uptight about work

For the first time since I started at Z-co, I' m feeling uptight about where I am. For five years I was in the enjoyable Niche, and in charge of it. In fact I was the Niche.

Soon I'll leave that niche to join a Group, doing a pretty-well-established set of procedures, following Group's norms and not doing a heck of a lot of independent work. I almost feel like I need therapy over it, it's making me so uptight.

Do I fear what will happen to the Niche? Am I afraid the new person, Newby Newberry, will screw up the sandcastle I've been building for five years? Do I feer she'll do a better job in my niche than I ever did?

Do I fear that Group may try to break my independent spirit? Or that I won't have fun anymore?

The reason I'm laughing now: I should be glad to be rid of my series of work-headaches; I should look forward to a clean slate; I should let go of notions that no one else can do it like I do it.

Right.

Well, there are some other problems that make me uptight. I care about what I've been producing in the Niche. For the sake of quality I am concerned about the possible decline of quality.

Also I have witnessed the lack of talent that sometimes plagues Z-co. We tend to put people who don't know squat into positions that require more thought than the knowing squat will allow.

November 1985

I do not hate myself now because there is no person or thing in my life that makes me hate myself. I hated myself better when I hated myself because then my emotions were all very simple. Raw. Unadulterated. It came from my inner soul. I feel now like I have been built up and I worry more now about things like what kinds of impressions I leave on other people. I try not to but I do it anyway. It's fake.

When I start acting fake I start losing contact with myself and that sets me in the direction of a short circuit. Maybe that is what I need. If everything blew up in my face, which will inevitably happen some time. it just might be the healthiest thing that could happen. Then I could stand away from myself and re-evaluate my life and the people in it and my actions and emotions. Then perhaps it'll all become crystal clear and I will be much happier. I do not want to be a liar or a phony or a back-stabber or a cheat but a lot of the time I am. I look at myself and cannot justify so I look away. I should not want to justify anything. I should naturally have the comfort of knowing that what I am doing is what I believe in--but I am really not sure anymore.

For the first time ever I have been asking people to tell me what is right for me.

(November 1985--1st semester of undergraduate program)

Harley-Bear-Brother

A dream, approximately June 14, 2007.

My brother Charlie is trying to teach me how to ride my new Harley, a beautiful machine that may be lost on me, as I've no idea how to ride it and I'm not sure I want to. Charlie's training me on the Harley the way Linda used to train her horses. I'm on a super-long lead rope and he stands in the middle of the circle I ride in, holding the master's end of the rope. Charlie tells me to shift, and I try to, but I don't know how. He calls out various instructions but I don't have any idea how to, so I'm at a loss. Much like a horse is, I suppose, when he's being trained on a lead rope.

Transition to the bear chase. Charlie and I are being chased by two bears: a grizzly and a polar. They hold us at bay in a little shed next to the old house in Harvard, near where the lilacs grew. Then Charlie's old dog Fuzzy saved us from the bears.

Triad Excerpt

Paula: We interrupt this program…yak yak yak…a special bulletin…this is the story we imagine as children, or watch in the old movies, but folks, I can tell you…attackers…yak yak yak…three separate locations...appears to be a coordinated effort…this morning.

Lou: That’s right, Paula. And thanks for joining us, folks. There are currently three separate colonizing forces hammering planet Earth with three distinct armies. All of them arrived in the night and all of them are still cloaking their communication as far as defense scientists can tell. We take you now to the Saudi desert where a group of space-craft have landed and apparently disabled all the terrestrial vehicles in the vicinity but—as you can see from this live broadcast they have not yet scrambled the communication. The local response is massive and chaotic. As you can see, however, the majority have taken this visitation as something holy. Thousands of local villagers are beginning the journey on foot to see what is going to happen, but also to offer prayers and offerings.

Paula: Lou, are there any people responding to the visitors with force?

Lou: Force? Well, I’d have to say there’s really no force available for them to use in response. Behind me can be seen a teeming crowed of awestruck, silent onlookers who stream around the feet of four great tanker-spaceships. The spaceships are silent, resting on tremendous feet with the girth of great redwood trees. I’m told now that our viewers have lost their video feed but I’ll continue to describe what I see, Paula. The sky has taken on an amazing orange tint, like a tropical sunset in a velvet painting. It’s indescribably beautiful. I feel as if I’m only now aware of my true senses for the first time. I can’t go on…

Paula: Lou appears to be affected by some mass-mind control centered at the space vessels in the Saudi Desert. As I have said, there are two other recognized landing spots this hour; all are confirmed to be civilizations foreign to Earth. On this historic occasion we take you now to the South Pacific, where submarines and a battle ship rush to gain access to two massive winged crafts that, according to the satellite photos, well, we’ll let you see them for yourselves...

