both teams looked bad), and later a few minutes of the Seattle-Carolina game (Seahawks dominated early) and the Steelers-Broncos game. Gotta love the Steelers rolling into Detroit with the old running back and the young quarterback. I'd call that a highly productive day.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Leaving Brooklyn
The confusion is that I seem to have grown up into someone who could not have been me as a child. Yet in the telling the girl grows to sound more and more like the woman I became. The voice overcomes her. The real girl with her layers concealing me becomes more elusive the more I tell. She has been superseded, but I am sure she existed. As I try to find her in me, I keep finding me in her. (Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Leaving Brooklyn, p.45)
It calls itself a novel but has the tone of a memoir, as her other books do, which is what makes them so convincing and compelling, and it clearly is infused with the stuff of autobiography. If it were packaged as nonfiction, Leaving Brooklyn could be read as a first-person treatise on the distance between the narrator's voice and the author's voice, or better yet between the eye of the subject and the eye of the author. A Portrait of the Artist as an Adolescent Girl, complete with expanding self-consciousness about the local particulars and an expanding consciousness of the universals embedded there. Besides, I love the way she puts together a paragraph.
Without going all avant guardian postmodern on us, Schwartz seems to be saying that to write anything is to distort, remake, and reshape the "original" material, whatever that is. Not that she's the first to make this point, but it comes across as honestly as possible in the nitty-gritty details of growing up in New York during the McCarthy Era. In her self-deprecating way, Schwartz makes fun of her middle-class existence while trying to get to the bottom of its predicament and tell the truth, which turns out to be not so simple a task.
Perhaps I haven't succeeded in finding the girl I was, but only in fabricating the girl I might have been, would have liked to be, looking backwards from the woman I have become....The very notion is an Escher construction: I am not a sheltered child but a grown-up version of a child who never was. And maybe I am this way because she never was, couldn't be. And yet it feels so real. If it wasn't a memory to begin with, it has become one now....No longer a case of double vision, but of two separate eyes whose separate visions - what happened and what might have happened - come together in what we call the past, which we see with hindsight.
Memory is revision. I have just destroyed another piece of my past, to tell a story. (Schwartz, p. 146)
One of the things I like about blogging is the chance to create an account (of anything, a bike ride, a bad public policy, a dream) that is as true as I can make it by intentionally selecting the salient bits of facts, without the clutter that would make it incomprehensibly complete. It's mostly editing. And it's a test of whether I can still recognize the characters on the page as the ones I knew in the caverns of memory. And don't give me that old "subjective" interpretation of "objective" truth malarky. But that's another story for another blog post which I'm not up to right now.
Meanwhile: Happy birthday to Edgar Allan Poe. A man who knew a good story when he lived one.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
AWOL
It was payday and everything. Some perceptive people at the office decided it was high time for an after-work get-together, and the timing couldn't have been better. Or so I thought. I left the office about 5:00, so okay, I'm already running a little late, but what else is new? I thought I had directions to the faux-Irish bar-restaurant in the strip mall across from the big mall, but I had never actually been there, so I was in search mode, going by verbal cues rather than experiential memory. Turn left on Sancus, look for a green sign (it's gotta be green), but I don't see it; did I pass it? Driving south a few blocks, it becomes residential, circle back, still nothing, but the NPR in-depth report on Bode Miller's slip of the tongue about competing in a world cup ski event while drunk was riveting, as well as mocking my own inability to navigate the streets of Central Swingstate in search of a drink, let alone Alpine slopes the morning after. Maybe I was distracted, inattentive, tired, spaced - after all it was Friday afternoon, quickly becoming Friday night - and that's why we were doing this in the first place, the need for an attitude adjustment, a change of perspective, a different point of view! On my second pass south on Sancus, after a U-turn in the Kroger parking lot, I noticed that the new Lazelle Woods recreation center was open, so I stopped in to take a quick look. The quick look became a conversation with a staff member at the desk, which became a personal tour of the building, which became another conversation about their programs and open gym hours. I learned a lot and made a mental note to check out their old guys basketball hour on Mondays. But I still hadn't found the group from the office, so I circled back up Sancus, and still no luck, no green neon, no Irish-looking sign. Do I have a giant blind spot? Did I have an amnesiac episode? Perhaps a break in the space-time continuum where either the faux Irish pub or my pickup truck became detached from the fabric of everyday reality for a few minutes, and for all intents and purposes I couldn't get there from here. Stumped, frustrated, confused, and bamboozled (but not boozed or even buzzed), I went home via the Vietnamese package store on Schocking Road, and in my first stroke of good luck, had some tonic and one slice of lime left in the fridge.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Walking the talk
Ramble 1 a: to move aimlessly from place to place b: to explore idly 2: to talk or write in a desultory or long-winded wandering fashion 3: to grow or extend irregularly
Sunday was catch-all day, roaming from one commitment to another while paying attention to whatever was in the way. At church people filled the smallish worship space to overflowing; worthwhile things were said and sung. I put the last of last year's pledge in the basket, then I choked on the words of the closing hymn and couldn't sing even a line of it. "It's important," said the woman next to me, a friend of my wife's. I talked briefly with Gaylord from RE class and Mary Ann from drum circle and then lit out for the territories.
Outside it was a crisp, bright January day to take a walk at the reservoir. The ground was a little damp, but I found a sunny spot sheltered from the wind to face the water and do qigong for half an hour. Walking back up the hill with beach stones in my pockets, I wondered aloud how that little exercise takes the pain out of the knees and hips and mind, but the best I could do was something about oxygenated blood bathing constricted, enflamed tissues in fluid to dilate, nourish, and purge all at once. Unable to really explain anything, I am left with a mystical belief in a phenomenon I don't understand but still invest with authority by returning to it every day.
"Anything you would recommend?" he asked the waitperson at Soulless Chain Coffee Shop. "Actually I kind of like the crumbcake, it's pretty good," she said. "I'll have a piece of that." She took his money and gave him his crumbcake on a little plate and made his French-press coffee, which he took upstairs to a little round table on the mezzanine to write about whatever happens next.
It seems like everybody here has dark hair. Two Japanese women at a table in the corner talk quietly. Next to them a young man alone with headphones smiles broadly as he reads. An older couple face each other across a little table in animated conversation, looking very professional in their khakis, sweaters, haircuts, and glasses. A big square table downstairs appears to be the faculty hangout, three or four old dudes unafraid and unimpressed, with white hair and beards, jeans and sweatshirts, knitted brows and plenty to talk about.
