Eat This Book Last

Good Night 2011

2011-12-31T00:50:00.000-08:00

Rambling thoughts for a New Year's eve morning.

I have insomnia often, but tonight is different. Tonight I feel anxiety when I lay down and when I sit up. It might have been the result of my earlier attempt at subtle stimulation. I allowed myself to have a cup of irish coffee. My thinking at the time was that the caffeine would keep me from yawning at a late evening party, while the alcohol would keep me from being too hyperactive. This strategy worked for the party, but at 2am I am the human version of the table-top novelty the "Dippy Bird."

Those in favor of a smaller government often like to blurt out the expression "personal responsibility." They say this as if personal responsibility is a key benefit of doing away with social services. They also somehow imply that this will improve our society. I guess it may be logical. It is possible that the American species would be improved by a bit more natural selection. However, I think it is only fair that with the reduction of social services that we ensure that folks who are seeking the path to personal responsibility be given every chance to achieve self-sufficiency. This should be especially true for the children. That's why we should insist that all who seek solvency be allowed to beg at the doorway of ANY private or public establishment. I think New York City and Disney will benefit from the contrast that thousands of small, dirty ignorant people will create. Why should Tijuana and Calcutta have all the personally responsible people?

How can I say all that more simply?

If smaller government is equal to personal responsibility but personal responsibility is not equal to opportunity, then how can deepening ignorance and poverty be equal to a stronger republic? Business 101 mandates that 80% of a company's profit would always be generated by 20% of its workforce, while the other 20% of the profit would be generated by the remaining 80% of the workforce. Why then wouldn't that rule apply to liberty and justice?

If we stop trying to support the weakest of our republic through social services I feel certain that we will only weaken the overall republic.

Survivor's guilt

2011-10-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

I've heard the term "survivor's guilt" many times before, but until recently I regarded it with little comprehension. I couldn't really understand the concept until a particular call ended last Friday afternoon.

At the age of twelve I learned that I was the son of a forty-three-year old woman who suffered a massive and debilitating stroke. She survived and recovered almost completely given the fact that her deep brain aneurysm ruptured while she was in post-op after routine surgery.

At the age of fifty I learned that I am now the brother of a fifty-six-year old woman who has recently discovered that she too has a deep brain aneurysm that has the likely potential of rupturing as catastrophically as my mother's did those many years ago.

When my sister told me of her diagnosis a few weeks back, she explained that her fate was no longer a matter of "if," it was only now a matter of "when." She also explained that my siblings and I are now considered second degree candidates, which implies that our statistical probability of stroke jumps past the 50-50 mark.

She said with a hint of shame, "You are advised to consult your doctor and schedule a MR-Arteriograph."

I called my doctor's office and left a casual message in the appropriate voice mail box, using the terminology that my sister's doctor had advised and waited for the usual long overdue call back from a tired and bored medical secretary, who would assure me that my complaint wasn't worthy of a doctor's visit. I was surprised when cell phone vibrated and hour later with a caller ID that read, "BLOCKED." Surprise became alarmed when I heard the tired, but concerned voice of the medical secretary ask me, "when can you get in here?"

My meeting with the doctor was anything but routine. We sat knee to knee in an examination room as he made notes of my news. When he had heard enough he began typing up an order for my blood work and scans. His only comment was, "we should get this done soon." The way he said the word "should" was intended to have an air of casualness, but instead it came across with an edge of anxiety - an anxiety that shived me between my shoulders.

I am a fatalist in many ways. I try to live "in the moment." My motto is "be here, now, and make your moment count." I want to embrace the doubts that now loom over my existence, and live the daily life, throwing caution to the winds. I have my good days with this philosophy, but as the date of my MRA closed in, so did the heavy cloak of my mortality.

The first attempt at the scan did not go well. I couldn't control my anxiety. My heart raced as they conveyed me into the clunking magnetic doughnut and the contents of my stomach threatened to paint the sterile aesthetic of the machinery. The technician was very kind and assured me that many people are claustrophobic. I know that I am not. I accepted his diagnoses, but knew that my anxiety was rooted in visions of blindness, lost memories and lost motor functions of a stroke victim.

My second attempt was less traumatic outwardly given the miracle of Xanex. However, the movie that played in my mind as the machine rattled around my skull was that of a man, buried to his neck in sand, being eaten by crawly things I could not see or deflect. It was a 20-minute ordeal, on a Thursday afternoon before a long holiday weekend, but it felt like a lifetime of misery. As I planted my feet and lifted myself from the gurney the technician told me the radiologist would probably get to my scans by next Wednesday.

That's why it was such an unsettling surprise for me to see the large caller ID, "BLOCKED" on my phone again the next day. Sinking feeling isn't just an expression. I was in my classroom, holding court over a lab project, and I calmly and quietly slipped into the hallway to take what would no doubt be a paradigm changing call. My dry hello was met by the now too familiar voice of a medical secretary. I said my name, repeated my date of birth, and she paused a moment before saying, "your scans are normal."

That's how the say it. "Your scans are normal."
They don't say, "YOU'VE JUST WON THE FUCKING LIFE LOTTERY!"
They say, "Your scans are normal."

I said thank you and pushed the button that ends every ordinary call. I took a deep breath and was not the least bit surprised to hear the rhythmic rasp of air passing a heart caught in a man's throat. I looked left and then right down the shiny, empty hallways of the IT department. There was no one there to see the color return to my face. I peeled myself from the wall and returned to the classroom only slightly lighter than when I had left the room.

I am only slightly lighter because I am alive to live today. And even though there is probability that there are some tomorrows in store for me, the same cannot be said for my sister. No matter how "here and now" I pretend to be, I cannot accept the inequity of our different realities.

I feel guilty.

Long shadows

2011-08-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

I've been spending too much time in the company of my human mortality. I never really appreciated before how blissfully ignorant I was of the truth, the truth that we are frail, we are lonesome, we are brief. As I type those words my mind flashes on a place I know in the woods. It is a place that looks old by human standards. It is green with pines, red with oak leaves, and silver with poplar and birch bark. I feel myself in this place. I feel brief, alone, and fragile, yet in this place those feelings are fair and honest. How can I not be humbled by the accomplishments of mushrooms and moss. Or awestruck by the ambitions of the acorns. Or impressed by the industry of a trickle of water that will for eons carve these hills and the dales. In this landscape I feel as whole as I need to be. In my urban spaces, I tap on my electronic keyboard, and it ticks like the clock of obsolescence. I feel this too when I look upon a friend's mother in a casket, a father-in-law strapped to a gurney, a wife wired to a heart monitor, and my knees as the throb and squeak. I guess it is time for me to appreciate the long shadows I am casting.

4th of July

2011-07-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

The river rises inches a minute as the new moon-tide ebbs and the summer sun sets. The air smells of bug-spray and clams.

I sit in my folding chair on the sand. You sit next to me. The two of us, together and apart; alone and surrounded; witnesses to a spectacle. We watch the skyrockets corkscrew up and burst. Their botanical light comes first, tracings upon the deep blue twilight. Their report comes next. We hear it roll down the banks of the river just as the pyro-light fades, white streaks to amber. Finally, their hazy trails of smoke are carried off by the slightest of breezes. Their memory is elciplsed by the launch of a new rocket.

I can feel my heart slowing and my breathing steady. I know we are all living and dying at this moment.

It is alright.

It will be alright.

There is nothing to do, but to be amazed and perhaps just a little saddened by the truth. We are skyrockets too.

Brown Bear

2011-01-05T01:35:00.000-08:00

You walked right in wearing your boom-nick casual attire: three layers of thermal shirts over builders bibs and untied boots. I think it makes you look younger than you should, but then it's been so long, how should I know what you should look like.

It's a strange comfort the way you point and laugh at me when you finally hear me calling your name. To a by-stander your reaction would seem disrespectful - a demonstration of humiliation. I know its just you saying, "Gawd! There he is again. Just when and where I think I won't ever see him." At least that's what I tell myself. I do that because I know I'm worthy of your respect. I do that even though you can never ever make me feel that way from the get-go.

So you are living in Vermont, with a dude. He's just a work partner in your business of turning trees into toothpick art. You don't explain that, but I know that's what it is. He's a quiet, handyman sort with a strong back and a predilliction for idleness. He is a smarter Lenny to your George. A side kick. A soft robot. After he looks me up and and down once he parks himself on the farthest bar stool and waits for the tender to glance long enough to see the quick flick of his thick finger tip at a tap handle. It's minimal but effective. That's what you need, I guess.

You are done laughing. My approach makes you look resigned to some unwanted discourse, but I keep coming. I stick out an open hand for a handshake and you respond by offering a fist bump. I begin to bend my fingers and while I'm at it you throw your arms around me.

Is that why I dig you? You have the power to make me feel so low and desperately uninteresting and then you throw all your light on me.

Complicated...But why?

That's our narrative I guess. I am doomed to meeting you when and where I would never expect and never by my rules. You will tell me a fantastic story about your current happenstance and I will say something that for one reason or another strikes you as prophecy. However, somehow you end up as Jonah and me as the beached whale. You take the day and walk away after a statement like: "This was great. We should meet here next week."

I show, but you won't...
...until it becomes the wrong place at the wrong time.

Maybe I'll come see your Brown Bear show at the festival next summer. Sure.

A waitress in mourning

2010-10-21T08:30:00.001-07:00

She has a lot on her mind. The counter is waiting, the booths have half their order and the kitchen bell is ringing out a passive-aggressive "your-food-is-getting-cold..." Yet, Belle is wiping the register down with a dish rag. Her eyes are fixed on a memory far away.

Few of us have ever crossed paths with a victim of unspeakable violence. Fewer still have recently conversed with a fated soul. Belle has.

Best friends are hard to find and harder to keep. Belle has lost her bestest oldest friend in the worse possible way.

DJ (David) Johnson
Teacher, writer, wrangler
Voice or text my iPhone
401-487-2226

Familiarity et al.

2010-09-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

SO... I taught a class. Gave references from books, videos, websites, people – living and dead. Created a safe atmosphere for discussion and experimentation. Scaffolded this assignment and that exam. Offered breaks, generous time lines, and gimme's. Advised publicly and privately. What did I get? Contempt.

It's 4:22am and I'm sitting awake trying to figure out where I went wrong and the only thing I can conclude is that I created an environment of familiarity. And as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. In my particular case familiarity seems to have metastasized to the point where it and admiration have became hostile aliens hell-bent on mutually assured destruction.

(sigh)

I guess there are worse sins. I could have actually failed to teach them. I could have encouraged their ignorance and insularity. But I didn't. I know I didn't. Yet, until I learn a better way to open my students up to new ideas I really can't complain about the scorn, disdain, and loss of sleep that comes with it.

Reunion

2010-09-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

I'm awake. Again. Early morning. Brain full of chatter. Belly full of fire. I am feeling closer to fifty than twenty.

I am thinking about people, many of whom I haven't seen since I was seventeen. I am imagining conversations and expressions I am going to face at the thirtieth reunion of the school from which I didn't actually graduate. I have considered faking an English accent, laughing too loudly, and wearing clothing that will show off my good tanned legs and de-accentuate my baldness and broadness.

I am considering preparing some apologies and avoidance tactics. I am hoping there won't be too much booze or dancing and at the same time hoping there is too much of both. I am nervous that I'll reveal crushes to the middle-aged women I never got over or fall into male rivalries I still don't really have a stake in.

My worst fear of all is that I'll discover I have never meant as much to these people as they have meant to me.

One of the hardest days of my life began at the moment my dad suggested I wasn't cut out for the company of these people. The seconded hardest day began at the moment I decided to accept that notion.

I often wonder what two more years of that gravy would have made me. Despite that, I think I do know what the experience, however brief, did instill in me.

Classical changed my life. It converted me from a follower to a pathfinder. While I had never been much for tradition or wrote allegiance, Classical, and many of those young people and their amazing bright minds, catalyzed me into a person of who challenged his own ignorance when ever he encountered it.

It didn't make me popular.
It didn't make me richer.
It doesn't help me sleep better.

It just helps me know and love myself a bit more.

It is a gift I hope I can pass on.

Newton's Law

2010-09-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

1. Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion (constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force.

LIL is what she typed on her smart phone. It was a mistake, full of irony and consequence. She entered the intersection at full speed and at the moment of the collision watched helplessly as a rocket scientist's head deformed on the hood of her car.

The astrophysics was used to seeing stars. However, he was also used to singing in his rock band, flying his plane, and diving the deep among sharks and groupers. When he awoke from the three month coma he was surprised to discover that except for the twitch of his left ankle he was locked in to the shattered remains of his body.

He would prevail. Steven Hawking made a mark in the book of Newton despite his ALS, so too would Alan Gomes. He insisted on working, but no one believed that he could manage. His colleagues, some of whom were frankly relieved to have him out of the way, sent him charts and scans worthy of third year astronomy students. The rejection fired his rage.

2. A body of mass m subject to a force F undergoes an acceleration a that has the same direction as the force and a magnitude that is directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass, i.e., F = ma.

Despondent, he twitched his toe and programmed his wheel chair to a coordinate that put him roughly in the middle deep end of his swimming pool. No one heard the splash and to the young doctor's surprise the water rejected him too. He was buoyant in a way that placed his eyes just below the surface of the water while keeping his nose just above.

After he accepted that he was not going to die he focused on the night sky above. It was like seeing the stars for the very first time. Parts of his brain that he never used before turned on and began defining the mathematical equations that would help describe what he was seeing.

It was the girl that had run him down that fateful day that rescued him from the pool. Ginnie, out of guilt or out of a sense of duty had been his morning assistant since his release from the rehab hospital. After the paramedics cleared him she got him warmed up and returned him to his work station where he began clicking away at the adaptive mouse. Hours later, exhausted but elated he signaled Ginnie to deliver a thumb drive to one colleague that hadn't turned his back to him yet. His name was Martin.

The formula that Martin ran through the simulator created a model of stunning complexity and unbelievable simplicity. After one day it disproved a thousand different PhD dissertations under review. A few days later it reverberated throughout the sciences enough to change the way mortals could access the universe. After a week it revealed humanity's unavoidable date with destiny - a destiny that most humans would prefer not to known.

3. The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.

Even people who believe that everything is predestined look both ways before they cross the street. The impact of a misplaced digit was what was required to change the perception of the physical world from three dimensions to nine. In this way Al and Ginnie are the Adam and Eve of a garden that was never meant for humans to see.

Or maybe destiny only seems like destiny?

Turn around, when possible.

2010-09-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

My mom turned 79 this week. We are sitting on the back deck, enjoying a cookout in her honor when I, against my better judgment, ask her what she would like for her birthday. She grimaces a bit, takes a deep breath and then with a sigh speaks this one sentence.

"I would like all my children to go to heaven with me."

My father shakes his head and offers a corrective question. "Cecile, you don't want them to all die the day you die, do you?" She laughs and adds, "You know what I mean!"

I do. I've heard it before.

It is a familiar refrain to an old, sad, sing along that my mom has been mewing since I was a kid, and it is not just a bit ironic.

For one, she assumes that she is a good-to-go, passport stamped, pearly gate approved candidate for the mansion on cloud nine. I don't want to judge, but I'm guessing she's forgetting (because they aren't forgiven) a few of her trespasses. Her response also implies that I and my siblings are not dogmatically acceptable for her final reward. We are mere failures of the faith.

This is a sentiment that has chaffed me from my childhood.

However, more than her judgment of me and my life is the irony that she makes no effort at all to reach out to me in this life. It's true. If my dad didn't call, the holidays and my birthdays would sail by unnoticed. For the life of me I can't understand why this woman would want to spend eternity with me when she can't be bothered to spend a few more random days a year in my company.

The saddest part of all this dogmatic idealizing lies in what may be. If heaven meets her concept of judgment, she is likely to be disappointed with its rewards. And if heaven meets my concept of judgment, she is likely to be doomed to an eternity of regret.

In either case...the GPS that I bought her probably won't help her find her way out.

Dopler of death

2010-08-16T04:53:00.000-07:00

"So you solved it," said Fish as she smirked at the surface of her coffee. "You've just proven the existence of heaven and hell." Fish is usually guarded about her spirituality around me. It's a kind of professional courtesy. She doesn't want to perturb my existential perspective.

"Do you think so?" My tone indicates that I don't want that responsibility. "I'm not sure I can claim that. I was trying to explain why so many people might believe in these places."

In fact, I don't really think of "them" as places. I consider them as states; the remaining dimension of time persist as mass and energy recede. My argument goes like this: As a person dies, every moment in linear time is perceived to be inversely proportional to their remaining mortal moments. The closer a person is to death, the longer the moments feel to them. It's like the elevator effect - how time drags when you can't actually do anything in the space where you find yourself. At death, this expansion of time occurs into an eternity. Therefore, (to me) it is reasonable that a person capable of doubt in there last moment actually experiences an eternity of suffering and the person who embraces love experiences that eternity. Heaven and Hell.

Fish added with a slow thoughtful nod, "and Purgatory too."

Sideburns

2010-06-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

She can't wait to tell her girlfriends about this one. The conversation is uncomfortable. The tone is terse. The words, tight. The man with the sideburns is British, definately; from the press, maybe. He is smiling despite resistance to his continental charms. His opponent is a print dress wearing blonde who is being paid to verify credentials, not giveaway expensive seats to freeloaders. She is telling him, not asking him to wait his turn. Her eyes are cold, but during her sideward glance she couldn't help but notice that his unstylish sideburns are an weak attempt to camoflage his freakishly hairy earlobes. A brief smile lights her lips like sunlight, but the warmth is just as quickly doused when he reaches across her table for a brochure and a "quick looksie" at the packet. He wilts and retreats to the coffee service. No one is impressed that he has his own tea bag.

Vines

2010-06-10T17:05:00.001-07:00

I'm watching a woman working in the rain. She is clipping off thickets of vine that have overtaken her driveway. Her work is methodical despite the downpour. She is watching me watch her. She disappears into the bush and then reappears with a handful of severed sprigs. She then chops them into shorter sections before compressing them into a green barrel. As she presses them down she looks up and checks to see if I'm still watching. I turn on my wipers so she can see me better.

Tina

2010-06-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

She wipes down the diner's stainless back-splash, moving back and forth along the entire counter in three heavy steps, Every lank limb is on a different task. An elbow, corrals the catchup bottles, a knee nudges back the bus-boy's bucket under the counter. She hums a song you or I might call an oldie, a song that manages to carry over the din of utensils gnashing eggs against thick buffalo china. If you asked her, there's never enough time to get things done, so what's the point of calling something old, or new? Life for a gray rooted, red-haired waitress is either calls for coffee or checks at the counter or stone dead.

Random

2010-05-27T08:12:00.001-07:00

I believe in welfare. I believe it's what continues to set us apart
from our past and on track to improve our future. I understand why
some people fear the concept. I also understand that most of these
fears should be violently suppressed. After all, welfare serves justice
and sometime justice must slaughter ignorance with the slashing
rampage of singleminded hate. The end.

Denny

2010-05-12T06:11:00.001-07:00

He is red faced, and about as reactive as a pot on the boil. His pale blue eyes are difficult to see among the bloodshot whites. At 7am a fat El Producto cigar wedges his fat, fish-lips apart just enough to show a rusty stack of teeth. I am watching him work. Every change of direction, a forgotten tool, an additional bolt from the back of his tradesman truck requires a brief pause, a moment for him to adjust to his new misfortune. When Denny walks he uses the wide planted steps of a man rolling a large wheel barrel of quick setting concrete. He is old looking for his years and the beers he has for breakfast does little to cool the fire he feels in every joint. For now he calls me boss because he knows I have the check for his labor in my shirt pocket and we are not equal men until that check is in his shirt pocket.

Peeves

2010-05-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

If you use the word über more than three times a day, you use it too much.
Over acting isn't a good thing.
Loud music, conversations, and cell calls - rude.
Texting while driving is a bad idea. (Please make me stop!)
Young men and women waiting five minutes to ride an elevator up one floor.
Same group waiting just as long to ride the elevator down two floors.
Smokers and their "world is an ashtray" attitude.
Emails with recipient lists that are longer than the message and can't be suppressed.
Facebook "copy this message" messages.
People who hide behind texts.
Denial.
Ungrateful people.
Hummus with mold on it when you really just want hummus.
People named Sandy, Robbin, or Tara. (I don't know why they bug me, but they do.)
People who talk over me.
Lowe's Hardware Store.
Shopping. (all kinds)
When Jack (my dog) spits out his Prozac pill.
Empty beer cans in the woods.
Waiting for people who don't care that you are waiting.
Clothing catalogs. (It's everything I hate about shopping, but in my home.)
Direct mail pieces that look like checks.
Litter.
Bad Breath. (Mine or yours)
Waste.
Outrageous insinuations.
People who refuse to have a sense of humor.
Long lists.

