(10/2006)
October baseball. That's all I can say. Now that my spouse is a baseball fan (going on 15 years, to be honest), it's hard to turn my attention away from the post-season race for the title.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Fascinated (fiction excerpt)
(11/1991)
Are we alone?
The separation is complete.
All the others have gone.
Take off my clothes with that nutty roommate's records playing in the other room. The record has repeated itself about a thousand times this afternoon.
Just let it go on and on. We are fascinated with one another but you are fascinated with me in a different way. You see me as one sees a book about the back woods of America where people still think naive thoughts such as "there will only be one real love for me." And I am fascinated with you the same way a person from the back woods is fascinated with any eighteen year old woman with her own credit cards and an apartment in Manhatten who comes along.
Someone even told me that a singer who had had an affair with you two years ago, when you were sixteen (!) wrote a song about your hair. It was who? He must be fifty!
It was all in the spirit of the city of no sleep, the city where you can get a hot dog and a bottle of bourbon at four in the morning and catch a film festival on Christmas day that goes all day and night. It is all true. New Years in the square, what is that square called? And those magazines, inspired by the artist who did the crazy Elvis Presley with big six-guns. What do I know? Where I come from the whole town closes down the day before Christmas and people look at you like you are crazy if they see you on the street.
I am simply baffled.
The night is dreadful in the city. That is my advantage. At the age of eighteen I have seen two hundred thousand stars burn up in the sky. One time, a thousand in one night. You cannot believe me and I have to show it to you. But you got too cold and I had to take you home.
Standing in the field, wanting to ignore his almost unbearable physical attraction to her, she tried to turn their minds to a more neutral subject, to the strange, rusting machinery which formed tangled shadows in the dim light of the crescent moon.
"What do you think that thing is for?"
"I grew up on a farm. I never worked on one."
"What the hell do you do on a farm if you don't work?"
What the hell you do is you make the day go by without getting stung by one of the yellowjackets in the nest over the back porch or getting butted by the Ram, who is named Raymond. He will give anyone a healthy respect for what the world believes to be a timid and fluffy creature who habitually runs from the wolf, the dog, or whatever else crosses its path. Raymond is neither timid nor fluffy, and he frequently stands up to any creature who cares to offer a threat to his dominion of the yard in front of the carriage-house.
He has all the demeanor of a drill sergeant, with perenially short hair and angry face bearing down on all who face him.
Raymond's fiery disposition is appreciated and imitated by all the other species in the barnyard, though he remains the most ominous through the constant threat that he may at any moment charge, not stopping until his head has impacted severely on another living creature. Each of the begrudgingly coexisting creatures has his own trademark mode of attack, and the young children have all learned the hard way to know the warning signs of an impending assault.
(Raymond went after dad)
(written 11/1991)
Are we alone?
The separation is complete.
All the others have gone.
Take off my clothes with that nutty roommate's records playing in the other room. The record has repeated itself about a thousand times this afternoon.
Just let it go on and on. We are fascinated with one another but you are fascinated with me in a different way. You see me as one sees a book about the back woods of America where people still think naive thoughts such as "there will only be one real love for me." And I am fascinated with you the same way a person from the back woods is fascinated with any eighteen year old woman with her own credit cards and an apartment in Manhatten who comes along.
Someone even told me that a singer who had had an affair with you two years ago, when you were sixteen (!) wrote a song about your hair. It was who? He must be fifty!
It was all in the spirit of the city of no sleep, the city where you can get a hot dog and a bottle of bourbon at four in the morning and catch a film festival on Christmas day that goes all day and night. It is all true. New Years in the square, what is that square called? And those magazines, inspired by the artist who did the crazy Elvis Presley with big six-guns. What do I know? Where I come from the whole town closes down the day before Christmas and people look at you like you are crazy if they see you on the street.
I am simply baffled.
The night is dreadful in the city. That is my advantage. At the age of eighteen I have seen two hundred thousand stars burn up in the sky. One time, a thousand in one night. You cannot believe me and I have to show it to you. But you got too cold and I had to take you home.