Under the ceiling lamp a pretty young woman with short hair and glasses sips water with knees together supporting her book, looking none too sure of herself in this drafty, attic-like space. Finally her friend comes up the stairs, long blond hair and pointed heels with a camelhair sweater and gestures cutting the air, and dark-eyed girl is captivated in her sweater-vest, jeans, and brown shoes. They met in their women's studies class and are learning to explore their otherness: "...civil liberties...in the professional world...I was thinking about...not really, no...I ended up working on...yeah, that's a pretty...how you find a...she just really likes him, so she figures out ways of...so I was thinking about...were you there? No, I just saw it...that would be wierd...I have absolutely no interest in it, but it's natural for a company to...yeah, for about thirty seconds, yeah exactly...oh, this is exciting...I'm allowed to..."
My coffee and crumbcake gone and my time officially up, I drove up route 43 to the interstate and home, listening to whatever was on WKSU, which happened to be "Folk Alley" with the veteran DJ Dan Bloom, who plays Allison Krauss, Kate Bush, Sam Bush, and talks about a yellow lab mix at the pound that needs a good home. Somewhere in Richland County, I start to lose the signal on the far side of each hill, hearing a mysterious fusion of bluegrass and baroque instruments for a minute, then pick it up again on the near side of the next hill, as topography interrupts the transmission from the northeast with another one from the south. As Folk Alley fades out, Angela Mariani and "Harmonia" fade in, the Blue Ridge Boys become the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and it turns out the mandolin is featured in both.
Sunday was catch-all day, roaming from one commitment to another while paying attention to whatever was in the way. At church people filled the smallish worship space to overflowing; worthwhile things were said and sung. I put the last of last year's pledge in the basket, then I choked on the words of the closing hymn and couldn't sing even a line of it. "It's important," said the woman next to me, a friend of my wife's. I talked briefly with Gaylord from RE class and Mary Ann from drum circle and then lit out for the territories.
Outside it was a crisp, bright January day to take a walk at the reservoir. The ground was a little damp, but I found a sunny spot sheltered from the wind to face the water and do qigong for half an hour. Walking back up the hill with beach stones in my pockets, I wondered aloud how that little exercise takes the pain out of the knees and hips and mind, but the best I could do was something about oxygenated blood bathing constricted, enflamed tissues in fluid to dilate, nourish, and purge all at once. Unable to really explain anything, I am left with a mystical belief in a phenomenon I don't understand but still invest with authority by returning to it every day.
"Anything you would recommend?" he asked the waitperson at Soulless Chain Coffee Shop. "Actually I kind of like the crumbcake, it's pretty good," she said. "I'll have a piece of that." She took his money and gave him his crumbcake on a little plate and made his French-press coffee, which he took upstairs to a little round table on the mezzanine to write about whatever happens next.
It seems like everybody here has dark hair. Two Japanese women at a table in the corner talk quietly. Next to them a young man alone with headphones smiles broadly as he reads. An older couple face each other across a little table in animated conversation, looking very professional in their khakis, sweaters, haircuts, and glasses. A big square table downstairs appears to be the faculty hangout, three or four old dudes unafraid and unimpressed, with white hair and beards, jeans and sweatshirts, knitted brows and plenty to talk about.
Under the ceiling lamp a pretty young woman with short hair and glasses sips water with knees together supporting her book, looking none too sure of herself in this drafty, attic-like space. Finally her friend comes up the stairs, long blond hair and pointed heels with a camelhair sweater and gestures cutting the air, and dark-eyed girl is captivated in her sweater-vest, jeans, and brown shoes. They met in their women's studies class and are learning to explore their otherness: "...civil liberties...in the professional world...I was thinking about...not really, no...I ended up working on...yeah, that's a pretty...how you find a...she just really likes him, so she figures out ways of...so I was thinking about...were you there? No, I just saw it...that would be wierd...I have absolutely no interest in it, but it's natural for a company to...yeah, for about thirty seconds, yeah exactly...oh, this is exciting...I'm allowed to..."
My coffee and crumbcake gone and my time officially up, I drove up route 43 to the interstate and home, listening to whatever was on WKSU, which happened to be "Folk Alley" with the veteran DJ Dan Bloom, who plays Allison Krauss, Kate Bush, Sam Bush, and talks about a yellow lab mix at the pound that needs a good home. Somewhere in Richland County, I start to lose the signal on the far side of each hill, hearing a mysterious fusion of bluegrass and baroque instruments for a minute, then pick it up again on the near side of the next hill, as topography interrupts the transmission from the northeast with another one from the south. As Folk Alley fades out, Angela Mariani and "Harmonia" fade in, the Blue Ridge Boys become the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and it turns out the mandolin is featured in both.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Why I love Saturday
Get up, get dressed, drink some coffee. There's no hurry. Cook some eggs and toast, eat, poke the fire, bring in an armload of wood, empty the compost, drink more coffee. Eat a grapefruit with the daughter and talk about - what else - grapefruit, how the membranes between sections are kind of like cell walls, but the tiny sac around each juicy nodule is the real cell wall, and those nodules are the largest known cells. Cool. Make note to self: Listen to your kids, you'll learn stuff.
Drive with spouse to her old office, which she once swore would be her last, and load furniture in the pickup truck. Drive home and talk about - what else - furniture, the old office, the new office, the past and future of her massage therapy practice. Unload some of the furniture at home and some at the new office, talk briefly about upcoming renovations with the guy who owns the building.
Go home, start a batch of bread, keep the fire going. Tinker. While dough is rising on a rack behind the woodstove, scavenge free wood from an undisclosed location, and on the way home scavenge some landscaping stones from another undisclosed location; rationalize that nobody will miss them. Unload wood and stones in yard; vow to replace badly installed hinges on back gate.
Work the dough into loaves, rearrange couch, coffee table, desk and rocking chair in den with skeptical spouse, put loaves in the oven, do a short workout as the sun goes down, take heavy bread out of oven to cool, change clothes.
Take wife, daughter, and daughter's best friend out to dinner at Barley's, hear about friend's difficult discussion with her dad about transferring from her college in Boston to our local Swingstate Megaversity, and commiserate with both of them. Chow down on sauerkraut balls (try 'em, they're outstanding!), Russian stout, Greek salad, and pierogis.
Go home, walk the dog, go to bed, reflect that I didn't really need that second stout, sleep like a rock.
