Pleasant Valley Sunday? (except we're not in a valley.)

The weather gadget on my Tosh mini is telling me it's 93º F outside at 4:30 in the afternoon. I don't know about that. It feels rather hotter, and our walk was truncated by mutual agreement between me and the dog. Jeff usually just goes with what we think.

Our neighbor, Jim, was out, fully drenched in the sweat of labor, and we exchanged a bit of chatter. Jim has always liked Jeff a great deal (as most people do,) and focused the banter on Jeff as Fredfred and I attempted to hold a patch of shade.

Quirky little phenomenon, synchronicity. I actually initiated the walk, despite the heat, in an effort to budge myself from the doldrums of what has been--for me--a fairly un-busy week or so. I know, it sounds like a good thing--an un-busy week--and in a way it undoubtedly is. But I'm certain, now that I stop and think about it, that I've acquired some new habits and techniques in the face of life with Alzheimer's. And one is to get up and go, as a means of distraction.

Sometimes I say that I'm trying to distract Jeff, who by default will otherwise divide his time between sitting in a kitchen armchair, gazing placidly about the room or dozing, taking a genuine nap, or standing in the driveway, watching the world--such as it is around here--go by. But I am, to be honest, probably more interested in distracting myself from several inescapable realities--the tedium of babysitting, hunger for actual conversation, and the ever-present queasy guilt I still feel that I can't single-handedly fake a long-gone relationship which has not existed for years, and would be fake, even if I faked it.

But as for synchronicity, neighbor Jim, and the banter: I started our walk thinking I've got to get out of here...just stick Jeff in the car and take a short, overnight trip somewhere. More distraction, better distraction. Leave the girls to handle Gabe and the pets. Then we passed Jim, and exactly that topic--brief getaways--was on his mind too. He said that he and his wife, feeling a bit stir-crazy, just took a long weekend in historic Williamsburg, and it was great because they could: Talk. Reconnect. Discuss the future. Be together.

Well, Fredfred and I stood tight on our patch of shade while Jeff grinned at Jim, happy to see his friend, but processing virtually nothing of what Jim was saying. While I was thinking exactly, Jim. That's exactly what getaways used to be about, before they came to be about a change of pace for my brain, and distraction from the truth that I can do absolutely nothing for Jeff's brain, other than keep him content with nice food and pleasant scenery.

Well, I have corn to shuck--another distraction, and it's 5:00 pm--time for Jeff to have a glass of chardonnay. He finds it quite pleasant.

Don't touch that dial! Or, well, I'll do it.

I'm reading an article in AARP magazine about the "culture of distraction," and how adults over 50 (of which I am not yet one...quite) are, for various reasons, the most susceptible to the cacaphony of competing stimuli.

Exactly while reading the article, I happened to be distracted by a full-page advertisement for easy to use "boomer friendly" cell phones and cell phone contracts. This was, after all, AARP magazine. (which, truth be told, is one of the few magazines I'd bother with. Turns out it's often relevant and interesting.)

I have often, over the past several years, given thought to obtaining the simplest of cell phones for Jeff--one with little more in the way of buttons than a standard touch tone phone. (I must interject, though--there really isn't such thing as a standard touch tone phone anymore. The last couple of cordless phone selections I've made have been with the express purpose of avoiding excess buttons. Not an easy task nowadays.)

Then, looking at the advertisement displaying phones of enticing simplicity, I realized Jeff could not use even these. Then it occurred to me: he has not, as far as I can recall, even picked up a telephone and made a call in months. No question it was getting difficult. In the last 2-3 years when he did wish to make a call, 9 times out of 10 I'd end up dialing for him as hitting 10 numbers + a dial key in sequence was proving to be too much.

Well, there's not much point in testing, but I suspect that--for Jeff--placing a phone call has fallen off the edge of the map, capability-wise. Nor has he swept the porch in some time. I think he could though, and maybe I should ask him to, once in a while.

