save water, shower with a friend

Somehow that old rallying cry doesn't sound as daring as it once did, but that's okay, maybe it's a good thing that the social revolution made such things commonplace. Now, according to Slate.com there's a corollary:

Are you a real environmentalist? If so, you might want to consider staying with your spouse long after the love is gone. Turns out, divorce is just one more thing that is bad for the environment. The LAT and WP report on a new study that reveals couples who live together use energy and water much more efficiently than those that have split up. In one year alone, divorced households were responsible for using as much as 61 percent more resources per person than before they split. "If you don't want to get remarried," the study's author explained, "maybe move in with somebody you like."

Will this this awareness spark widespread cohabitation by friends who just want to save the planet? Will it keep couples from splitting just so they can reduce, reuse, and recycle their irreconcilable differences? Will it spawn a wave of urban and rural communes populated by green post-hippie post-feminist post-boomers?

I doubt it. Yet it does make strange bedfellows of so-called social conservatives and so-called environmentalists, although the latter are probably the more conservative in a literal sense. And yes, it adds another dimension to the old family-values argument - another phrase that seems to have lost traction - to know that material, moral, and ecological 'values' coincide. In short, breaking up is expensive.

Be lean and mean it

Warning: the following contains a confessional diatribe in which I castigate myself for inviting a cold virus to take me hostage, which it did.

It has been a couple of years since my last confession - and a couple of years since my last cold. I say this, not to brag about how healthy I am (the good ole boys used to say if it's true it ain't braggin' but that's bullshit), but to make the observation that these things aren't random. I brought it on myself. I have sinned, and when one strays from the path of righteousness, clean living, and daily workouts, one pays the price by reaping a harvest of head congestion, runny nose, frequent fog-horn blasts into a soggy handkerchief, and horribly mixed metaphors.

I sowed the seeds of the first cold of the year by spending the time I woulda coulda shoulda been moving around out in the fall weather but instead sat at my desk hunched over an editing project that was due. Make that overdue. I consciously chose to do the sedentary yet profitable task of vigorously moving a pencil around a two-dimensional surface instead of going outside, riding my bike, tai-ing my chi, walking the dog, balancing the internal energy - and instant karma's gonna get you.

And so it did come to pass that my body welcomed the ever-present virus, which made itself at home in the warm, moist cellular environment of my weak, vulnerable mucous membrane, where the virus and its progeny lived a long and healthy one-week lifespan disrupting the normal healthy functioning of my upper respiratory tract, making me blow my nose every hour on the hour. All because I skipped a few workouts. Like I needed further evidence that nobody gets away with anything in this life.

My body (and probably yours) is like a small but complex ecosystem, in which organ systems, like little cell cities, take in nutrients in order to do their work. Some of what they produce is toxic sludge that must be disposed of or it will poison the environment and make the system break down. The thing is, once the organs are conditioned to a certain amount of internal cleansing through daily exercise, fresh air, water, and the occasional habanero pepper, any interruption of that cycle causes a bad reaction. Ergo, if I don't work out, my usually clean system reacts more than one might expect, because it expects the toxic sludge to be gone.

It also happens to be getting colder outside, but that's not why I "caught a cold" - the misnomer that keeps people inside in the winter. On the contrary, my experience is just the opposite: I'm less likely to get sick if I go outside every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, and condition my internal ecosystem to adapt to the external elements. Typically I'm a little chilly (hands, feet, nose) for the first ten minutes, and then the internal furnace kicks in and I warm up.

The warmed-up body, pumping blood and breathing deeply, brings energy to the limbs and releases toxins to the atmosphere (thank you, trees and other flora for taking over the clean-up at this point). Voila! Mobile immune system in action, warding off bad karma by playing outside.

Just for the record, I'm feeling much better now. My message to the universe: wake-up call received, will not skip any more workouts than absolutely necessary, whatever that means, because the margin for error is as thin as the insulating fat layer on my skinny body.

I'd like to thank...

"...God and my family and my teammates." That may not be an exact quote, but that's the gist of what the young man said to the TV announcer after leading his team to victory. He went on to describe what went right for Illinois and what a long way they've come since they lost to Ohio State a year ago.

