No Oscar, maybe.

Blanchett, Pitt, and company were perfectly good in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but the central character which I find myself the most interested in, in retrospect, is the retirement home which serves as a sanctuary and nursery for the young Benjamin, and as a haven at the end. Everyone needs such a place.

What else was right? Benjamin was right, that even the best and fullest of relationships cannot sustain the friction and ill-fit caused by insurmountable chronic physical conditions. A partnership may have occupied an utterly cherishable and eternally valued position in a person’s life story, but this esteemed place will not protect it from erosion when the tectonic plates of two lives shift unharmoniously. The white clapboard house with the piano in the parlor and a welcoming front porch might then be the refuge which fiction can supply, and real people might just have to dream about.

Wisdom from an older movie (based on the Anne Tyler novel): The Accidental Tourist. Sometimes who you should be with is not so much a function of who the other person is, but rather of who you are when you’re with that person. As wonderful and deserving as the other person may be, if you’re icky and mean around him/her then you’re probably not doing anybody any favors.

Still, you may not be able to rewrite the story line to fit the attractive parameters afforded by fiction, because you just may be one of those people who live outside the gestalt of storytelling (this may explain why--if in fact this is true of you--you can’t write fiction either.) If so, then you need to find another book to reference. Such as the only marginally fictionalized A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson. From this book you can glean the following: Sometimes it’s just a trudge through the neverending trees, step after step, where the best pleasures available are your morning coffee and the occasional glimpse of wildlife. If this seems more descriptive of your story (using the word story loosely,) then it may be at least slightly comforting that even a trudge may, at the end, show enough signs of narrative that it’s worth telling about.

badness

Hazel lives to perform.

Just now, I can only see the black side of her nose, because she is peering around the corner at me, with just one eye, contemplating which of the tricks in her repertoire she should resort to next. At the moment, the kitchen table is ripe with possibilities. Even if there were not a wad of embroidery floss, a pen cap, and a roll of wrapping paper to knock on the floor with a dramatic flourish, she would tear more shreds in Olivia’s plastic bag full of dvds or dive headlong into a pile of newspapers with the velocity needed to scatter them across the kitchen.

She is 8. She should have outgrown this nonsense, but--at 7 pounds--she really hasn’t outgrown anything.

Plus, especially for the Christmas season, there is a tree to tackle. I know better--well, let’s say I’ve learned better--than to hang anything breakable near the bottom, but you can still make a lovely racket with what is there. If you tire of the basement door game.

The basement door game. That’s the one in which you (and by you, I mean Hazel,) sit at the top of the basement steps, behind the door which is left open just enough so that you can access your food and litter box. You push the door open all the way. I close it, because I don’t like the basement door wide open. You push it open again. I close it. Repeat until you decide you’d now prefer to jump from chair to chair staring at Chessie. Or stare at Rachel. She’s reading Jane Austen, but you can make her notice you’re staring at her. You know you can.

AM 111--where we broadcast mixed metaphors all day, every day

Sometimes going to Quizno’s with a person is the only way to help him feel like you are there for him and you are still “together.” So, though lunch out at Quizno’s (or Noodles, or Lebanese Taverna, or Chipotle,) may not seem like the worthiest of ways to spend one’s time or money, if it accomplishes the above-mentioned aim, it is valuable.

There’s not a lot I can do about Alzheimer’s, but I have, gradually, fine-tuned my personal description of what it does to a brain. And I am full of analogies. There is the one where I think of the brain as being a big bank of lights which, grouped into systems, operates the complexities of cognition like a theatrical kleig set. This image seems especially appropriate once you see a PET scan because that’s exactly what you see--lit and unlit spots.

