I panic.

I panic quite often actually.

This morning I drew two clock faces, assigning myself random times to make them read: 4:45. 11:10. A couple days ago I got back into counting backwards from 100 by 7s. Gabe could do it quite well, but in his case I have no concerns about deterioration. Fortunately I am still quite apt. At that trick, anyway.

I’ve been watching The Alzheimer’s Project, a series of HBO documentaries, which are, luckily, available to stream from HBO.com since I do not subscribe to an HBO-containing level of cable service. So, as the film depicts various people jumping through those very familiar cognitive testing hoops, I cannot help playing along. For reassurance. Yes! I say. I remember how it goes: Anna Thompson is a school cook who was robbed of $56 on State Street. Right? And yes, I’m right. Furthermore, those three words were table, penny, and apple. But still I panic. Because sometimes my brain won’t give me the name of the neighbor 3 doors down whom I never see...at least not right off the bat. First name: Jan. Last name:___________. I’m going to look it up if it doesn’t come before I get to the end of this entry. And that will make me mad.

Hendra. Thanks brain. It might really be perimenopausal fog-brain that is making me all ocd about cognitive reassurance measures. This is one reason I will keep studying Japanese. Present me with a page that looks like this: ねこはうるさいですね。My first impulse is to panic. My brain protests: What are you, nuts? it thinks, or something very close to that. But, if I relax and look at it, I can, calmly, decipher that into: neko wa urusai desu ne? and then the next step: The cat is noisy, isn’t it?

But my state of mind re minds nowadays, is to recognize them as fragile, maybe ephemeral, things. I will be much indebted to mine if it hangs around as long as I need it.

Good thought: I can write crappy for the rest of my life.

Visit 2 with the college consultant today, and a delightful homeward drive during which I had the pleasure of listening to Gabe outline which other middle-aged females I look older and wrinklier than (most, it turns out.) Jeff, checked out as per normal, had no helpful defense to add to the equation, so I simply had to bite my tongue so as not to inform the punk he’s doughy and lazy and I’m tired of raising him.

But that’s the point of these appointments...to find some setting in which he can--removed from my burned out decrepitude--mature and grow some life-enhancing strengths.

As for me, I am certain I am mature enough. Though the fates don’t appear to agree, and think that I need more practice in the areas of self-reliance, patience, and a zen-informed coolness with the prospect of a life devoid of success in creative ventures. And woohoo--I like a life that aims to hone. Whee.

Meanwhile, I am to that truly plodding stage in the book-creation process. The stage during which the initial zing of the concept has worn the rubber off its shoes, and you must scrape brain dregs for the next sentence, hoping it will be magically infused with a whiff of inspiration which must come from someplace to which you personally have no access. Clarence, you there? Have some coffee if it will help.

Then, eventually, there will come a point where (I hope) I can say...this ball, it’s a’rollin’!, and from there the process feels a darn sight less forced.

Actually, the nicest thing about Clarence is, he’s completely neutral on the subject of how old I look.

I hope tree clumps make good lawn mulch.

The trees over the garage are dropping leafy sprigs, and fluttery bunches of fluffy brown stuff as if from buckets. All over the back patio, which is experiencing its first Spring. Gobs of vegetation and a tribe of carpenter bees are giving the area a special character only enhanced by the leyland cypress bowing oppressively over it all.

edit: And cripes! A tree just fell down in the back yard!

It is, like the basement, just a small part of one family habitat, demanding upkeep. So, I do what I can, without the spirit for it, because the house is not about what the house was supposed to be about for me. Hence, in order to avoid thinking about what the house was supposed to be about, I dream of the Airstream. It represents--in the dream--a retreat where I’d go to shove off the sense of trying to keep a two-person life afloat with only one person.

Man, do I hate fussers and mopers. And there is a self-indictment. Plus, the ball may not be dropped, and now is not the time to relinquish the position of hearth-keeper. ‘Tis disconcerting and disorienting if the mother-ship downsizes to a Jetsons-sized bubble car too soon.

But frankly--and I say this with all the humor I can muster, and completely in the interest of honesty and disclosure as opposed to bellyaching--this is a bit of a ridiculous position. You cannot be an adequate companion to someone with Alzheimer’s. This is because his receiver is broken. All you can do is be there. He will still feel left out, and under-companioned, because he knows he’s missing a no-longer-extant relationship. Because you, the other person, cannot have the former relationship all by yourself. And, even if you could simulate it, his receiver would still be broken. So, you keep being there, as seemingly useless as it is, and hope that maybe at some point you’ll get a chance to do something at which you might actually succeed.

Anyway, sorry ‘bout the fussy-pants stuff. I’m actually very pleased that I successfully removed the old, and installed the new casement window sash, even though it’s a bogus knock-off rather than being an actual Hurd replacement part. It is nice to watch the clumpy leaflets rain from the trees, NOT through a rock-sized hole in the glass.

surreality is my only option.

We liked a college, and that was new.