Standing in the field, wanting to ignore his almost unbearable physical attraction to her, she tried to turn their minds to a more neutral subject, to the strange, rusting machinery which formed tangled shadows in the dim light of the crescent moon.
"What do you think that thing is for?"
"I grew up on a farm. I never worked on one."
"What the hell do you do on a farm if you don't work?"
What the hell you do is you make the day go by without getting stung by one of the yellowjackets in the nest over the back porch or getting butted by the Ram, who is named Raymond. He will give anyone a healthy respect for what the world believes to be a timid and fluffy creature who habitually runs from the wolf, the dog, or whatever else crosses its path. Raymond is neither timid nor fluffy, and he frequently stands up to any creature who cares to offer a threat to his dominion of the yard in front of the carriage-house.
He has all the demeanor of a drill sergeant, with perenially short hair and angry face bearing down on all who face him.
Raymond's fiery disposition is appreciated and imitated by all the other species in the barnyard, though he remains the most ominous through the constant threat that he may at any moment charge, not stopping until his head has impacted severely on another living creature. Each of the begrudgingly coexisting creatures has his own trademark mode of attack, and the young children have all learned the hard way to know the warning signs of an impending assault.
(Raymond went after dad)
(written 11/1991)
Alternative Travel
(10/1991)
I can travel quicker than the quickest way possible to the mountains of the moon with the magic of a piece of paper and some ink. In the days of my childhood I began the journeys. They have always been short and sometimes they have been insane but I know after more than a decade they are the best of my imagination or the gentle side of a gang of demons that possess myself and every person. If the bad weather has brought a toughness which facilitates strength and perserverence in the human spirit, the good weather has shown the power of compassion and dreaming of peace and happiness.
(written 10/91)
I can travel quicker than the quickest way possible to the mountains of the moon with the magic of a piece of paper and some ink. In the days of my childhood I began the journeys. They have always been short and sometimes they have been insane but I know after more than a decade they are the best of my imagination or the gentle side of a gang of demons that possess myself and every person. If the bad weather has brought a toughness which facilitates strength and perserverence in the human spirit, the good weather has shown the power of compassion and dreaming of peace and happiness.
(written 10/91)
Friday, October 06, 2006
Madhouse Diary (fiction excerpt--takes place in October)
(12/2004)
I began to imagine the snow was falling outside, even though it was a clear night and the temperature was an October mild. In my mind, though I knew it to be true, I wished we could all go out and make sure. Someone noticed me kind of squirming in my seat, and I found myself explaining the whole notion.
"That's cool," said Tabitha, but everyone else was quiet. Another long silence followed. I started thinking, this is the last time these girls will invite me anywhere with them, now that I'm talking like a 15 year old. Plus I kept clearing my throat, that last big cough not really all the way done with me. Finally Annie spoke.
"Now you got me thinking it's snowing outside." And we were all laughing again. But this time in a frantic, convulsive way that made me forget what it was that was funny. I figured that pot didn't really do anything to me. I was high on my nervousness, just happy to be around some attractive women who found me at all interesting. If I stopped to think about the last couple years, the end of my marriage, the ugly blows life dealt me, the state of the world, I could've been weeping with equal intensity.
(written 12/2004)
I began to imagine the snow was falling outside, even though it was a clear night and the temperature was an October mild. In my mind, though I knew it to be true, I wished we could all go out and make sure. Someone noticed me kind of squirming in my seat, and I found myself explaining the whole notion.
"That's cool," said Tabitha, but everyone else was quiet. Another long silence followed. I started thinking, this is the last time these girls will invite me anywhere with them, now that I'm talking like a 15 year old. Plus I kept clearing my throat, that last big cough not really all the way done with me. Finally Annie spoke.
"Now you got me thinking it's snowing outside." And we were all laughing again. But this time in a frantic, convulsive way that made me forget what it was that was funny. I figured that pot didn't really do anything to me. I was high on my nervousness, just happy to be around some attractive women who found me at all interesting. If I stopped to think about the last couple years, the end of my marriage, the ugly blows life dealt me, the state of the world, I could've been weeping with equal intensity.
