I guess things are gonna change

I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately. About the changes we have to resolve ourselves to make, the ones we want to make but are too scared to make. About changes that are forced upon us, about changes that we can do nothing about.

And it’s all scary. Even the changes we want to make most. I’m not treading any new ground in saying this. We’re all terrified of it. How do we know that it’ll work out for the best when we make those changes? How can we cope knowing that decisions that will affect our lives are made without us?

We can’t know the future, and the comfort of the past leaves us a cushion to fall back on. When that cushion is ripped away from us and we can’t continue to rely on it, moving forward is scary. It’s scary because our safety is gone. Experience has trained us to expect that cushion to be there for us and when it isn’t, we don’t know who or what to turn to when things potentially go wrong. And so sometimes it’s easier to just hide away from it. When the change is in our control we can choose to leave things as they are, instead. We can sit and stare at it until the opportunity has run itself dry and be left to wonder “what if?” It’s an all too easy option. Change could lead to something better in those cases, but the possibilities of what could go wrong can keep us from making the decision. Our choices define us, and sometimes, it’s hard to live up to that expectation.

Change begets change. Sometimes, the unforeseen ones have the largest impact. There are people who touch our lives that must leave it.  We have to deal with that when it comes, be reminded of the temporary nature of relationships, of the impact one person can have on us. And I’m not even talking about people passing away—people move, they graduate, they find new opportunities—they move on. And we have to let them, and we have to move on for ourselves. When that is our only option there is nothing to do but ponder what the change means, what we can learn from it and how to create a new world of comfort for ourselves. Ponder the relationships we have now and how to make the most of them—say what we want to say, ask what we want to ask, let people know what they mean to you.

“In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back.” – Charlie Brown

We have to find our own answers and judge for ourselves how to deal with change and how to confront it. Because when we look back on our lives, there’s nothing we can do about the changes that have happened and the ones we have failed to make happen. I’m not an expert, I don’t even take my own advice, but things are always changing. We should, at least, control the ones we can and embrace the uncertainty. Maybe I’ll do that.

I think I spelled your name wrong.

I think I spelled your name wrong.

Hopefully you didn’t notice. Of course you’ll notice; it’s your name.

But hopefully the sentiment was enough that you can forgive such an error. I was in a hurry and didn’t even think to check that one word at the beginning. Cause, see, when I think of you I get caught up in the bigger picture. I think you can overlook that, I just can’t help it.

We’re only human and I know that sometimes grand gestures are silly but I get caught up in the idea of them and I lose the details. I really want the big picture; the whole package.  Details are for the patient and I really don’t have that.

I’d say it’s because life is short but it’s because I really just want to skip to the good parts; you know, the stuff in the movies. Maybe that’s girly, I know it’s not supposed to be the guy’s problem to have his love life expectations dictated by media. That’s not archetypical. I’m supposed to do all the work.

What I wrote to you was great: eloquent and articulate. I said everything I wanted to say and I said it well. I thought about maybe sending it with a flower, but that would be cheesy. I don’t want to be cheesy; I just want to be honest.

I was so concerned with the how and the when that I think I spelled your name wrong. But that doesn’t matter because I was too afraid to give you the letter, anyway.

The Hill

The fire has gone out. The plumes of smoke that once tapered into the sky are gone now. Only a lone stack remains, like an abandoned candle blown out by the wind.

And all the men that stand on the hill sip champagne and clap one another on the backs. They are victorious this afternoon. Their long struggle for environmental reforms ending victorious at last. They smoke cigars and the ashes fall over browning grass.

 There was life here once. It wasn’t green and growing and foliage and deer and birds. But it was life.

Families spent afternoons on this hill, watching the smoke rise, proud of their fathers who made their afternoon possible. Teenagers spent evenings on this hill, drinking beer under the distant glow of the flames. First kiss beneath the smoldering sky.

People were married here.

Now the grass cracks underfoot. There haven’t been families on this hill in years. There hasn’t been work beneath the smokestacks for a family to live on. The town beneath this hill was once the distant fantasy of the far away dreamers. Cars traveled to and from the flames constantly like moths with a purpose. Mothers walked their children to the store. Dads lined up outside stores on Christmas Eve for last minute presents.

Nothing travels those streets anymore.

The fire has been dying for years now. Lobbyists and politicians have been demanded it be extinguished. It bothered them. A rustic remembrance of an outdated economic model. It wasn’t the need to cut costs, they said. It was public health, they said.

The fire had killed the memories upon the hill. The dream was burned away from the inside, not poisoned from without.

A single father stood in his old home beneath the hill. The fire had gone out and with it gone, so went his parent’s home. They had bought the house brand new so that future generations could have a place to live. It had lasted one and a half.

Upon the hill there were no more families. There was only the hollow victory of a hollow battle that meant nothing for anyone. The men in their suits had no plans for that old, blown out candle.

The sun dips beneath the horizon and for the first time in many years the hill is dark. The people beneath the hill muddle about their homes to salvage former lives, while the men in suits leave their cigars behind, a miniaturized memorial of what they have extinguished.

The fire has gone out.

Some Poems

 

First World Angst

Dawn at midnight
Endless cycle of borrowed time
Day becomes evening,
Evening becomes companion.
Fallen down traditions

Rupture.

No more conventions,
Only gatherings of faithless movements.
Modern times,
Postmodern times,
The story is still the same.
Things change.