Well, back to my article. (Nothing, it seems, gets a solid 10 minutes of attention from me. I'm not even sure I can apply such luxurious amounts of time anymore.) The article is called "May I Have My Attention Please?" It speaks of scattered focus in a zany world--a life ambiance I know well. Even a boomer friendly phone with big, raised buttons isn't going to add a snippet of calm to that.

He ain't heavy...

...nor is he exactly a lightweight at 160 lbs, but raising the kid has been a bit of a long road, with many a winding turn. Gabe never much wanted to bother with driving. Still, he gamely sat through driver's ed in the Fall of '08, and completed 2 out of 3 two-hour on-road sessions with the driving instructor. I was advised however, after session 2, that Gabe needed a hefty measure of more road experience before we should bother scheduling #3, and therein lay the problem. Road experience would require me and Gabe in a car at the same time, but opposite to our usual configuration. There was, in other words, no one around to sit shot-gun with him except me, and this simply proved to be a non-compatible way to place the two of us on the gameboard.

So I dropped it. Gabe had no itch to drive, and I had no itch to push a cantankerous (in that setting) 16 year old into situations he was not ready for. But, as his senior year of high school, '09/'10, pressed on I realized that mentoring a new driver was not a task I wished to postpone for future enjoyment, and that the kid needed a serviceable photo i.d., and that we might as well buckle up and git 'er done.

So, at Christmas break '09, I badgered him to once again do the online practice tests so that he could (and did) once again pass the multiple choice computer test needed to replace his now-expired learner's permit. As Spring rolled in, I got back in touch with the driving school (who do retain their records that long...Gabe is hardly unprecedented in drawing out the process,) and hired Rich, the placid-like-a-cow road instructor (as opposed to the other guy, whose name I've forgotten,) to take the kid on-road for an extra 10 hours.

I failed to mention the vision part. Amblyopia as a little child has left Gabe with a right eye which plays left field to his left eye's first baseman, but the right eye's acuity is not improved with glasses. It's a brain thing. And in obtaining his first learner's permit, we played a lengthy game of telephone/fax/and pass-the-buck-to-the-supervisor before the optometrist had filled out the proper paperwork to the MVA's satisfaction. There is, you see, no button to push on their monitors that says "one eye crappy/glasses not required." Hence, I made extra sure, before we went for permit #2, that he'd had a fresh eye exam and the proper paper was in hand.

So, it was at the end of this process--a rather organizationally-intensive one on my part--that we set off this morning for his official on-road driver's licensing test. On-road is a misnomer. It's more of an on-course test, where you cover a total of roughly 100 yards, distance-wise, but must pretend you're parallel parking between actual cars (rather than orange cones,) look over your shoulder to ensure that another vehicle has not magically materialized onto the closed course in your way, and use your turn signals for all you're worth.

I'm sure it did not hurt that Gabe's appearance of maturity in years, and unruffled nature gave a sense of greater experience than he in fact possesses, but I won't argue. He passed, and my decidedly not-unruffled innards heaved a great sigh of job well done. Even though we had to sit around the MVA for 2 hours (yes, really, 2 hours) waiting for number G75 to be called so he could sign the little screen, get the glamour shot in front of the blue towel, and snag the license.

Meanwhile, we concocted many ideas for flash-mobs which might make any time spent on the MVA's metallic benches more entertaining. Bingo cards for instance. So, as the synthesized female voice calls "A 25, F 213, I 9," (every number, in other words, except G75,) your planted people could pop up occasionally and yell "BINGO!" Or, how about a sudden onslaught of balloons and confetti as you congratulate some random person for being "the 10th customer we've served this year!" and present him with a giant check for $10 and five cents.

Or perhaps we'll leave these ideas for Gabe's future creative writing efforts. Next year. At college. Where he won't have a car anyway.

Pass the cheese.

Clarence the cross-eyed muse and I...we're working it out.