...now that we have video restored. It appears the two airplane-like machines dove directly into the deepest spot in the Pacific Ocean today. No doubt their instrumentation provided them with the location of this spot, and that they have come to it for a specific reason. After landing, upon the water, they immediately folded up their wings and dove straight into the Marianas trench, traveling as accurately and purposefully as submarines. According to Navy sources there is a limit to how far down any terrestrial craft will be able to pursue them. Therefore it may be a matter of waiting out the invaders until they return to the surface. We will keep you updated. Now to the invasion in Central Mongolia…

(originally written 2004)

Yam Story Excerpt 4

Rain

The morning brought on an enormous downpour that started just before dawn and continued, relentless, for more than two hours. Alison and Noah thought they knew what heavy rain was from their stay at Kaokara, but this was something more intense and more enduring. Looking out the window, they saw every walking path transformed into a tiny stream. Little bits of coconut husk and stray cooking leaf were carried away. A slant to the village ground not previously noticeable became apparent by the slowly creeping direction o f the light sheet of water enveloping the hamlet. Water moving as one slow creature passing through the village to consume the detritus of earthly life; water falling from the sky with the force of ropes dropped from miles above; water of a shifting mood, first hurried and giddy, then steadier, a runner going a long distance, then filled with the rage of a tremendous, petulant toddler; water arriving as the landlord, coming to remind the tenants that the boss was at home, and planning on using every room; water that soothed, at last, like a blanket of night, realizing the mind into an abyss of quiet and inactivity, because the water allowed so little human movement; water that arrived as a guest, welcome, but called upon its own kind to join the party, and overran its hosts; ill-mannered and sloppy in its behavior; water that shook the houses and silenced the babies’ crying with its amazing basic parenthood over all things; water with hands that took whatever was for the taking; water that could shake any island to its foundations; water that told them, you are all so tiny, and made them all feel relieved to be tiny.

Creatures (1)

The goose wails in the flagging daylight: it is a noise that any creature with ears will find horrible and upsetting. The mud-bug, only a few inches away, doesn't even know the goose is there; he doesn't have the power of sight or hearing. His body knows what it knows and lives accordingly. The goose is a big fertilizer where the mud bug is concerned. The nutrients pour out of geese like manna from mud-bug heaven.

Another goose replies. The goose takes off; the mud-bug disappears into the murky warmth of his home.

Planet of the Boys Excerpt

Stephen
Oak has actual people living on it. People who were fired, convicted, exiled, people who spoke out against the Powers. And we're not talking about people who said the easy things, like mining can be bad for you; no, a contaminated planet is saved for people who commmit serious religious crimes, or indecent people who kill outside the law.

But up here in the tall buildings we know the real crime, and it's always the naive, nearly educated people who take the freedom thing too seriously. If there was one thing we learned from the Liberty Experiments, it was that humans like to believe they have liberty. And that it's easy to make a life full of consumer products feel like liberty. The danger of the experiment is that so many people fail to see the nod and the wink on the official publications that speak to them about liberty. Everyone can see the uniformed guards, everyone can see the prisons and the weapons we keep stockpiled around our settlements, but somehow they think of liberty as this overarching principle, a thing as essential as their breath, rather than the soft, comforting advertisement for happiness that we always intended it to be. Abstractions have always taken a back seat to economic reality; it's been that way since humanity came into existence; longer really: it's been that way since any beings anywhere engaged in community living. The abstractions are how we flavor things for the lessers, though, so we encourage them where they're useful.

Davey
I am an old guy who talks all the time. The guys tolerate me because I say things that make this place make a little sense, and things that scare them a little bit. But they wouldn't really put up with ol' Davey's crazy theories unless they saw me working. I know I'll be washed up soon enough but I've been lucky enough. The truth is I want to get going but I have to earn a few more bucks out here before I can take off. Sure, I could apply for work on Oak, and be set up with a pretty nice assignment, but if you think the recruitment to Ferro was bullshit? I mean, that place was *liquidated*. You don't liquidate unless you have the kind of violence that could spread to other civilizations (or so they tell us). Even if they could get rid of all the contamination on Oak, no way should anyone accept an assignment there. If I have time I'll tell you my whole Oak theory, but now's not the time. I'm trying to keep my mouth shut for a few days. That's a cycle I do: talk a few days, then lay off and leave people to think about it. Also I take on some bullshit topic that comes straight from the managers, and I work that for a while, so they think I'm helping spread the Powers' word. But I soften it up so much and distort it so well that the guys aren't gettting what they're trying to sell.

It seems like it'd be easy to be a good guy, tell the stories that need telling, and be true to yourself. Are you crazy? That's not easy. It's easier to be a liar, to not give a shit what happens to your fellows, and to take whatever you can steal.

(Originally written 5/2005)

Yam Story Excerpt 2

Arthur

Noah hoped his roommate would be out long enough to leave a few hours of peace in the cabin. But no such luck. Arthur was only a few minutes behind him getting back. He had hoped he would have time to read, or write or just fall asleep alone. Time alone was something Noah cherished, he was finding out on this experience of very little time alone. The idea of a roommate was somewhat stifling to him after years of having enjoyed his own room back home. Strangely enough this very concern was on Arthur’s frantic mind. As he paced he vented his thoughts to Noah.