Drive with spouse to her old office, which she once swore would be her last, and load furniture in the pickup truck. Drive home and talk about - what else - furniture, the old office, the new office, the past and future of her massage therapy practice. Unload some of the furniture at home and some at the new office, talk briefly about upcoming renovations with the guy who owns the building.
Go home, start a batch of bread, keep the fire going. Tinker. While dough is rising on a rack behind the woodstove, scavenge free wood from an undisclosed location, and on the way home scavenge some landscaping stones from another undisclosed location; rationalize that nobody will miss them. Unload wood and stones in yard; vow to replace badly installed hinges on back gate.
Work the dough into loaves, rearrange couch, coffee table, desk and rocking chair in den with skeptical spouse, put loaves in the oven, do a short workout as the sun goes down, take heavy bread out of oven to cool, change clothes.
Take wife, daughter, and daughter's best friend out to dinner at Barley's, hear about friend's difficult discussion with her dad about transferring from her college in Boston to our local Swingstate Megaversity, and commiserate with both of them. Chow down on sauerkraut balls (try 'em, they're outstanding!), Russian stout, Greek salad, and pierogis.
Go home, walk the dog, go to bed, reflect that I didn't really need that second stout, sleep like a rock.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
You're not depressed, you're just dysthymic, inhibited, and anhedonic
True story. Dr. Carlos is examining me after umpteen years without a checkup - heart, lungs, prostate, the whole nine yards - and she asks if there's anything else I - or my wife - am concerned about. I say no, my wife is more worried about my mind than my body. Long pause. Under her breath, Dr. Carlos says, "Is he being serious?" The subject is dropped.
Which brings me to today's topic of discussion: Mental Illness - Is it real or is it all in your head?
Dr. Carlos doesn't know me. She has data in her records based on a few minutes of observation, conversation, measurement, and a couple of lab tests: aging white male in reasonably good health, no known life crises, questionable sense of humor. I wasn't asking for her help with my serotonin level, and she wasn't offering. Don't ask, don't tell. Contrary to my entire belief system, it was a physical, as distinct from a mental, exam. As if the two could be separate.
I don't remember where I saw the quote that drew me to this book, but Listening to Prozac turned out to be interesting reading for a while. It came out back in 1993 when the subject was fresher in this culture, but for some of us it takes a while to catch up. It was worthwhile food for thought that will probably not greatly alter my practice, which luckily consists more of doing stuff than taking stuff. This is my reflection - not a review and not a paper - on the points that hit me as most relevant to everyday body-mind functioning. Pardon the ponderous tone.
So a certain segment of the population (I'm guessing the INTJs of Myers' and Briggs' typology) just don't fit the dominant paradigm. So they adapt in order to get along in an ESFP world. They don't go out much, turn inward, and develop a shadowy internal world they can maintain according to their hunter-gatherer standards of survival. Or they become so dysfunctional that they take drugs - either medically prescribed, or self-administered - and cope the best way they can. One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Some flocked to Prozac, Zoloft, and other popular antidepressants; some found solace in vodka, marijuana, cocaine, speed, psychadelics, coffee, dark chocolate, you name it. I'm purposely lumping disparate mind-altering agents together to make a point which I will disclose as soon as I discover what it is.
Better living through chemistry, in the words of the old DuPont (or was it Dow?) ads, or "Brave Neuro World," in the words of the recent article in The Nation. If I'm not exactly normal, as in close to the genetic mean, why shouldn't I medicate myself into the mainstream in order to function more easily alongside all those characters whose temperaments are closer to the middle of the bell-shaped curve? It's not like I'm popping black beauties in the john at work to get me through the afternoon or, worse yet, for fun on the weekend, which would be evil because it's "recreational." If I didn't have a benign childhood, maybe I should be able to chemically induce a benign adulthood with an appropriate substance.
As I was typing that sentence, an e-mail appeared in my inbox with the subject-line "Friday Happy Hour." You just can't plan these things. This line of reasoning suggests that every personality type, including every diagnostic pathology, lies somewhere on a continuum. They call it spectrum theory. It resembles Labanalysis of movement in the individual combinations of factors in three dimensions or planes, and it puts in perspective some of the labels that we attach to regular people doing what they have to do.
I like this kind of theory, not so much for its cause-and-effect linking of a substance with a pattern of behavior, which seems a little mechanistic, but for the gradations along three different scales. It isn't one-dimensional in explaining differences. Think of reward dependence as the vertical plane, where up is high-maintenance and down is low-maintenance. If harm avoidance is the sagittal plane, then forward is risk-taking and backward is risk-averse. If novelty is the horizontal plane, then left craves variety and right craves consistency.
If you're still reading this, you might be high-maintenance, risk-averse, and craving consistency. Join the club! This doesn't necessarily mean you and I are depressed, even though our moods, behavior, and reactivity to life's travails might mimic the symptoms that fall into the giant catch-all receptacle. Unless you want it to.
Okay, so it's off the mark to compare antidepressants to a cup of coffee in the morning, a beer after work, or snorting lines between meetings. It's more complicated than that. Maybe it's a matter of deferred gratification with a note from the doctor, which is okay, rather than immediate gratification, available on the corner, to which we should just say no. And who am I to say, having neither medical training nor first-hand experience in the pharmaceutical maze.
Clearly I was comparing apples and oranges when I told a friend, who is reliant upon his antidepressants, that my drug of choice was tequila; this was last spring, I know because that's tequila season where I live. And I reassure myself with the knowledge that writing holds off the demons. They say Kafka was alienated, but if he'd been all that alienated he wouldn't have been able to sit down and write brilliantly, compellingly, and convincingly about the experience of alienation.
Which brings me to today's topic of discussion: Mental Illness - Is it real or is it all in your head?
"Temperament" usually refers to an inborn, genetically determined and chemically mediated, predisposition to a cluster of responses and behaviors....contrasted to "character," which refers to stable, repeated behavior patterns arising from life experience. "Character" is also used to refer to a person's idiosyncratic traits or...acquired traits; it is environmental where temperament is inborn, psychological where temperament is biological." (Kramer, Listening to Prozac, pp. 148-149)
Dr. Carlos doesn't know me. She has data in her records based on a few minutes of observation, conversation, measurement, and a couple of lab tests: aging white male in reasonably good health, no known life crises, questionable sense of humor. I wasn't asking for her help with my serotonin level, and she wasn't offering. Don't ask, don't tell. Contrary to my entire belief system, it was a physical, as distinct from a mental, exam. As if the two could be separate.