I found out something interesting--half-finished books can be like cheese. Leave them lying around long enough and they may just acquire a character you weren't expecting. This is better in the case of the book than it is in the case of the cheese, not that I'd recommend either on a canapé tray. But a little smell, a few streaks of je ne sais quoi which you hardly knew you were inoculating the manuscript with when you eked out the words, can cause it to come out of that dusty stack of stuff-you'll-get-to-eventually with a patina you're certain you didn't beat into it. But you did. It's just that in the trudging...during the times of painstaking doldrums, when you could cough up little more than a sentence or two a week...you couldn't see it. The character of the characters, in their tedious squeezed-out familiarity, was invisible to you.

So you toss it aside, to gather dust with the map of Ohio, your kid's report card, and a book called Making Sense of Japanese. Then, when you pick it up again 3 months later, just to see if you really need to start all over again from scratch, you discover that the characters have, in fact, improved with age, total absence of oaken barrels notwithstanding.

I suspect that Clarence knows that will happen.

Bad stardust! Bad! Dang, now I scared it.

I am only elaborating on this because it is something that I otherwise never discuss, and I’d like to give it some air, although I doubt it will help much. Here is what I don’t like about concerts: It is not me making the music. I might love the music, absolutely, but it is intensely unsatisfactory that I am not a part of it. Being a passive observer is horribly inadequate.

Take that and multiply 20 or 30x, and that’s how I feel every time I read fiction I love. I might love the story, but I hate that I didn’t create it. And I’m intensely jealous of the person who did. The pseudo-historic, but mostly fictitious, character whom I relate to the most on this subject is Salieri. Enraged that a little sh*t like Mozart was gifted with the talent that he himself craved, he pretty much went kookoo. Well, I don’t think I’m in danger of either going nuts or poisoning Amadeus, but I hope I’ve conveyed the point. I am angry to feel a calling to a task (creating enjoyable things for people to read,) while being denied the requisite talent or inspiration. I am beyond angry. I am, like Salieri, enraged.

Notice I’m using words like “calling” and “denied” which suggest that something in the cosmos is in the business of orchestrating, or speaking to us in some way. However, to suggest that the whatever-it-is would both call and deny is to either conjure a ridiculously puckish force, or else to tie a silly knot of primitive thinking, and not simply accept that we are what we are, the universe is what it is, and it’s not anyone or anything’s fault. Because if something were in any way responsible, I would also ask it why it would present me with such a conundrum (urge to build/no toolbox,) while simultaneously depriving me of the one human who used to be capable of breathing sense into me when I went wacko.

I have mentioned Edison, and his 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Exactly why, you see, I have gone to the trouble of writing 3.5 books. Because what do you do with a situation? Well, you do what you can with it. So, if you can bring the 99% to the table, you bring it, trusting and/or hoping that the 1% will show up too. J.K.Rowling has said that Harry Potter, the concept and character, sprang fully formed into her brain as she was riding a train. I don’t know where Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, which I’m currently reading, fishes for ideas. I’ve never found a fishing hole, and nothing useful has ever sprung fully, or even partially, formed into my brain, so this is how I’ve concocted fiction: It is absolute barrel scraping. I begin to scratch random thoughts--names, notions, places, quirks--into a working notebook. I continue to do so, until I can begin to link them together by means of more scrapings, or a bit of ribbon, or a wad of chewing gum. Slowly, and with the desperation you feel when pinching the last blip of toothpaste out of the tube, (you know--the point where you actually jam the toothbrush bristles into the tube opening,) I patch something together. And sometimes, I actually sort of end up liking the result. But frankly, I’m pretty sure that 1% has never shown up, and I believe I have presented my work to the world sufficiently that--if it were there, that 1%--someone would have noticed it by now. But it’s not there. Because the 1% is one of those things that you may not be able to describe, but you know it when you see it.