Angels

2010-05-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

When I sleep, I sleep deeply; unaware of the movement and sounds of others. The proof is undeniable.

Just this morning I awoke at 2 A.M to discover the pop-up tent that I had staged in my yard earlier in the day had rolled away like a giant tumble weed. The wind this required should have been enough to rouse me, never mind the sound of a four legged sailcraft stampeding along my driveway. It did not.

What's more curious to me is the fact that in these same moments, while this fracas was taking place in the real world I was engrossed in a dreamworld. In my dream a large, downy feather moved about in the silent thermals stirred by Sunday morning sunlight. I could feel myself smile as the feather danced above my breakfast of toast and tea. The dream concluded when I asked the feather to settle near my spoon. When it obeyed my spoon rested upon it to hold it down. It was then that I woke and heard the wind.

It's hard to ignore. The flips and spirals of the dream feather are perfect metaphors for the white canopy and framework. Perhaps we can observe from our dreams, random thoughts or prompts from the ever wandering mind. Perhaps we only think we are obtuse to the world of the breathing body.

Perhaps this is the realm of angels.

Don't get me wrong. Nothing has changed. I still don't manifest a faith or a higher power. For me there are no "saintly souls" tasked with my well being. No hierarchy of paragons watching over me. So, what am I to believe?

I believe in imagination.

I think mankind has the ability to understand what he observes and to move on, without an exhaustive toll paid to probability or verity. We fill in the holes in our history and future with whatever makes sense so that we can get on with the business of breathing.

Or is that what the angels want us to believe?

Maybe the answer will come to me in a dream. However, before I go back to bed to answer that question, I would just like to thank the night-walker who scrambled around my yard, right under my open window, finding rocks and bricks with which to weigh down my upside-down tumbled tent. You are an angel...and a little creepy.

Beaker

2010-05-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

I had two friends from New York City, one Jewish, one Italian. They would constantly point out for me, or anyone else that was in earshot, how all Jews want to be Italians and how all Italians want to be Jews. This, they referred to, as the Sinatra/Bishop - Bishop/Sinatra syndrome; a deeply seeded need to disassociate with one's own heritage for what was perceived as a more powerful "rat-packier" peer group.

This bar room analysis of culture always left me re-imagining Coppola's "God Father" with seders and bris, which in turn caused interesting visions to intrude on my therapy sessions with Bob Meyer. That's because Bob is a nice Jewish man with a touch of the curly good looks of Sonny (James Caan) and a dash of the stern deliberateness of Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall). In addition, Bob likes to change up his image during our sessions by shifting between an impulsive but passionate gangster advocate, to a sterile but technically correct consigliare.

Our sessions fly by.

Bob and I agreed not to meet regularly anymore for the time being. I had run out of insecurities and he was beginning to recycle reassurances. (At $3.50 a minute I am willing and grateful for a hand up, but that's too rich for a hand to hold.) We wrapped things up with a general discussion about where I was headed.

"Beaker," was my answer. "All of this, these discussions, these feelings, have taught me that we are just beakers of chemicals." I went on to explain that I've finally come to grips with how every human situation is a result or reaction to what chemical is firing off in our brains. How every story is a trickle of hormones or inhibitors. How every reaction is the silent squirt of a colorless gland in our bodies sending some prehistoric algorithm to our ancient lizard computer.

Bob shook my hand with a big broad smile and said, "I think you're on to something." For a brief moment he reminded me of Sammy Davis, Jr.

Lessons Learned

2010-05-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

He walked in like he owned the place. I knew he didn't. He knew he didn't either. Didn't stop him from stepping into the freshly swept kitchen with his dusty boots, making his mark literally and figuratively. I stuck out my hand and offered my name to the man. He looked at my hand and smacked his palm against it and without meeting my eyes he answered, "Scott."

My first guess was lawyer. He struck me as smart, detached, impatient and entitled. Much like some of the frat boys I knew, back when. My next guess was realtor, based on way he surveyed the place. I shrugged and went back to my work as he continued on with his cold survey.

Scott was well known around the camp. It was clear he was a member. Yet no one there seemed to treat him much like family, which made me think he wasn't more than an associate to them.

I had moved onto the decking when I finally heard him explain himself for the first of many times that day. He was a renovator by trade: a rough-neck, rocks to roof guy, who believed he could have been much more. He caught Justin's ear. "This is the crap I deal with every day. Forty years now, I half-ass fix things the wrong way to other peoples specs." Every word he spoke had a scalding sputter to it.

Scott was an angry man; capable of more, banished to less.

I heard him tell his story three more times before the sun sank to the tree tops. Each time he sounded a little bit sadder. I was glad I hadn't stopped listening before he voluntarily answered the question that was rolling around in my mind. The one that I used to ask myself when I was that angry. How does a man get where he was?

"It's like I tell my sons," he says, "If you take the easy way when you are young, all that's left when your older is the hard way."

More than a few of us nodded in agreement.

Acquainted, Departed.

2010-04-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

John, the affable, cotton-topped albino, wheelchair valet, who has worked the ER entrance of Boro Hospital for the last 16 years, snapped.

He was doing his job the way he's always done it, with smiles and cheerful tones. He looked every bit the spry old fella making the most of his retirement from the paint plant. He was keeping busy, giving a little back, aiding strangers as they transitioned into the abnormal, stressful, and sometimes heart breaking world of emergency care.

If you thought you knew John you might have declared that he had set upon the perfect plan, that he had found a way to bank karma for the day - not too far in the future - when he might eventually arrive at this portico to be wheeled into the Emergency Room moments before his death.

Unfortunately, we never really know a person, and no one could have known how John's blood pressure medicine would react with his new choice of coffee sweetener. A whole team of biochemist could not have predicted how that juice might simultaneously release forty-five years of mineral spirits from John's fat cells, or how his lack of melanin would allow the sunlight to trigger a cascade effect in his blood stream. It's just not one of those things a pharmaceutical company can afford to screen out. It's factors too many random variables. A publicly traded company knows it's easier and morally forgivable to insure for the unexpected and hope that such a thing never happens.

Truth is...it happens more than you think.

The strange concoction began to use John's liver like a reactor, creating a new serum close enough to adrenaline to fool his inner brain. The alcohol-like fluid resurected from the long forgotten paint vapors surged to his heart, lungs and then deep within his frontal lobe. The only outward sign of this sudden and profound intoxication were the beads of sweet that started condensing on the ridge of John's pink brow.

John was primed like a time-bomb.

Now, every man has his "thing." Growing up more milk-colored than milk could make a person a little brittle where thoughtless words are concerned. Ironically, being zinged about his white hair, ash-gray eyes, or translucent skin was not one of his frailties. John understood how strange, new things could make people react. To his mind the best way to deal with the unfamiliar was to get familiar with it. So he would let people have their moment of shock and then politely insist that they call him by his name - John. Four letters. Nice and simple. John made sure it was stitched into every piece of clothing he wore. He even had a special name tag made to match his valet jacket. It was a large tag, marked with bright yellow letters, on black. J-o-h-n.

He was overheard shouting this fact out as he launched a portly old woman and her wheelchair on a kinetic flight down the ER ramp toward the physician's parking lot. He continued shouting as he watched her roll away like a bowler cajoling a strike, "My name is John! Not Johnny! Not John-boy! Just John!"

On a good day John would have reasoned that well meaning people sometimes take forgivable liberties with a person's name. That life makes room for an innocent mistakes. However, at this hour John's chemical cocktail had squeezed reality from his mind just enough to turn what was brittle into painful shards of unpleasant memories, which in turn released an ugly fantasy of vengeance upon a kind, soft-spoken woman with a bad foot. You see, poor Vera had misread his name tag and declared in a friendly voice, "I've got a son named Johnny."

(Snap!)

That's all it took. Next thing you know old Vera was traveling at over twenty miles an hour when the wheel chair met the curb. The sudden change in inertia fired her headlong at the grill of a surgeon's S-class Mercedes Benz. She didn't have enough breath to scream.

Things were suddenly quiet at the top of the ramp too. John's heart had been fibrillating since he started yelling. Oxygen deprived his balance just quit, dropping him on the ground between the hissing automatic doors at roughly the same moment Vera's wheelchair returned to earth in the middle of the parking lot.

Karma was laughing as recently acquainted were pronounced dead by the same doctor who would soon discover that there was another interesting casualty waiting for him, down in the parking lot.

Ben Straits is Dead

2010-04-09T15:16:00.001-07:00

Though he had no pulse, he was all heart.
Though he had no soul, he was a dear one.
Though he was not real, he was very real to me and to the others that mattered.

He was born as a composite of ideals, ifs, and possibilities, and his short life ended as a sacrifice to responsibilities, realities, and promises.

Some may remember him as a liar, cheat, and scoundrel, but they will only reveal what fearful people they themselves are. For in this life, the greatest sin of all is to risk nothing. So, I will remember him as a real, but fragile man who meant no harm, to no one. A man who tried to do the inadvisable in a time of hope, in the spirit of discovery. An imperfect man who dared to wonder aloud and listened to the answers.

He will be missed.

The circle

2010-03-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

odd, adjective,-er, -est, noun
–adjective

1. differing in nature from what is ordinary, usual, or expected: an odd choice.

I am odd. You are odd. We are all odd in each our odd little ways. However, at forty-eight I am discovering that I have never embraced what makes me odd. I have never come to be comfortable in my oddness and in failing that, I am constantly waging a silent little war against these differences. Ironically, when I am not attacking myself, I am defending myself against attacks from others.

This oddness is my baggage, and I'm claiming it right here, and right now. They are mine. Here is my claim ticket. The numbers match. See?

I am a sensitive man. For years I've chosen to speak of this sensitivity as "concern." I did this because it was too easy for people to say, "you are too sensitive," thus invalidating my perception of reality. To say I was "concerned" gave my perception a life of it's own, allowing me to distance it from me and me from the crushing pain that would follow whence it would be cast out as nothing of consequence. This is because that whatever "it" is called, it boils down to one thing - it is my feeling.

I don't just see the situations of my life, I feel them. They are my next layer of skin. I wear them. They define me. These feelings carry me, for better or worse, the way restfulness and weariness do. Does this sound dramatic to you? I suppose it can. Dramatic the way an unrequited love may be. This is all about to change. For this is my baggage.

But...these are not my golf clubs.

Scenes from an American Diner

2010-02-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

The diner is full of young folks recovering from late nights.
That will be you tomorrow.

There's a nine year old girl next to me at the counter. Her feet don't reach the floor and she can spin all the way around with one push on her diner stool. I'm jealous and tell her so. She doesn't like my beard and tells me so.

I've ordered the biscuits and gravy. Two scramble eggs right on top. My waitress is wearing "tip enhancing" pants. They are either 100% Lycra or a coat of flat-black spray paint - Oh my.

A young man at a booth nearby is proposing to his friends that they write the false history of the banana pancake. I want in on that.

The sign on OV's diner wall reads, "There is no love without OV." To which I say, "There is no food without oo."

I find myself staring at the doorframe to the kitchen. It is pegged with promo medals and signit badges. Are they gifts from customers, I wonder to myself? Or proof of grandma's kleptomania?

The banana pancake bunch just burst into chorus of "We built this city on rock 'n roll." It is a terrible noise. A guy at the far end of the bar shouts, "Hey, American Idol! - you lose!!." The Pancake band frowns.

Overheard from somewhere over my shoulder: "Family guy is blurring the lines of racism and bigotry." Is that a line?

I pay. I tip. I leave.

Tragedy: Great and Small

2010-02-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

It was seven years ago today. Kyle and I were interviewing a woman who ran an organic dairy farm in the lea of one of New Zealand's most active volcanoes. I was setting up the tripod and camera while Kyle and the farmer, Christina (pronounced CHRIS-teeeeneh in the Northern Island, thin-edged, rural accent) set up a couple of lawn chairs from the van. Christina asked the first question in an attempt to get her mind around why a couple of yanks had invaded her garden with video equipment.

"Soeh...wheeh ah you frihme?"

We both paused, trying to rebuild the interrogtive in our minds. Kyle answered, "New England," and I added, "Rhode Island...well, Craannstiiin," said in my best city-state twang. The parochial joke was, of course, lost on Christina, but for some reason she held me in her gaze with a look that didn't express confusion as much as shock.

"Oh, that's awful...I'm teeribly soerrhy."

For a moment I thought that we might have found someone with the strange, dry, kiwi wit about which we'd often been warned. However, before we could laugh she explained that the news reports for the last few hours had detailed a terrible night club fire in which 100 people had lost their lives. Where was that we asked.

"Warwick, Rhode Island," is what she answered.

Kyle and I looked at each other knowing that it was slim odds that this disaster would leave us unscathed. After all, Rhode Islanders seldom enjoy even one degree of separation on a good day and to be sure this would not be remembered as a good day.

We completed the taping despite the distraction of what horrific news might await us nineteen time zones into yesterday. When everything was packed up, we said our thank-yous and accepted her hugs of gratitude and sympathy before heading off to our next appointment. We weren't out of the driveway before the cell phone connected us to a familiar voice in the 01-401 area code. The report was accurate. The impact would be devastating. We were comforted to know that all our nieces and nephews were accounted for as were our closest friends. It would be days later that names of classmates and associates would emerge from the ashes.

Giving...Up?

2010-02-15T05:50:00.001-08:00

Giving up – a bit of an oxymoron...maybe. You are not really giving and the results seldom strike the agent as an "up" of any kind.

I've been accused of giving up. Despite my terrier-like persistence in most everything I undertake, my critics believe that giving up has become an unfortunate feature of my adult life; a mark of resignation against my self.

I've been giving this a lot of thought as I move around the corners of my temporary residence-in-exile.

The first person to pin this on me was my ex-business partner Dana. We were having a partners' meeting one evening, which quickly degraded into a bickering match about our different work styles. I was complaining about how she bulldogs every project when she reeled on me and shouted, "Well then, why don't YOU show up for the party?!" I was flabbergasted. She went on to explain how I always seemed to fade away into the business version of a wall flower the moment someone challenged my design. Of course I knew what she was talking about, but I always thought it was the correct thing to do. I had come from a tradition of lead, follow or get out of the way. Getting out of the way seemed noble to me (of me?).

Was it giving up? I don't know. The question was confused even more when Dana abruptly dissolved the company the day after we had had our greatest success as a team. To my mind my approach to the project had been a complete departure from my wallflower past. I had come to the party, had drunk deeply of the punch, had danced the Watusi, and had been the last to leave. I was forced to conclude that Dana didn't really know what she wanted. In light of recent trends I am left to wonder who did the giving up.

The next person to peg me had a different take. Her name was Beth, a bright, young woman I had hired on to help me develop a project. Beth was as smart and savvy as you'd ever want in a television producer. If she had a flaw it was based in her self-hatred at being overweight and temperamental. She may not have always been gentle, but more often than not she had been dead-on right about what she saw. "You hate your job," she said to me the day before I fired her. "You walk around here, miserable and conflicted and you suck to be around."

She was right. I did hate my job. I was struggling to leverage a business model I didn't love into a business model I thought I could love. It was almost working, but not fast enough. I was in danger of becoming an indentured servant to the worst parts of both models and the best solution required me to change my paradigm by giving up on everything. I killed the project, fired Beth and the extra staff, put the business up for sale, and removed myself to a position where I would do the least harm. It was a huge risk and to many people I may have looked like a quitter, but in the end it was a stroke of genius.

The most recent person to point to what I've given up is my friend Cary. We have a lot in common which makes her easy to talk to and infuriating to disagree with. Cary noticed that my recent symptoms of disconsolation might be based in my habit of letting other people make choices for me. She pointed to a few things I had said and done recently and I had to agree that she was right. The logic of this kind of behavior is easy to follow: if you don't choose for yourself, you can blame the chooser if it goes badly. The other side of that is the person you blame will resent you for making them the villain.

Looking back on these events and assuming for a moment that I know all the truths, it seems that personal revolutions follow closely on personal revelation. In these cases the catalyst seems to be the moment I give up giving up.

Geocaching

2010-02-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

I met Birkin for breakfast at the Middle of Nowhere Diner in Exeter. It's a hodge-podge building situated along the old truck road not far from the state forest. The kitchen staff is Greek and the wait staff look to be trailer-treacle who have been working since six A.M. for most of their mid-forty lives.

Birkin and I talked about motorcycles thrills and marriage chills as the waitresses took turns warming our coffees. In the summer months the diner is a "must-stop" for the Harley crowd, but on this winter day it's a comfort station for a few country folk marking a Saturday differently from the everyday by consuming large amounts of all the things their doctor told them to avoid.

A group of ladies in a near by booth were celebrating a birthday with grits before heading to the Indian casino. I didn't catch which one, but by the looks of them I would have to guess the one with the million dollar bingo. Behind me sat a couple of guys who were talking about wood piles and politics. I don't think they shared the same view on things. The man who occupied the backside of my diner bench was jiggling his leg a lot. The vibrations radiated through my body and out my arm into my coffee mug spawning concentric rings on the surface of the black house-blend.

Birkin is curious and deeply empathetic of my current situation. He takes time to carefully ask sensitive questions, sensitively. Like most folks, he probably wants to know more than he feels he has a right to know. It's no matter to me. I'm happy to share my point of view. It gives me a chance to hear these difficult things in an adult voice, a voice markedly different than the seven-year-old narrator who typically speaks to me. We go back and forth, while the contents of our breakfast plates hold out and then about 20 minutes longer. An hour's worth of stories ring true to me. However, my inner seven-year-old reminds me not to be too proud of the truth.

We leave the diner for what counts as this region's mall - the outfitter's shop at the river junction. We walk every corner of the store chatting about our different cultures of pass time. We take turns stopping to touch the camping gear and gadgets. Each time we loose our place in the conversation, only to pick up another trail that crosses the topic. When we are done looking we each pick up something that, thought trivial, we hope serves to encourage the quiet shop to stay in business yet another year.

In the parking lot Birkin searches his iPhone for a near-by geocache. There is one less than a thousand yards away. The marker is called the "Old Stone Damn" and when we pull up, Birkin hands me the iPhone so that I can walk us in. I follow the map and GPS trace to the general location of the cache. It appears to reside somewhere in a silted-up sluice way, just upstream from a 1763 era water mill. I turn in a slow circle, looking for a sign of the contemporary techno-geek cache until I am finally distracted by where I actually am. My mode shifts from searching to seeing and in a moment I am marveling. I marvel at the iron axles and iron pipes the transect the gully. Marvel at the craftsmanship and brute man-strength that was used to forge such things. I marvel at the stone arch that bridges the sluice and for a moment I see myself, dead and gone, long before the day ice and water finally overturn the rough stones.

By all accounts the morning is a success. Even though we didn't find the cache, we have endeavoured to look and by looking we have seen old things in a new way. The same can be said for what is discoverable in the conversation of two, middle-aged men trying to do the best with what is left.

Shopping bags

2010-02-08T05:17:00.000-08:00

I'm alarmed by the number of plastic shopping bags I've accumulated in the first two weeks of my exile. It seems there's always something in some store somewhere that will complete my life.

Food is obvious. I eat simply: peanut butter (chunky), English muffins, hot dogs, salad, and one rotisserie chicken for the week. I buy my veggies at the local Thai restaurant - ruffle rigged steamed delights. They are getting used to my dollar and a half order paid in quarters.

The less obvious stuffs are the sundries. Double-A's for the smoke alarm that trills "low battery" like a paranoid parrot at two in the morning. Fungus cream for my left pinkie toe that has found the local shower culture most exciting. Dish soap and laundry detergent. My brand of coffee. A bottle of scotch. A night light.

Apparently padding is more important to my forty-eight-year-old bones than I would ever have believed. I bought a "European" bolster for where the futon meets the wall. My own set of bamboo sheets. A laptop pad and my biggest investment of my exile (besides therapy), a man-chair.

Those who know me are probably scratching their heads right now. Generally speaking there isn't much man-centric about me. However, on the fourteenth day of giving the granny rocker a fair shake I decided that enough was enough. I went out and bought a Stressless chair. That's the brand name anyway. I nearly dropped a nut - twice - trying to get its awkward frame through the apartment door.