Now, “like” and “dislike” are terms that we have to keep in the strange and other-worldly perspective of tree-roots, zombies, and presence of treadmills in rec centers. But--keeping our somewhat clueless point of view in mind--we decidedly liked Manhattanville College. But, man was it a long trip for a short trip.

Trial By Keys: Helen (Jeff’s sister and our NYC host,) had Thursday obligations, so she left a set of keys (3) for us with her Upper West Side door people. We duly elevated to the 15th floor and spent the next 15 minutes trying all possible combinations of 3 (clockwise top, center widdershins, bottom clockwise, etc.) I don’t know why this was so difficult. Yes, I do, at least in part. It’s because Jeff didn’t like that I only allotted him a couple minutes to attempt to insert a key upside down and at a 45° angle, before I went back at it myself. The solution involved using Gabe’s ears to discern which deadbolt was giving off the telltale “locked” rattle and completely disregarding Helen’s handwritten intructions. So we got in. And it was a lovely day to walk across Central Park to our first school visit with Jeff trailing me and Gabe by 15 paces as his nose slowly got back into joint.

I increasingly perceive the two people for whom I’m primarily responsible as a couple of freighters, drifting at snail’s pace in opposite directions, but--for now--at a roughly similar (though not matching) latitude. Gabe can insert a key into a lock correctly, and discern whether or not it has turned. Jeff knows that we live in the town of [insert town name here ;)], and not Annapolis. Not so, vice versa. Gabe perceives (correctly, I believe) that Jeff attempts to interact with small children at an adjoining restaurant table in a way that is slightly creepy and intrusive. Jeff perceives (again, correctly) that Gabe is apt to insert “humorous” questions at awkward and not-ideal moments in the campus tour. They both rely on me to an almost burdensome and disconcerting extent. Neither wonders whether I know what I’m doing when we get off Amtrak at New York Penn and I lead us toward signs for the “A” subway line. They trust me unquestioningly and blindly. Were it up to Jeff, he would be lost in the confusion. Were it up to Gabe, he might very well say “ok...so what city are we in?” Neither can deploy his subway ticket at the turnstile magnetic strip reader correctly. Jeff cannot understand the concept at all, and I position him, slide his card, then pull him through. Gabe slides his through the one to his left instead of his right. Luckily it is not crowded and I am able, from the other side of the turnstiles, to redirect him through the now-unlocked lane.(The phrase which pops to mind when I think about Gabe--”What’s the frequency Kenneth?” Because the brain clearly works. But the wavelength on which its tuner is fixed? Unknown.)

The major thing that differentiates the two is this: One can be taught, and will--sooner or later--bumble into the shipping lane known as “growing up.” The other is drifting, albeit at glacial pace, into the seas of oblivion. In the meantime, if I could momentarily split into particles and waves, I’d like to test whether I would feel more alone with these two or without them, as in actually alone.

It is my hope that by sending Gabe away to college, he’ll stop defaulting to the assumption that I’ve got it covered, and recognize that there are a few more facets on the polyhedron of life he needs to take heed of. As for Jeff, I will be turning on the tv for him for as long as he remains interested in tv. (This remote is for the tv. Tune it to channel 3, then take this other remote, aim it at the cable tuner, and hit 053 for CNBC. Right.) Meanwhile, I am learning not to mind his hours in the kitchen chair, dozing or doing nothing.

But, as for the take home points most pertinent to the ostensible reason for the trip: Manhattanville College has a strong support program for LD students. They also have (in no particular order of importance) treadmills in the gym, nice not-so-preppy people, black squirrels, creative writing, a good-smelling cafeteria, and Japanese classes.

Oh, and we won a red and white pop-up chair from the admissions guy because I knew--in a quick q & a contest--that the school has 1600 undergrads.

At least there are cats in the box.

There seems to be something horribly--even morally--wrong with being bored. Thankfully, most of the time I am too busy to notice.

The thing is, as much as I’ve studied and learned and compared notes, I cannot help thinking--when there’s a person who does, really, nothing all day and all night apart from reading the paper and 3 different books (again)--that I should be providing an activity. But the thing is--he, apparently, is not bored. Me, keeping him company? Bored.

But you can’t leave a person alone all day. So I do stuff. I be a writer even though the world has its fill of them, as far as I can tell. I think, actually, the world has its fill of almost everything a human could possibly contribute. Except for Concert Association database keeper. So I do that too. And study Japanese. Even though chapter 3 in the textbook is really getting on my nerves in being legible only to people younger than 35 and ants who might be literate. I fiddle. And I sponsor errands.

Tonight I decided to try something new, so I rooted through the chest of drawers in the computer room where games are stashed, and pulled out Railroad Rush Hour. It’s a puzzly thing where you set the little plastic engines, boxcars, and cabooses in a frame in such a way that the red engine can’t escape until you’ve slid the other cars out of its way, sequentially. I’m not so great at it. Even using the “beginner” cards to set things up. But I did get Jeff to sit down with me. It was clear that he was humoring me and had zero interest in trying to free the red engine. I fooled around with it a bit. Reminded me, unfortunately, of those dumb little sliding number frames you’d win as a consolation prize, and which I more or less detested. Rush Hour was better. But only a bit. Still...I guess if a puzzle doesn’t stimulate the slightest interest in a person, there’s not much I can do about that.