I don't remember where I saw the quote that drew me to this book, but Listening to Prozac turned out to be interesting reading for a while. It came out back in 1993 when the subject was fresher in this culture, but for some of us it takes a while to catch up. It was worthwhile food for thought that will probably not greatly alter my practice, which luckily consists more of doing stuff than taking stuff. This is my reflection - not a review and not a paper - on the points that hit me as most relevant to everyday body-mind functioning. Pardon the ponderous tone.
...what was once a successful reproductive "strategy" is now the variant human trait underlying chronic and recurrent depression....More broadly, we can see how the survival of the tribe, or gene pool, might be enhanced by the presence of some dogged, methodical members....The problem is that our modern technological society demands the ability to face outward, expend high degrees of energy, take risks, and respond repidly to multiple competing stimuli...The environment no longer rewards the full range of temperaments that were necessary for human survival in prior settings. (Kramer, pp. 171-172)
So a certain segment of the population (I'm guessing the INTJs of Myers' and Briggs' typology) just don't fit the dominant paradigm. So they adapt in order to get along in an ESFP world. They don't go out much, turn inward, and develop a shadowy internal world they can maintain according to their hunter-gatherer standards of survival. Or they become so dysfunctional that they take drugs - either medically prescribed, or self-administered - and cope the best way they can. One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Some flocked to Prozac, Zoloft, and other popular antidepressants; some found solace in vodka, marijuana, cocaine, speed, psychadelics, coffee, dark chocolate, you name it. I'm purposely lumping disparate mind-altering agents together to make a point which I will disclose as soon as I discover what it is.
The vast majority of these people, including those who are outright inhibited socially, will be "normal" in psychological terms. Most of them will be highly functional in their careers and private lives. No one has ever called people with inhibited personalities mentally ill....(They) have achieved chemically the interior milieau of someone born with a different genome and exposed to a more benign world in childhood. (Kramer, p. 177)
Better living through chemistry, in the words of the old DuPont (or was it Dow?) ads, or "Brave Neuro World," in the words of the recent article in The Nation. If I'm not exactly normal, as in close to the genetic mean, why shouldn't I medicate myself into the mainstream in order to function more easily alongside all those characters whose temperaments are closer to the middle of the bell-shaped curve? It's not like I'm popping black beauties in the john at work to get me through the afternoon or, worse yet, for fun on the weekend, which would be evil because it's "recreational." If I didn't have a benign childhood, maybe I should be able to chemically induce a benign adulthood with an appropriate substance.
As I was typing that sentence, an e-mail appeared in my inbox with the subject-line "Friday Happy Hour." You just can't plan these things. This line of reasoning suggests that every personality type, including every diagnostic pathology, lies somewhere on a continuum. They call it spectrum theory. It resembles Labanalysis of movement in the individual combinations of factors in three dimensions or planes, and it puts in perspective some of the labels that we attach to regular people doing what they have to do.
Cloninger believes there are three biologically determined axes of temperament, corresponding to the three neurohumors: norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine....These three axes - reward dependence, harm avoidance, and novelty seeking - ...cover a vast territory....Extremes on three dimensions correspond to personality structures that begin to look like psychiatric deviance....Cloninger's is a true spectrum theory of personality. We are all brothers under the skin, the sociopath, the hero, and the working drone. What distinguishes us is the state of our neurohumors. Where normal personality ends and personality disorder begins is only a matter of convention - of how far along each axis we set the cutoff points. (Kramer, pp. 185-188)
I like this kind of theory, not so much for its cause-and-effect linking of a substance with a pattern of behavior, which seems a little mechanistic, but for the gradations along three different scales. It isn't one-dimensional in explaining differences. Think of reward dependence as the vertical plane, where up is high-maintenance and down is low-maintenance. If harm avoidance is the sagittal plane, then forward is risk-taking and backward is risk-averse. If novelty is the horizontal plane, then left craves variety and right craves consistency.
If you're still reading this, you might be high-maintenance, risk-averse, and craving consistency. Join the club! This doesn't necessarily mean you and I are depressed, even though our moods, behavior, and reactivity to life's travails might mimic the symptoms that fall into the giant catch-all receptacle. Unless you want it to.
Prozac does not provide pleasure; it restores the capacity for pleasure. It is neither excitatory like cocaine nor satiating like heroin....If we accept the proposition that hedonic capacity exists along a continuum, then in treating hypohedonia we are shifting a normal person from one part of that continuum to another. As long as we move from the extreme toward the middle - from atypical depression toward appetitive wellness - that exercise is unexceptionable....Where does treatment and and - to use the word - hedonism begin? (Kramer, pp. 233-234)
Okay, so it's off the mark to compare antidepressants to a cup of coffee in the morning, a beer after work, or snorting lines between meetings. It's more complicated than that. Maybe it's a matter of deferred gratification with a note from the doctor, which is okay, rather than immediate gratification, available on the corner, to which we should just say no. And who am I to say, having neither medical training nor first-hand experience in the pharmaceutical maze.
Clearly I was comparing apples and oranges when I told a friend, who is reliant upon his antidepressants, that my drug of choice was tequila; this was last spring, I know because that's tequila season where I live. And I reassure myself with the knowledge that writing holds off the demons. They say Kafka was alienated, but if he'd been all that alienated he wouldn't have been able to sit down and write brilliantly, compellingly, and convincingly about the experience of alienation.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Telecom Panopticon
You have the right to remain silent. That's the good news. And you are being watched, but it's for your own good.
You may or may not have the right to an attorney, depending on how we classify you (enemy combatant, suspected conspirator, foreign correspondent, interested third party, international caller, contributor to a charity, frequent library user, etc.) and whether we actually charge you with a crime. Silly me. I thought a private line, private conversation, private residence, private entrance, private property, private information, private parties, and private enterprise were, like, not public. What was I thinking?