 

Perspective

Flying high, but never free
Set on course by debts repaid
Fleeting joy and endless possibility.
A single choice,
A defining moment.
The world continues without change,
Spurious choices alter only perception.
Fly on course, fly higher and higher.
Reach the stars, the same old stars,
Veiled in fog.
Defaulted debts;
Free at last but without chance.

I. Guerilla War

Stolen glances behind backs,

Trained thumbs dance

Over choreographed keys.

Abbreviated messages

With hidden meanings,

Brokered faster than conscience.

Insincere smiles mask bitter feuds,

One-sided and unspoken,

But hard-fought and brutal.

Taking aim by deflection,

Battles never won.

Confrontation

Ignored.

Treaties were never brokered

With passivity.

Untitled

Fortune favors the bold, they say.

Former heroes lie in bed,

Burns and scars and everything

Broken.

Empty windbags on the hill,

Stare down at the favored bold,

Poor and struggling;

Fortunate.

 

 

 December 2010

Haikus and short poems

1.
Cannibal soup
I’ve heard it tastes quite good
But varies by person.

2.

Notebook a mess
Scribbled out writing
Breakfast would have helped

3.

Leaves on the ground
Make it hard to be shifty
No muggings tonight

4.

Working in a sewer
Makes a person grateful
For a pet skunk

5.

Foundation shaky
Shouldn’t build a house of cards
On a moving bus

November-December 2010

A Trip to the Zoo (2nd Draft, Work in Progress)

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Philadelphia; the perfect day to take a child to the zoo. The sun was out, there was a cool breeze and the traffic off the Vine Street Expressway was only mildly suffocating. In the parking lot, Margaret Fuller took a long drag of her cigarette and absentmindedly blew the smoke into the sky. Her son Ricky ran around her in circles laughing. “Please settle down, Ricky, we’re in public,” she sighed. Ricky slowed and then hopped twice before coming to a complete stop. “Come on!” he called, bouncing in his Payless sneakers. This was Ricky’s first trip to the zoo. Margaret’s too, for that matter.

Margaret dropped her cigarette and dug it into the blacktop beneath the sole of her shoe. “Let’s go,” she said, and unceremoniously took Ricky’s small hand in hers. While she absentmindedly walked between the cars, each of her son’s steps were a conscious march to an excited drum that built to a crescendo until they came to the pay window.

“An adult and a child, please.”

“That’ll be 24 dollars, ma’am,” the seller responded.

“It’s 14 dollars for a five year old?” The man nodded. “Ridiculous, he’s barely a person. It’s not enough I had to pay 12 dollars for parking?” The question was, of course, rhetorical, and Margaret threw 30 dollars down for payment. The ticket seller seemed used to this treatment and continued to smile as he made change.

“Enjoy your visit, little man,” he said to Ricky, who couldn’t take his eyes off the horizon, where already he could hear various animal sounds. Margaret let out a sniff of annoyance, “Have a wonderful day,” she hissed with sarcasm. “Come on, Ricky.” Again she grabbed her son’s hand and they headed into the zoo.

Ricky was too infatuated with all of the new visual stimulus and exotic smells. “It smells like poop!” He proudly declared.

“Hush, don’t say that out loud,” Margaret corrected. As soon as they came upon the nearest cage, Ricky broke free of his mother’s loose grip and ran to it. There was simply too much new here for the boy to handle. Sights and sounds and smells that were unlike anything he had ever encountered before. His heart pounded and his feet operated faster than his brain could process.

“Monkeys!” He yelled, bouncing up and down as he held onto the railing in front of the cage. Margaret’s phone rang, and she turned to answer it, finger against her ear. All of this nature was so noisy. Margaret was adjusting to the new sensations as well. The taste of stale nicotine mixed uncomfortably with the smell of fertilizer in the back of her sinuses. The sounds of the monkeys reminded her too much of a shrieking baby.

“Hello, Donna. No, no, I’m at the zoo with—yes, I know, but I promised him ages ago. He hasn’t let me forget. I always assumed children had the memory span of a goldfish. No, I wish. I don’t even like dogs. Ricky, honey, don’t go under the railing!” She called from the distance, only vaguely noticing that her son had started to try to attempt to join the animals. “Honestly, it’d be easier if I had one of the monkeys. Donna, yes, I’ll be seeing you soon, I don’t think we’ll be staying here long, not if I have anything to—“

“I want to see the polar bears!” Ricky shouted, tugging at his mother’s pants. Apparently he had not been successful at climbing the fence.

“OK,dear, we’ll see the polar bears,” Margaret managed to get out between her friend’s sentences. “Donna you have just got to tell me about last night,” she continued, letting her son lead her to where he thought the polar bears were located.

All around the zoo, various types of birds wandered freely, all of which enticed Ricky to no end. “Ricky, stop running, dear,” she peppered between gossip with Donna. “He really is an impossible child slow down, dear. Anyway, did he live up to the hype? I just can’t find the time for men while having to raise Ricky, it’s such hard work.” Margaret howled in laughter at something Donna said, at the same time Ricky had just successfully tossed a rock at a rooster crossing his path. Encouraged by this response, he picked up another pebble and threw it at the bird. It crowed, inciting Ricky to run behind his mother’s legs. “See, honey, that’s why you need to be respectful,” Margaret explained. “Now, which way are the monkeys?”

“Polar bears! Already saw monkeys,” Ricky said matter-of-factly, wagging his little finger at his mother. “They’re this way!” He declared, and continued on his path, now avoiding the chickens.