As postgame on-field interviews go, it seemed harmless enough. The kid, Juice Williams, had played remarkably well, making smart plays at crunch time in a huge win against the number-one-ranked team in the country. Considering that he is a college sophomore, probably 19 years old, playing quarterback in the Big Ten, getting this kind of attention on national TV, I thought he conducted himself well. Rather than acting like God's Gift to Football, he gave all the credit to the people around him and his notion of a higher power. What's not to like?

I was somewhat stunned the next morning in church when Rev. Susan, whom I like and respect for her depth and humor, voiced her superficial and humorless objections to the young man's remarks. What she heard - that he thanked God for His help in defeating the other team, for blessing the Illini instead of the Buckeyes - was quite different from what I heard - that he credited others for his success, that he was grateful for being able to play so well. I guess it's a fine line.

Back in the days when the Boston Celtics ruled pro basketball, their center was an enlightened being named Bill Russell. Besides being an extraordinarily quick and strong six-foot-nine, Russell was a defensive genius and a team player par excellence who had a knack for raising the performance of everybody on both teams to another level. After his retirement he wrote an article describing the fleeting joy of taking part in the kind of competition (LL "seeking together" according to Web10) where who wins or loses is almost beside the point.

Almost - not quite - because everybody is trying; otherwise they wouldn't be "seeking together" or raising each other to a higher level of performance. Dig?

Blessing and being blessed are complicated, and to Rev. Susan's credit, she went on to unpack some of the complexities of giving thanks, and it is that time of year. What I find irritating is the assumption that the big jock sure can run, he sure can throw, but he's too simple-minded to conceive of anything more subtle than "Please God Help Us Win" - the sports equivalent of "God Bless Our Troops." Righteously indignant nonathletes are quick to judge those who actually play the game (rather than sitting on the couch) and quick be appalled at the silly tribal behavior of both players and fans.

To be fair, I too rage at some of the gifted assholes who get rich and famous while abusing their bodies, their opponents, their peers, the public, their spouses, and their drug of choice. The sports section of the paper is full of their names and their egos. I also have major theological differences with the Illinois quarterback, which I hope to discuss with him while we throw the ball around.

But it's not the theological question of where the blessings come from that has me steamed up. It's the distribution of blessings. When warmonger patriots proudly plant "God bless our troops" in their front yards, they are explicitly directing their pious request at the armed forces attacking and conquering another country, implicitly excluding Iraqi troops (evildoers) from that blessing. When liberal intellectuals decry the sophomore quarterback's thanking his god for a good game, they can't conceive of a universalist deity showering strength, speed, and agility on 22 undergraduates at one time and enjoying the game.

Thank you, earth and sky, wind and water, birds and beasts, flowers and trees, all cells of one body.

gang colors

Yo, where's your gang colors?

Sorry, I'm not in uniform today. My OSU hoody shrank from XL to M ten years ago, and I last saw my only remaining Michigan T-shirt when using it to wash windows some time in the eighties. My old Oberlin T-shirt is a threadbare shadow of its former self, and it's too cold to wear a T-shirt anyway. I still have some Kent State gear, but I wore that last year, prompting one compassionate conservative co-worker to inform me, "That's where they kill students."

Thank you, B, I didn't know that.

That covers most of my college allegiances. So I chose to wear a dark green plaid in honor of Oregon. I never went to school there, but I have a friend who did, and one of my Ann Arbor roommates now lives in Eugene - does that count?

I'm tempted to wax philosophical about the significance of adorning our bodies with totemic symbols of group affiliation, but I don't have the energy. I guess the warrior archetype got beat up in the parking lot by the worker-drone archetype, and the shaman archetype just looked the other way. And no, I'm not packing heat, unless the Swiss Army knife in my briefcase qualifies as a weapon and is therefore banned on school, um, company property.

Hey, where's your school spirit? (I left it at the office.)

Parker

I have a secret crush. Promise not to tell anyone? She is the cutest, funniest, strongest, smartest, most adorable, honest, fearless, clever...