Way back in the halcyon days of the Cold War, when the enemy was another country - public life in the USSR was said to be so harsh, dishonest, and inhumane that, in private, people showed some compassion, openness, and humanity. The joke then was that public life in the U.S. was all about caring, openness, and humanity but people in their private lives were solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. The joke now is that public life in the Land of the Free is all hard, cold realism, no more mister nice guy, and everyone for himself, while "private life" as such has been disappeared like some troublesome Chilean dissident. That familiar notion we were all taught to respect, the right to privacy, no longer exists now that it's inconvenient. Look out life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The cat is out of the bag, and it's no longer a big secret that the National Security Agency, with a little help from the phone company, is listening, watching, and reading your everyday communications. Or could be. Which is an even more effective. What better way to stifle criticism than to let it slip that phones are sometimes tapped without cause or authorization. Non-court-ordered domestic surveillance, which quaintly used to be called "illegal," is now authorized by executive fiat, which makes it legal, I guess, if anyone is self-destructive enough to challenge it, which would be like painting a target on your back. The official flunky for the regime that runs the country says the NSA will continue to protect us by listening for any loose talk between you and your co-worker, your mother, your best friend, or your Aunt Tillie. You are hereby put on notice. Don't say you weren't warned.
It's a clever Benthamite move, making telecommunications a big national panopticon. Jeremy Bentham, quite a character himself, dreamed up a fiendishly brilliant design for a prison in which all the individual cells had open sides facing outward in a circle and inward toward a central observation tower. It fit the utilitarian need to watch the inmates' every move by making each cell constantly visible to an unseen observer, greatly simplifying the actual surveillance by guards. Prisoners who know they are being watched, the argument goes, are less likely to say or do anything that actually requires watching. The perfect self-police state quietly removes the illusion of privacy.
Back in the day, only paranoiacs (you know who you are) muzzled themselves from speaking (privately) on the phone, at work, or on the street, for fear of being overheard expressing their (private) beliefs. Only the radical fringe knew for sure there was a file in Washington with their name on it, although some secretly wished there was, automatically making them radically chic. They went on speaking their minds anyway, ignoring or mocking the benevolent guardians of liberty such as J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy who made no secret of wanting them silenced.
As you know, if you've been paying attention to that official stage persona, "we" are at war until further notice, in order to protect our freedoms, which are suspended because we are at war. As part of that war against an unidentified Other, we are protecting us by treating us as the unidentified Other by curbing, cancelling, or conveniently redefining our former civil liberties, including the spurious, so-called right to privacy. What, you didn't know that? Never mind, you're better off not thinking about it; that's what we have leaders for. Just go about your own business, and rest assured that you're being watched.
You may or may not have the right to an attorney, depending on how we classify you (enemy combatant, suspected conspirator, foreign correspondent, interested third party, international caller, contributor to a charity, frequent library user, etc.) and whether we actually charge you with a crime. Silly me. I thought a private line, private conversation, private residence, private entrance, private property, private information, private parties, and private enterprise were, like, not public. What was I thinking?
Way back in the halcyon days of the Cold War, when the enemy was another country - public life in the USSR was said to be so harsh, dishonest, and inhumane that, in private, people showed some compassion, openness, and humanity. The joke then was that public life in the U.S. was all about caring, openness, and humanity but people in their private lives were solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. The joke now is that public life in the Land of the Free is all hard, cold realism, no more mister nice guy, and everyone for himself, while "private life" as such has been disappeared like some troublesome Chilean dissident. That familiar notion we were all taught to respect, the right to privacy, no longer exists now that it's inconvenient. Look out life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The cat is out of the bag, and it's no longer a big secret that the National Security Agency, with a little help from the phone company, is listening, watching, and reading your everyday communications. Or could be. Which is an even more effective. What better way to stifle criticism than to let it slip that phones are sometimes tapped without cause or authorization. Non-court-ordered domestic surveillance, which quaintly used to be called "illegal," is now authorized by executive fiat, which makes it legal, I guess, if anyone is self-destructive enough to challenge it, which would be like painting a target on your back. The official flunky for the regime that runs the country says the NSA will continue to protect us by listening for any loose talk between you and your co-worker, your mother, your best friend, or your Aunt Tillie. You are hereby put on notice. Don't say you weren't warned.
It's a clever Benthamite move, making telecommunications a big national panopticon. Jeremy Bentham, quite a character himself, dreamed up a fiendishly brilliant design for a prison in which all the individual cells had open sides facing outward in a circle and inward toward a central observation tower. It fit the utilitarian need to watch the inmates' every move by making each cell constantly visible to an unseen observer, greatly simplifying the actual surveillance by guards. Prisoners who know they are being watched, the argument goes, are less likely to say or do anything that actually requires watching. The perfect self-police state quietly removes the illusion of privacy.
Back in the day, only paranoiacs (you know who you are) muzzled themselves from speaking (privately) on the phone, at work, or on the street, for fear of being overheard expressing their (private) beliefs. Only the radical fringe knew for sure there was a file in Washington with their name on it, although some secretly wished there was, automatically making them radically chic. They went on speaking their minds anyway, ignoring or mocking the benevolent guardians of liberty such as J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy who made no secret of wanting them silenced.
As you know, if you've been paying attention to that official stage persona, "we" are at war until further notice, in order to protect our freedoms, which are suspended because we are at war. As part of that war against an unidentified Other, we are protecting us by treating us as the unidentified Other by curbing, cancelling, or conveniently redefining our former civil liberties, including the spurious, so-called right to privacy. What, you didn't know that? Never mind, you're better off not thinking about it; that's what we have leaders for. Just go about your own business, and rest assured that you're being watched.
Monday, January 09, 2006
On the road again randomly
Pick your soundtrack for this imaginary epic: either the Willie Nelson lighter-than-air pop-country hit that was played way too much on '80s radio (...just can't wait to be on that road again) or the Canned Heat blues-rock tune that some of you may recall from the late '60s. Either one will do as musical background to the rare midwinter bike ride I took yesterday to celebrate the effects of global warming.
When the normal weekend chores have been done, the dead tree once more naked and out of the house, the floor swept, bread baked, soup cooked, laundry done, containers recycled, and firewood fetched, what do you do when the temperature is pushing 60 and real, actual sunshine makes an appearance in Central Swingstate? You go for a bike ride, of course!
Luckily I had already patched the tube that gave me a flat that stopped me in my tracks about a month ago on my way down the hill on County Line Road from our little abode (that lives in the house that Jack built), so I was ready when this heat wave hit. I put on a warm hat that I didn't need and gloves that I did, and on my way to add air to the rear tire, I did the MacKenzie Wind Test. Since there was a strong south wind, I did the rational thing for once and started out southward in order to return northward with the wind at my back. If you've ever gone out with the wind, worked up a sweat, and made the turn to come back against the wind as it gets cooler and you get tired, you will understand MacKenzie's First Law.