In fact, the polar bears were not at all in the direction they were going, but every other animal imaginable seemed to be. Margaret tried her best to not actually look at any of them, but Ricky was fascinated and pulled at her pant leg until she paid attention. She was much more concerned with living her friend Donna’s life vicariously through the phone. Donna led such an interesting and exciting social life, one uncolored by an unplanned five year old.

“Unfortunately, Donna, Michael couldn’t take Ricky today—I know, I tried to explain to him that I had already made plans, but Michael insisted I take care of Ricky today. Something about not seeing me enough—no I don’t know what he’s doing today, probably spending it with that woman he’s been seeing. Oh yes she and Michael have been together for a year. Where he finds the time I have no idea—Ricky, stop here—OK, yes, I’ll see you then. Absolutely, tonight. Wine.”

Mother and son came across the lions, and Ricky had his face pressed against the glass. “Where’s the daddy?” He questioned.

“Letting the mommy do all the work, I’m sure,” Margaret answered. This was the first time she had actually looked at the animals—Donna had to go to a salon appointment—and she began to envy the lioness. Not so much because a lioness was accepted as the one who took on many of the responsibilities, but because if she was really frustrated with her cub, she could just tear it apart as she bathed it.

Ricky made his way over to a pile of freshly fallen leaves and began gathering them up, while his mother stared out into space. He hoisted his shirt collar over his head and began to stuff it with leaves. “Mommy, look at my mane!” he declared, and followed it up with a roar.

“It’s beautiful, honey.” She flicked on her lighter and inhaled deeply from her fresh cigarette, her eyes fixed blankly on the shuffling crowd and never actually passing over her son. Ricky stayed posed for his mother for a moment and then shook the leaves from his shirt. Margaret took a last look at the lions before turning to her son.

When she caught sight of Ricky again, he was wandering away from the lion exhibit.

“Gorilla!” the boy was amazed and ran over to the glass to get a look at the animal. “The big monkeys are my favorite. Why do they have hands for feet? Do they need to hold more bananas? How come they aren’t smart enough to talk? Joey told me that they are just like humans only not as smart.” Margaret exhaled a wisp of smoke from between her lips. “Do you think they can understand people talk?” Ricky continued. “BANANA!” he shouted at the glass, and pressed his nose right up against it. “Banana!” he screamed again.

“Ricky, be quiet, honey, we’re in public,” Margaret corrected, exhaustion clear in her voice. Ricky tore himself away from starting at the gorilla and ran to the elephants that he had just noticed.

“Ma’am, you can’t smoke that here,” someone behind Margaret spoke. She turned to look at the voice. He was young, maybe in his 20s, and was wearing the green employee polo. “You can’t smoke here, I need you to put the cigarette out.” Margaret stared at him for a moment, and let the cigarette fall from between her fingertips. With as much grandeur as she could muster, she turned on her heels and walked toward her son.

He was already bored with the elephants and was again running toward the lions. Margaret already missed her cigarette. She followed her son toward the lion exhibit, past the tigers, and they wound around the felines twice. “No polar bears,” Ricky declared sadly.

“Let’s have lunch, dear, I am starving.” Ricky looked up at his mother, pouting. “But I want to see polar bears!”

“We’ll find them after lunch, dear,” Margaret assured him in as motherly a voice as she was capable of.

“But I want to see the polar bears!” Ricky reminded more forcefully. Margaret stared at him, much as she had stared at the zoo employee that told her to put out the cigarette. “Fine, we’ll go find the polar bears.” Her lips were pierced together so tightly that if she had still been smoking she may have cut her cigarette clean in two. Ricky bounced up and down in excitement, and Margaret led him away. She took a last look at the big cats, and noticed the lioness holding the cub against the ground with one paw. “If only,” she thought.

Together they wound around the lake at the center of the zoo. All the while, Ricky attempted to get a good look at all the different animal exhibits, but Margaret was on a mission for polar bears. The boy did not seem to mind too much, though, and was enjoying his brief glimpses at so many different creatures. She looked at her watch. They had already been here an hour-and-a-half.

“Rhinosaurus!” he squealed, and squirmed out of Margaret’s grip. He ran over to the fence where the rhinoceros were gathered, and appeared to be eating. Ricky pointed his finger from his forehead and walked toward his mother, jabbing her in the leg with his faux-rhinoceros horn.

“See, even the rhinoceroses are eating, Ricky, we should be, too,” Margaret pointed out, apparently not even noticing she was being jabbed by her son. She stared at the horned creatures with much the same interest she had the lions, as if they were the first animals she had ever taken the time to look at. They seemed completely disinterested in the world around them, unconcerned with anything but their grass. Two stood side-by-side, apparently completely unaware that the other was there; completely focused on what they were doing at the moment.

Ricky had given up on his one-child stampede and looked past his mother. Behind her he saw on a nearby sign a drawing of a bear. “Bears!” He ran past his mother and pushed through the crowd.

Margaret turned slowly, and followed the general direction Ricky had taken off on. She found him a few moments later, staring through the glass at a swimming polar bear. Margaret leaned disinterestedly on an informational plaque. “Where do polar bears come from, mommy?” Ricky asked.

“I don’t know, honey,” she responded, idly fiddling with a pack of cigarettes she wished she could open. The polar bear floated toward the glass, and Ricky’s eyes widened in disbelief. Margaret tapped her fingers on the plaque she was leaning against. The bear seemed to look at the crowd for a moment, and then turned away just as suddenly. Ricky was either terrified or excited to have seen the animal so close. He turned to his mother in disbelief. Margaret was more concerned with the idea that they had even taken the time to look at the polar bear, and as far as she was concerned, the polar bear looking back at them was a silent agreement with her assessment.