So I feel like I’m living in a box, sort of. It’s a relatively nice box, with some things to play with. I guess I’d like a slightly bigger box with a few more people in it.

No. I will not get a neckchain.

I hate glasses.

To be fair to the whole concept of optical devices, I really do appreciate them in theory. But it was easier to be impressed with the instantaneous improvement afforded by a pair of mild nearsightedness correctors, which had the magical property of instantly dispensing with the nuisance of myopia at the slight trade-off of a frame on your nose.

This was all that I needed, and only in certain situations at that, until a couple or so years ago. But now I believe that I’m in need of some sort of specs-on-a-hinge device, where two pairs of glasses, joined at the earpieces, would flip to the top of my head, or down to eye-level, depending on whether I intended to see the wipe-off board in Japanese class (that’s where they used to have chalk boards--up front,) attempt to differentiate “hi” from “pi” in hiragana in my textbook, or read the impossibly, ridiculously miniature lettering on the back of a shampoo bottle at the grocery store. There would be three options: distance glasses, no glasses, and 1.50+ magnifying.

I understand that it is the purpose of “progressive” lenses to address all of these conditions in the convenient package of a single (or rather 2 single) lenses the size of dried prunes.

I got a pair maybe 1.5 years ago? But see...I can’t read out of the bottom part like I’m supposed to. If I hold the book at a distance of about arm length, then yes...I can read with the glasses. But I’m better off without them entirely. And when it comes to that tiny tiny tiny stuff, it’s magnifiers or forget it. So I don’t know (and please help me if you know the answer to this question) whether the problem might be that my prescription of 1.5 years ago, which apparently wasn’t exactly up to date as of January this year, is maybe just not strong enough.

The question is whether it’s worth sinking a few more hundred dollars into an updated prescription, or whether I should just learn to love pushing glasses up and down my face in class, and fishing out the magnifiers in the grocery store.

Because the real nasty thing about presbyopia is it just doesn’t correct with the delightful alacrity of myopia. It’s kind of picky.

Anyway, I think that if I had any gift for synthetic parts manufacturing, then Lifetime Guarantee Flexilenses® which you get implanted could be a really big seller. In the meantime...(crap)...I will be that dork handing objects to my children and saying “what does this say please?” And they will tell me. But Gabe will pronounce it weird.

Maybe you clap the hand against your foot.

I would say our road trip to Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey was good. Good in the somewhat interesting, we found food, and Janet the GPS did yeoman duty sense of good. The college visit itself has derailed me into all sorts of side ruminations about Gabe, college fit, and what the heck we should do with the kid.

(As an aside, I will say that I’m never so happy to see my bed as when I’ve just spent the last night in a hotel. Not that the Holiday Inn Express was bad. It was fine. Good even. But the disorientation experienced by Jeff, who gets up at night, can’t find the bathroom, turns lights on, then can’t figure out how to get back in bed always means my sleep is pretty patchy. Threw into focus for me exactly why I don’t go out of my way to plan trips anymore. And the coffee was weak. But you’d expect that.)

But, back to Gabe. Answering the question What should Gabe do after high school? feels like a restatement of What is the sound of one hand clapping? Like trying to answer the koan, you must--in trying to answer the Gabe question--actually think of an answer where it appears none exists. Maybe you can throw away the koan as stupid, but you can’t throw away the kid. And here’s where the usual objections or words of counsel, from the well-meaning, hit the bricks and go splat.

Doesn’t the kid need to figure this out for himself? Well, yes, ideally. But this kid isn’t even motivated to do the usual things, like drive a car or, um, move, sometimes. As far as I can tell, he would, if left unattended, default to eating Honey Nut Joe’s O’s and finding intriguing new animes online. All day. All night. It might not ever occur to him that he was now out of high school and in need of a plan.

Maybe you’re just a control freak. Let’s get this straight, right now. I don’t want to control anyone. It is my greatest wish that each person control him/herself. But, like a medium-ranked canine which will assume alpha rank if there’s a vacuum, I am keenly aware that there are things in need of controlling and absolutely no one stepping up to the plate.

So maybe if he didn’t assume you’d take care of it, he’d step up himself. Voila. Exactly. It’s my only hope. Which is why the default thought that you can send an undermotivated kid to the community college for a couple years falls flat. Gabe must go somewhere else. Somewhere where it’s good and clear that I’m not there to back him up.

But I doubt if that place will be Fairleigh Dickinson. Of my many impressions, the one that has filtered out most strongly is that it is not a school of non-conforming odd-ducks. Gabe would be the marginalized figure he more or less was at Summit. Baltimore Lab, where almost everyone is uniquely weird, has been a refreshingly better fit. Hence, it is my latest line of thought that, like the ugly duckling and the swans, Gabe must be dropped amongst a freaky dorky weird collection of creative types in order to have a hope of finding the inspiration to be who he is.