So now, full of coffee and English muffins, smelling fresh and clean, while I wage war against foot fungus, I have completed my first blog entry from my man-chair. I'm not stress free, but I am not crippled either.

Revelation at Chien Maison

2010-02-01T03:38:00.000-08:00

You shouldn't expect sanity from those who are not sane. It will just irritate you and them.

A fully realized adult is...

2010-02-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

a person who has learned to listen to what is important, and not listen to what isn't important.

Men are dogs.

2010-01-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

They like food and sex and they have to check out other dogs.
They need a job.
They respond to simple commands and affection.
They will be loyal until the food or affection runs out.
They like to go for drives.
They like to chase things through the woods.
They will fetch repeatedly if you praise them for it.
There is no point in talking to them all the time.
There is no point in asking them if something looks good on you or is the right shade of teal.
They would eat their meals right out of the can or bag if you let them.
It's ok if they take a nap as long as they come when you call them.
They like to cuddle.
They hate the mailman.
They hate being chained up.
They don't mind going for walks as long as you let them sniff things along the way.

The most important facts:
Some dogs are smarter than other dogs, but they are still dogs.
Dogs can be male or female - there is a difference, but they are still dogs.
Big dogs think they are little. Little dogs think they are big. It's important to respect their perception of themselves.
They bark and bite when they are scared.
They are easily scared.
They think you are just like them. It is your job to remind them everyday that you are not.

A change of Venue

2010-01-24T04:48:00.000-08:00

Laundry baskets, shirts on hangers, shoes in hand. Computer, phone, and cables. A sweep for this book and that. A cold shouldered hug good-bye after her parting remark.

"I'm not sure you do love me."

An hour to kill, I drive to the village and see a friend. She is walking her dog. I beg a walk too. Some one's ex-wife, she is experienced. She listens. We shake our heads. There is some laughter and some groaning. Five o'clock, I arrive for a visit of my temporary home. My old friend and his young wife are trying to goad me into staying for dinner. They accept my excuses, and I accept a plate of food anyway. I scan the tiny apartment, picturing myself at home as we talk about Fred's health, and lack of wealth. He gets down to it finally.

"What the hell happened?"

"We are close," I say and go on to explain that when close people hurt they feel it deeply. He nods knowingly. He probes a bit more trying to reason how a couple he called "bullet proof" were facing this. It made him feel vulnerable and a little bit older. I finished my wine as he watched a college basketball game with no emotion. When I signaled my departure his wife took a picture of us. She likes to remind her sad, new husband that he has wealth in other ways. They give me a hug and a key.

"We'll be gone until May, maybe. You can move in next week."

I drive on familiar roads in unfamiliar directions now. My first night of separation begins. I'm am a cat-sitter for the week in a cosy East Side Tudor. I'll need my provisions, my staples. Peanut butter, yogurt, English muffins, granola, a $3.50 tooth brush, deodorant. I arrive at Cary's house. Shuttle in my things. At last I am greeted by Tiny, a gray, dry haired cat. He is my charge for the week. The house is dark but warm. There are sticky notes here and there to tell me what to do. I occupy the guest room.

It's a trial. I have traded one sadness for another. One address for another. I'll be ok.

The third lever.

2009-12-22T22:14:00.000-08:00

Surgery was a blur. They used a gas as anesthetic. When I awoke, weak and queasy, I discovered that Mr. Skinner had put me in a different box. Instead of two levers, one for food and one for water, there was a third. This third lever was hard wired to a small transformer which sent a tiny electrical charge to thin steel filaments that now encircled the amygdala of my brain. I wouldn't realize this until after my curious rat-mind would finally get the better of me. Until then I would be happy - whatever that was - with the two levers I had always known.

It pleased me - whatever that means - whenever I pressed the water lever, because I got water - enough to quench my fiery thirst. It eased my mind - I suppose - to press the food lever because it would release the salty little biscuits the lab assistant called Rat Chow. The food wasn't great, but it was all I had ever known. So, what did I care about lever three?

I guess I felt frustrated. I had been trained to press levers. I didn't want to at first. I remember the day the lab geek stuck a finger through the cage door and triggered the food lever the first time. I was so hungry and this big pink GOD appeared through my cage door and made food appear for me. I gobbled it up and began to pray to the GOD that he might come again, and relieve my suffering. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed, but he did not come and I grew hungry again. I felt pain...and anger. I wanted to take it out on my tail. It was pink like the finger. I bit it and felt more pain.

The next day, the lab geek, poked a pencil through the cage door. I was so weak and dehydrated, I didn't make the connection at first. He rubbed the pink eraser against the water lever, softly at first, and then he jammed the lever down. I watched with admiration as a bubble of water spilled onto the tray. I crawled over to the puddle and sipped it up between my long incisors. I had never known a more wonderful feeling. That was the day I stopped praying and started pressing the levers myself. I literally made myself barf (three times!) from all the food and water that the levers would deliver. There was no end to the goodness and generosity of the levers. For months they sustained me without disappointment. Why would I need a third lever?

Maybe it was the surgery, or the gas, or the routine, but it just started to irk me. This lever, number three, to the right of the food lever just seemed to be mocking me. It was making me feel - anxious? I pressed on the water lever and tried to ignore it as I slurped up my reward, but I couldn't. It was still there. I looked at it with a sideways glance as I triggered the biscuit lever. It didn't look back, but it didn't look away either.

I moved to the far side of the cage to weigh my options.

Talk about hard wiring. Us rats may be curious, but we are also suspicious. That suspicion has saved us from drowning, burning, getting trampled down and gobbled up. Yet, how can a creature be curious and suspicious and not go a little crazy? It's very conflicting. Why would we be made this way if we weren't supposed to go crazy or die trying not to? I wasn't going to go crazy. I let experience overcome my fear. The levers had always been good to me. So, I scampered up to lever three and after two haulting and hesitant touches I slammed the silvery bar down.

The weight of my little pink paws closed a circuit which sent a short pulse of electrons from behind the panel, along the plastic coated wires and into the electrodes the skillful surgeon had threaded into my brain. The pulse was a nothing, a non-event by electrical standards, but to my brain it was like sweet music.

Now, I don't claim to understand a word of this but from what I overheard the micro voltage set off a chain reaction. The amygdala sensed the current and signaled the nucleus accumbens, which controls the release of dopamine, which fired off a shot to the ventral tegmental area which actually released the dopamine into the cerebellum - which controls muscle function - and the pituitary gland - which releases beta-endorphins, which decrease pain; oxytocin, which increases feelings of trust; and vasopressin, which increases bonding.

It was love at first touch.

Love truly conquers all. Three days later I would be dead because I would forsake the food and water completely in the service of lever three. Isn't that crazy?

Tough Skins and Skippies

2009-10-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

"Tough Skins and Skippies..."

The inventory of my wardrobe was spoken to me by a pretty, little, curly-haired girl as I stepped up into the school's granite doorway. It was intoned with a sense of pity. She, the unofficial greeter for the recently named Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School; me, the country kid turned city kid on my first day of school. We were meeting for the first time, and I think, the last time.

Tough Skins were the economically-priced nameplate brand of dungarees offered by the Sears and Roebuck Company and to my bumpkin eyes they were a big step up from the Outlet basement "rivet" pants that used to chafe my knees into white powder. Skippies were the canvas sneaks with the rubber toe caps that you prayed no one would be mean enough to notice before they had a chance to like you. The combination of the two items, shit-brown jeans and clown-red shoes, marked me as the kid somewhere between the white boy who had pooped his pants in first grade and the black kid with whose hair was dusted with DDT on a weekly basis in order to control his head lice outbreaks.

Such was the cast system of my public school days. It is a wonder I learned anything at all.

Wheels

2009-10-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

I was driving my van through a city park recently and I noticed what looked to be a homeless man, walking a beautiful chrome bike. I asked myself why he wasn't riding the wonderful bike to wherever he was going. Then it occurred to me that maybe he wasn't in a hurry to go nowhere.

For a brief moment, I felt as though I knew that world.

At any phase of my life, one of my most prized possessions has often been whatever wheeled vehicle that most fit my style. It began with a tricycle at age three. It was a small, ruddy-red thing with a white bib leading up to the handle bars. I never really rode it in the conventional way. I preferred to stand on its back step plate and kick-ride it like a scooter. I could really make the peddles blur. For what seemed like hours I would ride it down to the far end of the driveway near the road, look back at the house for reassurance, and then rid it back.

I graduated (much later) to a hand-me-down bike which I bought from my cousin for five dollars. To be clear, it was a hand-me-down of generations. It was an American made, post-world-war beast with 20-inch wheels. It was stable and rugged enough that you could release it at the top of a hill and it would roll with its invisible rider to the bottom, collide with whatever, flip, tumble, crash, and remain rideable, time and time again. I called it the "Bomber."

Around the age of twelve I became interested in building bikes. I would scour the neighborhood on trash night with my box of tools and return home with a cache of chrome treasures. There were a variety of off-spring from this venture, but the most successful one was a five-speed, low-rider that the neighborhood kids dubbed "Coo-Coo-Kenievel." I could ride this Frankenstein of salvage down stairs, off stonewalls, and on several occasions, into parked cars - it never failed to roll away. It was a fun ride and with it I began my lifelong, love of exploring.

I was alone most of the time in my early teens. My main companion was a tireless, smooth-coat collie name "Brutus." He and I would ride for miles a day in any direction that would brings us to woods. Once there, he and I would set up a camp. He would keep watch, while I made a circle of stones, and swept out a sitting area. When the work was done we would sit together, quietly, hidden away in our camp, absorbing the peace. Before leaving I would often remark to myself that this would place be a fine place to live and back then there were plenty of days I thought I might have to.

As I graduated into motor vehicles I maintained my salvage arts by mending a variety of cars into brief, but functional conveyances. The most well know and demanding of this period was a 1967 Mustang Coupe, dubbed ZIGMOP. It belonged to my sisters and was used by them to get back and forth to college. Fortunately for me, their boyfriends made sure their feet didn't touch the ground much on the weekends, which gave me almost unlimited access to the pretty, yet fragile car. (I discovered recently that Ziggie featured prominently into memories my friends had of high school nights. Ironically, I didn't.)

Once again I have a vehicle that incorporates much of the ingenuity and comforts needed by the American explorer. I have a refrigerator, water, a bunk, and the company of a terrier. I enjoy it immensely and use it to navigate out to the fringe of my current world, where the dog and I can explore and restore ourselves. I drive the speed limit as a general rule because I find it a more relaxing, less stressful way to go. Sadly the people behind me on the road seldom share my philosophy.

Whatever the shape, make or model, the effect has always been the same. The wheels take me away to someplace I didn't really know I wanted to be and when I am ready, they take me back.

And like the man in the park, most days I'm in no hurry.

Moonie

2009-09-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

"The key is on the post." read the note.

When we arrived at the chain across the steep dirt road we found the key precisely as indicated and it took just a few tries and two shots of WD-40 for the lock to finally relent and let down its guard.

At the top of the hill we arrived to find the fire pit and wood stack pretty much as we had left them 45 days earlier. The only difference was the crop of green grass growing through the ashes and the stones of the hearth. We setup camp and enjoyed the solitude of the wide, bald peak as the sun sailed across the sky on a collision coarse with Monadnock. As the dome darkened, the wind shifted to the east and when we turned to study the sky in that direction we were surprised to discover another inhabitant of the hill - the full corn moon.

When the fire finally died down and the cool air closed in on us, we set off to bed and were rewarded to a quick, deep sleep. But as it often happens in my years I awoke again at 1am, too rested and resolved to fall back a sleep anytime soon. So, I stepped outside into the blue moonlight and I stood listening to the grassy accent of this New Hampshire plateau. As my head filled with scents of hay and willow, I admitted to the moon the uncommon peace these late-night rendezvous have brought to me.

He remembered with me the best moments: Nantucket, Lake Ontario, Saint Maarten, and the long night we passed over the Pacific Date Line. And then we mused about how different this night would be. It was, after all, the first meeting to occur over such a landlocked place.

"Then this must be a very special place indeed," I heard myself say aloud. The moon smiled, but could not deny it.

A Labor day.

2009-09-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

It's hard to imagine a more American tableau. Angular sunlight across a crowded deck nestled up against the New Hampshire woods. Insects and people energized by the fading summer heat. There is family. A cookout. A quick sing. Then they blow out the candles and we eat some cake. It starts at 1 P.M. and ends at four. That's how we celebrate the birthday of my mom and my sister every year on the first weekend of September.

I'm happy for my sister, a woman in her forties who learned to abandon fear many years ago. I'm sad for my mother, a woman who spirals daily from the inequities of life. The annual event is a relentless reminder of how each is different.

It's never been my way to celebrate birthdays. I'm terrible at gifts and cards almost always disappoint. Still, I don't want to waste the moment. I don't want to darken it with my shadow. I buck up and contribute the Hallmarks and the hugs and then I withdraw to the cover of my nieces' and nephews' circles. From there I can watch the joy of life on my sister's face and the mask of contentment on my mother's without making either one uncomfortable.

It's funny to me how I always suddenly remember, on my way home, that the next day is Labor Day. A day when there will be other less complex picnics to enjoy.

Leaping Lizards

2009-08-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's not often that a man in New England receives a text message from his wife that reads: "Giant iguana under our hot tub. Dog and I are freaking out."

Generally, such a message would be assumed to be an odd joke or evidence of accidental hallucinogenic exposure. However, on this Saturday I responded with a simple, "Ah." and nothing more.

Before I left on my weekend road trip a few things happened which made the message seem suddenly very reasonable. The first thing was the curious appearance of a serious looking man with a butterfly net along the adjacent lawn of the city park on which we live. As I tossed a Frisbee for my terrier Jack, the man prodded around at the base of the various trees and shrubs a bit more cautiously than your average middle-aged butterfly enthusiast. Stranger still was the fact that he was wearing heavy gloves and was in the company of a sidearm wearing policeman. While resting, Jack and I sat under a tree and watched the two men go from tree to tree, first circling, then inspecting the foliage over head, and then finally poking at the brush around the base. It was an interesting dance, but what interested me the most was the fact that the young policeman's right hand was always resting un-casually on the grip of his 9mm.

As the odd entomologists approached the tree I was sitting under I politely asked, "What kind of butterflies are you looking for?" To which the man with the net answered, "Iguana. Big one." Now, I admit, it took me a moment to erase the notion of a large iguana-like butterfly from my imagination, but by the time I had, the policeman and Mr. Butterfly Net had moved on to probe another tree.

Such is life on a city park. Parks make handy dumping grounds. Kyle and I have seen it happen several times. A car will stop. The door will open, close, and then the car will speed away leaving behind a confused puppy, or kitten. The logic? Free animal shelter with a steady stream of soft-hearted people to clean up the mess you didn't want to. So, as Jack and I crossed back to our yard I made a mental note to keep an eye out for a tropical lizard - big one - and to revised my habit of sitting under trees.

The second situation also involved my dog Jack. For days he had been worrying around a small dugout near the stairs of our hot tub. He would approach and retreat, reverse angle of approach and repeat. His actions were tense and halting compared to the time that he discovered a small possum nesting under the spa. His caution made me conclude that it must be a skunk. The previous August a large, potent skunk had schooled Jack on the rules of this urban jungle and for six weeks we lived with the consequences. Not wanting to face the unfading acrid smell or the inevitable series of ineffective dog baths I repeatedly called Jack away from the hole with a sharp, "Leave it!" To which he would respond by looking at me for a few twitchy seconds before going back to his work of worrying.

Maybe I'm a bit thick or deluded, but the pretzely logic of an alien invasion didn't come together for me. It never occurred to me that the warm, moist gravel under the three-ton tank would appeal to a reptile. Nor had it dawned that Jack would find the quick, flicking forked-tongue of a lizard something to be particularly guarded against. So I researched solutions to skunk infestation and found the recommended treatment required you to wait until the nocturnal critter left for their night of foraging. Once they were prowling you could seal up the nest without fear of getting sprayed or bitten by a potentially rabid animal. Once they discover they've been evicted, they simply move on.

The next evening, just before dusk, I dusted the area around the hole with flour. When I checked later that night for any signs of of footprints all I saw was a strange kind of drag mark leading to the hole. It didn't make sense. And so I left the next day on my road trip, forgetting to tell my wife the status of all things wild. So when Jack started to do his dodg'ems mannuever Kyle became a tad more curious. She moved the steps out of the way and found the dog nose to nose with what looked to her like an ugly armadillo. (Another creature unlikely to be found in our region.) However, when the armadillo revealed his long, snake like tongue, she retreated to behind a makeshift wall of garden furniture and began calling authorities and anyone else who might have experience with something reptilian.

The state agencies weren't helpful. I wasn't helpful ("ah"). But ultimately she made contact with a pet store owner who agreed to come down and extract it for her.

Mr. Ruben arrived dressed for weekend yard-work. He was armed only with a wee fish tank net. (Kyle had indicated that the lizard might be about a foot long iguana.) When he peered under the Spa and saw the broad head of a two foot lizard and commented with a hint of disappointment, "That's no iguana, lady. That's a monitor lizard." Kyle blinked. Rubin sat up, "They're connivours. Mean ones. They can bite and scratch you bad enough to earn you stitches."

Kyle texted me the news, "Not Iguana. Large meat eating lizard." as Rubin unenthusiastically tried to drive the monitor out of the hole. After fifteen minutes Rubin gave up. His parting words: "Call me if you trap him. Good luck." It seems there's a lot of interest from people who want a trapped animal. But not much where the trapping is concerned.

The next few signals I received detailed the slow, arduous process of trapping a two-foot lizard in a foot and a half trap Kyle was able to borrow from a neighbor. She loaded the trigger with cat food and retreated to the safety of the house to nervously wait for the lizard to fold himself up and deliver himself, surrendered. When night fell she retrieved the trap so it wouldn't catch some other furry animal. It would be a little difficult to explain to your neighbor how their pet had become the unexpected meal of a hungry African lizard.

The only thing worse than being prey is not knowing your predator. Kyle began by naming it - Monty the monitor. Then Kyle researched the habits and habitats of the monitor lizard, but sometimes knowledge isn't a good thing. She discovered that this Varanus (lizard) has a long blood line which includes the Komodo Dragon famed for chomping on unsuspecting campers. She also discovered that they have a very high metabolism which makes them hungry and aggressive. It wasn't all bad news, though. There is a variety of monitor considered to be "safe" for human companionship. This variety is the known as the Savannah Monitor Lizard and based on his markings and relatively modest size, our guest was, most likely, one of these. Unfortunately, information doesn't change the facts: he was a meat-eater and that Kyle and Jack were meat.

But that wasn't the most serious problem anymore.

Turns out the only thing worse than knowing you have a hungry, aggressive, two-foot long, meat-eating lizard in your backyard is not knowing where in your backyard he is. While sipping coffee and monitoring the monitor, Kyle observed the slow but determined appearance of Monty from his hole. With tongue flicking and the gate of a gator he made his way around the side of the house and into the lush flowerbeds where he disappeared from sight. Until now, Kyle had planned to work this entire Sunday in the garden. This is something she loves, but which no longer seemed very appealing.

She opted instead for Plan B: Hide from the monster. Doors were closed and windows locked up tight on what was the hottest day of the summer. Jack and her took turns looking out over the garden and listening for the screams of Japanese business men and women, running for their lives. When I arrived back home, shortly after 2pm, I was greeted by an exhausted, sweaty, gardener, who had lost her humor about life in the jungle. Her orders were simple - "Find him."

Those who know me know that I have a wealth of useless knowledge. Most of this knowledge has been soaked off of the pages of National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Somewhere in my memory I recalled seeing a video where a man fashioned a makeshift noose stick. Fifteen minutes later I had one too.

In all the time that had transpired Jack had not lost an ounce of eagerness about meeting the beast called Monty. I tightened his harness and affixed his leash and lead him out to the yard where he headed straight toward the hot tub and cautiously approached the hole. He sniffed and prodded the gravel with his paw. A moment later he looked up as me as if to say in a Klondike Pete kind of way, "Nothin." We went on to perambulate the entire yard in a similar fashion with similar results. After we had combed every bush and every hedge we headed back inside with the unsatisfying news that the lizard had left us.

The sun was getting low and the humidity eased off a bit, so Kyle and I prepared our dinner and drinks and walked out into the backyard to catch up on the various details and events of the weekend. As we crunched away on our salads we were startled by the noise of something coming through the brush. Jack went on high alert and dove towards the sound. Whatever it was was moving fast enough in our direction to knock a drain pipe out of plumb. Jack retreated a bit. Kyle whispered none too subtly, "It's back!"