The bear pressed its nose against the glass and Ricky was in the perfect position to have his small fingers up against its nose. Astonished, he banged as hard against the glass as he could. Margaret put a stop to that immediately. “You’re going to embarrass me,” she whispered. Ricky was not hindered by this turn of events. He pressed his lips against the glass. As he did so, the polar bear swam away and out of its pool.

“I scared it!” he declared. His mother glanced around to see if anyone was staring. Ricky pulled at her pant leg .

“What is it, honey?”

“I want to see the monkeys.”

“We saw the monkeys already, it’s time to go get food.”

“But I want to see the monkeys!”

“I told you after the polar bear we’d go get food. Didn’t you like seeing the polar bear?”

“Yeah, he looked right at us, it was so neat!” Ricky seemed so pleased with the last experience that he simply wandered off without any particular goal. Margaret took her opportunity and without saying anything further, led her son to the exit. He didn’t seem to mind, as he continued to chatter nonstop about the animals. The elephants had apparently sprayed each other with water. The monkeys were funny too, because they all jumped over one another, and apparently he had managed to see a peacock spread its feathers.

They were in the car and back on the road before Ricky seemed to notice they had even left. For a moment, Margaret was prepared to explain why it was time to leave, but Ricky began to talk nonstop again, and continued to do so until they had reached the suburbs.

The highway gave way to rows of identical houses. Manicured shrubbery and piles of bagged leaves framed the sidewalks. Middle-aged women tended to their dying flowers, and more than a few men were out mowing their lawns. Margaret pulled up to the driveway of a particularly well-kept house, one that still had green grass and not a single leaf on the lawn. She parked behind a slick, red Corvette that looked like it had just been washed. Margaret stepped out of her mid-90s brown and faded Escort and she and her son approached the door. She knocked and waited.

After a minute, she grew impatient and knocked again. Moments following, the door opened, and a visibly flustered man in his early 30s came to the door. “Margaret, what are you doing here? Is Ricky alright? I didn’t expect you back today, not this early at least.”

“We finished at the zoo, Michael. Right, honey?” Margaret responded. Ricky nodded absentmindedly, too involved in chewing on the french fries they had picked up from a fast food place to really have an answer.

“Did you have fun, Ricky?” Michael asked, and extended a hand to invite his son back inside.

“Yeah! A Polar bear looked right at us! Wasn’t it cool, mom?”

“It was very cool, dear,” Margaret responded.

“Why don’t you go inside, Ricky, I’ll be in with you in a minute, Laura’s in the kitchen baking a cake.” Ricky ran inside at the mention of cake, leaving Michael and Margaret alone to talk. “You were supposed to spend the day with him.”

“I was supposed to spend time with him. And we did! He’s wanted to go to the zoo for a long time, and I promised him I would take him, we had a great time.” Michael rubbed his temples in frustration, but Margaret was sincere.

“We had a great time,” she repeated.

Sherman on the Pier

My friend has a house in North Wildwood right off of the bridge. It’s like a little cottage on a pier, all wooden and ramshackle, but not in a bad way. The ceiling is lined with fishing rods, and we sleep in the lofts. The roof leaks and the floor is uneven. It’s a treasure. His family’s owned it for years, probably longer than he’s been alive. The beautiful thing about that house is the sense of isolation. There are neighbors, but it’s disconnected from the tourist community. The pier sits on the bay, overlooking nothing but the water and a few houses and a bait store on the other side. At night the lights of the boardwalk shine in the distance; the Ferris wheel sits atop the horizon like a Bruce Springsteen song. The world stops when you’re on that pier—it’s timeless.

Not terribly long ago I spent a week there, myself and a pretty large group of people. We spent the days jumping off the pier, combating the tide and sitting in the sun. It was quite a sun too, bright, overpowering and hot. But that was OK; we had an ice cold bay right beneath our feet. Into this idyllic scene wandered a cat. At first, it was just a stray, there were plenty of them down the road, and for one to make its way to us was not unlikely. It stuck around for a while; at first I don’t think we even noticed it too much. But the cat didn’t leave.

In my experience, this was bad news. Not only am I allergic to cats, I find them to be stuck up and altogether unpleasant. But, the cat stuck around and since it had been playing pretty nicely for an hour or so, it was rewarded with attention. After it had been pet and deemed to be fairly well behaved, someone picked it up; it purred and calmly accepted this situation. The girls fed it, and somewhere along the way it got the name Sherman.

I resisted the creature for a day or so, but eventually, even my deep-seeded prejudice against felines was broken down. Sherman was an exceptionally well-behaved creature, more so than most housecats I’ve come across, and the fact that it was a stray tugged at something inside of me, I guess.

We fed it a lot—and I do mean a lot. Pretty much anything we didn’t eat during the week, we left outside for Sherman. He (or maybe she, I don’t think we ever came to a real conclusion) made a home for himself underneath a capsized boat on the side of the house. After a few days, Sherman became a part of our routine. We’d put water out for him every morning, feed him minnows and whatever other spare food we could find, and watch him chase around birds. We were as doting on a stray animal as was possible—more possible than I thought was possible, really.