Actress.



I realize it's not the same to have a crush on a movie star as it is to have a crush on your ninth-grade Spanish teacher (remember Mrs. Forrest in Garden City? Woo-hoo!) or the co-worker half your age (doesn't everybody over a certain age?) or the debutante-dancer-Platonist of the first midlife, um, event (which is another story), but still, crushes are harmless infatuations, right? It might as well be Parker Posey as Mrs. Forrest. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely a figment of my overactive imagination.

The fact is, I am now able to declare openly that for several weeks, in the privacy of Om Shanty, in the company of the mostly-tolerant Gven Golly ("He's going through a phase"), and under the bemused gaze of Zelda Golly ("Whatever"), I've been staging, attending, and enjoying a Parker Posey Film Festival. A brief, critically annotated filmography of what I've seen of her oeuvre so far:

Adam & Steve - Slightly gross (to get your attention) and well-intentioned coming-out story about oddly matched gay couple, with Parker as supportive friend.
Best in Show - Hilarious send-up of dog owners with Parker as yuppie control freak.
Blade Trinity - Live-action comic book action hero Wesley Snipes and mod squad fight archcriminals, including Parker as twisted villainess.
Broken English - Probably her best work to date, as a grown-up urban sophisticate learning to deal with jerks, idiots, nice people, and the difficulty of all relationships.
Clockwatchers - Cute, ironic tragicomedy of alienated office workers' loyalty and spite, with Parker as spite.
Daytrippers - Remarkable ensemble cast as urban family with issues, with kooky sister Parker alongside Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Ann Meara.
Fay Grim - Sequel to 'Henry Fool' with aging actors reprising roles with remarkable finesse, but you should see 'Henry' first if you want to follow a narrative.
For Your Consideration - Over the top movie-making character types.
Frankenstein - Strong role as police investigator in weak movie that's mostly dark, damp, industrial atmosphere.
Henry Fool - Oblique drama of family dysfunction, outsider art, domestic violence, survival, and coffee, with Parker as brittle sister.
Laws of Attraction - Never mind, Parker typecast as crazy rock and roll girl.
The OH in Ohio - Brilliant, how you say, coming with age comedy with help from Danny DeVito and other devices.
Party Girl - Delightful urban coming-of-age comedy in which Parker has an epiphany with the Dewey Decimal System.
Personal Velocity - Three short films of great power, with Parker in the middle as a conflicted editor working through tough father, mother, and other issues.
Scream 3 - Never mind, Parker typecast as superficial Courtney Cox wannabe.
Superman Returns - Disappointing in so many ways, even Kevin Spacey's Lex Luther with Parker as sidekick can't salvage it.
Waiting for Guffman - Forgetable, forgotten.
You've Got Mail - Never mind, Parker typecast as teddy-bear Tom's evil girlfriend and foil for good-girl Meg.

There's even a decent interview with her in the current issue of Bust, in which she says "Hi" to the man staring at her in the restaurant, and gives the following enlightened answer to the age-old professional woman question of whether she wants to have kids: "If it happens, it happens. I just want to have interesting experiences."

STRIKE

A writer friend has brought up a subject I haven't heard mentioned in a long time. I also haven't read Harper's in a long time, so maybe it's just my being out of touch. And to many people just the words general strike sound very Sixties French New Left. Anyway who has the time? Who hasn't bought into the the neofascist security state, if only by silent submission? Can they send all of us to Guantanamo?

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? (Garret Keizer, Harper's, October 2007)

Correct me if I'm wrong, history geeks, but my understanding is that groups of people go on strike when they are excluded from other means of influencing policy, either public or private. When workers have no leverage because their interests are not represented, when prisoners are silenced or otherwise treated as objects, or when students without rights are herded like livestock through the diploma mill. Everyone can draw their own conclusions about whether voters fall into that category.