Which leads me to Columbia College. The son of Gabe’s carpool driver/teacher, a Lab 12th grader, has discovered a most appealing atmosphere at this school of arts and media in...Chicago. Chicago? I said. That’s so far away! Indeed, it made no sense to me at all until I checked their web site, watched a couple of their videos, and was quickly awash in the remarkable realization that here was a school full of students who are--each in his/her way--as weird as Gabe. It was a crazy wake up call, which highlighted what a wrong environment FDU--with its girls in Ugg boots and baseball team boys--was for Gabe.

FDU has a great LD program. But here is, perhaps, the second most important take home point I took home from our FDU visit, and it was made by the counselor presenting the program to us. That is: Do not pick a school with the LD program--no matter how fine--as the primary focus. Pick the school first for whether it fits the kid. The program is icing. Nice icing, but icing.

Still--don’t worry mom--it is not my plan to send the kid to Chicago. (I may show him the video...but, seriously. Don’t worry.)
It is my plan though, to look for something that looks like that. Because, here’s the thing:
What do we know about Gabe? What has he put any effort into and what makes him proud? Here are a few things that come to mind: He likes...hypnotism, sleight of hand, moonwalking, weird right-brain cartooning, unicycling, the rare work of fiction or poetry he actually sits himself down to do, ideas and notions that drift in from somewhere left of left field. He needs focus, motivation, and inspiration. But he’s not going to get it by being the weird kid among preppies. But maybe, in a place where the arts of all sorts--drama, writing, game creation, storyboarding--are being performed by better-focused kids all around him...maybe in such an environment he will catch a glimpse of what he wants to be. And maybe I’m stupid. But maybe one hand can clap, I don’t know.

Telephone Company Flunk-out.

When I was 21, I flunked out of the telephone company.

That was quite a long time ago. I’ve never completely addressed the subject, because I didn’t then--and possibly still don’t--know exactly what to make of the experience, but at the moment I feel like trying, so here goes:

I was a recent college grad, with a motley B.S. in Animal Science (by way of anthropology, art, and French, + 3 undergrad colleges.) So I was certainly not facing any obvious career path, and this explains why my father--a loyal executive (retired) of C & P Telephone--felt that pursuing an inroad into telephone company management might be a thought. So he put me in touch with a former colleague who suggested--strongly--that I NOT enter from the ground up--that is, by means of an entry level operator-type job--but rather wait until an entry into the management track opened up. My dad, meanwhile, ever mindful of honest work, suggested the opposite. Why not do the phone rep training track while I was waiting? As it turns out, I think the first guy was on to something. But I listened to dad. Here’s what happened:

At this point I can’t even remember what the job title of the position I began training for was. Some kind of service rep thing. A phone answerer/do you want fries with that type of person. I commuted daily, with a red-haired guy whose name I’ve forgotten (but who drove a VW Bug he retrofitted himself,) 1 hour each way, to the training facility in Hunt Valley.

For what ultimately would have amounted to maybe 8 weeks, I (and my fellow job-seekers) engaged in a step-wise, semi-self-paced program in which we simulated the behavior of real service reps by taking phone calls from remote training personnel (playing the role of “customers.”) Gradually, we’d add a new trick to the list of topics to cover, or sales hints to plant in every telephone encounter with the other side. And at certain pre-determined junctures, they tested us by means of a similar simulation.

Said hello the right way. Check. Inquired as to whether customer’s equipment was working satisfactorily. Check. Proposed an upgrade to more expensive equipment, without being obvious that the equipment was more expensive. Check. (This was the old days...when phones were owned by the phone company. Within a matter of a year, equipment privatization happened, and people bought their own crappy phones.) But, see...this was where things started to get weird. Because the check-off list of things we were required to cover, in any and all customer encounter, became so specific and picky that I believe, essentially, my brain rebelled. Do you have kids? Do they play in the basement? Could you use a phone in the basement? How about in the doghouse? Does your baby need a phone? Do you have a baby? Are you planning to have one? It was actually kind of sick and pathetic.

You were not allowed to miss a trick on these test calls. I do not know, to this day, whether I was capable of passing. All I know is, I could not say all that crappy stuff. Whether I actually forgot parts, or whether it was simply so contrary to my nature to fit into somebody else’s box, I cannot say. But what the manager lady told me--and I remember this distinctly--is that I did not “meet the objective.”

I did not know how to respond then, and I still barely know. The objective? What was going on there? Clearly, there was no leeway for personality or even a glimmer of independent thought in that gig. Was I too dumb? Surely I was not less intelligent than all telephone service reps of the 80’s. Too stubborn maybe. Too ornery, also maybe.

I asked myself afterward: Could I have passed? Was it possible for me to have done so? And I still don’t know. I failed. I don’t know what it was a failure of, but I don’t think it was a failure of intelligence.

I suppose, what I honestly believe is that the program was, essentially, a screening process for automatons. You would be filtered out for a faulty memory, no doubt, but you would also be filtered out--of this I am certain--for free thought. The process was meant to squeeze out any who could not, amoeba-like, conform themselves to a service-rep sized box.