I can’t really put my finger on why we all fell in love with that cat— myself especially. Something about how quickly he warmed up to and how much he apparently needed us stuck with me that week. He was all too happy to be picked up, to take our food and enjoy our company. I swear he recognized his name. Late in the week, after a long night, we had all gone to bed only to hear an unearthly screech. Something like I’d imagine a cat sounds like when it’s being stepped on by an elephant. I didn’t really know what to make of it; no one else did either. Three of us (at this point the only occupants left) rushed outside to find him at 3 in the morning. We searched for a half hour, but Sherman was nowhere to be found. At the time I thought it pretty ridiculous that we all cared so much about a cat that wasn’t ours, and to be honest I still kind of do—but there it was—three dead-tired vacationers standing on a pier in the dead of the night, trying to find a cat. Just as we were giving up, Sherman came back, much to our relief. Unwarranted relief, but relief nonetheless.

When it came time to leave we had all become so attached to Sherman that we resolved to take it with us. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but what the hell, we felt bad for the thing. It was emaciated and ate like any meal might be its last one, and I personally enjoyed that it was a cat that didn’t act like it was better than me. Not really unexpectedly, Sherman ran when we tried to carry it in a box to the car. As we tried to calm him down, a mother and son passed by, and recognized Sherman as Whiskers. Apparently, our little group wasn’t so special. Eventually, we managed to get him into the box again, but he bolted even faster that time and disappeared completely.

We looked for Sherman for a while, but we never did find him.

Maybe we weren’t supposed to. I think back to the boy who recognized “Whiskers” and wonder if he moved onto another pier and touched the lives of another little community like ours. Maybe that’s what he was there to do.

December 2, 2010

A Penny Saved

The inherent value of a penny is nonexistent. It once was worth something, but now people seem to be more likely to drop it because of inconvenience than keep it around and save it up. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” Ben Franklin is famous for saying. But it takes so long for those pennies to add up. You take a penny and it sits around for months before it has enough peers to be worth even a little bit. One hundred pennies for one dollar. One dollar is almost valueless at this point.

I feel bad for the penny; it just doesn’t seem fair that people are so quick to drop it. The nickel isn’t worth much more, but that’s not so easily dismissed. Maybe it’s because the penny stands out. Copper versus silver. I don’t know.

 I remember one day I was sitting on a bench waiting for someone; at this point I don’t even recall who. I saw a penny out of the corner of my eye; the sun was hitting it just right to make it glitter. I’ve never seen a shiny penny before— they’re always grimy. I think that’s why I couldn’t take my eye off of it. I kept trying to go back to the notes, but that reflection from the light kept distracting me. I was reminded of the rhyme that kids would always say when I was little, “Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck.” I stood up, walked over to the penny and picked it up off of the sidewalk. It was on tails. Was that bad luck? I tried to remember back to recess in grade school and all the different esoteric rules kids had. I couldn’t remember if it was only good luck when you picked it up with heads or if it was specifically bad luck on tails.

I put it in my pocket anyway, I didn’t really care about good luck or bad luck, I was never superstitious. 

I sat back down on the bench and checked the time. It was ten minutes now and the person hadn’t shown up. How much time had I wasted in my life waiting for other people? Probably an accumulation of years at this point.  So often, that waiting wound up with someone not showing up at all. Disappointment or anger followed. In this instance, I really can’t remember if the person I was waiting for this day ever actually showed up, or what specifically we were going to do. It seems like that’s the more common result of waiting—anticlimax. How long had that penny been sitting there, I wondered, waiting for someone to pick it up?

I took the penny from my pocket and looked at it. It was from the current year. I was shocked; I had never seen a fresh one before. It struck me, for some reason. This penny hadn’t spent years on the ground or under a couch cushion. It hadn’t been exposed to sunshine and rain, it had no time to turn green and accumulate grime.  It hadn’t had the disappointment of being constantly passed over or left to sit in disuse. It was new to the harshness of the world.

It may have been lying tails-up, but I couldn’t help but feel like this was a lucky penny.

November 10, 2010

After the Wind (2nd Draft, Work in Progress)

The wind came through town last night. It took everything with it. The power was out everywhere. Electrical wires hung limp from splintered poles. They did not even spark; the power had been cut off some time during the night to prevent fires.

My car was down the street, lofted in a neighbor’s tree.

No one else was outside. I could never sleep through the wind, and as soon as it ended I walked out into the aftermath. The first thing I noticed was that it was hot. That dry, breezeless midsummer heat, times two. The grass did not even move between my toes. It appeared that Mother Nature had used up all her breath in that crescendo of a tantrum. The next thing I noticed was that it was quiet. Absolutely quiet. No birds chirped, no wind shook the leaves. There was not even the sound of insects. All the animals had left; those that hadn’t were probably blown away.

Which brings us back to the silence. I never experienced silence like that before then. I rubbed my arm as a chill ran down my spine. It was like I was living in a dead world. I shuffled my feet just so that I could hear the grass crackle beneath them. I needed to remind myself that sound still existed.

That was why I jumped when a screen door creaked open. The reemergence of normalcy to this stark scene was a jolt. I turned my eyes to the source, and saw my neighbor, Mister Moore, walk outside, sipping a mug of coffee in his bathrobe, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Behind him, the screen door floated shut. It didn’t slam.

I was perhaps more shocked by his nonchalance than I was at the silence that I had just experienced. He looked over at me and raised his mug in greeting. Mister Moore was about fifty years old, his thin hair gray, but only recently receding.