An Election Day general strike would set our remembrance of those people free from the sarcophagi of rhetoric and rationalization. It would be the political equivalent of raising them from the dead. It would be a clear if sadly delayed message of solidarity to those voters in Ohio and Florida who were pretty much told they could drop dead. (Keizer)

Tell me to get over it, but is anyone really convinced that the electoral process was served in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004? And remind me again how it helps the general public to accept unquestioningly the results of a rigged election. (Chorus offstage: It's a terrible system and far better than European multiparty chaos or any other current system. It isn't perfect, but it's stable, and changing the election process would be too disruptive. Elections and the illusion of majority rule have always been corrupted by money and influence, so how is this any different?)

But we don’t have to do it, you will say, because “we have a process.” Have or had, the verb remains tentative. In regard to verbs, Dick Cheney showed his superlative talent for le mot juste when in the halls of the U.S. Congress he told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. He has since told congressional investigators to do the same thing. There’s your process. (Keizer)

Maybe what I should do it let other's make their case. Here are some other voices on this issue

My frustration shows whenever I speak about this maimed democracy, as it did the other night in an otherwise calm conversation about the ghost of stolen elections past. I think what is most damaging is the complicity of the losing parties - both the political party that loses the election and the voters who vote against their own interests, e.g. tax cuts for the wealthy - in this perversion of "free elections."

Grant me the energy to do what I can do, the serenity to sleep at night when it doesn't work, and the wisdom to wake up and smell the coffee. Or something like that.

lies, falsehoods, prevarication

Smells just as foul by any other name.

We are all capable of halting and even reversing the aging process. Exercise in general, and strength training in particular, has been scientifically proven to help achieve such results. In this seminar, participants will learn the basics of designing and performing an overall exercise program, with an emphasis on strength training; there will be an overview of major muscle groups of the body. With the fitness skills and nutritional guidelines taught, participants will learn how to condition themselves so that they can live each day as though they were 10 or 20 years younger.
(promotional blurb for a well-intentioned, deceptive, manipulative corporate program [my emphasis])

Did you know that aging can be stopped or reversed? It's been scientifically proven! Don't believe me? Just ask an ignorant hack writer of PR blurbs for the benevolent, altruistic, worker-friendly corporate program. Conclusion: If I join the program, I won't get any older; if I join it wholeheartedly, I'll get younger. All this plus an overview of major muscle groups! I (heart) corporation.

The Prophet Clint Eastwood sayeth: Some people believe you should exercise less as you get older, but you should exercise more. I subscribe to that belief. I also believe that one must exercise more carefully, more mindfully, i.e. more responsibly as the years go by. But Clint doesn't claim that exercising more will make you less old, that time and its physiological effects magically shift backward. The Prophet Clint doesn't think we're all idiots.

So where does a person find reliable information? TV, of course, where the totally truthful drug ads tell you to "Ask your doctor whether red Lebanese hash is right for your unexplained sensations, the urge to move, or other disturbing symptoms of RLS (gasp!)." One of these days I'm going to put my restless leg through the TV screen.

Which reminds me of the Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, who said (or is said to have said), "Half of what people say is lies, and the other half is bullshit." Unless it's the kinder, gentler department of human skill-sets, which always tells the truth.

Paradise

Donald Barthelme, may he rest in something akin to joy with a sharp edge of erotic tension, if not in peace, wrote some remarkable pieces of fiction, mainly during the seventies and eighties I think. Now that he has left this earthly plane, he will presumably write no more amazing literary morsels for his readers to savor, but they are in print, thank you Gutenburg, so that's something.

I've read most of his books - Barthelme, not Gutenburg - novels and short stories I guess you would call them, though they don't follow the usual narrative conventions - and they seldom fail to surprise, provoke, and entertain. I laughed, I cried, I reflected, he shot himself.