So who gets it, inspiration? Where does it come from, why does it land where it does? I don’t have an answer, so I’m calling it stardust. And there’s really, really no point in being angry at stardust.

with a p.s to Zoto, who is one of the few people reading this! At your M.A.T. graduation, the speaker concluded by saying, "now go out, and be useful!" And that was both wrenching, but so right--because you guys have a chance to do that, and will. Once I said to your dad that I supposed I brought little to the world but a decent and interesting set of genes to pass along so that I could have useful children. He told me that thinking of myself as just a gene pool was a cop out. Maybe I was right. Maybe he was right. I still don't know. But maybe you can harbor and pass along stardust--like one of those skip-a-generation phenotypes. Not entirely bad.

Maybe stardust tea?

I am planning, and expecting (based on a quantitative analysis of the vagaries of mood and emotion,) to be in a much better mood tomorrow.

Gabe noticed as I was tossing some ravioli in a pot for him. ”You seem mad,” he said. ”Yes,” I allowed, ”I am mad. But not at any people. Just mad.”

Yesterday, I was trying to study Genki, my Japanese book. It’s different when you don’t have a class to go to, and I had one of those flash moments--I am doing this for no reason, and that doesn’t work for me. This is also why I do not write the book I’d been working on--there is no reason.

It would seem, based on a study of myself, that humans are better off when they have motivation to do what they do. So if, for example, you would enjoy studying Japanese, you will engage in the pursuit with greater vim if you expect to be airdropped into Osaka with a napsack and an apple. Likewise, if you would enjoy writing stories, you will feel a greater yen to do so if there are other humans saying ”Your work pleases me! Please do more.” Short of this kind of feedback, or the expectation of being airdropped--or at least something analogous--I cannot think what motivates people to do what they do. And that seems to be what is making me mad today.

Yes, see...the cosmos didn't give me a function, and I'm pissed. I know. I know I have a neurodegenerating spouse who needs me, and I'm totally on it. No worries. But would that be enough for you? It's not enough for me. I was enjoying the delusion that I could--while taking care of my spouse, which is clearly in many ways a downer--take refuge and comfort in being someone who writes something that people want to read. But that would require what Tia Dalma in Pirates of the Caribbean calls (in a weird Creole twang) a "touch of destiny," and I have long since had to concede that--apart from a certain population of trendily named 80s babies--there is no one named Destiny.

Which leaves me, as far as I can tell, to invent my own sense of purpose, and there again, I am on a bit of a lookout for Thomas Edison's 1%. (You know--genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration?) The 99%, I can offer in spades. The 1% is like fleeting specks of stardust settling randomly but sparsely on the inhabitants of Earth. Chances are it will miss you.

So, make tea?

Ungroomed food and lawns R us.

While waiting for Gabe and his buddy Matt to enjoy the festivities at their second classmate graduation party of the season, Jeff and I took gustatory refuge in Edo Sushi on Reisterstown Road, just north of the urban congested part.

It was much more clean, attractive, and tasty than you might expect from a strip mall location, and--thanks to my iPhone Japanese dictionary--I learned something I should have known already but didn’t: Edo is a former name of what is now Tokyo.

Why is it that when I go in a Japanese restaurant I cannot bring myself to say “Hajimemashite” (a greeting,) or anything else more interesting that a mumbled arigatoo? It’s because I’m intimidated by my inadequacy in any foreign language, and all I can do is make up for it by scrawling something in hiragana on the merchant copy of the credit card receipt at the end of the meal.

I ordered Jeff a bento box. This was a mistake, and I realized that the moment I offered him the option, but by then he’d said “that sounds good, I’ll have that,” and I didn’t feel like doing any more pointed steering. But the upshot is that a compartmentalized tray of assorted sushi rolls, spring rolls, and skewered chicken is not amenable to his preferred method of eating. Here’s what he usually does with food: Rather than attempt the brain-jangling task of deciding what to eat first and sorting it from everything else, he mixes all his food into a hash, and shovels it in. This is only a slightly more intense version of how he’s handled food his entire life, but now he couldn’t distinguish a dragon roll from a slab of raw salmon to save his life, and just the presentation of it is clearly a mind boggler.