I mentioned before that I couldn’t sleep through the wind. Older folks like Mister Moore and my parents could sleep like it was any other night. They had lived through it a few times.

The last winds came when I was eleven, and I spent the whole time huddled under my doorway with a blanket over my head. To be fair, my reaction this particular time was no different.

Mister Moore surveyed the damage, the belt on his bathrobe eerily still. He raised his hand above his eyes and peered down the street. I did likewise. It was like some kind of highway nightmare. Cars piled on top of each other, none looked at all salvageable. My eyes flitted back to my car, a few houses closer, lofted in a tree. Compared to those in the pile it appeared immaculate.

Briefly, the image of my car as some kind of holy emperor, more majestic and beyond the paltry problems of its inferiors played across my mind. I laughed almost immediately. Yesterday it had been the cheapest hunk of junk on the block.

Mister Moore must have been looking at my car too. “You got lucky, we should be able to get that down today. You’ll be the envy of the neighborhood pretty soon.”  I smiled at him as a courtesy. Again, the imaginary immaculacy of the car played through my thoughts.

I began to wonder why anyone stayed here. Every ten years this wind came, and every ten years the people who lived here had to clean up this mess. How had his town even survived so long?

Needless to say, I plan to move away at my first opportunity. Maybe the fact that my car survived unscathed is the universe trying to tell me something: that I’m not supposed to deal with this, that I still have a chance to escape the fate of my parents and Mister Moore and not have to rebuild my life every decade. How did they afford it? Why would you even bother?

Mister Moore was in disturbingly cheerful spirits and so was my dad when he came out, in almost an identical fashion to my neighbor. My father’s eyes squinted against the sun, which beamed down with severe intensity because there were no clouds to veil it for once.

Pretty soon the front lawns of the block were specked with a gaggle of robed, coffee-drinking, middle aged men. I tried to retreat back inside, but my mom intercepted me and began to explain to me how the clean up process worked.

First was the gathering of all the debris. Most people who lived here now had figured out ways to minimize this damage but some people never bothered. My dad never bothered—he seemed to enjoy the cleaning process.

I was furious. Why should I help? I’d be gone in a month for school, and I’d be away from all this mess. I hated it here. It wasn’t just this wind or the cleanup, it was this whole place. It was stagnant. No one in this town ever did anything new. The same thing every day, every month, every year. I wanted no part in stopping progress.

Before I realized it, I had asked that “Why?” out loud. My frustration with the whole situation had boiled to a point where it began to overflow. Keeping my mouth shut wasn’t an option. “Why bother? It’ll cost more to repair all this damage than to move!”

“This is home, dear,” my mom explained, and the voice she used attempted to be so calming that it just made me angrier. “Your father has lived here his whole life, why would we leave just because of a minor setback?”

Minor setback. We owned three cars. One was sandwiched in between a telephone pole and a Volkswagen Beetle, another had fused into a T-shape with a decrepit truck, and the third was stuck in a tree. Not for the last time, I imagined myself driving my lofty chariot down that silent road away from here, the only sound echoing in the air my defiant laughter.

My dad came over and put a hand on my shoulder to calm me down. “It’s alright, we’ve got plenty saved away to fix all of this up. Besides, I’ve been needing an excuse to fix our landscaping.” His reassuring smile felt more condescending than reassuring. Was this why I was driving a car that was older than me? Because my parents were saving all their money to repair and replace things they knew would be ruined? Was that why they had never taken me anywhere farther than the lake for our family vacation?

I tried to pass off my gritted teeth as a smile. I don’t know that it worked, but either way my parents continued onto their business.

In a horrifically synchronized manner, the multiple cups of coffee had been finished off, and all the older men of the neighborhood retreated inside.  My mother was circling the house and surveying the damage. I wandered over to the tree that held up my car. The branches looked slumped beneath the weight. On a normal autumn day the tree looked barren enough, but especially so today.  Some of the bark had been stripped, and the branches looked weak around the trunk. In the unearthly silence I could hear the faint sound of the wood creaking.

Mr. Moore from across the street was already dressed and trying to sort out the mess of cars. His house had been wind-proofed, so he wasn’t concerned. I always thought it was funny he had spent so much on renovations over the last few years but still drove a powder blue Nissan Stanza. I felt like an idiot for never realizing all of this before. Suddenly, my always-lingering desire to leave this place became more immediate.

No one else my age lived in this town. It was like an entire generation realized the futility of having to rebuild every decade. I had every intention of joining them. My closest friend lived in the next town—this one didn’t even have its own school district, I went to regional schools. I was never bitter about it before the wind, but suddenly every slight injustice felt like a history of oppression in the face of futility. It took me 21 years to get to this point, and all I had to show for it was a car flipped upside down in a tree. 

My mother told me stay nearby for school; I knew before I was out of high school that was not going to happen. My family couldn’t afford to send me too far, though, and I settled for a small private school about an hour away. Far enough to pretend for at least a little while, that I was not tethered to a place of such unavailing monotony.

My father and most of the rest of the block had come back outside, and began to pick up their lawns. “Little help here, son?” My dad requested. I pretended not to hear him, and walked over to the pile of cars.

I wished mine were down from its height. I looked up at it again.  Logistically, I couldn’t see how to get it down. A branch looked like it had lodged in the axle of one of the wheels somehow. But more than that, it just seemed like there was no way to keep it from falling. Maybe the car wasn’t special or lofty; maybe it was just the last to crash.