Why I missed this one (1986) I have no idea, but there it was on the shelf at the public library, where I was looking for something by John Barth, whom I discovered about the same point in my disjointed cut-and-paste undergraduate years. Did I read a review? Did someone hand me a copy and say you gotta read this? Snow White was my first encounter with Barthelme, and it was hilariously freaking absurdly beautiful in an archetypally tragic and tubular way. Then, as now, I wished I could write like him. To wit:

Q: What did you do, after work, in the evenings or on weekend, in Philadelphia?
A: Just ordinary things.
Q: No special interests?
A: I was very interested in bow-hunting. These new bows they have now, what they call a compound bow - Also, I'm a member of the Galapagos Society, we work for the environment, it's really a very effective -
Q: And what else?
A: Well, adultery. I would say that's how I spent most of my free time. In adultery.
Q: You mean regular adultery.
A: Yes. Sleeping with people although legally bound to someone else.
Q: These were women.
A: Invariably.
.... [something about a haircutter]
A: What if she stabs me in the ear with the scissors?
Q: Unlikely, I would think.
A: Stabs me in the ear with the scissors in an excess of rage?
Q: Your guilt. I recognize it. Clearly, guilt.
A: Nonsense. The prudent man guards his eardrums. The prudent man avoid anomalous circumstances.
Q: You regard yourself as prudent.
A: I regard myself as asleep. I go along, things happen to me, there are disturbances, one copes, thinking of the golden pillow, I don't mean literally golden but golden in my esteem -
Q: Let me play this track here for you, it's by Echo and the Bunnymen -
A: I'll pass.
Q: I also have a video of the Tet offensive with Walter Cronkite...
(Donald Barthelme, Paradise, NY: Putnam, 1986, p. 47)

Sorry, that was a bit on the long side, but you get the idea. Or not. I'm not going to try to unpack it because the packaging is already so well done. I'll do what D.H. Lawrence did in his essays about Hawthorne and Melville, which was essentially to let them write it for him, which he did brilliantly of course.

Veronica told him that she had flunked Freshman English 1303 three times. "How in the world did you do that?" he asked. "Comma splices," she said. "Also every time I wrote down something I thought, the small-section teacher said that it was banal. It probably was banal." [....] "We all went through this," he told them, and Dore said, "Yeah, and you smart guys did the Vietnam war." Simon had opposed the Vietnam war in all possible ways short of self-immolation but could not deny that it was a war constructed by people who had labored through Psychology I, II, III, and IV and Main Currents of Western Thought. "But, dummy, it's the only thing you've got," he said. "Your best idea." "I have the highest respect for education," she said. "The highest. I'd be just as dreary when I came out as I was when I went in." (Paradise, p. 169)

It's like trying to explain a joke, which is always a mistake, for the same reason that Isadora Duncan told the journalist, when asked what the dance means, that if she could tell him what it means, she wouldn't have danced it. Or maybe it was Martha Graham. On the other hand, what good is a review that says, This is a good book, and you should read it? Not much. Is that enough filler between slices of fresh fruit, enough bread to clear the palate before the next sip of wine?

"One day there won't be any wives any more."
"Or husbands either."
"Just free units cruising the surface of the earth. Flying the black flag."
"Something to look forward to."
"Do you really think so?"
"What about the children?"
"Get one and keep it. Keep it for yourself. Hug it and teach it things. Everything you know."
(Paradise, p. 200)

National Corporate Master Appreciation Day

Do you know what today is? It's National Boss Day, aka Kiss-Ass/Brown-Nose/Suck-Up Day, which means it can't be long before National Corporate Master Appreciation Day, and soon after that National CEO-Robber Baron Love-Fest Week, followed by Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib Warden/Guard Adoration Month.

The little spectacle on this cube farm took the form of a contest between departments over who would out-do the other in fawning over their beloved manager, and within the department over which serf could gush the most over how great thou art. Excuse me while I gag on the cake.

Vaccinium macrocarpon

The common cranberry. An Amerikan tradition. A Thanksgiving staple. A group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines...found in acidic bogs throughout the cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

When I talked to Jessi Golly two weeks ago on the phone, he had just arrived in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, to begin work on the cranberry harvest. He had given his notice at Forbidden Planet, having made arrangements with his housemate Gabriel to work at the cranberry farm. Gabriel has worked there before so he knows the drill. Thursday was Jessi's last day at the bookstore, and he will have his job back after the cranberry gig, which lasts until just before Thanksgiving.

So on Monday he took the Chinatown Bus to Boston, then the southbound train to Buzzard’s Bay, where Gabriel picked him up in his truck and brought him to the farm. For the next six weeks he has a room in a doublewide, sharing a kitchen and bathroom with five other people, some of whom he already knew from New York.