“They really mean it when they say you get no privacy, you know. Not a moment to yourself. Always in the fishbowl. You never know when you’ll have a moment to yourself.”

“Was that the article by the girl who was a volunteer in Kiribati, because I—“

Arthur didn’t notice the interruption. “My brother was a volunteer in Mali a few years back, the seventies. He taught in a secondary school. Not two minutes after a shower, he’d be in his room dressing and there’d be a pair of eyes. A student peeking in the window to see how the white man lives.”

“I guess the curiosity just—“

“Well, this went on for weeks on end, a different kid or group of kids each day, peeking in the window. Finally he—“ Noah thought he could see Arthur’s pessimistic world view rising, dough in a pan, as he related his tale. What had pushed him to such fear and excitement?

“Finally he couldn’t take it any more and he chased the kid away with a stick, and then the trouble really started” The guy in Arthur’s story must not have read the literature that said “you live in a fishbowl” when you live as a Peace Corps volunteer.

It was spelled out for them during the application process, during the interview process, but other volunteers returning home, and in a hundred little hints given in any travel book about any country where “westerners” were not a majority. People simply looked at strangers quite a bit, especially children who had never seen the strangers. A white man entering the Solomon Islands that year was much the same level of fascinating as a black man visiting a small city in Japan. Everyone has a look. Some people have a stare. It’s not pleasant but it’s natural.

“It’s only natural for people to stare, Arthur.”

“I know that’s true. It’s just that I’m ready for that part of the experience to be over.” Ready for it to be over? Hell, it hadn’t even begun. What the heck, thought Noah, I’ll share some psychology stuff too, as long as we’re at it.

“I really think I’m going to like the people-staring-at-me part. You wanna know why? I was pretty lonely as a kid. Big house, lots of sibs, I didn’t get a lot of attention. You had to be loud or injured to get much attention at our house.” He thought as he spoke, this is letting your guard down. From now on this nutty guy’s going to consider you his buddy, and follow you around the way he was following Edgar around at the visit to Lars’s research center.

“That’s opposite of me. I had a ton of attention. Only two of us and my brother gone a lot.”

“Two parents?”

“Yep. Divorce?”

“Not only that”, said Noah dramatically, “but a second divorce. Mom got remarried right away to an even weirder guy than Dad.”

“Whoa. And did he have more kids that he added to the mix?”

Noah felt strange about the conversation. As if Arthur were going to keep track of all he said to use it as gossip or blackmail later. Paranoia, infectious? It was Arthur who had all the concerns about privacy, so would he be protective of others’ privacy? For a second, it seemed like a funny idea to talk to Arthur about drugs or group sex, just to see if word would get around. A crazy notion.

“Do you think they have much in the way of divorce here?”

“I bet they don’t. But I also know there’s quite a lot of missionary work here. Traditionally, probably divorces weren’t too common. But you see foreign influence and you see alcohol and gambling and people moving to town, then you sure see divorce, I guess.” Arthur continued for a while in the same vein, for a little too long.

Noah cocked his head sideways as if to let a word or two fall from his ear to his brain. Weren’t he and Arthur the “foreign influence”? Was divorce really something that “Europeans” brought with them? What about the theory that the locals might have freely divorced one another until the missionaries came along and told them God meant for women and men to stay married for life. Noah saw a momentary picture of his mother and father, having to stay together despite their dislike for one another.

After holding forth for quite some time, Arthur shocked his roommate by suggesting they ought to turn in rather than wear themselves out with the cultural talk. “We have plenty of culture to live, I reckon”, he declared. It would be a relief to de-focus from the aura of weird that was Arthur. As Noah dozed off he toyed with naming the phases he’d seen Arthur seamlessly cycle through: scared watcher on the plane; eager boss-follower at Lars’s house; fretting paranoid at the dinner; jabbering academic after supper. What fueled all this? Not just the stress of the trip, or the whole resort would feel like a getaway for wigged out Americans.

Originally Written 2003-2005

Yam Story Excerpt 1

Arrival

The flight from Cairns, Australia to Guadalcanal Island’s Henderson Field was late as usual. At the airstrip (for it was too tiny an operation to be rightfully considered an airport) waited a striking looking crowd, including a band of shirtless local schoolboys with their bodies painted in bright array, pan-pipes in their hands; a nervous but official-looking group of Americans who were not dressed quite as well as a youthful group of what looked like graduate students but turned out to be the Peace Corps “training staff”, bearing clipboards and wearing brightly polished shoes. Finally there was a group of twenty or thirty upper-class looking 30 to 40 year olds with bright polyester clothing and sandals on their feet. This group crowded into the shade of a beautiful and ancient tree in the sand parking lot, just outside the baggage area, which was little more than and overhanging roof to protect against sudden and forceful downpours. The only truly indoor areas were behind doors marked “staff only”. There were no restaurants, gift shops, or any of the commercial distractions Westerners would normally expect.