We jumped to our feet. Kyle grabbed Jack and dragged him inside as I got my noose stick. At this point I had only seen pictures of Monty. However, nothing can really prepare you for the sight of a prehistoric monster climbing over your wood pile and heading in your direction. I got a little light headed and tried to expose as little of my 200 pound body as I could. (That's a lot of meat.) Heart pounding I lowered the noose into his path. Monty stopped and his tongue flicked at the nylon cord as if to ask, "Food?" When he determined it wasn't he continued walking right into the noose. I gently tightened the cord until it created a resistance against his forward momentum. What happened next nearly cost me my undies.

The lizard, sensing the trapping began to thrash violently. Kindling was flying around and creating a tangle of limbs. I tried to lift him out and over, but the PVC tube I had used as my stick just arched from his weight. When I relaxed the pole again Monty started to do what could best be described as a crocodile roll. He slithered his body over and over, his thick tail whipping
and slashing in every direction. I was now afraid for both of us. I called to Kyle in a surprisingly squeaky voice, "Hon..., I'm gonna need to put him in something! Got any ideas?" Kyle appeared around the corner with a plastic storage box that we normally used for storing seasonal clothing.
It was a brilliant solution. Big enough and opaque enough with two sturdy lid halves that would interlock and help you deny the fact that you were cornering a dangerous animal.

I dragged Monty out and over to the awaiting box. He was still flipping around like a very annoyed miniature dinosaur. After I steadied myself I choked up on the PVC tube and lifted him into the case while Kyle scrambled around trying to snap a picture with her iPhone. Everything was too frantic to allow for a steady shot. After the third smeary blur she fought off her panic and knelt down to close the box top while I kept the noose tight. Unfortunately, we couldn't close the top until I retracted the noose stick. Fortunately, the YouTube video I had watched had prepared me for this. I had fed the cord down the inside of the tube which allowed me to retract the stick while keeping the loop somewhat taught. It worked as planned and with the top closed we both caught our breath while holding the case down with a fair amount of our combined weight.

All was quiet.

It was then that I realized that I still had a lizard in a noose - a tight noose. he might not be breathing. We moved the box over to the driveway. I'm thinking now that we wanted to have a great many directions and distances to run. Kyle helped me slowly open the lids. As we did Monty made his move. he slammed up against the lid with all his force. It was jarring. In reality, Monty couldn't weigh more than eight pounds, but in our minds he was eight hundred. We slammed the lid back down but had managed to accomplish what we had intended. We knew this because Monty was now hissing loudly.

After another five minutes he quieted down. At which point it occurred to us that he might be suffocating in the plastic case. I donned some grill gloves that covered my arms up to the elbow. We prepared some chicken wire and carefully opened the box one lid at a time. Monty thrashed a bit but was clearly showing signs of exhaustion or hypoxia. He recovered some of his spunk when we started to hand feed him shredded chicken.

An hour later we delivered him into the hands (he took the box too) of a DEM officer who left a family cookout in order to meet Monty.

Academic Rivalry?

2009-06-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

I've never really understood academic rivalry. I've witnessed my friend's at Ohio University wage these slow terrible wars for years now and as the joke goes the fighting is fierce because so little is at stake. I was sure that my academic life at my low-profile technical college would be Swiss compared to a land grant school or Ivy League, but I guess I was wrong.

Today, I experienced my first sortie. I hosted a final presentation for a senior seminar class as I thought was the custom. I invited key faculty and recruited some committed underclassmen to help evaluate the senior candidates. I also recruited a few industry professionals to offer a reality check and to raise the stakes a little for the students. I just wanted the seniors to get a sense of the current climate and level of discourse that takes place in the business world. I had no idea how any of this could be threatening to my colleagues.

The seniors presented. My academic associates threw softballs, which made the students yawn. Then my professional associates threw a couple of startling change ups, which the seniors actually responded to extremely well. For some reason - I am honestly now sleepless trying to fathom why - one of my colleagues felt it necessary to come to their defense. This of course brought the discourse to a complete and grinding halt.

To abate the crickets I wrapped up the presentation with the usual polite fanfare and accolades. At which point I had hoped a more casual discussion would ensue. It did...briefly, until my comrade swooped in again to correct a rhetorical question I had offered as a topic of debate, which again poured chilling water on everything.

Never one to take a hint, or a subtle nudge I pushed on optimistically. I formally introduced my guests to my jaunty comrade. "This is so-and-so, an associate in the Game Design and Simulation department."

"Game DEVELOPMENT and Simulation - NOT Design! We are developers - what you do is design." The last part of his statement had a fairly dismissive tone. The professor went on to admonish me in front of my guests for a few more minutes, making it very plain how wrong I was to substitute the word design for development. The first explanation was adequate advice, the third was really overkill. My guests politely waited out the embarrassing and tedious tirade until my comrade finally acknowledged his introduction.

I've been with the department for almost a year already and in that time not one person has corrected me in regards to the official departmental name. This moment, in front of these outsiders seemed an odd place to make a teachable moment. It caused blood to back up behind the rage buffer, somewhere in the back of my brain. I quickly went to my happy place and called upon my power animal - a cross between a fuzzy kitten and a jelly fish - and I silently exhaled away the caustic counter attack that was forming in my frontal lobe.

However, here I am at 2 in the morning, trying to unpuzzle my mind about the event. Do I ask for an apology, or offer one? Do I sort things out or stock things away? Hopefully time will reveal what I did wrong, but for now I forfeit sleep and a little pride in search of detente.

Gravity... It's the law.

2009-05-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time coming.

I have been playing fast and loose with the law lately. Dangling from ladders. Balancing on the edge of wobbly railings. Hanging from gutters fifteen feet in the air. I was begging for a moving violation from the physics police. Well...It finally came. Around 3 pm, Sunday afternoon, as I was deflating the giant, carnival-style bouncy that had dominated my yard for most of the weekend. The brightly colored baffles were slowly sinking into a pile of rubbery tubes when it occurred to me that it might be a huge laugh to throw myself swan-dive-style into its last gasp.

I backed up about twelve feet, planted my strong foot and then sprinted. At the edge of the pad I vaulted, converting my forward energy into a nice leap, entering the airspace over the now three-foot-high air bag with about two feet of clearance. I had a smile on my face as my horizontal body dropped into the festive-folds. My chest and belly arched to meet its last puff of resistance.

There was none.

My 200 pound body of forty-seven years dropped through the folds to find only about an inch of air above the cold, hard ground. The impact scared me. I felt my blood rush from the front of my body to the back in one sharp splash. When it hit the limit of my skin there it squirted out to my extremities, like super-heated gas. Again, there was no relief. I don't know what all that meat and juices colliding with earth sounded like from the outside, but from the inside it definitely sound like the word POW.

I didn't move for a second. Not sure I could. When I finally did I popped up to show everyone that I was pleased with myself. That I was unhurt and proud. The truth is my whole body hurt and I could have cried like a baby.

The first of 25 random things about me.

2009-02-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

You've seen these things, right? Flipping around the social network pages? You are supposed to jot down 25 random things about yourself and then pass it along to 25 of your network "friends."

I did it. I admit it.

I resisted for a long time. But then I found myself reading the stacks of random thoughts others had published, as many as one hundred a day, and I found myself wondering what I would dribble about if given the chance. The result surprised me.

My first comment was: "I am not deep"

I'm not exactly sure who I was talking to when I wrote this. The phrase just sort of fell out of my subconscious ringing in a defensive of tone. As a sentence it is a nothing: subject, being verb (first person - singular), negative adverb, adjective. It has all the apologetic promise of an overweight, middle-age man dropping his towel before leaping into bed with a new lover.

Still, I can't help but acknowledge the truth of it. I am not deep. (written with less apology and defense, but a hint more resignation). Does that make me superficial? I can't agree with that notion. While I may be guilty of having a quick, fertile wit that is sometimes capable of generating a few too many twisty, superficial observations of the obvious, I can't help but think that I am deliberately looking away from the deep, subconsciously highlighting the shadows and counterpointing the low notes. Maybe it's my way of providing a public service.

After all, it's not the depth of the cave that will kill you, it's the sudden stop at the end.

Baubles of Sapphire and Orange

2009-01-13T00:07:00.000-08:00

All that Ismael knew of his paternal grandmother was that she was a French exchange student, that her turn-ons were caviar, champagne, and sailing topless off the coast of Nice in the summertime, and that she was a sucker for dark-haired blue-eyed men.

This information was gleaned from the back of the Oui magazine page that showed the image of a beautiful naked woman with sunbleached-blond ringlets, a necklace of sapphire and orange baubles and her smiling violet eyes as she danced among the orange sparks of a summer bonfire (presumably on a beach somewhere in France). The artful image was just slightly distorted by ripples of heat and flame and she was captured with her left hand scrunching a handful of her wild hair while her right hand caressed the gentle curve above her naval that would one day (or in fact even in that photo) contain the embryo of Ismael's father.

Ismael would unfold the page time and again to gaze at her. He loved the way the time lapse image captured traces of her motion as streaky highlights on her necklace. He loved the hint of armpit hair. He was also mesmerized by the faint trail of light pubic hair that traced a thin line from her naval to her mound and the way her modesty was artfully protected beyond a forked tongue of flame at the bottom of the page.

It never worried him that he was turned on by a picture of his father's mother or that his father had left the scrap of paper and this story as his singular earthly possession. Ismael did not know time and relationship in those terms.

Blog of Revelations

2009-01-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

Charcoal and Pii

Charcoal met Pii during the emergency cleanup operation of North Korea.

At the time he was a young nuclear engineer on loan from the Navy. He, like hundreds of other experts, was brought there on a humanitarian mission to help do whatever they could about the plutonium seepage occurring from the various reactor graves that surrounded the capitol. The situation was far worse than anyone had imagined. The air was contaminated, and so was the food, water, and any product or by-product of production. To interact with any of it was suicide. Charcoal filed his report and withdrew to a hill town east of the capitol where it was more likely to find rain that fell from clouds formed over less deadly areas of the world. As he waited for to be extracted he lived in a shipping container lined with the brick like blocks of lead acid car batteries. He ate only the mushrooms he grew himself and an awful iodine medicine he concocted from pig thyroids.

It took three months for him to realize that they would not be coming for him. By then the people of his hilltop were becoming desperate from the selenium poisoning. He knew he would have to walk away or join in the deathwatch. He hatched a plan which involved making a large, last batch of the tincture that was keeping him just a little less poisoned than the town's folks. It would requiring silently slaughtering the last four town hogs in the dead of night and escaping before anyone could stop him.

There was a large problem and a little problem with the plan.

The large problem was that fact that pigs didn't typically die quietly. In fact, they typically made a big deal of everything. If his plan was going to work He needed them to sleep to death so that his knife-work would be as quite as a whisper. He solved the problem with basic chemistry. Charcoal siphoned off a gallon or so of weak sulfuric acid from the car batteries that lined his bunk. Sprinkled over their rich shit slurry the acid would sizzle and react with the nitrogen enough to create a low, misty cloud of nitrous-oxide. Three deep breaths would make the piggies numb enough to peacefully enjoy their evisceration.

The small problem was more worrisome for Charcoal – he had never killed a human before. The pig sty was guarded at night by a pitiful little girl named Pii. One of the first victims of the radiation Pii was born mutated. Only her hands and her head grew normally and the genetic disruption caused her torso, legs and feet to remain small and polliwog like. Too hideous for the proud people to see during the day she lived with the pigs at night and acted as their body guards, eating their food and keeping warm in their excrement. Her alarm cry would in turn set the pigs squealing so she would need to be dispatched first. His conscience was delaying his plan and adding days to his exposure.

Closing thoughts on 2008

2008-12-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

This American Life rocks. I can listen over and over again.

My ladder envy has been replaced by bike envy.

I decided today that Velma was much hotter than Daphne.

I will return to New Zealand someday.

I will work for diner food.

I'm looking forward to the next school quarter.

I pledge to stay out late twice (maybe at least once) a month.

A strange memory

2008-12-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

I kissed her goodnight (and goodbye) and watched her walk with determined steps up the driveway and through the breezeway door. The dip of the porch light signaled the end of our life together. I turned my head away as I lifted my foot from the brake and move on gently to the accelerator. The street lights' beams reached out across my misty windshield and pulled me away from that past and into the future.

Blog of Revelations

2008-12-05T12:25:00.000-08:00

Ismael waited away in the shadows of a wreck as he watched Charcoal twist and squirm in his silent pain. He closed his eyes from time to time so he could see the man with the features of his memories. In that image Charcoal's eyes, now a hazy blood-soaked gray, were still a piercing blue, strong enough to penetrated the thin slits of his chocolate-brown eyelids. Ismael remember how small the orbs of those eyes had seem to his seven-year-old self and how their size did not recon with the big world that Charcoal like to talk about.

Ismael opened his own blue eyes again when he heard Charcoal cough, and mumbled something about city gardens and swans. The cough turned into a snorting laugh that shot small puffs of dust away from the rims of his crusty, pinched nostrils. When Ismael closed his eyes again he saw the strong lines of Charcoal's nose as it once was, and remember how Charc had laughed himself sick the time he realized that it was his brain creating the vapors of a phantom stench and not the world around him. He had described it many time as a putrid and penetrating version of the ringing ears some of the old-ones had experienced before they went stone deaf. It was a strange gift as it had allowed him to endure the warm earth of the landfill. After all, it wasn't like anyplace else would have smelled better to him.

Anarchy

2008-11-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

I heard a radio interview the other morning. It was the voice of a middle aged black man, speaking deliberately, choosing words of warning to the government – to all of us really – against waiting too long to solve the economic crisis of today. He was explaining in working class English that we needed to do this if we wanted to avoid anarchy.

"When I was young," he said, "I was not afraid of dying." His use of the words "afraid" and "dying" were accented richly with 1960's experience. Then he added, "The youth of today are not afraid of killing."

It gave me chills.

I found myself thinking about the first American suicide bomber in the local mall. The first shoot-out at the Wal-Mart. The first gas attack in the movieplex. It was a long, cold minute until I realized that the first of these would not be the last.

Blog of Revolations - Chapter Five

2008-10-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

There was a time when Charcoal would have described Ismael as a rival. However, Ismael had never understood their relationship in that way. As far as he was concerned, Charcoal was a sensitive and intelligent man up to the unfortunate moment when Ismael had chosen to act without either quality. It etched a thin, but jagged line between them that carried on through the time when neither benefited from the divide. And now Charcoal lay dying, the colors in his map-work veins fading and all he can manage to do is hold up a hand that says, "Stay away. Your help is not welcome or desired."

Furniture

2008-09-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

I've become sensitive to a trend in the my region of the Northeast. People have become fond of placing a couple of Adirondack chairs out on the corner of their lawns, arranged presumably at the most meditative view on the their property. I see these couplings everywhere. However, I've never once seen the seats occupied. Not once.

Is this another American illusion? Do these people place the chairs out there in the hope that someday they will have the time to sit there and enjoy the view? Are they trying to taunt the casual onlooker by suggesting that they have more views than they can use? Or do they just have a low opinion of those chairs. So low that they've chosen to banish them to the far reaches of their kingdoms. Maybe it is an obstacle for the lawn mower man.

I am a man of action. If there is a seat. I want to sit in it. In fact, I believe that every seat deserves to be sat upon - naked. I believe in full body contact while vista contemplating.

Do you want to help? Find one of these vistas, take off your cloths, sit, and take a picture. Send it to me and I'll post it here.

By the way. The word Adirondack means "bark eater" in the language of the Mohawk (which means cannibal). Extra points if you send a picture of yourself chewing on the naked arm (or leg) of a friend who is chewing on a stick. Let's end the lonely, wasted existence of the banished Adirondack chair.

Blog of Revelations - Chapter 4

2008-08-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

Charcoal lives in a hole on the side of the landfill and everyday his name becomes more ironic. Charcoal has not eaten in weeks and his skin is silver-gray. Beneath his translucent skin is a network of pink, green and blue blood vessel, including one that looks very much like the iconic Boston transit authority map. Charcoal points to the thin green line the stretches away from a cluster on his forearm and jokes, "I used to live here, in Brookline."

Blog of Revelations - Chapter 3

2008-08-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

Gentle wears no shoes. She never has.

In the early days of the exodus she was carried everywhere because she was still small and light and the people of the hill were still strong. She would ride high on the men's shoulders and as the women passed by they would squeeze her chubby feet and marvel at their softness. Ismael was her favorite mount and she knew him by his thick hair and flexible ear lobes. She would direct him around toward the different sounds that she heard by tugging on his lobes like reins. He would cradle her soft little feet in his palms as he carried her along.

Though Gentle was still very small she became too heavy for most. The ash, salt, soda and borax quickly desiccated her soles into dark, hard, human hooves. This was a blessing really. She no longer winced at the thorns and broken glass that found her footfalls. She no longer sensed the searing heat of the day, or the aching cold of the night that defined the random path she walked.

But still, it bothered Ismael.

One day he attempted to make her some sandals out of some plastic soda bottles he found. He pounded them flat with a stick and sized them against Gentle's footprints in the sand. He worked on them for days, rubbing all the sharp points smooth against any rock he passed near. In all those days he never came across a suitable string or strap to hold them to her heels. By the time he had, her feet had out grown the gesture.

He carried the sandals for along for a while. Cradling them in the palms of his hands as he contemplated the change, until finally he left them tied to a grizzled oak branch like ornaments he could see in a distant memory.

As he walked away they clacked in the breeze like a raven's beak.

Blog of Revelations - Chapter Two

2008-08-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

A night or two before, Ismael had a dream. In the dream he could remember the day when the ancestors had moved the young people onto the far green hill, away from the ash and the alkaloid mist.

They had done this so that they could drive back the dust and expand the hill of green. They had done this because they thought that the children would flourish on the highland, and the rose would return to their babies' cheeks. But, they had not known or did not calculate the effect of hope on the little ones. They did not anticipate how, even as children, small and light, there would be a price paid in green grass and yellow flowers and that too soon the hill would be traded away to the soda ash gray of the low lands.

In the dream Ismael watched how the children did weep for their ancestors and how their tears eroded trails in the dust on their cheeks.

When Ismael awoke, he tossed a stone to the East, in the direction that his ancestors had walked away the day they left him. Even though he had thrown the stone very far, a grayish ring of powder puffed up from the ground where it had landed. The dust was sucked up into a swirl of hot wind and disappeared over what used to be the green hill.

The ancestors, he knew, were long gone.

Blog of Revelations - Chapter One

2008-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Ismael was awakened at the dim light of dawn by the call of a cat. He knew by the low growl that the cat was hungry and that the little girl named Gentle might be in danger. He followed the noise down to the the salt pond and sat waiting in the tall grass with a hand full of stones.

He spotted Gentle as she sat on the old wooden dock to the west and cast her toy fishing net upon the crust of the glistening salt. The crystals shown like stars as she dragged the net back and shook them free. She was, as Ismael had suspected, completely oblivious to the cat whose glowing eyes were spying on her from the thrush of the eastern edge of the pond.

Ismael readied a stone to drive off the cat but as he cocked his arm back he noticed that the cat's eyes had shifted to the wet end of the pond. He followed them to where he could make out the dark silhouette of a great sea hawk as it hovered silently above the brine. As he watched the bird suddenly folded its wings and plunged into the dark with a soft splash, arising a moment later with an eel.

The sea hawk then dropped the eel on the salt crust where the eels' wet body created a stinging pool of slurry. The eel writhed in agony and Ismael was struck with pity for the serpent as the hawk set upon it again and again, lifting it skyward and dropping on the sharp, hard salt to burn from in its own mucus. Ismael threw a stone at the hawk in an attempt to scare it off but the hawk hopped out of its way. The stone struck the eel instead knocking it back into the water. Just then, the hungry cat seized upon the opportunity scampering across the salt crust and into the water after the wounded eel.

Gentle stopped what she was doing to see what all the commotion was about, but as her eyes and ears were not as good as Ismael's she went back to her game.

The hawk did not fly away and for a moment Ismael thought he might have traded one predator for another. He readied another stone should the hawk fall on Gentle.

But the hawk did not fall upon Gentle. Instead it hovered over the cat's ripple. A moment later it dove into the dark again and emerged with a new quarry. Ismael watched as great hawk flew away with the drowned cat in one claw and the exhausted eel in the other.

A new metaphor for America

2008-08-05T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'm really tired of the old metaphor that describes America as a great big ship, which requires time to change course. I think the recent hiccup in fuel prices proves that we are really more like a motorcycle.