It was good for me to talk to him after he had arrived and gotten situated. He's an adult, he's been on his own for a few years now, but to me and Gven he's still The Boy. We need to be reassured every now and then that The Boy and The Girl are okay. We appreciate their having their own adventures, and we can even enjoy the ride vicariously sometimes, but it isn't fun to be out of touch for too long.

Zelda came in the door just as I was hanging up the phone with Jessi. I hadn't really seen her in a few days. Monday is receiving day at her bookstore, and she had spent a long day unpacking, sorting, and tracking a shipment of books from the warehouse, making sure everything was there, recording errors and irregularities, like a nonfiction book is recorded as fiction.

There happened to be a lot of errors and irregularities, so sitting in the den with the crickets chirping outside, I learned a lot about the way they handle book shipments, and she is very good at breaking down the process in terms I can understand.

It had been an interesting day for me too, as in the curse “May you live in interesting times.” Work was slow, and office communication has been uneven, shall we say, making for some minor unease and frustration, which I managed to work out of my system with qigong and handstands in the fitness room and a bike ride home.

That night there was a small, peculiar drum circle at the percussion store on High Street, so I also got to indulge in the group therapy of improvising rhythms by wailing on stretched animal skins. You never know who will show up at these things, and this one was mostly old people (meaning anyone born before 1951) plus one hipster with dreadlocks and great chops on hand drums. The guy could really play, and a couple of times we got into a pretty good jam, with him in the lead and me providing mainly bass.

None of which has anything to do with cranberries, except circumstantially, in which case all of the above is closely connected, if only because it all happened to me within a short time-frame in which I was paying attention. This is the metanarrative, where I talk about the way random stuff occurs, and then it occurs to me to write it down.

A few days later Jessi called me at my desk, and I got a lot more information about what he actually does out there on the farm. It's a little more than the grunt labor I had pictured. Some days are long, like 16-18 hours, depending on the size of the order they have to get out. The crew of six does all phases of the process - from bog to bag - harvesting, processing, and packaging, so it's not too monotonous.

Some days they do a wet harvest: flood the field and use a machine that cuts and then pulls the floating berries through a long tube to the conveyor for and processing. Wet berries don't keep well, so this is only done when they are being sold to Ocean Spray for concentrate.

Other days they do a dry harvest, which involves another machine that works like a large self-propelled lawnmower. Someone drives it down the rows of plants, and it cuts berries, separates the stems, and collects the berries in a bag. It's tricky if the ground is uneven.

Another machine screens out the berries that are too small or not ripe. Additional sorting requires people to sit by the conveyor and pick out any remaining substandard berries before they reach the bagging stage. There two people fill up 12-ounce plastic bags, seal them shut, and pack them in boxes. When there are enough boxes filled, they stack them on pallets and load them on the truck for delivery to the buyer.

It's a family farm on Cape Cod that's been doing this for like four generations. It's agriculture. Plant, cultivate, weed, water, worry, harvest, package, sell. It sounds like a great experience, and I think he will learn a lot. When I was talking to Rachel about it during a pause from checking proofs before releasing files to the printer, I saw how Jessi is doing what the motto says is the mission of the college he dropped out of: Learning and Labor.

Go Yeomen!

seven-minute bio

My Wednesday night men's group was given the assignment of presenting a brief biographical sketch. My response was to pile as many details as possible into a small container, shake vigorously, and see what comes out, although I think I went over the seven minute limit. In the interest of reducing, reusing, recycling, and revealing, I reproduce it almost verbatim here.

Born 1951 in a small town in Minnesota. It was the postwar era, I had three older sisters, both my parents had college degrees, and upward mobility was a major theme.

When I was three, we moved across the Mississippi to a larger town in Wisconsin. What I recall most vividly is the house on Market Street, riding my red Schwinn, and walking to Hogan School two blocks away. I remember learning to read and do long division, playing a lot of baseball, basketball, football, and war with the other boys in the neighborhood. The Milwaukee Braves, Minneapolis Lakers, and Green Bay Packers were our teams. In war it was still us versus the Germans. I spent a lot of time alone, and that was fine with me. My parents were a steady presence, and we were a close-knit family.