Twenty three Americans would be arriving within the hour. The boys would strike up their pan pipes, the worried looking Americans would usher the newcomers off to their medium sized buses (very large to a local person) waiting nearby, and so would begin the two-year experience of living more simply than they could possibly imagine. Still, to most islanders, each volunteer’s two years would still be more luxury than a lifetime would bring.

Their arrival would be the end of a long process of application, clearance, and travel. It would be the beginning of a frustrating but necessary several weeks of training in the language and culture of local people. For a few it would be a rapid unraveling of their last two years or more of planning and sacrifice as they realized they were not meant to function outside the United States. For fewer still it would be a rapid psychological deterioration as they discovered their fragile sanity could not endure a combined pressures of culture shock, travel, training and stress.

For Noah, as most of the group, the greatest loss would be the surrender of a number of mistaken expectations.

The group who waited on the ground tried their best not to let show their impatience. The group on board the soon-to-arrive flight tried not to let show their mounting anxiety.

The most noticeable person among the Americans waiting at Henderson Field was a tall new Englander with bloodshot eyes, a balding scalp, and a cigarette in his shaking fingers. He looked like an aging, reformed heroin addict. The aids, much more at ease, stood by his side: a woman with an exaggerated tan, also chain-smoking and a slightly-less-tall man with no cigarette and a decidedly more placid expression. He held a clipboard and wore a belt with a water-bottle holster.

“I want this welcoming to be brief but have some memorable impact for them,” huffed the taller man. “I’ve been thinking of how to combine humor with-“

“Patriotism?”

“Well, not patriotism exactly. Do you think? No. Something like esprit du corps.”

“Esprit du Peace Corps,” countered the placid man. The woman turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes, and pursing her lips.

“Mike, if you’re going to do this with the volunteers…“

“They’ll eat out of his hand.” The nervous man interrupted. And the don’t get to be called volunteers until they have completed their training. Michael’s putting on an act of his. He nerds it up and it helps him keep professional distance. Also it makes them comfortable, like with an uncle.”

Michael briefly guffawed. “Edgar knows me too well, already.” Even as he spoke he was scanning for logistical snags, reviewing the trainers with his eyes, glancing at his clipboard to count this and that, speaking soundless reminders to himself.

“Elaine, you’ll speak first, and you give ‘em a drill sergeant’s pep-talk,” said Mr. Nervous. Elaine’s eyes narrowed a second time.

“We have been over this enough times, my fearless leader. I set them up with a pep talk, then you knock ‘em down with a sense of duty talk. She seemed to be more experienced at the routine despite, clearly, that she had 20 fewer years on Earth. Her nervousness was a nervousness of too much caffeine while his mimicked a reaction to too few sedatives. He felt around in his pockets for something that might have been missing. Mike opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, deciding something.

The boss abruptly pivoted, addressed the most senior looking of the Solomon Islander contingent of his staff standing by.

“What’s the first performance the group will be doing?” The head trainer looked bewildered for a split second, then mentally translated the boss’s question and began his response. In the moment of confidence this offered Elaine, she turned to Mike.

“Is Edgar more freaky today or is it me?” Elaine let her agitation loose for a moment or two. It manifest through her eyes, her head, her dry mane of brown-yet-lightened hair tossing impatiently as she shifted her pocket-search for cigarettes from one tight hip pocket to another.

Mike looked into her face, then past her to where Edgar, their smoking, chatting rail-thin director, struggled through the use of Solomon Islands Pidgin with the trainer. Mike might have been responding with his eyes to Elaine’s query. She continued. “I would love to be able to disappear for the part where he gives his speech. People just don’t buy that shit, do they? Davis never would have—“

Mike showed his first vague sign of irritation, which was no more than a lessening of his placidity, still mainly in command of his face. “Edgar hasn’t been here long enough to have the confidence of a Davis. I’m sure once he finds his footing he’ll—“

“He better fucking find his footing I swear it.” Edgar spun back around now, an amazed look on his face.

“Did you know Francis’s parents have arranged a marriage for him for next year? Why, I didn’t even know that could happen here. Amazing!” His eyes widened with more amazement than words conveyed. Now Mike was the one to narrow his eyes at the boss.

“You know, that’s not the first time Francis has told you that, Edgar.” For a change of pace, Elaine decided to show the placidity.

“Edgar’s quite right though, Mike. This is my second stint in the South Pacific and I haven’t heard of arranged marriages from anyone besides Francis.”

There was a pause, then Mike displayed that side of his personality that neither of his co-administrators fathomed. He laughed loudly at himself, even slapped his knee. This gesture caused an immediate ripple of laughter to pass through the group of trainers. Soon they were all laughing heartily through their minor stage fright, for what reason they knew not.

Mike’s expression registered hearty approval of the trainers’ laughter. He wanted to make sure they stayed happy. These young people were important to the success of Peace Corps in the country. They represented the first impression each volunteer-in-training would have of the Solomon Islands: they would be the first teachers of customs, language, social norms. Amongst all the expatriate Europeans, Asians, North Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and Africans living in this tiny nation, only the missionaries could rival the Peace Corps in the quality of training in local language and culture. Trainers were Peace Corps’s life-blood. Still, Francis would need a talking to after the exchange with the boss. Was he bullshitting Edgar to make him look silly? If so, it would have to stop.