A ship is turned from the wheel house and the rest of the passengers just go along for the ride. On a motorcycle the course and the mere fact that the rider avoids trees, abutments, and pavement is a simple matter of shifting weight. I learned this fact during my first few minutes on a motorcycle. It was a quick and profound education in balance and momentum. You see, you don't really steer a motorcycle, you cajole it (the handlebars are really there to keep the rider from flying off the bike). To go right, you look right, lean your right shoulder to the right, and shift your hip to the right. The next thing you know the entire mass of your bike is heeling in that direction. It is a subtle thing, a beautiful thing, which makes you the rider seem powerful and ethereal all in the same moment.

Let's stop waiting for the wheel house to change our course. Grab your handle bars, lean in the direction we need to go, and hang on for dear life.

Waterfall

2008-07-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

It was the worse that ever happened to us. My nephew Nick drowned. It was 10 years ago on this very day. He and two of his buddies went over a rain swollen spillway in a canoe while fishing. During the three days it took to recover their bodies my wife and I decided to change the way we thought about life. We slowed down, dropped back, and eventually abandoned the types of pursuits common to the American DINC. It was the best that ever happened to us. Without being intentionally ironic we celebrate his anniversary by taking a boat ride under Niagara's Horseshoe falls. As we buffeted about on the Maiden of the Mist in the blinding spray we saluted those lost boys. There are so many people and places we would never have known if Nick hadn't shown us the way.

Greener by Design

2008-06-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Look at what you do, and how you do it.
Find your niche, make it green.

Tell me what green is and I'll make it dark green.

Incentives: reward or punishment. It will probably take a constant application to both to change the world. When has it been any different.

We don't think of air, food, water, or shelter as burdens of responsibility. They are the basic things we need to live and we've had five million years to incorporate their systems into our daily life. Yet, when most people think about sustainability it quickly takes on the specter of burden rather than the very necessary system required to help promote and preserve the quality of our lives.

Greening: Reduce everything about a product except the quality it brings to the world.

Sustainability is a measure of performance. We need to stop thinking about it as a separate measure of performance.

whole·some [hohl-suhm] –adjective

1.	conducive to moral or general well-being; salutary; beneficial: wholesome recreation; wholesome environment.

2.	conducive to bodily health; healthful; salubrious: wholesome food; wholesome air; wholesome exercise.

3.	suggestive of physical or moral health, esp. in appearance.

4.	healthy or sound.

New Word: Whole-Sum - The quantification of a sustainable (green) attribute.

Green(er) and Green(ing) are a process.

The bubble: The components and attributes that define the nursery of terrestrial earth creature. For most air-breathers the space between three feet of soil and 10,000 feet of atmosphere. For aquatic creatures the dew-point down to the sub-sea aquafers.

The system of sustainability requires component level inventory which includes three primary (first tier) quantification: Carbon, Toxin, Lifespan.

Carbon: Sequestered (fossil) carbon liberation as it relates to source acquisition through end of use disposal.

Toxin: Any product, by-product, or discipation of organically disruptive material.

Lifespan: The timespan from raw material back to raw material.

Where do we begin?

Buying less of everything and anything.
This idea tampers with the concept of commerce, a system that is dependent upon turn-over, but it is the best first step. Future success of commerce will depend on the value-add of a product relationship. (The GE example: Sell power by the hour, not jet engines.)
Buying less will reduce all three quantities of the first tier.

Buying for long life.
Another idea which tampers with the current concept of commerce. Here again the solution will be in the long-term relationship with the manufacturer. ( I love my Mac. The keys, plugs and screen will work fine for years. I would gladly pay for upgrades in the invisible internal features and software. A move that would no doubt reduce the amount of landfill waste and increase a larger part of its life).

Ask for less carbon.

Ask for less toxins.
Less is less.

Niche

2008-06-12T18:03:00.000-07:00

I chatted with an innovation consultant who has found herself in the strange position of being a "Green" consultant. She doesn't really promote herself that way and yet she continues to acquire gig after gig facilitating fortune 500 companies into sustainability plans. She was resoundingly humorless as she talked about the world of products development admitting that it's about money and markets and has little to do with environment or non-customers. Her advice to me: Find your niche - make it green.

I think that's her advice to everyone but it would be hard to get her to admit that.

Working it

2008-06-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

The final presentation of the day was called "What's in Store." It feature a blogger acting as host and the sustainability director for Wal-Mart acting as guest in a one-sided crossfire interview.

The blogger lobbed softball after softball at the Wal-Mart guy who responded with witty and well thought out anecodots about the supply chain, square milk containers that improve the cubilization of palette, and China. If half of what he said is true he will soon be promoted to Saint.

The truth of the matter is that Wal-Mart is huge. (Too huge and too powerful the guy in the row next to me muttered.) But the little bit that they do under the self-serving guise of sustainability is 100 times more than 100 of their market competitors are not doing. How big is big?

Two million employees big. Largest company in the world big. $26,ooo profit dollars and hour big. If they were a State of the Union, they would place 13th in population, but 1st in gross product. But they're not just big - they are a huge influencer. They've sold almost 200 million compact florescents since they started carrying them. That's saved the world $6 billion in energy costs and 40 million tons of carbon dioxide which is something like taking 1.4 million cars of the road.

Love them if they are telling the truth. Hate them if they're lying. But no matter what it's up to us to drive the market.

I am so niave

2008-06-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

Corporate America has no soul.

I haven't met a representative who wants sustainability because it's the right thing to do. They are all doing in because the "buyer" (who they don't really respect) thinks they want it.

Warning: Never suggest to a Clorox VP that chlorine is toxic. He will rip you a new one and he doesn't care how bad he looks while he's doing it.

Fact: Wherever Wal-Mart goes, the product developers will follow. Think about that the next time you buy something from them. Companies of that size need to be held to the highest standard.

The game is wealth and sustainability revolves around continued wealth.

I once suggested that lawyers offer advice to the paranoid the way bartenders offer drinks to alcoholics. The green biz isn't functioning at a much higher level.

I asked a sustainability "guru" what the top three sustainability problems were and she answered like this, "Well...carbon is number one because it's what "they" say is critical. Second would be toxicity, because no one wants to be responsible for poisoning a customer. And, hmmmm....I'm not sure I know what qualifies as third. Really comes down to what the customer wants.

A key person from a key government agency told me a story about a promotional giveaway item (swag) that was being handed out to the public long after it was discovered that the paint on it was discovered to have 1400 ppm of lead. The reason for continuing with the distribution? They had already paid for them. The agency doing is generally responsible for safe-guarding the health of the public. The item was the kind of thing you would let a baby chew on.

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Images of a journey south

2008-06-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Connecticut is a bitter stretch of highway. Is it true everywhere that where the main road parallels a commuter rail line the macadam should be shabby and unsafe? The roads through Hartford aren't like that?

New York is blissfully brief. It looked awful in the 95 degree heat. When the GPS says, "Exit Left," I really need to trust it. I added dozens of miles and minutes to my trip second guessing it.

New Jersey is a toll road where you are encouraged to drive at least 20 miles over the speed limit in order to make the ordeal as short as possible. Failing that you are encouraged to take a commuter out in a firey wreck.

Delaware is beautiful. Miles of wheat fields and hills full of fragrant pink clover blossoms. I kept thinking Dover was a city. Highway signs read 20 miles to Dover, 10 miles to Dover, 5 miles to Dover. I was so surprised to find that it was an air force base - a huge air force base. At one point the highway made a wide circle around an enormous transport hanger. The C-130's were lined up, row by row. There had to be a hundred. I wondered as it passed into an image in my rear view mirror if that was where the flag drapped soldiers are greeted.

I noticed a rash of sprawl in Delaware. McMansions planted in neat rows on what used to be farm fields. I hope they stop before they've lost the best of their resources.

Delaware has the ugliest vehicle tags and too many churches along the highway. But, I had to admit they are well patrolled and most folks drive the speed limit.

Maryland has a beautiful flag. Not as pretty as Montana's, but close. All the counties are named after a British royal and the towns across from the Delaware boarder are noticably more affluent making Delaware seem like the dull country cousin. Rhode Island's Bay side towns look similarly glitzy compared to the sea side towns. It's all without substance.

Highway signs in the DC area are kind of folksie. They ask questions and answer them for you. "Heading for the Bay Bridge? Stay on Route 50"
"Fenderbender? Move your car off the road."
Charming.

Every area of Virginia I've driven in looks exactly like every other section. It's disturbing.

I'm camped out in Fairfax station which is apparently the hub of the South Asian community. I drove by a large Hindu temple and all I could think to ask myself was whether there might be a good Sagwala near by.

I directed my GPS to take me to my meeting by the alternate-alternate-alternate route. It only added 5 minutes to my trip and took me back roads through what looked like Korea town. I thought about Kim-che for the next 5 miles.

The hotel is right next to the beltway. The reception started out slowly. I met a gladhander and got a little depressed, but got more depressed by his "booth babe" who kept mispronouncing renewable to the EPA executive. Things got better when Bambi (her name is Jill actually) scooted off to get a glass of wine that hadn't been heated by the sun. John from EPA was really on the ball and gave me my first takeaway from the event. He explain how the aerospace industry grew out of ingenuity driven not by war, but by contests.

The Spirit of St Louis showed the world that the Atlantc could be crossed. Now it's crossed hundreds of times a day.

"Sleepy? Maybe you should go to bed."

G'night.

On the Sunny Side of the Street

2008-06-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

Friends of mine live in a neighborhood where every other person is either a dermatologist or a therapist.
"It's a bit confusing," admitted my friend Cary. "Just as one person is scolding you to put on sunscreen, someone else comes along to say, 'Oh, don't you listen to them. You can do whatever you want."

Finding my Way

2008-05-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Teaching.
Teaching just about anything, but most likely media arts.
Writing.
Writing because it keeps me focused, sane, amused.
Animation.
Animation because I'm good at it, and because if I don't keep doing it I'll lose it.
Media.
Media because other people think I'm good at it. Media because it's my second nature, which begs the question, what is my first.

Writing - The failed experiment?

2008-05-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

The software programmer in me likes to think of homosapien evolution as a six-million-year-long open source code project. With that in mind, I often think of language, particularly written language, as a sub-routine of that larger program.

At present, one sixth of the world's population cannot read or write. That translates into one billion homosapiens who cannot read the word "illiterate" in any language at all. I'm sorry to report that this number is growing. Take a look at this email from one of my brightest college students.

"can you poast my grade for the test i was asking you about is class i got 55 out 70 thank you for your time"

I observed this student as he wrote this email. It took him ten minutes to compose this short request. He was practically sweating when he was done. He's an enormous, baby-faced, 20-year-old high school graduate who knows every detail of every new sports shoe that hits the market. He picks up complicated software and imaging concepts with amazing speed and he can recite whole TV episodes of "Family Guy" from memory. Every indicator points to his intelligence. Yet, he can't read or write above a third grade level.

The interesting thing about his situation and that of most of his fellow students is that they probably won't need to. The world is changing. Written language is a relatively new sub-routine of our open source project (less than 5,000 years long) and there are an alarming number of indicators suggesting that its string will soon loop itself out of existence.

My advice to my writer friends...Hurry!

SHED-ding Light - My second article

2008-04-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.naturalnews.net/wordpress/?p=1600

Cliff hanger

2008-04-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

My dad is the best and worst storyteller I know. Growing up he used to tell me and my siblings some beauties–thrillers and chillers–and the nightly dinner table was his stage.

"Bobby" was already forty around the time I figured out that he was my dad and I was his son. By that point in his life he had already mastered his art. In between bites from his plate of segregated food groups he would weave long complicated plots with twists and turns, and a few surprises along the way that could literally leave you spellbound. His pale blue eyes would fix on a place far away as he seemed to channel these incredible details of the strange and the wonderful. Fact or fiction he had a gift that made his stories so good.

What made them bad, was his habit of cliff hanging. On almost every other opportunity he would escape a ten or twenty minute long epic without without finishing. For some reason as he approached what should have been the climax of his story he would shutter, shrug, or just lapse into an eerie silence and his story would fade away without another word as we sat waiting watching him chew.

For the first thirty seconds we would silently hope it was some kind of stagecraft. And after a minute passed we'd begin to believe he may have become overwhelmed by his subject's beauty or horror. However, by the time he started in on his dessert you knew it was over. The story was done, and there were no more details to be shared.

It's taken me most of my life, but I finally think I know what was happening.

These are a few of my favorite things...

2008-03-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

(Not sung to the tune of the Rodgers And Hammerstein hit.)

I like water lily blossoms on a hot July morning. They take my breath away and they smell like vanilla ice cream. I also like vanilla ice cream.

I am a sucker for a great meatloaf diner special (that is diner, as in roadside diner) and I have been known to wax rhapsodic about the truffle pizzas I had the pleasure of enjoying more than once on a trip to Tuscany one month after September 11th, 2001.

I love the southern Rhode Island coast during the warm, last days of October. The sun hangs so low over Block Island Sound that the waves sparkle like 20 miles of sequins.

I like a good slushy, sub-zero, vodka martini, straight up, in a ridiculously fragile glass, with three giant olives, but I can only drink one. I have been known to enjoy shrimp cocktail, raw oysters, and I'm on a quest to recreate the experience of a stuffed shrimp Parmesan dish that I had once almost 24 years ago.

I love a good sunrise or sunset.

I love upsetting the status quo. I have been rich and poor and I like being poor much better.

I admire people who make plans over second cups of strong coffee or the occasional single malt scotch.

I like the noise my baseboard radiators make in the middle of the night, but I like the sound of peep toads and crickets even more.

I love a good village, with a good coffee shop, and on occasion I believe I will expire in such a place.

If you were to look around my desk you would think that I liked technology. But, the truth of the matter is that I only just tolerate the geeky gear for the benefits of turning my weird thoughts into tangible (if only somewhat) images.

I love postcards and cartoons drawn on napkins.

I love that people borrow things from me, and I love it when they return what they borrowed with a small plate of oatmeal cookies.

I like photos of drunken friends, but I get embarrassed by the urge they create in me. The one that makes me want to to hug them uncomfortably long, if and when I next see them alive.

I love a good story and that most of my favorite people are good storytellers but really bad joke-tellers.

I love that I am old enough to have useful experiences and a life expectancy that might allow me to do something useful with them, but I could do without the ear hair.

Don't be discouraged.

2008-03-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

It's worth doing the difficult, the insane, the impossible. Set a goal even though at times you will feel as though you've lost your way. Persevere, because change is hard and it will always be resisted. But...hey, don't listen to me. Listen to these famous losers.

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
-- Albert Einstein.

A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.
-- Norwegian Proverb.

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this.
-- Don Quixote.

Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter,
and those who matter don't mind.
-- Dr. Seuss.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-- George Bernard Shaw.

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.
-- Milan Kundera.

To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.
-- Janeane Garafolo.

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
- Groucho Marx

View from the SHED

2008-03-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to my new column on the Natural News Network.

In the Shed

2008-03-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

So often we are asked to solve problems that took generations and nations of people to create. All the desire and a garage full of Priuses can't begin to make the difference. That's why I'm always looking for a way to scale down global problems into a form that a person can matter. My latest invention: SHED.

SHED as in Sustainable, Humane, Economic, Design.

Sustainable is an awful word. I've always hated how unsatisfying it sounds. How do you suppose your spouse would respond if you described your relationship as sustainable? However, it does have value in an emotionally removed sort of way. We need to use things that fit in the circle of our carbon based life cycle and so it deserves to be part of a whole life tactic.

Humane is a simple, and yet complex word. I'm not sure if being humane is more or less relevant than it ever was, but regardless, it needs to figure into everything we do as humans. We are of the earth, humus, and we need to make choices that acknowledges our place on the earth. Consuming sustainably doesn't serve if the rest of the world starves.

Economic balance creates the symbolic conversion of a resources, both sustainable and humane. It allows for a person and a community a season and a hemisphere away to balance their fortunes with our own.

I believe design is the most important part. Design demonstrates that we are intentional and committed to balance. Design leads to solution.

In total, the word SHED means a great many things. It can mean a large or small building. It can mean to emit or impart. It can mean to resist or cast off. Whether noun or verb; shelter or knowledge; burden or evil, it is a living word that a person can know and resolve to experience.

Individually we need to make ourselves aware of the things we use on a daily basis and determine whether or not they pass the SHED rule. We need to evaluate our waterSHED, foodSHED, workSHED, wealthSHED, and wasteSHED like the world depended on it. It's like the golden rule, "do on to others as you would have them do on to you." SHED gives us a safe way to abandon our entitlement and our delusions of comfort for what really matters–justice for all.

Maybe we can end the bloodSHED and tearsSHED.

Beijing

2008-02-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

I bumped into a friend I haven't seen in a while at a cocktail party. He is a city planner and explained his recent absence on the fact that he had just returned from a forum in Beijing where he was hired to help solve some "growth" issues they're having. He had a somewhat glassy look in his eyes as his mind tried to relate the math that is China today.

For example: During a trip less than ten years ago he visited a city north of Beijing that was straining under its nine million inhabitants. When he went back to check on things during this trip he was pleased to discover that they had only grown by 600 percent to 36 million.

"They're 36 million people who want flushing toilets, SUV's, and four car garages," he said vacantly. That's because recently a new people's revolution has taken hold of the people of China. "Workers of the world unite" has been replaced by a new slogan "To be rich is glorious." Everyone in China is on the bandwagon. Farmers are moving to the cities to capture their piece of the wealth in such numbers that the commerce systems can barely keep up. In fact, savings banks and the like aren't considered fruitful investments for the hard working communist. These savvy entrepreneurs are putting their money into the one growth commodity that seems to be in constant demand–bricks. That's right, men and women are banking their surplus money in the brick market. Not gold bricks, mind you, but common building bricks that can be converted into cash for a profit almost anywhere in a city that is sending up 1000 new towers a year. It's rather clever I guess.

Maybe we should all start investing in bricks. After all a billion and a half chinamen can't all be Wong.

Misremembering

2008-02-22T23:38:00.000-08:00

Misremembering inflicts us all and I want to set my record straight.

Just this week I had the opportunity to misremember something. It took place during an alumni breakfast at my old college campus. I was standing next to Kristen, a woman who was for all intents and purposes my little sister during those school days. The now forty-something, wife of Alan, mother of Matthew, provided nearly half of my social core when we were twenty-somethings. Aside from her availability and companionship she opened my horizons.She introduced me to Richard Bach and his book Illusions and likewise entertained any and all of my philosophical ideas or fantasies. Her wide-eyed idealism made me believe that just about anything was possible, which at the time was too extraordinarily valuable to a guy like me.

The misremembering part happened when someone asked how we had met. Kristen described me as one of the first upper classmen she became friendly with as a freshman. I in turn described her as a kitten mewing in the branches of a tree. More correctly I said, "we found her in a tree." It is in that "we" that I misremembered. The we that my brain added in was Johanne, my collegiate sweetheart. The three of us were so often together as a group that it was difficult for some to determine what our relationship was. Privately, the three of us assumed specific roles: me as father, Johanne as mother, and Kristen as baby Krissy. The notion of the kittenish rescue was something that Kris allowed Johanne and I to believe during our years together so that she could watch over us.

The best that I can recall about our actual meeting these days is that it happened on a Saturday morning in the foyer of a gymnasium building that was being used to handle (or mishandle) pre-registration. I, the shaggy hometown sophomore, was moping around, working on my disgruntled artist persona when Kristen, all cute and Connecticut, popped up next to me just as clear and bright as a soap bubble. We confused each other for a while. I assumed that all feminine attention needed to be harnessed into a coupling and she assumed I was smarter than that. It took a few months but we wrangled it out and became the brother sister team that transcended the puppy love.

In the long run it was her roommate who would completed us. If Kristen was all ideal and optimism, Johanne was reality and skepticism. Years later I would fall in love with and marry a woman who had all those qualities. Much as it does today, the combination of tempraments kept my mania from spinning off in any harmful directions. However, to set the record completely straight, in case you hadn't figured it out, I was actually the kitten in the tree.

Kristen has been an administrator at our old school for nearly as long as we have been graduates of it. For her its four walls are full of memories far more varied than my own. Yet, she indulged me in a few moments or reminiscence after the alumni breakfast by relating a recent experience. She described how during a blood drive the week before she found herself looking up from the donation couch at the ceiling of the student union ballroom. As she filled her bag she was taken by a flood of school day memories. For a moment she looked and sounded like Dorothy recounting her trip to Oz and like the scarecrow and the tin-man we, Johanne, me, Baby Krissy, were all recalled to her.