I turned my eyes to the rest of the block again. Most people were working hard on gathering up the debris. A few had begun to try to sort out the mess of cars. There was still not even a slight breeze; the air was just as motionless as it had been when I came out. Other than the sounds of the clean up, I could hear no animals. There was still a chance this was all a dream, because it certainly felt unreal.

I looked back at my house and my mother came back around to the front with a long list of damages. Curiosity took the better of me and I retraced her steps into the backyard.  A tree from next door had destroyed our fence and pieces of roof from well down the street littered the grass. Leaves from all over had mingled together, while the cherry tree in our backyard stood naked but somehow still standing.  One of our windows had been shattered by something, but luckily we had boarded them to keep any glass from getting inside.

 I turned my attention from the house itself to the rest of the yard and then my breath left me like a punch in the gut. Ripped right out of the ground was our old swing set. It was older than my memory, and here it was splintered and sprawled across the yard. One of the seats hung limply from the cherry tree branch, but the rest of it was almost beyond recognition. Something deep and visceral went through me at the moment my eyes surveyed the remains of that once-wondrous source of joy.

I can’t say why I felt this way; it had been years since I had touched the thing. The chains were rusted and the noise it made when someone tried to use it was like the dying sounds of some large animal. Every part of it swayed with the movement of the swing. Even in normal wind it shifted.

But I could still remember spending whole afternoons on those swings, pretending I was in flight high above the rest of the world. Above the feeble troubles of schoolwork and chores. For years that swing set had been my sanctuary.  I slept a number of nights in the lookout above the slide. Escape. Freedom. But that had been a long time ago.

It seemed like there was no escape anymore. Dad needed me to help out with the clean up. Next time the winds came he’d need me even more. I began to realize that even if I moved out there was no getting away. Was that it? Was everyone just resigned to this absurd fate by obligation?

My feet took me to the limp swing hanging from the tree branch before I could even process that I was moving. Apparently it was very precariously balanced.  As soon as my finger brushed against the plastic seat, the metal chain slid off the branch with a metallic hiss followed by a thump. The thump had the weight of a fifty-pound sack hitting a padded floor. Maybe I was projecting.

“We’ve been meaning to get rid of that for years—it’s been such an eyesore. But we figured we’d save ourselves the trouble.” I jumped at the sound of my dad’s voice; every sound this morning was still so loud as it hung in the unnaturally still air.  I said nothing.  “Here, can you help me with this?” he asked, as he lifted what had once been the lookout’s roof. I stared at him for a moment, then at the piece of wood. I wanted to refuse, but also knew it needed to get done. Silently, I picked up the plank of wood with him and we carried it over to a corner of the yard. My dad proceeded to collect other wooden remains from various sources and carried them over to start a pile. “We could get a lot of use out of this for a while,” he explained, all smiles.

I was still speechless, and I began to notice something about my dad’s behavior this morning, and Mister Moore’s, for that matter. They weren’t just going through the motions. Something about this for my dad was enjoyable. I couldn’t figure out what, or why, but I wanted to find out.

“You want to come with me to look at cars tomorrow? We can finally go ahead and replace that old Taurus. I never liked that car, it was such an ugly color.” I shrugged. I wasn’t feeling particularly committal. But I paid attention to what he was saying. The words seemed so much clearer than they would have on another day; maybe it was because there was nothing in between him and myself except the dead summer air.

Something about that simple proposition struck me. I had always just thought that the Taurus was like my swing set, some old object my dad had some kind of sentimental attachment to. In that way, I guess I was wrong. But much like that old swing set, he had utilized the wind to take care of the work for him.

I knew that this day was coming for years, but I had always just assumed my parents were being stubborn about it or ignoring it. I assumed that cleaning up would just be futilely mending fences and waiting for things to break again. But despite the leaves on the ground and the various and sundry broken parts all over the place, I realized what my father saw: a renewal. The swing set had been torn down because it was time for it to come down.  The neighborhood repaired because it was time to repair. I hadn’t used that swing set in years, and the only reason it had held on so long was because I wasn’t ready to let it go. Any time the subject of taking it down came up I protested, but I never really had a valid argument for it staying.

Dad wasn’t avoiding reality by staying here; he was making the best of it. In that way, he even had me beat, because all I wanted to do was run away.

A crash came from down the street and the sound swept down the row of houses like a shockwave. I knew what it was before I went and looked. The branches of the tree had given way, my car’s precarious loft had given out and it had landed hood-first on the blacktop.

The dream of pulling out of this desolation in a victorious laughter shattered in front of my eyes.  So much for an emperor’s chariot, now it was once again just a piece of junk. So much for that brief loftiness.

Mister Moore, still in his bathrobe, was probing his Nissan Stanza for things that may have been left behind, but it seemed like he wasn’t turning up much. I looked down at my own car and peered into the window, but the only thing that had been in there had been my hopes of getting away from this place.  I wondered what Mister Moore was hoping to find in that wreck, but didn’t ask. Much like myself with the swing set, he was probably just looking for hope that he didn’t have to let go. Mister Moore complained about that car a lot, but he took meticulous care of it.

Meanwhile, my dad was gathering up the broken pieces of our house’s exterior. There wasn’t anything he was looking for. It didn’t look like it at first glance, but he was more prepared for this than Mister Moore. There wasn’t anything he was holding onto—he accepted that this was his chance to get ready for the next ten years. Still in strong spirits, dad struggled to roll a pillar that had broken off of our porch out of the bushes. “Here, let me help,” I called across the yard, and I felt my words taken away in a slight breeze.