This is an excerpt from a book-length draft.

Please message me below if you'd like to read more.

Migraines in General

1/8/2008

In the daytime, when it's bright, anything can appear to be an aura. All the sunlight reflecting off cars and windows, one little shaft of light scintillates your eyes for a second, and you find yourself sitting on a bench or leaning against a brick facade doing a weird little diagnostic dance with your eyeballs. The dance basically involves cocking the head to one side then looking up and down repeatedly. The hand is usually part of the analysis. Looking at the fingers, one by one. You can do that during an aura, but you can't see the whole hand. If parts don't add up to wholes, then you have a migraine and you rush to find that drug to abort the thing.

Aborting a migraine can be done in a number of ways, and what works for you does not work for everyone. To make matters worse, a food or drug that helps you might make someone else's migraine worse. Isn't that a lot of fun?

The horrible time I had as a teenager coming to grips with migraine--failing to come to grips with it, really--leaves its impression to this day. I can't stand to think that I'm under a cloud of ignorance of what else I can do, or stop doing, to make the headaches come never again; I can't stand to think that many other people are stuck with this problem too. This life has many pleasures and desires, but none so great as to get through the day without any physical misery. Life is surprising enough without aura, and numbness, disturbances in cognition, general disorientation, and hallucinations.

Country Music as Art

(12/2006)

My spouse loves that Country Music. Not just Country, but "Young" country. What does young mean. Does it mean they put the stars out to pasture before they get too unappealing to the youngest, spendiest demographic? Does that mean that the Willies and Johnnys and Lorettas and Dollys of the future will fade to nothingness before they can have the second, third and fourth acts of their careers as their namesakes did? I have to say I don't like the "young" stuff too much. About the youngest star I can really listen to is Dwight Yoakam, who happens to have made is debut album north of twenty years ago. So I'm somewhat out of it.
So when I tell you I did some analysis of Country you'll forgive me, perhaps, if my studies are prejudiced by the older artists.

I figured out what Country Music has to say to me. It only came clear to me when I started thinking of the songs as part of a literary canon that should be studied with the nose held, in much the same was I held my nose whilst wading through "Classical" English Literature, such as the Bronte Sisters and whoever wrote Frankenstein.

The lament features a person with a "steady heart", known as "Me", paired tragically with someone who likes to go off dancing and cheating while poor Me cries; this person is known as "You". You makes Me feel like crap by Me can't help coming back again and again, or letting You in the door late at night even though You might smell like cheap perfume and alcohol, because Me can't live without You. Me even tried to live without you; this was folly for a "steady heart", incapable of the same neglectful lifestyle that You relishes.

Me may be a steady heart who can't live without You, but Me is no fool. Me even tried to go out with He or She for a while but the thought of You spoiled any effort to find new romance. For some reason He was boring and unattractive to Me, and even though He offered Me the world, You got in the way of Me's new love without even trying. He was patient and tried hard to understand the spell You held over Me, but ultimately that made Me find He even less attractive. Where Me found a She to love, there were a number of different reactions. Sometimes She was boring just like He; other times She was even more neglectful than You, causing Me's heart to be broken twice over.

My research has found, then, that Me is not just a "steady heart" but that Me loved You because of how callous You could be. You might have some words to say in defense of all this alleged mistreatment, but alas You was the silent one in every case, so research yielded no results. In the popular case of a duet, both voices inevitably sing the part of Me, causing the listener great disappointment to discover there are two Yous out there; that they are equally selfish and uncaring; and that they will not be allowed to speak for themselves, most of the time.

December 31, 2006

Dad Yelling Crosswalk Dec 2006

I was yelling at this lady for backing into me in the crosswalk (well, the car really just tapped me, but I yelled anyway.

Before that I was yelling at someone at work for being too loud.

I'm becoming my father. He yelled.

I wish Dad were still alive. I'd ask him: Did you ever feel bad ten minutes later, after you'd yelled at someone?

It was not her fault she was being incautious. Even if she killed you it wouldn't be her fault, as far as the squirrels and the trees were concerned. Supposing I died, would my wife be angry with her, then find a way to forgive her? Is there a reason to wonder these things? Did the people who died in the concentration camps look back from their afterlife and find a way to feel forgiveness for the Nazis, as Vonnegut envisioned in Happy Birthday, Wanda June?

What about the lady in the car, who almost backed over me? Did she imagine herself in my shoes, and she in mine, and wonder to herself, whether she would have yelled at me the way I yelled at her? I hope so!

My blustery behavior notwithstanding, I believe I think the best of most people, and I want them to think the best of people as well. How can this be so? In practice I'm a boor like all the other boors.