(written 12/2004)
Monday, October 02, 2006
George Bush (Sr.) Dream, 1992
(10/1992)
In my dream I was with George and Barbara Bush at a family picnic. Their many children and grandchildren were in and out of the room where we stood, adjoining to the green where the gathering was taking place. It could have beem a workshop , since there was a saw blade clearly visible on the bench nearby., George was making a point about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he referred to as "The Gentleman From New York." even though I never really knew for sure until I looked it up today that FDR was really from New York.
I will be damned. George Bush was right about something in my dream.
But then he said, "The Gentleman From New York had to go and help all the colored people in the country by giving them jobs in dangerous industry so that more and more of those people were injured than ever before, and our corporations lost lots of money."
Maybe it was Bush talking with Archie Bunker's voice.
(written October 1992; a month later Clinton beat Bush in the general election)
In my dream I was with George and Barbara Bush at a family picnic. Their many children and grandchildren were in and out of the room where we stood, adjoining to the green where the gathering was taking place. It could have beem a workshop , since there was a saw blade clearly visible on the bench nearby., George was making a point about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he referred to as "The Gentleman From New York." even though I never really knew for sure until I looked it up today that FDR was really from New York.
I will be damned. George Bush was right about something in my dream.
But then he said, "The Gentleman From New York had to go and help all the colored people in the country by giving them jobs in dangerous industry so that more and more of those people were injured than ever before, and our corporations lost lots of money."
Maybe it was Bush talking with Archie Bunker's voice.
(written October 1992; a month later Clinton beat Bush in the general election)
Big Guy Sleeping
(10/1990)
He was a huge man, towering over all of us. His legs carried him across the big dining room in less than three steps. The doorways were only big enough for him. You couldn't get around him in the front hallway. You had to turn around and walk back to the living room and wait for him to go enter with you, go out the front door, or begin his gradual climb of the front stair to his large, green carpeted bedroom.
HIS bedroom was his bear cave. He would go in and turn on the space heater and the television set and be all set to stay for hours. There was no bathroom upstairs but he made up for it by urinating into a large coffee bottle, the same instant brand he had been buying for years. A trip to the bathroom would have meant to go back down those stairs, through the hall and kitchen, a turn in the dark coldness of the old kitchen, and finally the toilet in the small room to the right., There was a space heater in there, also. One for the master bedroom and one for the bathroom, and those were all. The long avenue in between was a dusty, drafty reminder of the money this house took. Hundreds of dollars every winter to pay the oil bills. He wouldn't hesitate to remind the children of energy costs when they would leave the door to the old kitchen ajar or turn the heat above seventy two degrees. They learned their own energy conservation lessons well as he reminded them from his chair in the dining room with a pained, slow voice of the countless hours of overtime he had been forced into by staying in this old sh-thole. He spoke and his shadow seemed to darken the entire room and all of reality as the agony of his condition was once again told. Two double shirts in six days time and not a moment to himself.
Not a moment to himself except for many hours of desperately needed sleep, beginning and ending with the thoughts of solitary worry. His children, who showed up in his long and terrifying dreams, cried for food and protection, desperate with neverending fear and neglect. He was always close enough to touch them but they couldn't see him. He could not make hid presence known or do anything to relieve them of their suffering. Indeed he had not presence at all in his nightmares. He could only see and feel but he could not be. Six hours of sleep made him feel as exhausted as he had felt after six hours of work. Sleep, once his only sure salvation from the mountainous difficulties of real life, had lately become more terrifying than life itself. At least at work he knew he existed. Every action, no matter how inane, had tangible results, no matter how negative.
Negativity was still affirmation, after all. To be nothing but a perceptive non entity was more frightening to him than any other concept. Existence was all he struggled for.