You know what? That’s not right. My sister (smarter than I by most measures) would not have flunked out. Maybe I was just dumb. Or maybe I was just exceptionally stubborn in the face of rigid expectations. I don’t know. I still don’t.

But I do know I would have stunk at the telephone company. Even as a manager.

Clarence meows like Bob Newhart.

Clarence the cross-eyed muse likes to thwap his tail at me. If he were more of a humanoid muse he might tap his foot impatiently, or drum his fingertips on the kitchen counter, but as it is--in his vague felinity--the message conveyed by the tail comes across unmistakably.

It’s time to edit, prods Clarence...and I do. Bit by tiny bit.

In the AARP Bulletin, an article profiles several folks who returned to the work force in their 50’s and up, finding jobs--in every case--in retail. I could do that. I could do the Barnes & Noble bookselling thing, if not the Trader Joe’s food-peddling thing. Sometimes I think I should do it now. Not spending current income flow could possibly do more to reduce potential impingement upon future security than tacking on supplemental income later.

But it’s not a serious option, and Clarence knows that perfectly well, even if my hesitancy to wrestle with creativity goads me into supposing that not-working is the irresponsible move. Ha. Like leaving Jeff home by himself while I hang out in the stacks at B&N would be responsible? Not. Not that I don’t need to pull myself back into the land of the living at least a little farther...I think I do...but I cannot abandon my charge to do so. Hence, I am home, lots...and also hence, Clarence is right. I have no good excuse not to scrape what creative energy I can muster into helping him keep his job. And earn Muse Stamps. Which he can spend at the Muse Stamp Redemption Center on a big refrigerator-sized scratching post to leave his claw sheddings in.

So, here we are, Clarence and I, trying to get this crazy kite of a story aloft, whether or not the wind is blowing.

This does not mean that I will never be semi-gainfully employed, but conditions for now leave me with absolutely no excuse to not keep at the fear-inspiring dream. I should probably befriend failure...same as I’ve befriended anxiety...then we just won’t have to worry about that anymore, and Clarence and I can get down to work.

snow comin'?

Is an overnight with the sibs a good thing, or a bad thing? Regardless of the fallout, I’m inclined to consider any event that gets Jeff interacting with humans other than me and Gabe to be a plus, but tiredness takes a notable toll.

It’s a little weird, when he walks in the door. How was Rehoboth? I ask. Good, he says. Where did you stay? His face goes blank. Did you guys go out for dinner last night? More blank.

Later he is able to tell me that they stayed in the home of a friend of Cousin Robin’s, but no information about dinner is within reach. He remembers that he stayed on a bed that was not so comfortable, and that he was cold. And he thinks he was in Cape May. Rehoboth, I remind him. Pointlessly, actually. A quick forensic examination of the duffel bag reveals that the clean t-shirt and briefs I sent went unused, but a hand-towel from the host house came home with him. Bedtime, I think, will be early tonight.

Will be for me too, if I finish this Pinot.

Clarence the cross-eyed muse, on the other hand, seems to be right on the ball today as I edit Weird Tale #4, or what exists of it, so far. Well, Clarence is a help. But there’s also Friday’s acupuncture, which seemed--at least for the first 48 hours--to cause all my inward negativity to blurble up in great glarbs and splots until, well--for today at least--I’m left with a little inner tranquility and a bit of creative energy.

I do not understand the latest Giant Food retrofit. I went there today. Not something I do often, but we needed o.j. and mango chutney (yes, we needed that,) and even though the same cute Asian produce man asked me if I needed help finding something 3 times, I still could not help but feel that Giant, in its newest incarnation, is designed to drive humans crazy, much in the way of a Walmart.

And yet, not everyone detests Walmart, nor was Giant--on the eve of what they say will be 5-8 inches of snow--suffering for want of customers. No. In spite of the fact that the aisle shelving now towers ominously over you like trash compactor walls in a nightmare sequence, Giant has customers. It is clear that my brain, like my foot, was not the model upon which the marketing wonks based their mainstream prototype. Which is fine, as long as there’s Trader Joe’s. And teriyaki tofu at good Japanese restaurants. With chopsticks.

shufu to you too

Chapter test #1, Japanese, is tomorrow night. Gabe has been a bit remiss in memorizing a short list of college majors and careers, so I made a study help--clip art of the various things, labeled with the Japanese word. The shufu illustration was especially chosen to reflect my feelings about the word. Yesterday we were reviewing: Shufu I say. Um...office worker? Gabe guesses. No, I say, housewife.

You’re sort of a shufu, says Gabe. No, I absolutely am not I assert. Shufus do not write fiction. Shufus do not install tile and hardwood floors. Shufus are not the only people in the house who can fix your computer. Shufus do not jump-start cars and fix bicycles. And shufus do not learn Japanese.

But you’re sort of a shufu, Gabe insists. Sort of NOT, I doubly insist. It is a detestable word, in any language.

As such, my clip art shufu is watching soaps and ironing--neither being an act I commit if I can help it. Further, I submit that even the word is an anachronistic concept in today’s society anyway. There are people of all ages and genders whose lives don’t necessarily revolve around standard salaried employment, and I’m quite certain you would not accuse them all of being shufus, and I utterly decline the designation along with them.
But still Gabe. Learn the English translation. It might be on the test.