Downtown Methodistville was quiet as I made my way down the hill on Main Street to the Alumni Creek Trail. Almost nobody was on it, it's January after all, a group of adults out for a stroll near those condos along the creek, one other cyclist with spandex jersey and a good bike. Maybe everybody's watching the Bengals and the Steelers slug it out on TV. The creek was high, but not so high you couldn't cross under Schocking Road where the trail dips down to streambed level. The only people at Cooper Park were two groups of Mexican Americans playing pickup games of soccer (futbol). As my friend AsbEstes would say, this is REAL sport.
About 45 minutes in, I reached my goal where the bike trail ends at another set of soccer fields across the road from Hideous Malltown, the faux community that one real estate huckster sold to another real estate huckster as the next big thing in urban living. Let's check it out in ten years when half the retail space is vacant, the 12-25 crowd is flocking to movies at a newer mall, and the city is desperately trying to figure out a way to salvage all those big-box stores that were once so fashionable.
The sun hits the horizon just as I make the turn and head north on my out-and-back. Familiarity makes the return trip shorter in subjective time but it still takes 45 objective minutes, and I don't notice the wind difference, probably a good sign. Just to add a little drama, I've pushed the time-envelop to where it's questionable whether I'll make it home in daylight. What's an epic without an element of danger? As I glide undisturbed up the leafy trail, I decide it's time for lights, but my batteries go dead about the time I get to Cooper Park. It doesn't matter because there's nobody else on the trail, and I can see just fine. I take it back: an older couple holding hands, a young mother pushing a stroller with twins, a beatnik in a leather jacket by himself; the soccer players have packed it in and are drinking Milwaukee's Best by their pickup trucks.
By the time I get back to Old Methodistville it's dark, so I velocipedal up Main, tail light blinking to alert whatever traffic might be turning off Cleveland Avenue - ah, made it - then use side streets through the campus of United Brethren College, overhearing some kids returning from a meeting, "...and I took a photography class in high school, so I'm the expert!" After I'd put the Schwinn in the barn for the night, my back and hips required some serious stretching, so I put on Dave Brubeck's Greatest Hits and lay on the floor to do some fiber art on my psoas major, piriformis, and latissimus dorsi. There's a piece called "Unsquare Dance" that stayed with me the rest of the evening. It's in 7/4 time, starts out real simple with bass and hand-claps, then the piano jumps in like a double-dutch jump-rope tap-dance. It's hypnotically cool and kept me company throughout my random walk with the dog.
When the normal weekend chores have been done, the dead tree once more naked and out of the house, the floor swept, bread baked, soup cooked, laundry done, containers recycled, and firewood fetched, what do you do when the temperature is pushing 60 and real, actual sunshine makes an appearance in Central Swingstate? You go for a bike ride, of course!
Luckily I had already patched the tube that gave me a flat that stopped me in my tracks about a month ago on my way down the hill on County Line Road from our little abode (that lives in the house that Jack built), so I was ready when this heat wave hit. I put on a warm hat that I didn't need and gloves that I did, and on my way to add air to the rear tire, I did the MacKenzie Wind Test. Since there was a strong south wind, I did the rational thing for once and started out southward in order to return northward with the wind at my back. If you've ever gone out with the wind, worked up a sweat, and made the turn to come back against the wind as it gets cooler and you get tired, you will understand MacKenzie's First Law.
Downtown Methodistville was quiet as I made my way down the hill on Main Street to the Alumni Creek Trail. Almost nobody was on it, it's January after all, a group of adults out for a stroll near those condos along the creek, one other cyclist with spandex jersey and a good bike. Maybe everybody's watching the Bengals and the Steelers slug it out on TV. The creek was high, but not so high you couldn't cross under Schocking Road where the trail dips down to streambed level. The only people at Cooper Park were two groups of Mexican Americans playing pickup games of soccer (futbol). As my friend AsbEstes would say, this is REAL sport.
About 45 minutes in, I reached my goal where the bike trail ends at another set of soccer fields across the road from Hideous Malltown, the faux community that one real estate huckster sold to another real estate huckster as the next big thing in urban living. Let's check it out in ten years when half the retail space is vacant, the 12-25 crowd is flocking to movies at a newer mall, and the city is desperately trying to figure out a way to salvage all those big-box stores that were once so fashionable.
The sun hits the horizon just as I make the turn and head north on my out-and-back. Familiarity makes the return trip shorter in subjective time but it still takes 45 objective minutes, and I don't notice the wind difference, probably a good sign. Just to add a little drama, I've pushed the time-envelop to where it's questionable whether I'll make it home in daylight. What's an epic without an element of danger? As I glide undisturbed up the leafy trail, I decide it's time for lights, but my batteries go dead about the time I get to Cooper Park. It doesn't matter because there's nobody else on the trail, and I can see just fine. I take it back: an older couple holding hands, a young mother pushing a stroller with twins, a beatnik in a leather jacket by himself; the soccer players have packed it in and are drinking Milwaukee's Best by their pickup trucks.
By the time I get back to Old Methodistville it's dark, so I velocipedal up Main, tail light blinking to alert whatever traffic might be turning off Cleveland Avenue - ah, made it - then use side streets through the campus of United Brethren College, overhearing some kids returning from a meeting, "...and I took a photography class in high school, so I'm the expert!" After I'd put the Schwinn in the barn for the night, my back and hips required some serious stretching, so I put on Dave Brubeck's Greatest Hits and lay on the floor to do some fiber art on my psoas major, piriformis, and latissimus dorsi. There's a piece called "Unsquare Dance" that stayed with me the rest of the evening. It's in 7/4 time, starts out real simple with bass and hand-claps, then the piano jumps in like a double-dutch jump-rope tap-dance. It's hypnotically cool and kept me company throughout my random walk with the dog.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Zojourner Truth
My daughter has been back in the country for two days, and I still haven't seen her. This seems odd. It probably speaks to my lingering attachment to "my little girl" and the long learning curve toward my accepting her independence. Or the fact that Helga has other things to do besides rush home and tell me all about her trip.
Her "trip," in the broad sense of the term, continued upon arrival on Wednesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Her best pal Svetlana, a friend from high school in Central City, picked her up at the airport, and for the next 48 hours, the two of them have been participating in one of those arcane rituals of American culture, the wedding.
Another friend, Ludmila, is getting married today to her high school sweetheart from Smalltown, and Helga is a bridesmaid. They played flute together in the Northeast Swingstate University Orchestra. This much I understand, sort of. They get to buy an expensive dress that they wear once, stand up in front of the church, sit at the head table at the reception, and get lots of pictures taken. Whatever kind of event Ludmila and her family decide on is their business, and Helga is happy to take part.