As his sleep was torn by repetitions of the ghastly vision of not being, the children were made constantly aware of his entity by his electric saw snoring, a noise as tremendous as the man himself. They were amazed at how loud it was, audible even from outside the house near the garage. It was nothing more than an extraordinary grunt repeated at four or five second intervals. The children remarked to one another how consistent and mechanical the noise was. They knew from experience that to disturb him at this stage of sleep--which began a half hour or so after he went to bed--was possible only through much shouting and clamor. When he slept quietly he was easy to disturb. They dreaded having to wake him for phone calls while he snored.
(written October 1990)
He was a huge man, towering over all of us. His legs carried him across the big dining room in less than three steps. The doorways were only big enough for him. You couldn't get around him in the front hallway. You had to turn around and walk back to the living room and wait for him to go enter with you, go out the front door, or begin his gradual climb of the front stair to his large, green carpeted bedroom.
HIS bedroom was his bear cave. He would go in and turn on the space heater and the television set and be all set to stay for hours. There was no bathroom upstairs but he made up for it by urinating into a large coffee bottle, the same instant brand he had been buying for years. A trip to the bathroom would have meant to go back down those stairs, through the hall and kitchen, a turn in the dark coldness of the old kitchen, and finally the toilet in the small room to the right., There was a space heater in there, also. One for the master bedroom and one for the bathroom, and those were all. The long avenue in between was a dusty, drafty reminder of the money this house took. Hundreds of dollars every winter to pay the oil bills. He wouldn't hesitate to remind the children of energy costs when they would leave the door to the old kitchen ajar or turn the heat above seventy two degrees. They learned their own energy conservation lessons well as he reminded them from his chair in the dining room with a pained, slow voice of the countless hours of overtime he had been forced into by staying in this old sh-thole. He spoke and his shadow seemed to darken the entire room and all of reality as the agony of his condition was once again told. Two double shirts in six days time and not a moment to himself.
Not a moment to himself except for many hours of desperately needed sleep, beginning and ending with the thoughts of solitary worry. His children, who showed up in his long and terrifying dreams, cried for food and protection, desperate with neverending fear and neglect. He was always close enough to touch them but they couldn't see him. He could not make hid presence known or do anything to relieve them of their suffering. Indeed he had not presence at all in his nightmares. He could only see and feel but he could not be. Six hours of sleep made him feel as exhausted as he had felt after six hours of work. Sleep, once his only sure salvation from the mountainous difficulties of real life, had lately become more terrifying than life itself. At least at work he knew he existed. Every action, no matter how inane, had tangible results, no matter how negative.
Negativity was still affirmation, after all. To be nothing but a perceptive non entity was more frightening to him than any other concept. Existence was all he struggled for.
As his sleep was torn by repetitions of the ghastly vision of not being, the children were made constantly aware of his entity by his electric saw snoring, a noise as tremendous as the man himself. They were amazed at how loud it was, audible even from outside the house near the garage. It was nothing more than an extraordinary grunt repeated at four or five second intervals. The children remarked to one another how consistent and mechanical the noise was. They knew from experience that to disturb him at this stage of sleep--which began a half hour or so after he went to bed--was possible only through much shouting and clamor. When he slept quietly he was easy to disturb. They dreaded having to wake him for phone calls while he snored.
(written October 1990)
Sunday, October 01, 2006
October Apple Mess, 1977
(10/2000)
The first day of October in Washington, DC . It turns my mind to nostalgia for some reason. I guess it's because the activities of summer suddenly calm down and the mind can take a rest.
And in this mental rest I recall Octobers past:
Andy Jagel really scared Rob and me one day the first summer after Rob came to Harvard. That was 1977. Andy screamed at us under an apple tree. Did we throw all these apples all over the road and make this mess? Clean this up right now! Andy demanded, his face a contorted tomato of rage. Clean up this f-ing mess right now! When he’d exhausted his lungs with demands and swear words, he departed with his long, loping, downward staring gait.
“Who is that guy?”, asked Rob. “He thinks we did that?”