The server, being sharper than most, caught on quickly, and brought out a fork and knife, and I helped point him to one food after another, while stopping him from eating edamame, fibrous pods and all, five times. Finally I scooped them all up and shelled the beans onto a side plate, then returned them. Yes, I did manage to eat most of my veggie rolls in the meantime.

Next time I will remember. Donburi, “bowl of food.” It’s already in a pile. All you have to do is scoop.

The boys, meanwhile, had a nice time. It was in one of those houses, in one of those neighborhoods--you enter past a stately brick pseudo-gateway, boasting a name such as Hunting Prawn Estates for the Upwardly Exclusive, and coast up and down gently hilly drives, past vast acreages of grass which you’re extremely grateful you don’t have to mow. The houses are chateaus without the benefit of quality windows guaranteed to function well for more than 5 years, but that’s ok...because windows which open are not the point. Trickling fountains, vast foyers, and carefully groomed landscaping features are the point.

Plus, I freely allow as how people may spend their money and enjoy whatever aesthetic they wish. It’s not as if I, in all my homespun elitism (or is it anti-elitism?) am in any way self-actualized. ; )

walk this way...no THIS way.

What are you thinking as you (once again) cannot discern which car door to approach? Here is our car. It is parked at the Annapolis Mall, in a row in front of Punk's Backyard Grill. You follow me to the driver's door.

"Why don't you head around to the other side?" I say, making a little semi-circle with my finger. Other side computed, in an odd way. You walk clear around the hatchback on our port side and try that car's driver door. "Let me show you," I say. I walk around the hatchback too, say "C'mere," and escort you to our shotgun door, which I open to make things quite obvious.

You are neither ruffled nor frustrated. Maybe slightly bemused, in a "well, that was tricky," kind of way. Like I would be if I couldn't quite figure out which way to insert the disk into the Wii, and Gabe had to show me. The thing is, if someone had to straighten me out on game consoles every day, and I never learned, I would become quite perturbed, but you do not. It is a fresh little bit of trickery every time, and, as far as you're concerned, it could and probably does happen to everyone. No fretting required. Who would argue that there's not at least a little bit of fortunate irony in this?

not the wise person on the mountaintop!

I have a Facebook friend, a decade younger, many of whose posts reflect the angst of self-dissatisfaction in the face of a life which seems objectively lovely. Sometimes I want to respond: There is no “there!”, It never begins to make sense!, and Befriend the disquiet--it doesn’t intend to leave.”

But I bite, or at least nip, my fingers in their urge to reply. Clearly, among the other cosmic callings I am not cosmically called to fulfill is mentoring. Advising the anxious to embrace the pain seems hardly the warm fuzzy that is called for. Even worse would be “You think you’re insufficiently fulfilled now? Wait until you get a load of aging!”

Despite my easy access to these un-choice pieces of advice, I am not marching forward into the swards of middle age with any major chips on my shoulder, monkeys on my back, or rainclouds hovering over my head a la Joe Btfsplk. I am content and willing to see what comes next, open to possibilities, and my optimistic streak has never been completely quashed.

But I can’t see the value in encouraging the notion--one which I have fondly harbored--that a nip here, a left turn there, or just THINKING HARDER is going to get you self-actualized. Or cause you to stumble into the narrative path of destiny. Because, seriously kids, it’s not. I hearken back to the call of the teacup, because it is--I find--such an apt illustration of what you need to do instead. Pour the just-boiled water over your favorite brew, in your absolute favorite cup...and watch it steep. Sip it. Say, “that’s pretty good, isn’t it?” Because it is. And it will rarely get better.

As for cosmic callings in general...I do doubt that the cosmos is in the calling business. It just bes, and all you can do is be with it. I realize this is not very satisfactory to those who (like me) were hoping for divine inspiration. And I’m not going to claim to have the last word on this--perhaps I have reached an erroneous conclusion and will be happily disillusioned at some future point on the timeline. (Or unhappily if it turns out that I’m actually the anti-hero of the story, or a minion. All narratives, after all, require their antagonists.)

In the meantime, tea.