As I drove away from the campus I had a funny thought about the lucky person who might receive that donation of rich blood from Kristen's heart. It will no doubt revive them, fill them with a sudden wide-eyed optimism, and an uncontrollable urge to make someone feel extraordinarily special. I hope they never misremember how great that feels.

Dirt Nap

2008-02-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

Billy sang along with an ironic laugh to his voice, "Hope I die before I get old!" as the Who's My Generation blared out of the white convertible's speakers. It was another beautiful day on the gulf coast and as far as Billy was concerned he owed it all to the Noxtel protocol.

The Noxtel Pharmasutical Company scientist had cleverly solved the age old problem of the inconvienent life. Unlike Rogain which could only offer hair, and Viagra which could only offer a few hours of manhood, Noxtel allowed a man to enjoy the benefits of youthful vitality while making sure he didn't overstay his welcome. It guaranteed low blood pressure, high metabolism, quick reflexes, a sharp mind, and a quick, peaceful death as you slept somewhere during your tenth year of the protocol. Billy, an extraordinarily fit looking octogenarian was speeding through day 265 of his tenth year. Everyday he woke up was a bonus and he lived it like it was his last because sooner or later it would be.

This created a bit of a problem. After so many years of sucking up, working to live, and keeping up with the Jones, he never expected to fall in love. He wasn't ready to leave now, peacefully or otherwise.

The folks he passed as he whipped in and out of the high speed lanes on his way to St. Augustine, might have thought he was just another reckless Noxteenager. But in fact he was in a life and death hurry to find the one man who it was said had discovered a way to beat the Noxtel protocol-indefinately.

Twilight

2008-01-29T14:49:00.001-08:00

As I roll Gladys back to her room from the sun deck I can sense that she is looking forward to tomorrow's birthday party. She suspects that someone from the family will show up for the celebration. There will be cake, balloons, and maybe a few pictures taken and even though her blank eyes, paralyzed vocal cords, and shriveled body can do nothing to express her gratitude, she will be thrilled by all the fuss. She has had her hair tinted especially for them and she's ready to play her part. It's not her birthday of course and the visitors aren't even her family - but it doesn't matter. As Mr. Foster, the ring master of the Cape Buena Vista Convalescent Home always says, "No one hopes to catch butterflies by twilight."

He should know. Mr. Foster has been running this scam for over a decade now. It's a shell game and he's an expert at casting his pantomime farces for the sons and daughters of wealthy snow birds - the ones that show up at least. He can tell by the pitying glances that they will never look too closely at the frail bodies before them. They don't want to remember their parents so strange or imagine for a moment that they themselves will end their days this way. Who does?

Soon they'll stop coming and instead they'll wait patiently for the call, the one where the voice on the line says, "We're so sorry for your loss. Your mother's (or father's or aunt's/uncle's) heart stopped sometime around 2 A.M." Mr. Foster will tell them later that their loved one died peacefully, while they were sleeping, surrounded by caring nurses while Tammy the home's calico purred curled up by their side. Mr. F never misses a detail.

When the family member hangs up the phone, they will breathe a sigh of relief. Not so much that their parent's suffering has ended, but that they expired before the planned financial reserves were completely exhusted. Mr. Foster makes sure there's always a just a little left. He does this because he believes no one really enjoys the burdens of profit associated with the hiding and forgetting of ones elders - no one except him that is.

He treats these unwanted shells the best he can while it matters, and lets them escape with as much dignity as possible the moment they're ready. Most don't hang around very long, which is is to say not long enough for the living. So, he substitutes a warm body from his ensemble of ten character actors like Gladys, Freddie, and Betty for whoever shows up with the guilts and through the magic of theater helps the offspring let them go.

When the time is right (and the money is gone) he'll open a file cabinet draw in the basement and fish out the powdered remains of the appropriate loved one.

Hope, Math and Orgasms

2008-01-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who is fond of saying, "It all boils down to chicks and dudes." This got me thinking.

I've been toying with the concept of plotting in true stories. That is to say that I've been trying to figure out if plotting is a test of a good true story or if you can create a good story by finding the plot points within the details.

According to Jon Franklin, author of the craft book called Writing for Story, a story can become a good story if you, the writer, knows what it's about. He has observed statistically that every good story has a penultimate moment where the principle subject changes tactics right before the climax. Franklin refers to this moment as the point of insight and he suggests that you a writer can preserve years of our artistic energy by learning how to write from this moment to the ending before venturing to write the beginning. I'm not getting any younger so the idea of preserving artistic energy appeals to me.

However, I have to admit it has been difficult to embrace this strategy as the best way to write. There's a general feeling of wrongness to it. That somehow it cheats or cheapens the process of discovery in some capital manner. And yet, though it may feel cheap it certainly doesn't feel easy. It is so difficult in fact that it has several times forced me back into my protective cave of metaphors to lick my wounds.

Maybe I got overly involved with the recuprative licking process, but something happened to me recently, there in the cave. I think I've finally come to understand how the term "climax" has became ordinarily associated with the concept of plot line. To some this may seem crude, immature, and distasteful, but that shouldn't make it less useful. In any case, I recently realized that before I was married a great many of my life's points of insight occurred within about 30 seconds of orgasm. There in the pure white light of clarity and focus, after the testosterone and tequila burned off, I would often come (no pun intended) to realize three things interesting things.

I am naked.
I have made a mistake.
To say so at the moment might result in castration, which would be easy because I am naked.

In short, (no pun intended) these moments parallel the very essence of good story. SO, maybe it all boils down to orgasms. But, even as I lay simmering in the afterglow of this eureka moment I was struck by another.

Life is math.

The human condition, the underlying element that makes a story good, boils down to the fundementals of quanification.

Add a person to your life = story.
Subtract a person = story.
Divide a nation = story.
Multiply a castrophe = story.
Rationalize a crime = story.

It's that simple. The writer (and the reader, if the story succeeds) is always trying to solve for X. "I am one. He, she, it are two," and so on. SO, it's math and orgasms. But what's to know about that? What are we really trying to quantifying?

I think the answer might be hope.

In a large way despair is tangible, and unactionable. It is - end of story. Hope is intangible and therefore it engages the mind in all sorts of horrible and wonderful ways. "I hope I live! I hope I die! I hope he, she, or it, lives or dies! I hope she falls asleep soon so that I can get out of here with my junk intact."

So, in fact, it all boils down to hope, math, and orgasms - which I guess boils down to chicks and dudes.

Encounter Time

2008-01-20T23:04:00.000-08:00

I live in the city where I grew up. Everyday I walk the streets that I wandered as a teen and I see many of the places and faces that I knew back then. As a young adult my wife moved here and since that time she has done a pretty good job of making it her turf as well. Together, as a couple for the last 20 years, our combined experiences and list of friends and acquaintances make it almost impossible for either one of us to go any place in town that doesn't hold a special memory for one or both of us.

This point was made very clear to us the other night, while we sat at a table in a Japanese restaurant named Haruki's which occupies the footprint of what used to be a local pub called Maximillian's. Our table was mere feet from the spot where we had one of our first drinks as a couple. It was a sweet memory and I was just about to remind my wife of it when an altogether different memory walked into view. It was my first love - a woman named Claudia.

Claudia and I met in high school. She gave me my first–but not the only–glimpse of angels on earth. At the time she was a beautiful, sensitive, and witty young lady of fifteen, and the mere sight of her made this stammering, awkward, rail of a boy of sixteen, weak to the point of fainting. Somehow we found each other in the dark corner of a party make-out room early on in our sophomore year. We stole a kiss from each other when our respective dates (in need of fresh air or a cooling period) made the mistake of leaving us alone together in the dark. The combination of daring dishonor and hormone madness caused a magnetic reaction that was so obvious that the next day we were each released by our steadies with a wave and a handshake.

We went from hot to heavy in a flash and practiced our hormone fueled love-craft for hours a night on the phone and almost every weekend in the back of my parent's Plymouth Valiant. It was an exciting year and a half of playing Russian Roulette with our genetic material and we were very lucky that we never managed to screw up our lives (or someone else's). Looking back I can't help but think that there might be something to the idea of guardian angels and not just because of what we managed to avoid. Claudia taught me how to love, and rescued me from the isolation of a dark adolescence.

In exchange, I occasionally made her laugh, but too often I made her cry as I struggled with my evil fits of insecurity. In the end, we parted at the point where our roles reversed. She took up with another boy to satisfy my doubts on the very same evening it finally occurred to me that I had no reason to doubt her.

I landed hard.

Still, I have no real regrets. The experience served to redefine me as a man. It was that relationship that became the lens by which I would see all others. It helped me understand things about myself and my heart that I may never have known otherwise. When again I would find myself stammering and awkward in the presence of another angel of earth it gave me the courage to take a chance. As it turned out, later that month we shared a drink at a bar where now a sushi chef can be found.

As Claudia walked by I called to her. She stopped and in a moment she put my 45 year old features in line with her 30 year old memory of me and smiled. My eyes blinked a hundred thanks-yous to her as I introduced my first love to my last love.

My Blankie

2008-01-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

When I can't sleep, I write.

I remember reading somewhere that the fair market value for sleep floats somewhere between 10,000 to 30,000 dollars an hour. That is, for every hour over and above a six hour night of sleep the average person would happily sacrifice $10K to $30K in annual salary. I can't recall how the researchers came to that number. Whether it was a tabulation based on the salaries of blue collar earners and their sleep habits compared to white collar counterparts and their habits. Nevertheless, I have no problem believing it is true.

I love to sleep and there are nights when I'm convinced that $30,000 for a bonus hour of sleep would be a steal.

For me the best meal, bottle of wine, and hot monkey sex, can be easily topped by a long, uninterrupted night of slumber. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, the food, wine, and sex, are not often a problem.

During the brief period of my life when I was a fearsome entrepreneur I could only manage a scant three to four hours a night. It was miserable. I was miserable. I felt, looked, and acted by all accounts like a troll. Things got a little better after I walked away from that glamorous life and traded the Nantucket summerhouse dream for a camper van. The adjustment cost me about $50,000 in income annually and every cell in my body knows it was totally worth it.

Nowadays, I can saw wood for seven and eight hour stretches, though it usually happens in three to four hour blocks. In between, I'll wake up and wonder-without answer-why I'm awake. Most nights this question fades during a short stroll around the rooms of my dark house, after which I can return to the safety of my bed. I roll in under the linens and slip my icy feet back and forth until they recover their warmth. Before I know it, I wake up to a new day. It is the most amazing feeling and one of the most rewarding things I do.

I recently began to wonder if this doesn't account for my intense relationship with bedding.

I didn't care much for bed or bedding as a child. I never had a security blanket or a plush toy for that matter. Blankets just happened. They moved in and out of my life based on wash cycles and opportunity.

I was a teenager before I was assigned my own personal blanket - a soft, thread bear, yellow flannel coverlet that I called the banana. As an adult I would discover that its permanent assignment to me had much to do with the fact that I was a funky smelling pubescent dude, whose sisters just plain got the willies from the musky aura that inhabited its fibers. This was probably caused by the night riding. Most mornings I would wake up and find the banana coiled like a rope and arched like a crescent moon between my legs. It was as if I spent the night riding it like a sea horse of dreams.

The banana and I were together for years. I was known to wear him like a toga as I foraged for food around the house late at night or early in the morning. He even moved with me as migrated from apartment to apartment through my late teens and into my twenties. He was well beyond useful warmth and on his way toward disintegration around the time I acquired a regular salary. When I made a move to replace him, I encountered my first battle with sleepiness.

I wadded the banana's frayed fringes and stashed him like the body of a murdered friend in the trunk of my Old's Cutlass before I walked into a K-Mart and bought the first adult looking linen I would own. When I say it was adult, I mean that in a 1980's post-disco, pre-punk, bachelor pad macho-manly adult kind of way. The comforter was dark blue satin with big orange and yellow swoops criss-crossing it. I think what drew me to it was the fact that it was part of a system, like a bedding uniform, complete with matching pillow cases, fitted sheets, and cover sheets. It was bad-ass cool and I paid for it with check number 101. Later I would learn it was just plain bad.

When it slithered out of its heavy-plastic, zippered storage bag I discovered that it was made of some kind of lethal polyester blend and padded with an itchy polyester wool. Even after weeks of washing, it never lost that sterile–most likely flammable–sizing odor. It was so air tight that it was difficult to believe that the plastic shopping bag that it came in wasn't more breathable. In addition, the material actually repelled water. I spilled a whole bowl of cheerios on it one morning and it formed a puddle that did not permeate to the sheets. I was able to transport it to my tub where I drained it and showered off the remnants of sugar and milk. As it turned out, the sour milk smell an improvement and instead of waking up choking from fumes, I would wake up gagging from spoiled food odors.

When the warmer evenings of summer came along I restored the banana to its rightful place and donated the sleep system to the Salvation Army. The banana had taken on the odors of my car trunk but otherwise restored my sleep record in a matter of nights. But when the cold autumn nights of gas-on-gas heat returned, I had to make other plans. It was around this time that my college girlfriend, Johanne, introduced me to my next bedding affair. She had spent some time in Switzerland and had discovered the wonders of the forty-pound feather duvet. We dated for many months and I crashed in her dorm room almost nightly. As with many immature relationships the romance was prolonged by my love for her bed. The unusual part was that more than half of that bedtime interest was devoted to that duvet. When we broke up I cried myself to sleep that first night and then went out the next day, signed up for a credit card, and used it to buy my own anemic, but wonderful, white duck duvet.

It's been twenty-five years now and I still have that duvet, thought it is quickly heading the way of the banana. Its cover is more gauze than twill-weave, which occasionally results in mid-night coughing fits caused by inhaling 25-year-old duck feathers. However, I can fade back to sleep quickly, because of its reassuring warmth, my wife's unconscious cooing, and the peace that comes with knowing that I may be poor--but I'm happy.

The 400 thread count sheets help too.

Food for thought

2007-12-23T18:19:00.000-08:00

If transcendence is the desired flavor of a last meal worthy of request, then state of mind must be the key ingredient. I'm suggesting that the choice has to be driven in part by whether the meal is intended to help you celebrate life in its closing moments or designed to fortify you as you face your death and whatever void or reward awaits you on the other side.

People who have a lot of time to think about and plan for their last meal are death row inmates. These are people whom we can presume know a little bit about cruel death and probably not too much about the sweet life. In addition, they have to have come to some conclusion about their final reward and therefore might desire at least one last gratifying moment before their last breath.

There is a website dedicated to tracking the last menus of the condemned. This website also offers a fine line of swag (including a nice thong) with the website logo on it. Rather unexpected. What I expected was a list of requests that would mostly consist of desserts or momma's mashed potatoes and gravy. Instead I found a list that wasn't any more requiting than what you might find in the daily receipts of a truck stop diner.

John Washington Hightower of Georgia, a man who murdered his wife and two step-children, asked for four fried pork chops, collard greens with boiled okra and "boiling meat", fried corn, fried fatback, fried green tomatoes, cornbread, lemonade, one pint of strawberry ice cream and three glazed donuts before taking his last walk on June 26, 2007. It wasn't a particularly healthy meal, but not enough to kill him either.

Patrick Bryan Knight (or not!) of Texas spent more than a third of his life planning his last meal of fried pork chops and chicken, garlic toast and ice cream as he waited for his lethal injection. Known as the "Dead man laughing" inmate, he accepted his fate with a chuckle, but not his conviction. In his final statement he suggested that the biggest joke of the whole experience was that he "was not Patrick Bryan Knight."

Jimmy Dale Bland of Oklahoma was terminally ill with cancer when the state switched his chemotherapy for a chemoexecution. He ordered hot and spicy chicken breast, two slices of sausage pizza with extra cheese, a slice of German chocolate cake, a pint of French vanilla ice cream and a Dr. Pepper for his farewell meal. The state paid to keep him alive so that he could pay for shooting a man in the back of the head. They also paid for the meal he probably would not have wanted if they had just let the lung and brain cancer run its course.

Most of us can get what we want whenever we want it. We have restaurants, supermarkets, mega-supermarkets and seemingly endless opportunities to satisfy the spiritual and mortal needs food can offer. Does that mean the last meal boils down to what you want when nothing else matters?

Noontime Nibble

2007-12-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

I'm running around town doing some errands when I realize it has only been hours since breakfast and yet somehow my stomach thinks it has been days. In a flash the idea of food is no longer an anatomical suggestion as much as it is a form of heartfelt longing. The sentiment takes over control of my car and without regard for the other missions I'm supposed to complete in the next hour I find all four wheels are pointed toward a meal.

From a distance I spot a Newport Creamery Restaurant, a breakfast-all-day-ice-cream- and-pie-for-dessert diner. But even as the distance closes I calculate that there will be an uncomfortable delay. Between me and the Creamery is a line of traffic locked is a war of hand gestures that has quickly dissolved from chivalrous offering to angry finger flicking. As the combatants escalate into start/stop thrusts and threats of vehicular homicide, my stomach diverts our van into a crowded parking lot, down the fire lane in front of a discount store, around a woman with shopping carriage who has stopped in the middle of the parking lot to check her receipt, and out the other side of the plaza into a parking space mere dance steps from the Creamery service counter and a menu.

As I warm upon the red leatherette counter stool I re-enter the question of the last meal. It occurs to me for a long moment that I love breakfast. I love it the way some folks love sleep and accept for cream of wheat and hot buttered grits my love is unconditional. And why not? Breakfast is like a reward for being alive. "Hey, you didn't die in your sleep. Have an English Muffin!" The decision is made. No question about it. Breakfast is quick, fresh, and perfect for me. However, even as I am extolling the virtues of the breakfast, I hear myself say "Yeah, but it's no burger."

In an instant I jilt the ladies of the hen house in favor of the burger and club sandwich page. Ten seconds after that I have built a multi-meat pile of farm yard friends and their by-products without even an inkling of guilt. How fickle and feckless I am. But...I'm am also thirsty and the waitress is coming. What will I drink?

The menu page flips to the centerfold where the shakes and frappes are displayed along side the cakes and pies. At the top left, pretty in pink, is the Creamery's premiere franchise attraction - The Awful Awful. You read it right. The drink is named Awful, Awful, and under it's plump bold red lettering is a thin line of type that should reassure you. It simply says, "It's a drink."

The first question that comes to mind is how the marketing world approaches the problem of "just another drink" with something so contrary. It's the Smuckers concept - "With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good." If the theory follows than why stop at Awful Awful. Why not Painful Anal Leakage, or Weepy Nasal Blister? Names so unappealing you will think you have died and gone to heaven when you taste it. But, as it turns out the drink's name probably wasn't a result of blatant, counter-intuitive design. The drink is awful big and awful good and in an effort to be awful good I ordered the vanilla reduced fat junior in the hope that I wouldn't become awful big.

My bacon, mushroom, cheese-burger with spicy fries arrived along with my vanilla Awful Awful. It was arranged and presented in menu picture perfect form and I had to resist moaning in ecstasy as inhaled the whole meal in seven minutes. It was so good. But, is good, good enough? Is satisfaction all that is required to rate a ranking on the last meal list?

There was nothing nostalgic about the meal. I wasn't transported to a summer evening, or the memory of a first kiss. If anything I may have to fight my stomach for control of the wheel the next time we pass the restaurant, but I think I'll manage. What makes a last meal important? Is it symbolism?

Last Supper

2007-12-17T13:52:00.000-08:00

Well...it's over. Despite the knocks and disappointments of the last six months I think it was it worth it. The thesis has been approved, which puts graduation just down the road a bit. And beyond that, I can see the finger lights of my future glowing on the dark horizon. It all concludes with a fine $10 a person, BYOB graduation buffet.

Somebody cue the swelling symphony of inspirational music - please.

Meanwhile, an odd abundance of culinary conclusions have been transpiring adjacent to this ending. They've been appearing with the frequency of lime-green cars just after you hear yourself say "You never see lime-green cars anymore." For instance, this blog is called "eat this book last." The idea being that climate change will effect what we think of as friend and food. I know it's not much, but it's a start. Then, just the other day I read about a new book on the market called "Last Supper." In this popular book the author interviewed a selection of famous chefs and foodies and had them describe the courses of their ideal last meal. Not-so-unexpectedly items ranged from tofu to foie gras. Yet it was the third and most resounding "ching" on the champagne flute that got my attention. This came in the form of a radio show about Francois Mitterrand's last meal. The famed former French president starved himself for a multi-course send off which included a rare and illegal delicacy in the form of a little thumb sized bird - the Ortolan.