She even agreed when pressed into service to make a toast to the happy couple, and I know she will do well in that role. Helga put a lot of effort into getting back from her (other) trip in time to do her part, and she is a trouper. Ever since she was a little girl, she has been extremely loyal to her friends. At times that has been difficult for her parents, but it's one of her best qualities, very Taurus like her mother.
Svetlana is a super-trouper for being her "date" on this adventure, a familiar face among the unfamiliar friends and family of the bride in Smalltown. Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
Her "trip," in the broad sense of the term, continued upon arrival on Wednesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Her best pal Svetlana, a friend from high school in Central City, picked her up at the airport, and for the next 48 hours, the two of them have been participating in one of those arcane rituals of American culture, the wedding.
Another friend, Ludmila, is getting married today to her high school sweetheart from Smalltown, and Helga is a bridesmaid. They played flute together in the Northeast Swingstate University Orchestra. This much I understand, sort of. They get to buy an expensive dress that they wear once, stand up in front of the church, sit at the head table at the reception, and get lots of pictures taken. Whatever kind of event Ludmila and her family decide on is their business, and Helga is happy to take part.
She even agreed when pressed into service to make a toast to the happy couple, and I know she will do well in that role. Helga put a lot of effort into getting back from her (other) trip in time to do her part, and she is a trouper. Ever since she was a little girl, she has been extremely loyal to her friends. At times that has been difficult for her parents, but it's one of her best qualities, very Taurus like her mother.
Svetlana is a super-trouper for being her "date" on this adventure, a familiar face among the unfamiliar friends and family of the bride in Smalltown. Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
The Zojourn, Day Ten
We got a call from Heathrow Airport this morning. It's my daughter telling me there's been a slight change, and she will be getting into Cleveland an hour later than originally scheduled. She sounded frazzled but okay. Will I tell her friend Svetlana, who is picking her up? Of course. Svetlana called a few minutes later, telepathically knowing that she should touch base to confirm Helga's arrival tonight. All will be well.
"I hate airports," Helga said.
She made the flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris to London Heathrow this morning as planned, but she didn't have enough time to get to the connecting flight to Washington, so she booked another plane to New York with a connection to Cleveland. All will be well.
I talked to her Monday afternoon, about 10:00 pm their time, after her first day in Paris. They had been to Notre Dame and the little island in the Seine (Ile de France?) after a fast trip by rail from London. She was getting a cold, but she was in love with the hotel on the Rue de Banquier, with its (French) doors opening onto a balcony overlooking a pretty courtyard. The group had just returned from dinner at a nice Greek restaurant with fabulous lighting and an amazing ceiling, where they ate wonderful food, and danced, and everyone had a good time.
They were going to the Musee D'Orsay the next day, then take time for individual investigations, and a few people were taking a side-trip to Versailles, which she would skip. Things were going well, and Helga was having fun despite her sniffles.
Today will be a long day in the air and on the ground, and by tonight (3:00 am Paris time) Helga will be at a bachelorette party in Richland County, Ohio, talk about culture shock. And all will be well.
"I hate airports," Helga said.
She made the flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris to London Heathrow this morning as planned, but she didn't have enough time to get to the connecting flight to Washington, so she booked another plane to New York with a connection to Cleveland. All will be well.
I talked to her Monday afternoon, about 10:00 pm their time, after her first day in Paris. They had been to Notre Dame and the little island in the Seine (Ile de France?) after a fast trip by rail from London. She was getting a cold, but she was in love with the hotel on the Rue de Banquier, with its (French) doors opening onto a balcony overlooking a pretty courtyard. The group had just returned from dinner at a nice Greek restaurant with fabulous lighting and an amazing ceiling, where they ate wonderful food, and danced, and everyone had a good time.
They were going to the Musee D'Orsay the next day, then take time for individual investigations, and a few people were taking a side-trip to Versailles, which she would skip. Things were going well, and Helga was having fun despite her sniffles.
Today will be a long day in the air and on the ground, and by tonight (3:00 am Paris time) Helga will be at a bachelorette party in Richland County, Ohio, talk about culture shock. And all will be well.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
But I digress
Making resolutions is a nice game to play on New Year's Eve, preferably with friends who know you well enough that you can level with them but who won't hold you to it. We have played this game with Gorm and Sylvia before, sometimes with the variations "I resolve to___", "I do not resolve to___", and "I resolve not to___". Kierkegaard aside, there will be no quibbling over whether there is a real difference between 'not resolving to' and 'resolving not to'.
Many moons ago, Gven Golly and I began a new year's ritual of consulting an oracle, another interesting thing to do if you're with someone who understands the oracular method in question, a Book of Changes (I Ching) and a Tarot deck in this case, allowing one to communicate one's personal misinterpretation of the statements and symbols from the oracle. Probably not a first-date thing to do, but cool if there's a common language grounded in some personal history.
Most telling of all is the chronicling of what you actually do on New Year's Day, as in the old wives tale alluded to by Brother Burb. I think the theory is that New Year's Day establishes a kind of template or precedent for each succeeding day, following the principle of WYDIWYD (what you've done is what you'll do), in the coinage of my favorite novelist John Barth. Many of the characters in his narratives are also writers whose characters are looking for their own narratives, and what better guide than WYDIWYD?
I began Sunday, January 1, 2006, by sleeping late and skipping church, guzzling coffee and scarfing pancakes. Then I walked around the corner to our neighborhood Ugly Monstrosity Drug Store to buy a newspaper, but they didn't have the New York Times, so I got a Dispatch, which we read while sitting in front of the fire. It was cool enough to justify a fire in the stove but warm enough to spend time outside in just a shirt and hat, so I did that. Swept out the garage, organized some tools, nuts and bolts, recycled cardboard boxes, things like that, while Gven went through the house like a whirlwind, cooking and cleaning. Oh yeah, I also bought a new calendar, out with the old, in with the new.
Dinner with Gorm and Sylvia was delightful, not surprising because I always enjoy their company, although it still surprises me just a little what good company they are. Gven cooked a hearty meal: pork roast with sauerkraut and apples, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sourdough bread. There was dark beer, rum and tonic, and then green tea with dessert: dangerously sweet dark-chocolate rumballs and Sylvia's delicious mince pie. Naturally we had to look up the various meanings of mince, all of which have to do with cutting things up into deceptively small pieces, whether it's fruit or meat or steps or words. So we didn't.