The pc, meanwhile, is (as I’ve alluded to,) in need of serious help. It’s a phenomenon how much crap can drift through the net-ether when one browses anime and fan fic sites. Downloading spyware removers has added burrs to hair-knots, and I’ve resolved--at this point--to learn to live with protection-racket software. We will try Kaspersky. It’s on its way. In the meantime, once the pc--now reinstalled from scratch--is reloaded with the usual line-up (Firefox, Windows Media Player, Guild Wars of course...) I will try to make a ghost of it on an external drive, possibly (but not definitely,) reducing the size of the headache the next such episode gives me.

Cellar dwellers

Sometimes the isolation wrought by organic brain syndrome is the specter you host, like it or not, on a drop-in basis. Actually, it’s always there, but sometimes it contents itself with living in the basement where you can sometimes sort of ignore it like that whiff of eau de kitty litter box. Other times it wants to hover in the kitchen, radiating its mood-deadening vibe into the shared atmosphere.

Warning: Do not watch movies such as P.S. I Love You, Love Actually, or even Mamma Mia when the specter is living upstairs. Back to the Future or anything Harry Potter are acceptable.

Clarence the muse and I have been having a little trouble finding time to get much accomplished. It’s my fault this time--I can’t pin it on Clarence. I like this Japanese stuff, see, and am doubling up on the books. The basement job is there and wants doing. (If it’s more orderly maybe the specter will stay down there? Doubt it.) And getting up at 5:15 a.m. puts me in afternoon nap mode. Hence, Clarence rarely can get any of my freshest brain time. Perhaps reality can catch up to my good intentions. We don’t want Clarence moving into the basement.

sandwich

My daydreams are taking me to weird and unfair places. Well...unfair in that I could never go there by making the right choices.

Lunch was at Panera, with Helen and 5 year old Belle. (Who can spread her own cream cheese on her bagel, thanks.) We talked about “comfort food...,” specifically, is there anything from childhood that is a true keeper, in the comfort food arsenal? Apart from the fact that I think of tunaroll cassafish (the kind made with soup and egg noodles,) with fondness, it seems that my segue from a standard American to mostly veg diet a couple of decades ago has rewritten my comfort food roster.

I love: grape leaves (dolmas,) hummus, udon noodles in miso broth, excellently-seasoned tofu, and Indian flatbreads with lentil dal. Foods that make me smile. So much for American classics. (with the caveat that I am truly enjoying the pickle they serve with sandwiches at Panera.)

In messy little blurts of indentured servitude in which the kitchen timer is boss, I’m getting the basement sorted. Jeff may be going to see Fallingwater with Helen in April. I may yet have my best chance to call junkbusters before summer.

Oh no...

I just had this thought which is both horrible and exquisite. What if Clarence isn't named after the angel in It's a Wonderful Life? What if he's actually more of an incarnation of Clarence the cross-eyed lion from Daktari?

And yet, I'm comforted in the quirky way that is characteristic of that which tends to comfort me. Large visually-impaired feline or Henry Travers...whichever...it's so helpful to live in a nebulous world where one is no longer alone in one's creative pursuit. Clarence and I--we keep each other accountable.

Fuzzy Lenz's real name is Gary Lenz. I know, because I wrote him a check to kick off the (lovely, as it's shaping up) patio out the back door. I tell Jeff. "Fuzzy's real name is Gary," I say. Now, every day, we have a conversation very much like this:

"Okay...so it's Michael," says Jeff.

"What is?"

"Fuzzy's real name."

"No," I say. "It's Gary."

"Ok, good," says Jeff, walking away. "Robert."

If Clarence just had Freddi's spunk...

I was chuffed to have stumbled upon Elizabeth Gilbert’s very recent TED.com talk on “a different way to think about creative genius.” What an excellent way to differentiate oneself from one’s failure (or success in her, or others’ cases,) as a writer. Or person of other creative bent.

Gilbert's notion is to revisit the old Greek way of thinking about creative genius as being that which visits you in a gift of inspiration, rather than the pre-existing condition, or nature of the artist/writer/creator. A separate persona, iow, which is either on the ball or isn't. I’d been claiming all along that it is not really my fault that a possibly psycho directive to write was coupled with Clarence the crappy muse being assigned to my case. (Clarence borrows his name from the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life. I cannot predict whether this name-sharing foreshadows eventual “success” or is merely a dumb name for a muse.)

Still, it’s sort of reassuring, in a sanity-soothing way, to imagine that it’s no aberration if “calling” and inspiration do not coalesce in this lifetime. At least I showed up for my part. Three silly books in ten years can’t be the worst record ever. Perhaps my frustration and hiatus of the last little while have corresponded with Clarence being busy with some CE credits. Maybe they’ve helped him. I just can’t worry about that.