Funerals

Funeral today.

Not much to say about funerals, they’re depressing and people cry and then they laugh to make themselves feel better and they make off-color jokes about the deceased and remember all the embarrassing things they did in life.

Everyone dresses up, except occasionally the guest of honor gets to wear a comfortable pair of pants and a laid back shirt. No one in attendance can get away with that. Lucky guy.

It’s almost unfortunate that people dress up for funerals. Funerals are uncomfortable enough without a tight collar and a pair of shoes that aren’t broken in because you only ever wear them twice a year.

Who’s ever been to a funeral on a nice day? It’s always hot—especially in a suit—or, if the universe really wants to pile on the cliché melancholy, it’s pouring. Funerals in winter must be a special kind of awful.

No one ever wants to go to a funeral but the idea of skipping it is worse. Guilt, man. It’s a powerful emotion. Last chance to say goodbye and all that. Ever been to a funeral for someone you didn’t know that well but always wanted to? That’s the worst. It’s like saying, “Long time no see” and “Goodbye forever, but we never really had that many memories.” It stings just the same, though.

Something’s beautiful about the ceremony despite its all-encompassing sadness. A waterfall precedes it, but there’s some closure at the end. Not much. Sometimes not enough. But it’s the end of a chapter. The end of a chapter kind of like when a book is really good but it’s too late to keep reading and you put in that bookmark but then get too busy to ever pick it up again. It isn’t a perfect metaphor; a book can be picked up again and reread.

There’s something like that with people, though not as finite. They’re probably never the same twice, but there’s always those embarrassing and off-color stories told at a funeral.

Someone always finds out something new about a person at a funeral because of those stories. Then they get retold and then they’re retold wrong and someone else has a unique impression of this dead person who did some funny shit when they were alive.

A dead person is always funny, because no one ever wants to remember the times they fought with the dearly departed, or how they never really talked as much as they should have.

Then there’s always the thought, “What will they say at my funeral?” It’s morbid but it goes through everyone’s mind, because funerals make death real.

Hopefully, they’ll have something funny to say.

-October 6, 2010

My Damp Socks

It’s raining today at Cabrini. I woke up at 9:00 and walked to breakfast at 9:20 in the 60 degree air while the steady falling rain chilled me to the bone. I haven’t been warm since I woke up. On my way to breakfast I waded through a miniature river that got into my socks and wet the bottom of my jeans. Any time I shift my legs the cold, damp denim brushes against my ankles. I want to put on dry pants and curl up beneath my comforter but that won’t be happening any time soon. It’s a busy Monday.

Rainy days make me reflective. Wet socks make me uncomfortable. There’s no energy or motivation driving me today because rainy days are gloomy and it’s hard even for me to find the sunshine through the gray clouds. But I’m not sad, just not motivated. There’s no big event on the horizon, no fun weekend plans: only work.

Being wet is unappealing. Why do people like the rain? Maybe movies have just soured the experience for me; nothing good ever happens in the rain in the movies, at least not anything that happens in my life, because the only good that ever happens in the rain is the climactic kiss in the torrential downpour. Downpours are the worst, those are windy to boot so every part of you gets wet.

Wet feet make me grumpy. There’s no ignoring a damp sock.It just gnaws at you all day like that thing in the back of your mind that tells you you forgot to lock your door. Try to focus all you like on something else, all that comes to you is that your sock is wet and it’s making your feet cold.


This time could be productively spent, especially considering I’m being paid for it. But productivity is fleeting.

I am pretty sure I’m losing weight. I only eat meals and usually don’t eat all that much at meals because the cafeteria is gross. I don’t want to spend money on meals or snacks; I’m also out of snacks so I don’t have any to eat even if I wanted to. This is a serious concern but I can’t really find myself caring too much. Dr. Cohen probably won’t be happy whenever I go about seeing him again.

My wisdom teeth are shifting my front teeth and my left lower molar is pushed sideways. I would really like them gone.

One day all of my discomforts and minor annoyances will be gone and that day will probably be just like every other day. And then the next day it will probably rain again and then my socks will be wet, and I’ll find a new list of minor annoyances.

And although damp socks can be traded in for dry ones, I wouldn’t discount the days of damp socks for anything, because that damn wet sock made me think.

- September 27th, 2010

Cannibals on a Train

“So I cooked the guy in a nice herb stew. I had my mom over for dinner, she thought it was delicious; thought we were eating chicken. Texture isn’t anything like chicken. But she doesn’t even have her real teeth anymore, maybe she forgets how it’s supposed to feel.”

“I made a pizza for my last girlfriend, it was asian barbecue. Had barbecue sauce, some mushrooms and a woman I used to work with on it. Honestly, it was probably one of the best meals I ever made for myself. Never thought it was possible to enjoy pizza that much.”

“What did she think of it?”

“She thought it was OK, but she said the mushrooms tasted funny. We broke up after she saw my fridge.”

“My first girlfriend was kind of like that, except we broke up after she got freezer burn.”

“I could go for another pizza. I don’t think I could make one quite as good again, though. That was a rare specimen.”

“Was it just the mushrooms?”

“I did something special with the sauce, it was a really experimental garlic mixture. But that I could replicate easily. The meat’s the problem. You know what they say, though, no accounting for personal taste.”

“Too true. It’s never the same meal twice.”

“What the heck is this stuff they gave us to eat, anyway?”

“I dunno; it tastes like chicken.”

- September 21, 2010