Unfailingly polite, Gorm and Sylvia went on and on about how good the house looked, and in fact it did look good. Gven's hard work and planning have paid off in major improvements to the kitchen and den, and to hear it from her best friend and decorating guru was especially satisfying. The conversation, like a mysterious fifth presence in the room, flowed easily from each of us yet occupied a space independent of any of us, moving from their son Theo and his girlfriend, to our daughter Helga and her trip to London, to a restaurant in western Maryland, to Gorm's old girlfriend in Athens, my old girlfriend in Ann Arbor, Sylvia's old boyfriend in Waynesburg, my sojourn in the Upper Peninsula and subsequent exodus to Georgia, and a host of related topics. I guess I did more talking than usual, but the conversation seemed to take the lead.
We didn't actually play the resolution game, but Gven resolved to have people over more. I later resolved to start getting up earlier and to ride a bike or do something aerobic. The I Ching talked about using the natural mind without ulterior motives - don't count the harvest while planting - and gave one of my favorite lines, "If a man is not as he should be, he has misfortune," a kind of karmic two-way street, where being internally out of balance causes bad things to happen and where people get internally out of balance because bad things have happened. Like Johnny Cash's dad in "Walk the Line." I hereby resolve not to do that. Oops, too late.
The cards were full of images of money and inspiration, of overcoming problems and learning new skills, of strength united with tenderness, and how it doesn't work to drive for results without being mindful of the process. I'm expecting a year of positive changes in how someone earns a living. If they speak to you at all, the cards are a good way to read in a lot of relevant things you already know, and the visuals are pretty crazy.
The next day, as rain drizzled from the gray Ohio sky, it looked like a good time to prune fruit trees. A crab apple and a regular apple tree in the back yard were screaming to be cleaned up, so I got out the pruning shears and step ladder and had at it. While I was cutting the suckers on a pear tree by the garage, I noticed how filled with junk the gutters were, so I climbed up on the metal roof of the garage - while it's raining - to scoop out the leaves and pinestraw and gunk, which became excellent mulch for the flower beds below. Then while on the roof, I noticed what a mess the lumber covering the woodpile has become, so I spent an hour rearranging 2x8s and 1x6s and sheets of plywood so they could be walked on while keeping the firewood dry. Kids, do not try this at home.
Many moons ago, Gven Golly and I began a new year's ritual of consulting an oracle, another interesting thing to do if you're with someone who understands the oracular method in question, a Book of Changes (I Ching) and a Tarot deck in this case, allowing one to communicate one's personal misinterpretation of the statements and symbols from the oracle. Probably not a first-date thing to do, but cool if there's a common language grounded in some personal history.
Most telling of all is the chronicling of what you actually do on New Year's Day, as in the old wives tale alluded to by Brother Burb. I think the theory is that New Year's Day establishes a kind of template or precedent for each succeeding day, following the principle of WYDIWYD (what you've done is what you'll do), in the coinage of my favorite novelist John Barth. Many of the characters in his narratives are also writers whose characters are looking for their own narratives, and what better guide than WYDIWYD?
I began Sunday, January 1, 2006, by sleeping late and skipping church, guzzling coffee and scarfing pancakes. Then I walked around the corner to our neighborhood Ugly Monstrosity Drug Store to buy a newspaper, but they didn't have the New York Times, so I got a Dispatch, which we read while sitting in front of the fire. It was cool enough to justify a fire in the stove but warm enough to spend time outside in just a shirt and hat, so I did that. Swept out the garage, organized some tools, nuts and bolts, recycled cardboard boxes, things like that, while Gven went through the house like a whirlwind, cooking and cleaning. Oh yeah, I also bought a new calendar, out with the old, in with the new.
Dinner with Gorm and Sylvia was delightful, not surprising because I always enjoy their company, although it still surprises me just a little what good company they are. Gven cooked a hearty meal: pork roast with sauerkraut and apples, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sourdough bread. There was dark beer, rum and tonic, and then green tea with dessert: dangerously sweet dark-chocolate rumballs and Sylvia's delicious mince pie. Naturally we had to look up the various meanings of mince, all of which have to do with cutting things up into deceptively small pieces, whether it's fruit or meat or steps or words. So we didn't.
Unfailingly polite, Gorm and Sylvia went on and on about how good the house looked, and in fact it did look good. Gven's hard work and planning have paid off in major improvements to the kitchen and den, and to hear it from her best friend and decorating guru was especially satisfying. The conversation, like a mysterious fifth presence in the room, flowed easily from each of us yet occupied a space independent of any of us, moving from their son Theo and his girlfriend, to our daughter Helga and her trip to London, to a restaurant in western Maryland, to Gorm's old girlfriend in Athens, my old girlfriend in Ann Arbor, Sylvia's old boyfriend in Waynesburg, my sojourn in the Upper Peninsula and subsequent exodus to Georgia, and a host of related topics. I guess I did more talking than usual, but the conversation seemed to take the lead.
We didn't actually play the resolution game, but Gven resolved to have people over more. I later resolved to start getting up earlier and to ride a bike or do something aerobic. The I Ching talked about using the natural mind without ulterior motives - don't count the harvest while planting - and gave one of my favorite lines, "If a man is not as he should be, he has misfortune," a kind of karmic two-way street, where being internally out of balance causes bad things to happen and where people get internally out of balance because bad things have happened. Like Johnny Cash's dad in "Walk the Line." I hereby resolve not to do that. Oops, too late.
The cards were full of images of money and inspiration, of overcoming problems and learning new skills, of strength united with tenderness, and how it doesn't work to drive for results without being mindful of the process. I'm expecting a year of positive changes in how someone earns a living. If they speak to you at all, the cards are a good way to read in a lot of relevant things you already know, and the visuals are pretty crazy.
The next day, as rain drizzled from the gray Ohio sky, it looked like a good time to prune fruit trees. A crab apple and a regular apple tree in the back yard were screaming to be cleaned up, so I got out the pruning shears and step ladder and had at it. While I was cutting the suckers on a pear tree by the garage, I noticed how filled with junk the gutters were, so I climbed up on the metal roof of the garage - while it's raining - to scoop out the leaves and pinestraw and gunk, which became excellent mulch for the flower beds below. Then while on the roof, I noticed what a mess the lumber covering the woodpile has become, so I spent an hour rearranging 2x8s and 1x6s and sheets of plywood so they could be walked on while keeping the firewood dry. Kids, do not try this at home.
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