Fuzzy and his helper are laying down gravel out the back door, in prep for concrete, which will provide the foundation for eventual slate and brick and something other than mud to walk onto when we exit kitchen rear. So, for now at least, there are no back steps, which means that we need to discourage Freddi’s wish to fall on her face out the back door. Instead, she’s issuing urgent staccato woofs, just so everyone is fully aware that she’s got the thing under surveillance. Thanks Fredfred.

end of a day blather.

When I got my distance-vision only glasses in January, the optometrist advised me to hang on to last year’s progressive lenses even though I don’t love them. He was right. It doesn’t work to wear distance-only glasses in Japanese class or the grocery store, but they are excellent for driving at night. Luckily, the honking-big case that came with the new ones holds both pairs.

I fret. Should I visit Beacon--the tiniest little college ever, in Leesburg Florida--with Gabe because it might, as an LD-specific school, have the highest chance of not flunking him out? Will a mainstream school-with-LD-program work? Will he still like Japanese when he has to start reading...in Japanese? Cola-nut? Uncola-nut? Can you choose wisely? (If you can, please let me know...I could use some input here.)

It was a day of too much to do. To Georgetown, through arduous D.C. traffic first thing in the morning for a hefty dose of poking, prodding, and brain-straining (Jeff,) and a lot of time sitting in a chair or looking out the 7th floor window of the hospital room at snow flurries, while trying to entertain my ADD mind with a combination of Japanese practice, scarf knitting, and playing with my Centro’s online functions to make sure Baltimore County Schools weren’t closing early. (me.) Luckily, they did not. Close early, that is, and we had time to chomp down a Chipotle burrito, get home, let the dog out, snag Gabe from carpool, run home to use the bathroom, and take him to drum. I recognize that there is nothing unusual about having little time to alight at home and achieve that settled feeling for most people, but I am grateful that our most pressing task for tomorrow is to return the Odyssey’s license plates to the DMV so we can stop insuring it.

I imagine that one day I may need a job, to extend the time until I need to rely on eggs and nests and stuff like that, and I imagine that I will work at Trader Joe’s, or similar. And I will not mind it. Probably. Because, the people seem nice enough, and besides--there is rarely a brilliant career opening for someone who: reads several languages somewhat, writes tolerable but unmarketable fiction, and is (or will be) fifty-something. So, it will be one of those jobs for people whose more interesting features are not highlighted by their vocation.

I am not watching the Superbowl

My brain is about to stretch to the point of flipping inside out. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy studying Japanese. Indeed, it is pleasing me in a way that I had not anticipated. But the process has evoked a couple of minor seismic shifts in my thinking.

See...I was a little concerned about how I sort of know some French, and I sort of know some Spanish, but neither one--when push comes to shove--is going to allow me to converse fluently at the drop of a hat. At all. At all at all. I can merely take comfort in the notion that if I’m unexpectedly airdropped into Lausanne, or maybe Bolivia, I will be able to combine my base of knowledge with the total immersion experience such that I may become conversant in a relatively short time. But my internal argument went something like this: Why add a language? Why not, instead, improve at the ones I already know? And now my answer is this: Because I can’t. At least not much, short of the aforementioned airdrop. Hence, why not expand my base of places where, if airdropped, I will have the framework on which to build?

So, ok. I’m apparently not that hard to convince, because I’ve completely bought that argument. But I’m still left with this concern: I enrolled for Gabe--so, unless I succeed in helping him succeed, I will have failed. So I wave my annoying little wipe-off board drills in his face, and leave Word docs on his PC with phrases to translate before he launches 
“Kitty-face Girl,” or whatever the heck animes he watches. He is immensely tolerant, thank goodness, but not--I observe--as quick a study as I am. It seems. So I have to remind myself: a) the kid has LDs. b)I bested Eric Winter in the NSA language-translation qualifying exam, where they give you an invented language and you have to figure out the rules. Eric Winter, otherwise, beat me in the “It’s Academic” qualifying trial.
c)I am obsessive like Hermione Granger. And then, just as I’m feeling ahead of the game, Gabe throws a few anime-derived expressions at me, about whose meanings I’m clueless, and I say “no fair! It’s not in the book!”

And, to be sane about it all, we have not had a chapter exam yet. It is perfectly plausible that class expectations are lower than my self-expectations. So let us wait and see.

And yay--I just looked it up, and it turns out that AACC does offer 4 semesters of Japanese, so I can go on and on and on...and then maybe reactivate my German synapses which went into hibernation after the one year of German they offered when I was in high school. From which I retain the following: Oje, der schwamm ist nicht nass. This is a very useful statement that you might employ any time you need to inform someone that the sponge is not wet. But I think it needs beefing up with a few additional expressions.

Last night, in the interest of further cultural enlightenment, Rachel, Gabe, Jeff and I went to Joss Japanese Bistro in Annapolis. Yum. In general. Once we got Jeff straightened out so that he was holding both his chopsticks right-side-up he did just fine. And even had this to add to tonight’s exchange of Japanese phrases: “Hoots man, be thrifty.”

Turning Japanese? Not yet anyway.