Headed to Buenos Aires, 1996

We're headed to Buenos Aires. Don't be nervous. don't assume. Don't go crazy. don't spend too much time, too much money. Why are you coming here? Where are you going next? How do you intend to get along? Breathe deeply. Build a sort of foundation of experience to make this happen smoothly. What questions need to be asked each time. How much do you charge? How long will this take? Which bus goes there? Don't be in a hurry if you can manage it. 10 years of some kind of waiting ends today so your heart is beating wildly. In the end you'll smile about it, and you'll thank yourself for getting over all the fear that's held you back.

I want to see the beauty of the place, feeling the combination of history, nature, culture, anger, happiness, fear, inspiration that carved its name into the continent in boldest of letters. The hearts of Borges, Cortázar, and countless other creators are beating here if you put your ear to the right street lamp.

The Dad's Death Idea

Outside the hospice I laugh; what's that guy doing selling cheap Van Gogh prints in the parking lot. Who pays for that? Especially here? Once again, I have a tin ear for my own culture: a couple hours later, there's my sister, with "Starry Night" in her back seat.

I have this book idea, called Madhouse Diary. It's all over my blog, or it will be soon if it's not. The book would be my own re-do of Dad's self-published manuscript from 1989 or so. The title of it then was Love, Lust and Schizophrenia, Volume 1: Snakes and Other Lowlife. I still blame myself, somewhat, for not telling him to save his money and not self-publish.

It was a sad story how badly done the thing was, from start to finish. Dad never sold to anyone outside his own circle of friends and relatives, and to this very day his multiple hundred copies of the first edition are taking up space in some storage locker.

Not long after, or before, the Van Gogh scene outside the hospice, Dad asked if my sister or myself would like to take the manuscript and do more with it. He said we were "welcome to it".

After I had time to think about it, I realized a semi-autobiographical manuscript is not the worst legacy, even if the story is a bit disjointed and written in the style of a person who rarely reads books of that genre, or any genre.

Whenever I have something tagged with Madhouse Diary, it means it is a possible scene in my own remaking of Dad's story.

(November 2006)

November!

I don't usually write today's thoughts here; the purpose, in fact, in starting a blog, was to blog the past: things I wrote back then, and things I wrote about from back then.

Tonight I write right now, about right now: the sore throat, the Democratic victory in the midterm elections, the Baccus family visit to DC; the exciting prospect of finding a house to live in.

The present is bland, isn't it? The past isn't glorious; it has a texture, a smell, and you know how it's going to turn out, more often than not. It builds itself in your memory, changes from joyful into heavenly, from fearful into heroic. I was a super-being at ten years old, according to my memory.

Here's my method so far: I have been google-desk-topping my writings to find this month's entries. Any Novembers that show up in the last 21 years of entries I have in digital formats, then, will come up.

The problem are the non-digital entries.

(11/13/2006)

Alfred and Carla on Ice (fiction excerpt)

(1996-2000; excerpt from much longer story Up and Down the Ladder)

The minivan was stuck on a small patch of ice in the Howard's driveway. This would be easy to free up but Al was caught up in his old feelings, knowing Carla was bringing him to the silly party he'd never otherwise have attended just for the purpose of not telling him something really awful like that she wouldn't like to see him again. She'd brought him out on a couple other occasions not to tell him to back off--but he wasn't getting her message. In fact he never seemed to receive any of the messages she didn't send. Carla was terrible at sending messages, or not sending them, in this silent way; Al actually knew it, instinctively, but there was a romantic and highly foolish impulse squelching the instinct Al read most clearly in Carla's dinner invitations: the message "stay away from now on". So he kept making new drawings for her and calling her after work and speaking to her mother when Carla was out with other friends, creating an increasingly awkward web of unbearably blurred communications between them in which he moved closer and closer to feeling in love with her even though he could tell it was hopeless and even though she returned his calls with less and less enthusiasm but without any true hint of "no" in her voice.

He would have a couple of visits a week in which she brushed off lightly all attempts to touch her and in which he'd begun to see evidence of her non-attraction, after a couple days of Al telling himself, the next visit is going to be different.

Tonight was the next one and it was no different. He sat in the passenger seat of her dad's minivan noticing she had it hung up on a spot if ice listening to a stupid song by his favorite singer. She liked that singer too except his stupid songs were her favorites which Al had originally found interesting or at least amusing but which lately had begun to seem like a warning sign. The stupid song and Carla's absent minded and unfrustrated attempts to move the car were enough to create an air of amusing yet depressing ambience. He noticed that snow had begun to fall. He'd like to watch it accumulate through the window at Paul's house."Let's forget the party and go to Paul's", he said. Paul was a nearby friend who offered Al's favorite types of distraction day or night. He knew Carla would not end up going there-he even asked himself why he continued on with her when so much of her actions he knew ahead of time. But it always seemed worth trying. What he'd been toying with for months was the idea she might have a drink or smoke some pot with him and begin to loosen up and talk about how she felt about him. Paul liked to call pot the "golden lasso" which never altered but simply "magnified the salient aspects of our personalities so we can't be false any longer." Paul was a big vocabulary builder for his Alfred, who loved to be with people who seemed incredibly intelligent.