Grandpa Anderson died in 1960, just before we moved to Detroit, which was a whole new world populated by the Detroit Tigers, Pistons, and Lions, new schools, new friends, reading the Detroit Free Press, and some influential teachers and coaches. I cared about being on the team, getting good grades, getting to know girls; I read a lot of biographies and histories. My brother was born when I was eleven, and I enjoyed having and being a brother.

In 1966 we moved to a more affluent suburb, and I started to learn about wealth and status. I played basketball, found out I liked to write, and got some recognition working on the high school newspaper and then the town newspaper. I liked being known. I found out that having a car was important (this was Detroit in the 1960s) and I liked driving my 1966 Mustang. I also learned about limitations: I wasn't the smartest, coolest, fastest, strongest, or most talented guy around, and I never would be.

I went to school in Ohio for two years and tried to do everything. I was in the Honors College, dorm government, on the track team, intramural sports, into politics, and eventually serious 'partying'. When I transferred to Michigan, I got an apartment with two friends from high school and did more 'partying' than studying - but it was SERIOUS partying. In and out of school for two years, I had very little academic focus, but I did connect with a couple of really interesting women.

I moved to the Upper Peninsula with a friend in 1974, and a whole new adventure began. When not traveling to Texas, Georgia, Indiana, or Florida, I worked in a candle shop and a food coop, drove a school bus, lived in a tent, played ball, played music, and gradually migrated west from Munising to AuTrain to Deerton to Marquette, where Northern Michigan University provided my first exposure to yoga and modern dance - and a couple of really interesting women.

Instead of staying in the UP, I accepted my sister Jo Jo's invitation to go south. I moved to Strawberry Mountain Farm in north Georgia in 1976 and met my future bride. We worked and played for two years among a loosely organized group of people attempting to build a therapeutic community. Helping run health-related workshops with folks from the city gave us a lot of opportunities for gardening, hiking, fun and games, taking care of horses and cows, as well as human interaction, miscommunication, and conflict.

Gven and I moved to Chicago for a year, where I met an important teacher and started to study taiji. Gven made a lot of friends working at a great restaurant called the Heartland Cafe, and I worked first for a weekly newspaper and then for the phone company. We made good use of the resources of city life: museums, libraries, restaurants, theater, music, and public transporation. That December we returned to Atlanta to get married. We initially moved to Ithaca, New York, where we met a very good teacher, and almost went to school at SUNY Cortland, but changed our minds and landed in Oberlin.

We spent two years in Oberlin, where I met another important teacher and learned a little about philosophy and its relation to everything. I learned more taiji and got the chance to coach both basketball and track as a student assistant. I also had a nice job writing for the faculty-staff newspaper and learned a little about academic politics. After graduating, I got a one-year job teaching at New Garden Friends School in North Carolina. Shortly before Jessi was born in 1982, we migrated back to Atlanta.

Jessi and Zelda were born in Atlanta 20 months apart. We lived in three different houses in three different neighborhoods. I worked for a carpenter, a psychologist, a retail nursery, a landscaper, and a tree-planting crew. I taught taiji at Emory, Clayton, Georgia State, and a dance studio. When I got a paper published, we decided it was time for graduate school, so we moved back to Ohio. The kids were toddlers.

At Ohio State I connected with a couple of influential teachers and learned a little more about philosophy, history, literature, language, research, writing, and more taiji. I also connected with a couple of peers in a drinking and discussion group we called the Physical Club after our heroes William James, C.S. Peirce, and their friends, the original pragmatists, who called themselves (tongue in cheek) the Metaphysical Club. Gven went to massage school and had a thriving practice in Grandview. The kids were starting school, playing soccer, and making friends.