I know...it's a chop suey of last bites, but you get my point, right? Well, it got me thinking. What would I want for my last meal? In the wide world of possibilities where would I begin my ending. Would I tuck into ethnic? A Mex-Tex BBQ? Or would I go down home with comfort food? What would you eat?

Face on - Face off.

2007-09-05T10:28:00.001-07:00

My small group workshop required me to find a better place in mind if I was going to be open to the advice and directions of my torturer and my two cohorts. I went out to my van and curled up into a ball in the back. It occurred to me to suck my thumb, but then I remembered that I didn't like the taste very much. As I lay there, listening to my happy cohorts passing by while discussed lively topics of literature and life, I considered my options.

"Can I select a new mentor?"

Probably not. Two of my previous mentors have taken leaves. One, took leave of his senses and the other, so that she could work on a personal publication - a child I think - or so I was told.

"Can I take a semester off?"

Definitely not. Well not definitely, but most probably. I would need to manage my student loans, find a good part time job, and try to talk my wife in to staying put at her job. Not to mention that I would loose some of the great momentum I have been building on since the start of this journey. So no. Stepping out for a powder didn't seem like a good option.

"Could I convince Steven to configure a creative alternative method?"

Psss-sha. Steven already thinks I'm a problem child. Ever since the Justin debacle he hasn't been able to find any time to chat with me or respond to my emails. I know that I can't blame it all on that mentor mess, but I can't help but think that it reduced his enthusiasm for the "mature male in his program." I picture Steven's red, round face in my mind as I rolled over on the sweaty van bunk. He is holding his head in his hands, panic-struck, as he asks, "Why are you annoying my Pulitzer Prize Winning Author?" His face disappeared after his hands fail to hold back the explosion that tears his head apart.

I say to the van ceiling, "I might just have to suck it up."

I hated the thought of this. It goes against my hard won principles. I can tolerate difficulties with the best of them if I'm doing it for the greater good or someone I care about, but it never goes well if I do it to my self, for my self. It just isn't how I like to burn life hours anymore. After all, I've paid my dues and I've paid my tuition. There's no reason why I should need to tolerate abuse. But what "other" choice do I have.

My cell phone alarm reminds me that it is time for my small workshop. I have not slept. Instead I have spent the hour coming to grips with (eliminating) my options. Even when I try to tell myself that hearing my mentor out is the best option, my heart nags me with the truth. It is the only option. So, I put on a brave face and head for the classroom.

It's a hot, humid day. It has been a hot, humid week. So it is no surprise to anyone that the room we have been assigned is a closed up, un-air conditioned, kiln. This does not effect my smile. Our plan B is to move to another less confining, steam bath, on the second floor of another building. This process eats up some time -not much- but some. This does not effect my smile. As we enter the room we shuffle around a bit as the mentor decides whether or not this room will do. More time. More smiling. The room passes, but just barely. It requires modification. Chairs must be moved, chalk boards cleaned, chalk located. There is grunting, sweating, and second thoughts, but after 20 minutes the smile prevails.The mentor begins to follow up where things left off at the end of my large group discussion.

"Your stories don't have structure." she says, "It is confusing and annoying for the reader." I nod and smile back at her when she tilts her head in my direction to make sure she hasn't lost me yet. She strikes three white lines on the blackboard in time to the syllables, "You've got to have structure." I nod in agreement.

I don't know why she is saying what she is saying, but I can't find any fault with the notion that my work requires structure. I have been telling my clients the same thing about their video scripts for years. I am actually known for my ability to "fix it in post" - finding little opportunities in a narrative or instructional video that simplifies and clarifies the finished product. I'm still smiling because I know that I don't know it all, and that this is an opportunity. My mentor is about to reveal something that my experience has failed to teach me. I am ready for that.

What I get instead, is something different. She has me explain what I wanted to say in my story. She starts with, "Where does this story take place?" and then fills in the lines of structure by repeatedly asking me, "Then what happens?" After fifteen minutes there are ten short sentences on the board. She taps the board again counting down the sequence. "You see? You need structure?" I look at the list and then I look at my pages and I recognize the pattern of my story. It is the same sequence. Then she asks my cohorts - one keystone student, and one capstone student - if they see it too. They nod, and they smile.

We all agree. We see a structural sequence on the board, and on the page. But who are we to disagree with the mentor. We are being told that there is no structure on the page even though the structure on the board came from the page. I am not smiling very much anymore. I am confused. I am wondering if the word "structure" is meaning something different today. I am a student, and I have a bold question?

"Excuse me. I'm sorry if I'm being thick." I look to my cohorts to see if they think I'm being thick. They aren't smiling much anymore. They are looking at my pages and at the board while their thin, well plucked eye brows dual on their foreheads. I continue, "I'm not sure I am getting what it is that is missing, er...structurally."

The mentor who is holding the chalk like a cigarette now, takes a long pull from her water bottle. She gestures at the board nodding "yes" as she swallows. Then she gestures at my pages and nods "no." I am nodding "no" now too, but not for the same reason. Before I can ask another questions she caps her water and calls the capstone student up to the board.

"You." she points at J. "You know what I mean. Show him. Do the next page of paragraphs." The mentor indicates which section of blackboard to use as the capstone student reluctantly makes her way to the board. With chalk in hand she turns to me and hesitantly asks, "What happens next?"

I feel J's pain, but she is in no position to instruct. Yet, she is as stuck as I am. I offer a few more "happenings" from my pages so that the awkwardness is relieved and we can all get past this misery. As the hour closes, J bolts for the door and the keystone student looks my way and shrugs. I collect my things and return to my van where I curl up again. My thumb tastes more bitter than I remember.

What do you think?

2007-08-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

The night was long, dark, and intolerably hot and humid. I sampled the variety of soggy imprints of sweat that crisscrossed my sheets and pillows as my mind turned the subject of my academic torment over and over again. When morning light finally peaked over the Somerville wall into Shady Hill I was no less resolved then I had been the evening before. It was 5am. There was no one to talk to. No where to go. Hours before I needed to be anywhere. I buried my head under my pillow in a half hearted attempt to smother myself. It must have worked. Moments later I emerged from underneath the cotton and poly death mask gasping. The clock now read 9:15am and I was late for my first class. The instructor was late too, but he hit the ground running.

“So, Let’s start off with introductions. We’ll go around the room, let’s see...counter clockwise. Tell us your name, and to make it interesting, tell us the name of your favorite book.”

The class responded with enthusiastic hmmms and ooohs. One young lady on the far side of the circle, giggled with excitement as she clapped her hands together in a mini-ovation. I was ten seats away from the first responder, and the rotation was heading in my direction. As the spotlight of attention found each budding author, he or she chimed out his or her name and unique literary love with ease and ardor, as the rest of the circle weighed in with their professional admiration. I heard a pipe organ begin to play in my head as I added my own thoughts to each response.

"Year of Magical Thinking" Oh a crowd pleaser.
"Anna Karenina" Great, but is it the greatest novel?
"Ulysses" Remake by a guy who was blind in only one eye. Am I the only one that finds that ironic?
"Great Gatsby" Glamour hound.
"Krakatoa" Intriguing.

The ride was picking up speed. Maybe this a contest? Oh, can I play? Can I have a brass ring? I can do it. I have a favorite book. I'm sure I do. I might even have several, and it will definitely define me as a writer. The desks of the semi-circle were moving up and down now.

"Passage to India" Hmmm. Curry for lunch would be nice.
"Slaughterhouse Five" I like Vonnegut. Predictably unpredictable. He gets a brass ring.

What about me? Do I get a brass ring? I...wait. What did I read last year that I was telling everyone about? It was...it began with an M, I think. As I search the alphabet, I feel the faces of the semi circle of students shift closer and closer toward my desk.

"Sons and Lovers" Lester? No Lawrence. Haven’t read it.
"Catch-22" I feel like the man in white right now.

Focus! I can see the cover. No, wait. That doesn't count as literature. I could say Walden, but I’m hating Thoreau right now. Damn! One more second.

"Native Son" I wouldn’t have guessed that from ol’ white-bread. Crap. My turn.

"I'm DJ, and I don't have a favorite book right now." SO YOU CAN’T FUCKING JUDGE ME! HA-HAH!!

The student next to me was so excited to tell the world about her favorite book that she started right in on my heels, only to be interrupted by the professor. The music stopped.

"BJ? Is it?”

I didn’t bother to correct him. I was praying that the merry-go-round hadn’t just stopped and thrown me into a pile of shit. Unfortunately, when I looked toward the front of the room the professor was making laser-like eye contact with me, confirming my suspicion that my ride might be over. He pressed on.

“What book would you like to have written?"

A good question and a fair one to ask a supposed writer. My head just wobbled, my nose drawing figure eights in the air. Nothing came forth, except a small, weak voice saying, “Start the music again, gitty up wooden pony.” Fortunately, It was too soft for anyone to hear because I’m pretty sure that isn’t the title of any book.

"What's your favorite song?" he solicited. I shrugged. "Favorite movie?" he probed. Now I was staring zombie-like into the void over his head."Favorite...TV show? Now he was plumbing. I guess he wanted to see how shallow my pedestrian pipes might be. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. I raised my palms, lay my head to one side, and held my shrug until he reluctantly restarted the calliope and reengaged the gear. He cast one more pitting glance in my direction as his world turned on and passed me.

I know the answer to these questions. I have opinions. I don’t even care what people think or is they judge me.

Favorite book: World According to Garp.
Favorite song: Black Cow by Steely Dan.
Favorite movie: Little Big Man.
Favorite TV show: Lost.

But for the life of me - maybe it was fatigue, or a complete failure of confidence - I was utterly dumbstruck. I had nothing. I just sat there and watched my reflection in the round house mirror as the wondrous wheel of clever, well-read responders leapt over imaginary hedgerows while my empty pony limped along.

It's all I remember about the two-hour lecture.

At lunch I searched my friend's minds about my situation, but most of them seemed uncomfortable with the subject. There was a vibe that I recognized my my single life. Essence of desperation, like too much cologne, it was wafting out of me in ugly black clouds that caused friends and strangers to flee when I asked, "What do you think?" It was terribly lonely. Yet, I couldn't really blame anyone for wanting to avoid negative energy this far into, what is even under the best of circumstances, a draining experience.

I was on my own. So I asked myself...again. All I could do was shrug.

The Harvard Treatment

2007-08-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

I made my way home from the cocktail party, around Harvard's construction, and along the path of "philosophical tolerance," so named because it runs between Harvard's Natural History Museum (evolution) and the Divinity School (Creation). It's a short bike ride but I somehow managed to forget that I had a bike and instead walked it along the route back to my boarding house in Shady Hill Square. I arrived at the enclave of 100 year old stucco duplexes to find the landlady, N, sitting on the top step, sipping from a tumbler of something clear and strong.

"Tough day? You look drained." She slurred a bit, which wasn't unusual.

"It was..." I thought to stop there, not sure what N - a woman capable of cold, dispasionate oppion - might be able to contribute to my moral, but instead I continued. I discribed the workshop, my confusion, my concerns, the whole saga for her. She listened quietly and when I was done, nodded knowingly.

"You said your mentor is a Harvard Grad?" I shrugged. She continued. "My dad was a professor there. He was famous, no infamous, for being a bastard. He was of the opinion that as a Harvard student you were already as smart as you were going to be. He felt is was his job to sort out the weak ones, the ones who didn't deserve the Harvard Diploma. The way he saw it the true measure of a Harvard grad was someone who could be brilliant while someone else was kicking them in the pants." N took another deep swing from her already empty glass and added, "He was a real bastard."

I headed up to bed wondering if my mentor was giving me the benefit of the Harvard treatment.

Have a Drink!

2007-08-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

The story continues...

Someone - maybe the gods - decided it might be clever to have a social - a wine lubricated, casual encounter between mentors and proteges, complete with crackers, cheeses, raw veggies, and chivvy dips. It was clever, and long over due.

I wandered around saying hello to the familiar faces and introducing myself to the occasional unfamiliar faces. I was chatting away with a first semester fiction student when my mentor happened by on her way to the bar. I spotted her vivid print summer dress out of the corner of my eye and noticed that she seemed casual and relaxed as she scanned the room, smiling and waving at her peers. Without prior experience I could have concluded only that she was a person who was fun loving, friendly, and approachable. Hoping for that type of close encounter, I flagged her down and introduced her to my new friend. "This is my new mentor."

"Torturer," she corrects, as she offers her hand to the keystone fiction writer.

My broad, hopeful smile turns into a small, weak smile, "I prefer teacher."

She smiles back, "I prefer torturer."

This is met with awkward giggles from the new student as the mentor pulls away and continues to the bar.

"Hmmmm, chemistry," sniggered the fiction student.

"You feel it too?" was the response from my gapping mouth, "She's a pip." I pretended to pretend that I was shaking from a cold draft and added, "I'm really looking forward to working with her."

My new friend detects my humiliation and excuses herself as I look down into my plastic wine cup, wondering if I will sleep tonight. It is empty, but I'm forced to wait for the "pip" to clear the bar before I can get a refill. I stand there in a crowded room full of laughter and release, looking at my shoes, coming to grips with the idea that this is a game for her, and she is winning. I feel tortured, disciplined, and shamed. Maybe this is what she needs me to feel, but I can't imagine why.

Later that evening, I siddle up to one of the cohorts, a person that will participate in my edification during the small group workshop. I am hopping to recruit her as a sympathetic participant in my humblement. Her name is G and she writes like a dream. She has worked with my mentor before and so there is a reason to believe that my mentor had something to do with G's success as writer and so may be worth the abuse. "SO...did you hear about the plan for small group?" I asked.

G's eyebrows fly above her dark eyeglass rims making her big observant eyes seem Power-Puff Girl huge. "Plan?!"

"Oh, Yes. Our mentor is planning to have you help me come to grips with my ignorance. She is planing to use my workshop period as an instructive seminar. You and L are the teachers." I could tell by G's reaction that this was news, but what she says next is even more sensational. She has read my mind.

"I know she's got terrible bedside manner, but who would you rather have operating on you? A nice doctor or a great doctor?" Before I can answer she says, "DJ was just telling me that you have plans for us during his workshop. That you want us to explain structure and stuff for him?" As I turn to my right, we are joined by the mentor. I am speechless and I feel my core deflating.

"Oh, jeez...Have a drink!" she squawks at me. Her face is rosy red, from the combination of heat, alcohol, and maybe just a little annoyance. "You are gonna be fine. You just need to trust me!"

I take a deep breath and hold it for half a second. I have enough air in me for a really good scream, but instead of screaming I release a measured even response. "I have no reason not to trust you. I just want to understand..." I am lost for words. Where do I begin? I am confused on so many levels. I hold the rest of the air on reserve.

G must have sensed the potential and waved excitetly to someone - probably anyone - across the room, so that she could make a graceful her escape.

"What are you afraid of, a little work?" the mentor asks, tilting her head at me in a manner that expresses a silent, "Duh?"

The air in my lungs is hot and wants to burst through my chest, and she has just gravely underestimated me, but I won't give her the satisfaction. I try to release the explosion in short, benign burst. "I am not afraid of writing. I am not afraid of re-writing, and I'm certainly not afraid of learning. But..." She cuts me off.

"You need to trust me and right now what you need MOST is a drink." With that she smacks me on the shoulder and walks off to find a more interesting partier.

I walk to the bar, put down my glass, collect my knapsack and head for my bed.

Why it is great to know great people.

2007-07-15T08:29:00.001-07:00

"I've been reading your blog. Don't be too hard on yourself, man. You're a really good teacher and an awful swell guy. Remember, opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one. YOU know when something rocks and when something needs work. But just because something needs work doesn't mean you suck, it only means you haven't met your full potential. You need a DJ-version of a writing coach. I know you won't give up, but I'll say it anyway: don't give up, be patient. Whatever you want to happen or create will come to fruition. It might not be tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. But if there's one thing I've learned in my short life, is that persistence pays off. Let's see some of the jerkoffs in your workshop produce a video, huh? Okay, I'm out."

"Humanity has never left the stone age. Every problem we have environmentally
is related to our relationship with stones." This is brilliant. This is your "thesis sentence, topic sentence," whatever crap label they use now. I read all the blog entries and agree with Pele, you write brilliantly. Do whatever you have to do to get the damn MFA, kiss the toes of the mentor,whatever, but keep writing your own stuff."

Pause for a Cause

2007-07-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

(I return to this tale after a short hiatus. I felt like I wanted to get a little distance between myself and the experiences of my residency and the best way to do that was to let a little time pass. I did this because I wanted to make sure what I wrote in this blog was as honest a portrait of the experience it could be and not just an emotional response to the experience. I'm happy to report that the process is producing the results I desire. I am releasing it from my heart, keeping only the lessons it has for me, turning a bad experience into a good experience. I hope those of you who read this gain something from it as well.)

Teaching Style - Learning Styles

2007-07-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

The 100-plus university students I have the pleasure of teaching, plus the 20-or-so employees I have coached, and the 30-something interns I have tutored, not to mention the nearly one thousand training videos I have produced have taught me a little bit about learning styles. Everyone needs a particular channel of communication to open between the source of knowledge and the brain before they can begin to learn. In my case it is verbal metaphor. It is clear that my mentor has other needs. For example:

When she returns with the second set of copies I am still fuming from the kindergarten comment and while I entertain fantasies of wetting my pants or throwing my crayons at her, I continue to read until she interrupts me. "You can finish that later," she says yawning. When I look up I see the beads of sweat are more pronounced than before. She must be trekking a long way for those copies in this heat. I try hard not to feel sympathy for her, but I fail and consider fanning her with the piles of copies she has made for me. The only thing that stops me is the thought that she might find it childish. I opt to keep things serious and professional until I figure her out.

"What do you have planned for your seminar?" she asks. Her question is accompanied by a flash of heat lighting in my brain. I wasn't prepared for this. I've been focusing on the structure questions. I roll my eyes and bite my lip as I search my memory for the fifteen or so options I have compiled. I respond with the two most recent thoughts I have had on the subject.

"Well, one idea is the concept of writing essays along the lines of a three act play, and the other is the about e-tools for writers. You know...web stuff that you can use for research and such." I don't mention that I have zero confidence in either of them at the moment. What I was trying to communicate was that I am actively reviewing my options. But before I can tell her about the other ideas I've been researching she starts writing furiously on her pad.

When she is done writing she rips the page from her notebook and conveys it halfway across the space between us. She says. "This is your assignment."

Assignment?

I take the page. It is a short outline with blanks where my research information will be filled in. The topic she has chosen for me is the Three Act Essay. My mouth drops open and a squeak escapes as I try to find the right way of saying, "What the Fuck?" I want to develop a working relationship with this person so I don't want to challenge everything that she pushes towards me. I decide to except the assignment. "Thanks, I'll get right on it."

I know she is impatient and my conference allotment is running out but I still am no closer to understanding the bit about structure, so I bring it up again.

She flicks her hand at the air, "We'll go over it in your small group workshop. I'll have your cohorts team up to help explain it to you." More discouraging news delivered in a discouraging manner. The two cohorts that will be present in that workshop aren't famously outspoken. One is a fourth semester who has said less then twenty words to me during the 40 opportunities that she has had. The other is a kind and insightful first semester student who has already admitted that she was confused by the structure question as well. "Where can this possibly go," I wonder.

I try a little gentle persuasion. "Um, That's fine," I try to say this convincingly, "but it would really help me to get a sense of what you see as the problem."

She flicks her hand again. "We'll cover it in small group. You'll just have to trust me."

I have never had any reason not to trust her, and I say so. I'm just confused about the concept of structure.

"Trust me." she says again and the meeting comes to an end.

Instructor - Destructor

2007-07-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

I recover my optimism despite a very unsatisfying workshop where my craft took a back seat to my creative direction. (Why my theme would be a topic of critical discussion is beyond me. It would never occur to me to tell the young depressive woman to stop writing about her addition to suffering, or the transgendered wo/man to steer clear of metaphors about having a penis - but hey, who am I?) I decided to play along, to submit a revised outline, to open myself to new ideas. I wasn't ready to abandon my plan, but I was ready to understand how another one might be better. I arrived at my advisory session ready to go, ready to begin again - fresh.

