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.
Showing posts with label dad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dad. Show all posts
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
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)
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)
Monday, October 09, 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)
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)
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)
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
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)
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