It never occured to Alfred that Carla didn't need a lasso, that she might already be telling him how she felt.

Carla refused the golden lasso by saying "oh, maybe later", in a far off whisper, but not without a bit of an eager flash of her eyes and a squeeze of his hand saying, if he could have given noticing the physical hints that she might want him, it would have saved Al quite a bit of trouble. The lasso itself was a delicious idea to her, but she didn't much care for Paul.

In fact Carla wondered why Al was having such a hard time seeing what she really wanted from life. As he traded seats with her to casually remove the minivan from the icy spot with cautious reverse-forward, reverse-forward rocking motions she repeated to herself mentally what she'd not said so many times: "I'm not ready. If I were ready it'd probably with you. I like you a lot and I know you're ready but I'm just not." Was he not listening? Did he think she was kidding? Did he need to hear more? It was a busy life for her preparing to graduate and to face the absolute confusion of college applications and all the other senior year headaches. Wasn't he too busy for chasing her this way? True he was one of the most honest and creative people she knew, and he had a great knack for introducing her to other people he worked with or met in other towns, and she even found it flattering that Al constantly ignored blatant advances by Caroline from Ireland, the exchange student all the lower classmen boys lusted for- because he was too stuck on her, Carla. But Carla's reason was plain and simple with no hidden truth beneath it. She wanted to get education over with and start seeing the world and start making some difference in it instead of all this silly, amusing talk.

They drove in considerable silence through the freezing November night to her friend Margaret's house-sit, Carla feeling the sense of relief at hearing other company and Alfred welcoming another oncoming attack of gloom and reflection. It would be awful to stay at Margaret's house-sit long unless there was plenty of intoxicant on hand. This Thanksgiving break business was a bit rough on his psyche because of a memory of a very strange thanksgiving when he was five and the whole town saw Mom and Dad throw groceries at one another along the Massachusetts Avenue near the town common after some confusion at a repair shop had left them stranded with a flat tire and no spare, forty-five minutes late for Aunt Ruth's family dinner gathering. Thanksgiving is when everyone shouts, he'd told his first grade teacher inadvertently, only to be rewarded with a full year of afternoon counseling sessions and some paperwork for Dad which caused another uncomfortable public scene (which he found out about later) between the school principal and Dad.

He thought about telling Carla the old Thanksgiving story but that was potent poison to be dumping on her holiday Wednesday night out so he let it go. He forced a bit of cheer and small talk to help her relax, silently brooding that he had to be at an overcrowded high school Van Halen and J. Geils party instead of back at Paul's with a big joint and some Velvet underground playing But when they arrived he was delighted to see Paul and some of his cronies on the back porch by the full keg, quietly criticizing the whole world . Carla trotted off toward her dependent, sullen-eyed friends who awaited her at every turn, and Al let himself relax a moment, laughing at nothing except the opportunity to escape to his dependent, sullen eyed friends.

Alfred woke up alone at 8:30 on Thanksgiving morning 1984 with a raging headache, alone in someone's bedroom, with a Led Zeppelin poster over the bed and a model something hanging off the ceiling. Shoes off but clothes on. He could smell Carla's hair but she'd left him with a kiss on the cheek and embrace, probably. The driveway was empty of cars and there was a substantial snowstorm in progress. As he searched the house for his jacket he found a few survivors, friends of Margaret and Carla that he hardly knew, and he helped them pick up cigarette packs and beer cups for a while. He'd been paid early because of the holiday so he had plenty of cigarettes to share. He was happy to be among such a neutral and cooperative scene for the moment. But it was Thanksgiving and he had to figure out how to get his ass back to Dad's before someone sent out a search party. So he started walking toward the center of town a couple miles away with the great wet chunks of snow sticking to his hair and no sound but the falling of it.

(1996-2000)

Food & Sex (1986)

It's Saturday afternoon. I am some person living at some college trying to think of something to do with myself. This is odd because I spend the majority of my time trying to figure how to get dona all that I have to do. Next week is Thanksgiving. I will be going home and trying to get money from members of my family. That is a college student's favorite past time: money grubbing.

And once he has the money it is squandered on odd unnecessary things like alcohol or movies or expensive fast food. Then he goes back for more. He finds it easy to believe that some sort of satisfaction may come from going out and spending this money. Again and again, he is proven wrong but that never stops him. It is a perverted cycle of the human mind.

I was talking to Dan today about orgasms.

"You figure half the people in the world," I said, "they think only about getting food because they don't just have it given to them the way you and I do. The other half, the people who already have food, they spend most of their time thinking about orgasms. And everything they do is in some way at least indireclty related to that pursuit."

"Yeah." Dan had toothpaste dripping from his chin. "That's about the size of it."