When I graduated, we went to south Alabama for a one-year teaching job that didn't work out. We moved back to Ohio, this time to Clintonville, where the kids made new friends in a new school and started to discover their own gifts. I worked here and there doing landscaping, baking bread, doing I Ching readings on the psychic hotline, teaching ethics and critical thinking at a community college. Freelance copyediting for SUNY Press helped me get into textbook editing at LDA, which helped me get into production editing at Megacorporate Publishing, where I've been for almost eight years.

Jessi and Zelda grew up in central swingstate and went through pretty good public schools. I was able to be present in their soccer teams, coach their basketball teams, scream my head off watching Jessi run track and cross country, go to Zelda's band concerts, and witness their friendships, adolescent struggles, and college transitions. Gven and I moved to a smaller house in Methodistville, and now the kids are grown, mostly on their own, but still very much part of our lives.

(That's over the seven-minute limit, but it's hard to decide what to leave out. It's also hard to tell what larger truth, if any, emerges, aside from the obvious horizontal mobility.)

Contemporaryfictiongurl

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Contemporaryfictiongurl!

It's late September and cool in the morning. I walk around and check the pepper plants, which are starting to ripen, and pick a handful of cherry tomatoes.

I sat out on the patio and read a couple chapters of Snow Crash while I ate my fried egg sandwich with a second cup of coffee. A hacker named Hiro Protagonist is hot on the trail of a neurolinguistic conspiracy to reverse the Tower of Babel story by reprogramming everyone to speak in tongues. Some would call it "science fiction" because that's the section where it is shelved in the bookstore. Others would call it "cyberpunk" because that's the subgenre where its fans say it fits like a nanotechnological glove. I'm just looking for a live story.

This is the suburbs. Name's Sven Golly. I'm an editor.

After breakfast I mixed some dry yeast with warm water and sugar, let it sit, added flour, and set the bowl of whole wheat sponge out in the sun to grow into dough. Then I started a second batch, pouring sourdough starter into a bowl, adding a little oil and water, some flour, and setting it in the sun to encourage select microorganisms to propagate and grow in that nutritious, moist medium and carry their informational structure into their organic environment. A culture spreads in a community; software informs and instructs hardware; viruses attach themselves to a habitable medium and change it.

I hear a dog's sharp bark down the block and look around for Dali. A minute ago she was chasing a squirrel up a tree, but I don't see her anywhere in the yard. She isn't napping in her usual chair in the house, so I worry. Did I leave a gate open? I walk to the corner, where some new neighbors, Rita and Dennis, are sitting in lawn chairs having a yard sale. "Nice bike. You haven't seen a little spotted dog, have you?" No, they haven't, and the barking is their golden retriever. I hadn't even noticed their moving in (this week?), or Brian's moving out (last week?), or the for-sale sign being taken down. That's how disconnected I am from my immediate environment.

Is there a story here? Can one be crafted from the scant material available? Does the mind make one up anyway, filling in the missing facts as needed to make sense of it all? I decide to check one more place, and Dali is found whimpering in the upstairs bedroom where she has locked herself in. Mystery solved.

I decide to pickle some cherry tomatoes in a sealed jar of saltwater and see how they react. It works with peppers, why not tomatoes?

Something purple has dripped on the pale pink ceramic tiles of the patio table, staining it in irregular blotches. A few little bundles of brown pine needles mixed in, smearing the purple pigment. Some kind of berries? Bird poop from the overhanging maple tree? One perfectly radiating purple splatter looks like photos of solar flares leaping from the surface of the sun, or Jackson Pollack's careful randomness, or an ink blot on paper.

Zelda wants me to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I don't know why, but she thinks I'd like it. I saw a copy of it lying on the floor of her room. She declared her intention yesterday to read a "classic" once a month to make up for the many great books that weren't assigned while she was in school. I had to ask what defines 'classic', and for her purposes it's canonical literature - Beowulf, Dickens, Hemingway. I think she knows what she's doing: she calls herself a "contemporary fiction girl." She wants to broaden her knowledge base, and she's in a good position to do it now.

When I found the dog up in Zelda's room, there was stuff all over the place: clothes, art books, paperbacks, cigarettes, empty cups and glasses. Yet I sense an orderly, self-contained fermentation taking place in that warm space.