I find my mentor smiling and seemingly buoyant as she holds court in her ad hoc conference area, a couple of opposing lounge chairs parked in the shade of the 60-inch flat-screen TV on the second level of the student center. Her print top, a pattern of colorful pantry items - canned tomatoes, corn, and beans - clashes wildly with the earthy tones of the sitting area. Her relaxed smile warped into a grimace as she began to speak.

"I got your..." she seems lost for words so I offer "outline," which she accepts with a nod. "So what do you think this thing...your thesis project, will look like?"

Jeez-Louise, I think to myself as I picture the latest outline in my head, a formatted table, each cell expressing the subtle nuance of my project. I can see it all, plain as day, yet she cannot - or chooses not to as the basis of some kind of academic exercise. I search the carpet and the Matisse inspired upholstery of my chair for an answer that will satisfy her. "One hundred and thirty pages about rocks and the environment," is all I can manage to say as my head itself turns into a rock.

She tilts her head, "It doesn't chronicle your trip to New Zealand?"

This is not news to me. "No. Just Ohio."

She nods at this in a rather sad way for a moment, and then recovers her buoyancy. "I brought some books which I think exemplify what you might be trying to achieve." One was called, Video Time in Kathmandu, and the other was called, Confederates in the Attic. They both look like gonzo travel guides. I write down their titles and authors while the images of their covers find long term residence in my memory. The mentor begins to fan through the front of the Confederates book scanning for a superlative paragraph. She dedicates one eye to the search while her other eye reads me over the corner of the book. I am thinking of Homer's cyclops when she finally asks the question I have been waiting for.

"What kind of reader are you? Fast? Slow?"

I know much of the world gets their information this way but I also know that aurally challenged (or put upon) bosses/teachers/professors attempt to dump fat book lists on students they feel are slow or not worth their trouble. Based on the way she walked away from the workshop yesterday, I'm inclined to believe the latter. My lips thin reflexively as they have every time that question has been put to me since the second grade. They stretch against my teeth, like they are holding back a mouth full of venom. Sometime, when my lips are dry they crack and I can taste the foil flavor of blood on my tongue. I count to three, breathe, and answer. My tone is flat and even.

"Slow. Very slow." I don't add slower than you could ever imagine, but I do tell her about my dyslexia at which point a puff of warm, humid air seems to flood the space around our chairs. I suspect this is a change in my internal temperature.

"Huh, well..." She looks down at the thick, dense book in her hand and shuffles her mental notes for a moment. To buy time she absently speaks the line of though she has already prepared for me. "These first chapters really capture what I'm trying to tell you about structure and the narrative." She looks up at me and I notice beads of sweat on the bridge of her nose. "You know what I mean?"

I haven't read the chapters and she hasn't expanded on any concepts that I am aware of. I nod "no" and I see her brain start to reshuffle again, but like that dead deck of a solitaire game it only repeats the cards she can't use. So, after one attempt at dialog, my frustrated mentor thrusts a book at me. I think she thinks I'm being thick.

"Read this first chapter," she says tersely. "There's no point in continuing...this..." her voice trails off. "Maybe I can make copies of this other chapter for you while you read that." With Kathmandu in hand she scurries off leaving me to sit, confused. I draw a deep cleansing breath and count to three before I plunge into the chapter intended to give this spare dialogue context.

It is a well written introduction to a story. I see narrative. I see structure. I see that the author has reached back into the his childhood as a starting point for the story's context - a conceit I have often avoided in my own writing, but one that I aspire to include. Yet, barring the deep history, I don't see how my "structure" has failed.

The mentor returns with a stack of paper.

I smile a greeting hanging on to my optimism by my teeth. "I've read seven pages so far," only about half of the section. I am getting tired and the paragraphs and spaces are already swirling like a soup of Scrabble tiles. "Do you want me to keep reading?" I ask.

"Yes...well, do you see what I am talking about? The narrator? The way he's set things up?"

I look at text again and admit, "No, I don't think I do. Not distinctly anyway."

She sighs and puts out her hand for the book I am reading. "You see how he creates these expositions - like in this paragraph," She points to a paragraph saturated with background information, "See how he sets up his theme?"

"Yes?" I'm confused so I shrug.

She sighs with exasperation. "Here, I'll go make copies of this section while you read these copies." We are making the exchange when she adds with a forced giggle, "I feel like a kindergarten teacher."

My eyebrows knit, "Well, I feel like a kindergarten student." This was a little lie. I actually feel like that seven year old who is forced to miss recess because Sister Lucy knows I'm smarter than I pretend to be. I see myself, alone in the classroom, head propped up on my elbows, as I look down at my Dick and Jane book, hating the round headed characters and their mumbled-jumbled banter. I didn't think the insult of that memory could be topped. I was wrong.

"Well as long as we agree," says my mentor, before she disappears down the stairs leaving me to record nothing inspiring from the text as my brain tries to understand, and at the same time, forget her frustration with the "slow boy."

Tuesday with Mumbles

2007-07-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

I am grumpy, sleep deprived, and a little intellectually bankrupt. Some of my closest cohorts sense how discouraged I am, but no one is in much of a mood to play Dr. Phil with me. No one, except M, who has shared, first hand, some of the pitfalls of having an insensitive mentor. She is eager to buoy my confidence.

"I read your piece. What's she talkin' about?" Her tone has the snarl of a mother wolf.

"Wish I knew," I mumble back. "I'm just in a holding pattern until I get a chance to ask her."

"Well I thought it was a good piece," she says sincerely, a gesture that goes a long way with me. I smile a thanks at her, yet at the same time I hate the idea that I am in need of such encouragement, sincere or otherwise. I mumble around the rest of the day making brief contact with others with encouraging words, ducking those who might suck the dim light of hope out of me. So much drama. Thank goodness it is such a slow day.

Sleepless, Hot, and Humid

2007-07-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

The heatwave continues to stall across the Cambridge/Somerville line making the air around Shady Hill Square still and stilted.

I can't sleep.

The only thing I can think to do is review my theme plan which I had developed for my one-on-one conference with my mentor. It is titled The World According to DJ, a lame reference to Garp created by fellow dyslexic John Irving. The plan is laid out in a word document as a one column table. I add a second column so that I can compare and contrast my notions of things after the mentor's and my cohorts comments. Not much changes as I type, except for the use of the word "stone age," the word which seemed to draw the most fire. I identify column one with a row that reads, "Before First Workshop" and the second column with "After First Workshop." I send it off by email satisfied that this might clear up some of the confusion. I will have to wait until Wednesday to discover that it does not.

The stake

2007-07-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

The heat of the day is oppressive, and I'm sprawled across my bed sweating. The landlady has found a fan for me and it pans my body with warm air in a hurry. The air is so warm that I wouldn't even know it was on if it weren't for the trembling of the hair on my legs and the growl it makes when it reverses direction. The afternoon plays back in my head, over and over again and like the fan it reverses over and over again.

Growl...growl...growl. Why am I so upset?

For almost ten years I've been watching the problem grow. For over five years I've dedicated myself to being part of the solution. For almost two years I've been formulating a book on the subject only to see my hopes crash around six months ago. My response to that despair was horrid, and I was ready to give up, when four months back I came up with a theme that might just reach people, only to learn two hours ago that my theme was up for discussion.

"Does my theme qualify as craft?" I ask the ceiling.

Prism of Perspective

2007-07-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

After the workshop I attempted to follow up with some of my cohorts hanging around the table. I quickly learn that this is too much to ask. I have had my hour, my case has been heard, and my jury has other fates to decide. I guess I can't blame them, but this does little to relieve my confusion. I feel deserted.

My friend P, a participant in the workshop and someone who has read my work several times, has been sitting nearby. I overhear that she is considering a dash back to her room before the next activity. It is on my way home, and I beg her company in the hopes that she might help shrink my head and give me an insight into the workshop experience. I ask this much of her because I know she will try to give me an honest opinion. I ask this much of her because she could ask this of me. I ask this much, because we are friends. I hope that I have not asked for too much.

As we walk along I realize that my brain has turned to mush. It is an uncomfortable feeling, a raw and vulnerable state. It is too soon for honesty, and too late for wisdom. I resist the urge to be defensive as the discussion circles around in a dizzying dervish of chicken versus egg politics. P is uncomfortable too, but she rallies on.

She smiles at me like a saint. "You got to think of it like a prism. Each facet is a distinct view of the same thing. You need to take the different views into consideration and learn from them."

I know what she means, and she's right of course, but I feel like the main point is being missed. "What's with the structure?" I ask. No one was really talking about structure.

"People didn't get what you were talking about," she said with a shrug.

"Did you miss what I was talking about?" My diplomacy was failing. "I repeated it three times during the story? It's a small world. That all I wanted to say. You got it right?"

"Yah, I got it." Her eyes were fixed on a crack in the sidewalk in front of the bed & breakfast where she is staying. If the hole were bigger, she might be wishing herself into it at this point. With all that I have at stake, even I find the discussion tedious. We say good bye.

I wander back to my apartment, feeling lost, getting angry. I knew she was right about that, but it still wasn't satisfying.

Scissor, Paper, Stone Age

2007-07-01T11:49:00.001-07:00

I submitted a 1500-word manuscript for workshop: a work-in-progress along the lines of a prologue/introduction/prelude. It was intended to setup the project I had in mind for my thesis. It was intentionally vague and I very much expected the work to generate some interpretive discussion. It was after all a taste test (more salt? less sugar?) to see if a reader would desire another bite.

Maybe my first mistake was thinking of the workshop as a focus group. It's hard not to. After all they are all consumers. The group is mostly female, except for one person who is transgendering presently and finds him/herself a bit in between, and each member represents a wide range of age, economic, and domestic status - qualities one looks for in a focus group. They also brought to the table a note worthy level of writing and reading experience. Looking back I can honestly say that I was there for their writing experience more than their reading experience.

The seven of us convened outside, in the campus garden, around a steel mesh patio table, under the cooling shade of a crab apple tree. My new mentor, a person with whom I have never worked with before, set things in motion with a round-robin of what I call the break-up speech. Break up speeches are usually characterized by how they offer a positive comment followed by a negative comment, much the same way a soon to be ex-lover might say, "You know I think you are the greatest, but your breath stinks and I can't bear the sight of you anymore."

I took notes as each of my cohorts took a moment to articulate their observations. I heard the usual things about tone, voice, complex language, and by my tally the first round was going pretty well. They got my jokes, were moved by my sentiments, and were able to decode my expository examples. The main thing they wanted was more of me and more of my interview subject. I was pleased.

When the discussion circled back to the mentor and moderator she summarized. She paused and then spoke in a very authoritative tone. "I think what we all agree on is that your structure doesn't work well, at all." I looked around the table and saw that everyone was looking down at the manuscript. Some seemed to be holding their breath.

I admit, it has been many years since I was in grammar school and I know that this MFA program doesn't seem overly concerned about teaching specific craft terminology. That said, in all my years in the video business, I thought I knew a few things about structure. I was pretty sure it had a beginning, middle, and an end. I had even deployed some bookending to frame up the main metaphor and the key theme had been echoed over and over again.

But my mentor had just implied that everyone observed a problem with structure. Had I heard what I wanted to hear? I looked down at my notes and back at her expression. She didn't blink. I looked around at my cohorts and most of them seemed confused, scanning the manuscript for structural flaws, while avoiding eye contact. I'm no expert on writing so I began to search too.

The mentor then opened the discussion to the group. "Who can explain to DJ what they mean by structure?"

What pressure I thought. Who wants to be the one without an answer to such a pointed question. I wanted to jump up and shout, "The prosecution is leading the witness, your honor!" but I also wanted to be enlightened. This structural thing sounded serious.

What happened next reminded me of the old proverb in which the three blind men discover the elephant. The first blind man bumps into the elephant's leg and thinks therefore that the animal is actually a tree. The second blind man reaches out and finds the trunk and assures everyone that the animal is actually a snake. The third one discovers the elephant's tail and declares that the animal is simply a rope. Just like that, my manuscript became six different kinds of problems. There was no consensus.

I threw myself at the mercy of the court. I needed a context to work with and I didn't want to waste any one's time. I pleaded to the mentor, "My education and experiences haven't given me a very literary vocabulary. I'm afraid that I'm not understanding this discussion. I don't know what you mean by structure."

The mentor winced at me. "You know what structure is. I've heard you advise your colleagues."

I thought I knew what structure was too, until now, and if I advised anyone on structure issues I did so intuitively. I responded to her point, "I think I have ideas about structure but I'm fairly certain that I don't know any specific structural terminology as such."

"Well then, what did you intend this...story to do?" The eyes around the table shifted from their pages, to the mentor and then back to me.

I offered an explanation. "I envisioned this as a prologue/intro/prelude. It's meant to set a tone for a book." Everyone looked down at their copy again as a siren echoed beyond the garden along Mass. Ave.

"A book, really? About what?" challenged the mentor. "Why are you New Zealand? Why are you a interested in the environment? What is your wife's involvement? What is the significance of the asteroid? Why should we care?"

I know all of these questions are important and I'm sure I'll address them in the work somewhere. It just never occurred to me to compress them into the opening chapter. In my mind I was building a framework around rocks and their connection to environmental catastrophe. The reoccurring theme was "small world." The underlying goal of the narrative was intended to excite human curiosity. Maybe I made it too much of a mystery? Too forensic? I asked the class.

"Would it help to know more of the background and where I was going?" not really thinking about the consequences of making the elephant bigger.

A unanimous yes opened the spigot of my recent life and I began to talk. I talked about sustainability, New Zealand, Triple Bottom Line, interviews with mayors and members of Parliament, and how globalization upset my mission. I went on to talk about my career path, environmental activism, promotion of renewable energy, and my despair over the misdirection caused by Al Gore's film. I was getting damn close to rhetoric when I decided to point to my writing again.

"People don't get it. They are worried about drowning Polar Bears, when they need to be worrying about their own future. That's when I decided that humanity wouldn't make it unless they undertook a broad cultural change, and based on the theories in Jared Diamond's book Collapse, we would all end up eating each other."

Oops, I missed.

My comments about eating each other caused uncomfortable blinks from my cohorts: looks that express sympathy for my mental condition rather than acceptance of my observations. In an attempt to reverse their diagnosis I blab on about my scheme to benefit from Armageddon by writing a shock humor book about anthropophagy. "A tongue and cheek guide to cannibalism called, Eat This Book Last." This got a laugh and broke the tension for a moment until I explained further how the project failed because it was a one-joke theme which would ultimately degrade into a miserably gory diatribe. One woman at the table started to move sharp objects out of my reach while the mentor and the first semester student to my left shuddered a bit. I went on to explain how I was contemplating my alternatives when I had the mixed fortune of sharing a commuter flight from Ohio to Boston with a super-consumer.

"This guy was decked out in heavy gold necklaces, gem stone pinkie rings, cuff links, and a diamond tie clip. He had a cell phone, laptop, ipod, and he was poking away on a bluetooth device." His behavior with the fight attendant and his general attitude toward people made me think - Neanderthal. "I found myself sitting next to a real stone age man." Then it occurred to me that all of his bling and toys were made out of some kind of refined stone - copper, tin, steel, titanium, silicon, acrylic, vinyl. Then I looked around the cabin and saw that every inch of the plane consisted of the same materials. "That's when it hit me. Humanity has never left the stone age. Every problem we have environmentally is related to our relationship with stones."

I looked around at my cohorts and several were nodding understanding until the trans-man (named C) piped in, "The Stone Age thing doesn't work."

How is that topic structure, I wondered? It didn't even feature in the story we were critiquing. It was mentioned in a sentence-long blurb on the cover page and once again in my truncated background monologue. But I turned to find the mentor nodding in agreement so I figured I should find out more.

C expanded on his notion for me. "It's been done - the feminist movement - you don't own it or School of Rock for that matter (my working title). It's not going to have the effect that you are hoping for." He talked for a while, offering other ideas and suggestions - all of them interesting, none of them practical.

I had considered these things, but had applied a longer view to them. Building on someone else's franchise is a way to force people to look at a familiar thing a new way. Statistically, the middle class is about three times smaller than people would like to believe. That's because there are a lot of poor people who refused to think of themselves as members of the poverty class. But that was still beside the point. Where had the craft discussion gone?

"What are we talking about here?" I asked the mentor.

She answered tersely, "We are talking about how you are going to revise this piece."

"That's fine, but I'm confused. I haven't heard a consensus on the problem of structure. I've heard voice, tone, and content issues, but I still don't see what the structural issue is."

"Well, this is not an introduction, or a prologue. And you aren't really talking about a book."

Some of my quiet cohorts weigh in on introductions and prologue, but nothing specific comes of the structural question. We are sitting there silently and I realize that the hot afternoon sun has found us in our hiding place. I have no idea how much time has passed in minutes, but in personal energy it seems like hours. Still I don't feel satisfaction. I want to move things towards a resolution. I worry that my Y-chromosome is getting in the way so I try being conciliatory.

"As far as the book - I'm sorry for using the word generically. I look at at stack of ten pages and I call it a book. And when I say stone age, I am expressing a relationship with rocks. I intend to use some kind of rock as a metaphor for each chapter. And when I speak about structure I'm not at all certain that I know what it represents in literary terms."

The mentor is collecting her books and pushing back her chair. "Well bring a pad and pen to your meeting tomorrow, we'll go over it. But, don't say you don't know what it is - you do." Before she turns to walk away I correct myself.

"I meant to say I don't have the vocabulary to describe structure." She gives me one last disgusted look before she walks away and for the first time it occurs to me that maybe she doesn't either.

My name is DJ and I am addicted to words

2007-07-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

No one - I mean no one - looks forward to large workshop. No exceptions. Large workshop is intended to be a collaborative teaching process. A way for students and cohorts to experience the many perspectives and confusions their writing creates while at the same time learning the vocabulary of the writing pedagogy. More often than not, it feels like a group intervention where everyone gets their turn to experience anger, sorrow, and denial, before beginning a twenty-eight day long rehab and revision cycle.

Fun.

Most folks come to workshop with a variety of strategies designed to stave off attacks on their esteem, morale, and ambitions. Others practice interpretation methods which prevent their manuscripts from devolving into a smoldering pile of paper shreds unfit for the bottom of the hamster cage. However, some folks never figure it out and fail to walk away with even a fiber of their psyche or syntax. It is not a pretty sight.

I've been fortunate. A long career as a creative professional has taught me a Jiu-Jitsu style of "tuck and roll" for the soul, absorbing the lessons of some big hits so I can live to write another day. It has served me well, professionally and personally. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. The problem lies in the fact that I have to see the hit coming before it hits me and in this recent example, I didn't.

Theme Song for a silent Shady Square

2007-06-24T00:11:00.000-07:00

"I know that tune...I know that tune...What tune is that? I'm sure I know it." I crash out of a sound sleep to the sound of music - hot, loud, brassy, jazzy music - coming into my head from three...(three?) sides. I am not in my own bed, in my own house, in my own neighborhood. I am in a strange place, at a strange time, hearing..."Damn! I know that tune!" It's 2am on Shady Square in Cambridge and music is pouring through the windows and walls of the second floor room like artificial sunlight on a hothouse tomato. At first I am sure the song is the theme to the sitcom "Fish." I see Abe Vagota's long sad face being trampled by his household full of wards and for some reason I think this is all coming from my van parked on the street. "Where's Lumis?" I wonder as the song ends and the background noise of Beacon Street takes control of the night. I'm still searching the darkness with my eyes when it occurs to me that what I heard was a theme from another show - not Fish, the music was too Jazzy to be Fish. Silhouettes of dancers slip through my mind as I slowly fight the urge to wake up. It finally comes to me "Cosby!'and I can see it all. The sleepless neighbor in the bedroom on the adjoining firewall, popping on the TV at 2am, gropping the volume button instead of the channel selector as the Cosby theme blares out over Shady Square and through the wall. Now we are both awake - in the dark.

Inappropriate comment

2007-06-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

A young woman, a cohort in my class, was explaining that her father's pancreas transplant made her absent last semester. I took the moment to tell her about my cannibal project and how transplants are one of the most popular forms cannibalism. Please quiet my mind - before I strike again.

Capstone

2007-06-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

Talking Heads drum solo rumbles through the cafe speakers as word spreads from four-top to two-top that I am an imposter - a no talent, fake - I stink of it. Two women stop at the table next to me and then move on after they catch a wiff.

John Swift

2007-01-16T07:27:00.001-08:00

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

Bradford Angier

2007-01-16T07:17:00.000-08:00

How to Stay Alive in the Woods, Sustenance p 14
"Sarvation is not a great deal more pleasant than most of us would expect. The body becomes auto-cannibalistic after a few foodless hours."