Triad Chapter 1 (fiction excerpt)

The Landing

Planet earth became busier and busier, the pace of life reaching beyond any plan nature or gods could have devised. Greater discoveries and bolder inventions brought humans and their surroundings closer and closer to the crisis of knowing everything and doing everything, yet their earliest folly, which had come with them and every other animal out of the primal muck of earth’s fecund womb, still hunted them every day of their lives: violence and conflict tore at the lives of people; most of them suffered; the few who did not suffer the violence of physical privation were instead plagued by the crisis of conscience created by witnessing such a cruel reality. Throughout the world, humans attempted to create a universal environment of understanding, but underneath it all, animal instinct carried the day, usually with less compassionate results than most people, if they thought about it, would desire.

Many predicted that a destructive force would bring the end of all things. Some said the earth would rid herself of humanity as a body destroys a threatening infection. Others reasoned that God would carry the pure of heart to a paradise, destroying the pathetic sinners. The notion of the onslaught of something was shared by growing numbers of people.

Then, at a time when much of humanity looked outside their own world in expectation of some great change, landed three separate alien invasions. There was no fanfare, no immediate response to the arrival of the foreigners. In fact, most people didn’t notice—even many people whose job it was specifically to notice such things.

Not Careful

(10/2006)

I was at the halfway point, out at something they call Candy Cane. It's over the Maryland line, uphill through Beach Drive. I ran it in the chill 40 degrees Fahrenheit, then felt the weakness you feel after you migraine.

I wasn't careful a few nights ago, with my medicine, and ended up with a migraine. It's just that easy. In the old days I had an excuse: I didn't know all the dangers around me that could flip the trigger. Now I know all too well about the dangers. Cheese, wine, chocolate, nuts, various delicious things that require aging--also in the mix are a variety of environmental factors. No sleepless nights; no over-exertion; no skipping meals; no flashing lights.

No flashing lights? How the hell is a person supposed to live in this world, in this strange country full of electrical things, without flashing lights?

I ask you again, how? What if I had a stroke, right here and now. My wife would find my body in a couple hours and I would awaken to various beeping sounds, the smell of a disinfectant, and the many, many electic lights of a hospital, including some metal box that monitors my heart and flashes a number every few seconds. If I was conscious at the time of my removal from the house, I'd have to witness the speedy metal conveyance they call an ambulance, flashing its lights for everyone within a mile to notice. Or if anyone nearby gets hurt during a normal day (this is a city; it happens every day) I'll have to see the same thing. How can I be more careful?

Not skipping meals may be the next hardest part. Who eats meals on time? I don't mean that as a hypothetical question. Who makes it to every meal? You have to be a hard-on about that, especially at work. At first I wasn't--you get into these meetings where some dick isn't paying attention to time (I mean, the only person in the room who's ignoring the time is the guy running the meeting) and you can't pay attention to anything he's saying and when he says is that a good idea you just mumble something, hoping to heaven he doesn't have another point to make. But he does have another point to make, of course, and by the time you get to where your food is your scalp is already tingling or your face feels like it's turning into cold clay, and, vavoom! There goes the next three hours.

Needless to say that doesn't keep me from having lunch anymore. I don't work for Amway, or the Krishna consciousness movement, where they really do use deprivation of meals to persuade people to do what they're told. I'm just talking about a regular workplace.

(written 10/2006)

Doing a Double (fiction excerpt: Madhouse Diary)

(10/2004)

Ed on Madhouse Diary: Doing a Double

Dad worked in a mental hospital. He'd come home at 4:30 except on the days when he worked double shifts. Then he came home after 11:00. When he was mad at us kids for fighting or generally being difficult he'd remind us that just to keep us in clothes was costing him two sixteen hour work days a week. Every Sunday night and every Thursday night was the schedule. I guess he had Saturday off. He usually slept all day. His snoring was loud enough to make us all understand that we better be quiet. I counted sixteen hours on the clock one day and realized that, as far as functioning through the day, sixteen hours was more than one day. It was all the day's life drained from it, and some of its bones ground into dust as well. I was a kid then, and I knew that a length of time you wouldn't even be bothered doing fun things had to be torture. Dad was a big strong man but we knew he was killing himself gradually.

Years later I'd work a couple sixteen hour shifts to see what it was like. I didn't have kids at home, I wasn't working in a mental hospital, and I wasn't an overweight smoker like dad, but I bet I felt something like what he felt. You don't want to feel that. Around the fourteenth hour I remember something like madness creeping in, then fleeing quickly and leaving me with a queasy sense of triumph that I hadn't fallen into the abyss. There was some gateway that opened in the mind during the double, but it was easy for young, fearless me to see it as a fearful place and step away from it. But was Dad able to avoid its lure?

The whole notion of working in the mad house is a Dickens nightmare. How did Dad come to it as a viable employment option? He could've worked fifteen miles closer to home at something far safer. Safer both physically and mentally. I worked it out in my mind that something about being in the crazy house made Dad feel justified in being in a terrible mood all the time. When it came time to voice his state of mind to the world, what else need he say besides "mental hospital" and "kids at home" before even the most cold-hearted listener would begin to think, that explains it.

(Written 10/2004)