There was certainly quite a mess of rotten apples all over the road. Something done by an early summer frost or some other anomaly of apple country’s weather. The mess stayed there until a heavy rain weeks later. Rob and I never failed to mock shout at one another whenever we passed that tree. “Clean up this f-ing mess!” we demanded again and again.
There were two miles and twenty or thirty houses between Rob’s house and mine. My family’s house was on Depot Rd., a dead end street with almost constant highway and train noises. The Featherstones were on the town common, on Elm St., surrounded by stately mansions from the 18th and 19th centuries. These homes were watched by the historical commission, which kept records of which houses were originally painted which colors. None of the “officially” historical homes were to be painted any other colors. No one protested. I shouted my disgust at the thought of such restriction upon hearing of it.
“It’s a free country, isn’t it?” I roared. “We should be able to paint houses whatever color we want! If it was my house I’d paint it purple just to show them.”
“No you wouldn’t”, Rob laughed at me.
“Why not?”
“It would look stupid, that’s why not! People would laugh at you. I would too. Anyway it’s our house, not yours. Paint your own house purple.”
“No way! That would look stupid.”
When the Featherstones moved into our town, Rob brought with him mysteries of the northern place called Canada, a place I had for my few short years as being under the ownership of the United States, by virtue of the name “North America” emblazoned across both the northern and southern borders of our country. Naturally this meant we owned Mexico as well. Not only did Rob bring with him the mysterious knowledge of new independent nations to our north and south, but there was also tofu, yoga, psychology, skiing, vacations, laughter. So many things I didn’t imagine even could exist.
Best of all in the early days of our friendship were the puppets. Rob was a puppeteer genius at the age of 9.
(originally written in October 2000)
The first day of October in Washington, DC . It turns my mind to nostalgia for some reason. I guess it's because the activities of summer suddenly calm down and the mind can take a rest.
And in this mental rest I recall Octobers past:
Andy Jagel really scared Rob and me one day the first summer after Rob came to Harvard. That was 1977. Andy screamed at us under an apple tree. Did we throw all these apples all over the road and make this mess? Clean this up right now! Andy demanded, his face a contorted tomato of rage. Clean up this f-ing mess right now! When he’d exhausted his lungs with demands and swear words, he departed with his long, loping, downward staring gait.
“Who is that guy?”, asked Rob. “He thinks we did that?”
There was certainly quite a mess of rotten apples all over the road. Something done by an early summer frost or some other anomaly of apple country’s weather. The mess stayed there until a heavy rain weeks later. Rob and I never failed to mock shout at one another whenever we passed that tree. “Clean up this f-ing mess!” we demanded again and again.
There were two miles and twenty or thirty houses between Rob’s house and mine. My family’s house was on Depot Rd., a dead end street with almost constant highway and train noises. The Featherstones were on the town common, on Elm St., surrounded by stately mansions from the 18th and 19th centuries. These homes were watched by the historical commission, which kept records of which houses were originally painted which colors. None of the “officially” historical homes were to be painted any other colors. No one protested. I shouted my disgust at the thought of such restriction upon hearing of it.
“It’s a free country, isn’t it?” I roared. “We should be able to paint houses whatever color we want! If it was my house I’d paint it purple just to show them.”
“No you wouldn’t”, Rob laughed at me.
“Why not?”
“It would look stupid, that’s why not! People would laugh at you. I would too. Anyway it’s our house, not yours. Paint your own house purple.”
“No way! That would look stupid.”
When the Featherstones moved into our town, Rob brought with him mysteries of the northern place called Canada, a place I had for my few short years as being under the ownership of the United States, by virtue of the name “North America” emblazoned across both the northern and southern borders of our country. Naturally this meant we owned Mexico as well. Not only did Rob bring with him the mysterious knowledge of new independent nations to our north and south, but there was also tofu, yoga, psychology, skiing, vacations, laughter. So many things I didn’t imagine even could exist.
Best of all in the early days of our friendship were the puppets. Rob was a puppeteer genius at the age of 9.
(originally written in October 2000)
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