Gabe and I started Japanese 111 at the Community College yesterday. It snowed today. Gabe is playing PS3 with Matt. I am studying Japanese. Gabe, the anime buff, thinks he will be helping me with Japanese homework. Time will tell.

We’re not to chapter 1 yet. We’re still in the “pre” chapter...the little bit at the beginning of language texts where you get your intro to basic greetings and a smattering of other niceties. And this I can say definitively: Japanese is like brain yoga. And I’m not talking downward dog. Nope...one of those asanas where your hand’s on the floor, your foot’s in the air, and you promptly fall into the nightstand and knock a lamp over.

Kind of makes you want to crawl back to French, Spanish, or German with a penitent air, saying all is forgiven! I didn’t mean it when I said querer was an inextricable knot of conjugations! And here’s the thing: In the pre-chapter--the baby chapter--you don’t even conjugate anything. But you also don’t get the comfort of an alphabet you recognize. Merci, gracias, danke... Oh, sure, anybody can say that, and write it too. And maybe you can say arigatoo, even though there’s probably nothing in your basic western educational background that the word even remotely resembles. But don’t get too puffed up about that. Because you’re cheating. It’s not really written “arigatoo,” it’s written ありがとう, and therein lies the problem. It’s going to be quite a while before I can look at ありがとう, and register it as a word. And sadly, my entire Japanese textbook looks pretty much like that.

Frankly, I do not know if I will ever look at Japanese characters and see words, as opposed to seeing a code that must be cracked, using the handy chart found in the back of my textbook, or online. Can a brain be that plastic at 47? Interestingly, I find that the experiment of discovering the answer to this question is almost as interesting as the language-learning process itself. Can my brain get it? Let’s see.

It has been quite some time since I traced the lines of word-parts in a work book, taking care to draw the horizontal crossbar before adding the slash and the curlicue. I’m sort of feeling like someone should give me a fresh new extra-fat pencil, and a stick-on gold star at the top of my paper. And there’s the semi-appalling truth that the hatches and swirls I’m struggling to copy are second nature to any Japanese 7 year old.

Even so, I’m finding it more fun than chore...I was just a little unprepared for the reaction my brain is having. Huh? it says. You want me to do what? So I show it a flash card featuring what appears to be a fish hook dancing with dagger and say “soo desu.” Or, more precisely, そうです. (cheat sheet: "That's right.")

Some stones are better left unrolled.

I’m done teaching Gabe to drive. He can get a license when he’s old enough and mature enough to figure out how to go about it without me. By then he’ll have at least 2 sisters over 21, and maybe couple of Tylers, who can pick up the ball I dropped, which will--by then--be moldering in a dusty corner with some dog teeth marks in it. Although, truthfully, I don’t think I dropped the ball. It’s more like none of my serves were ever returned.

The only thing that niggles me still is that he’s going to need a certificate of completion from the driver’s ed school. He’s done the classroom hours, and 2 out of 3 of the drive-with-instructor sessions. After session #2, the guy told me not to schedule #3 until he’d gotten more experience, and there’s where the twain won’t meet. Because what the guy said was correct: He’s bad at driving. And I’m done. So I’m hoping that if I call the driving school on Monday and explain that we’re bagging it for now, but would like--if possible--to have the certificate in hand so that he doesn’t have to pay for and take driver’s ed again several years down the road, that they’ll agree to one more supervised lesson, even if it’s not the sort that normally comprises lesson #3. But if they say no...oh well...it’ll be Gabe’s $400 and 30+ hours next time.

Next time, as in a time when he can both round a bend and observe, in a meaningful way, that there are 5 cars backed up at a light a mere 15 yards ahead of him. The surprising thing--to me anyway--is that you would think that a guy who can ride a unicycle, perform sleight of hand with cards, and defeat Super Mario in a melee would have the necessary eye-hand chops to handle a car, but t’aint, apparently, so.

It can be a little disconcerting though, when people do not mature according to the only scheme of which you’re aware, to feel confident that the alternative unknown scheme will also have a reasonable outcome. That, thus, is the trick of this parenting episode--to be able, in the absence of confidence, to exist on the the plane of the now, and trust the then to be either a) something you can handle, or b) something you can wash your hands of. I am practicing “b” by leaving the driving ball to grow lichen in the corner.

Swabby

Gabe is out racking up miles with the driving instructor. It’s #2 out of 3 sessions. Must get the driver’s license even if he doesn’t particularly need to use it much. For practical and i.d. reasons. And now I have another. One must have a valid DL in order to obtain a Merchant Mariner Document from the Coast Guard. One must have the MMD to enter the entry level Merchant Mariner program at the Paul Hall School in Piney Point Maryland. And one must have a back up plan should college not work out. And that’s what Piney Point would be.

Deck Department, Engine Department, Steward Department? Yes Gabe...the possibilities abound, and you’re stuck on a boat where they must make some use of you. This is not to say that college is out. By no means. We will visit, we will pick, we will entreat...but ultimately the rest is up to the kid, and--while I hope he’ll grab the magic feather and fly--it helps my inner tranquility to have a Plan B. Or a Plan 9 from Outer Space if need be.