But I’m failing to conjure just the right analogy to describe how the AD brain inexorably isolates itself as the channels which allow for communication with the outside world break down. A fish out of water, starved for oxygen in an atmosphere that’s full of it? Not quite, because a fish never had lungs to begin with. Maybe (as an especially seasonal metaphor) it’s a cut evergreen in a deep-bucket Christmas tree stand, browning prematurely despite your valiant efforts to keep the bucket full of water...because...its pores have all clogged with sap, and the water cannot be absorbed.

The problem is--if we extend the metaphor to the next ridiculous step in the story--the tree thinks you’re not watering it. So it’s kind of ticked off at you sometimes. And there you are, standing there with a hose.

I know that the problem is a communication one. The interface which allows for new information to enter the equation, outside that which already exists in the head, is broken. Because often the AD person will describe a thought or share a thinking process which has the marks of some fairly complex processing. But, should you try to add a relevant tidbit, or provide some tangential insight, you will find--when he responds as if your contribution has entered the mix--that it has not. He is simply restating the point of view that exists in his head, unreachable by external variables.

That which is new--that which deviates from the pre-existing template--does not compute. To interact with another person in a meaningful way, requires an exchange of information. When the AD person does not receive your signals, it is because his receiver is disconnected, but he thinks it’s because you aren’t broadcasting. Consequently, in addition to feeling unable to follow the ambient conversation in the room, he also feels that you are not attempting to include him, and that is a very difficult situation to correct without resorting to a tone and manner that will be perceived as patronizing (which adds a whole other layer of negative emotional content to the smorgasbord.)

To further complicate the issue, all but the emotionally super-human will find it difficult to sustain the incentive level needed to give and give and give into a relationship where communication and common understanding have failed. Because good relationships are positive feedback loops wherein the energy available to feed the relationship is directly proportional to the nutritional content you derive from it.

Another truth, therefore, is this: Sometimes it’s that your broadcasts are not being received, and sometimes it’s that your station’s power grid has run out of juice and there’s nothing to broadcast.

So, you go to Quizno’s instead, because at least everyone gets to eat.

Why Y?

I don’t know. You might wonder why I have participated in the National Geographic Genographic project, not once, but 3 times at last count. Once for my Y lineage (via my dad’s cheek cells,) once for my maternal line mitochondrial DNA (my own buccal mucosa,) and once more--to provide a more complete picture for my kids-- for Jeff’s Y line.

I figured Jeff’s would be similar to mine--your basic Gravettian or Aurignacian type drifters who landed mid-Europe and dispersed from there...but maybe without the ultra-norse Viking twist specific to the Gillespie line. And that’s why I delayed. But one day a month or so ago I simply decided what-the-hey, and Jeff got his mouth swabbed.

Turns out that his haplogroup, the E3b-folk, have almost no common history with mine, the I-folk. Yep...looks like our people split up roughly 50,000 years ago, in East Africa, about the time of what’s known as the “Great Leap Forward.” What happened round about then, see, is that humans got smarter. A lot smarter, evidently and they began to do new things like speak in sentences. So, what I imagine caused the I haplogroup/E3b haplogroup rift is something like this: The E3bs kept pronouncing ketchup and chocolate like cat-sup and chalk-let, and that really got on our I-group’s collective nerves, causing us to veer east across the Red Sea at Ethiopia while the proto-Clements continued up the east coast of Africa.

From there they pretty much peopled the coasts of the Mediterranean, both north and south while the proto-Gillespies blazed a more northerly trail through the Middle-East, then west into Europe where they busied themselves with painting beefalos or whatever those things were, on cave walls.

It is only by dint of the fact that some later member of each group independently fell for all that hyperbole about the “New World” that our children even came into being.

But why am I curious? I think it’s because I have a general concept of myself as the most mundane of human creatures, from an ethnic standpoint, and I was curious to see if any decorative accents could be appended to my Heinz 57 Euro self-image.

And I have, in fact, found these colorful details to be fun. Unimportant to be sure, in the scheme of things, but fun.

Ultimately there is no take-home point. Except perhaps this. As we strive to imagine Gabe’s future, we can offer him these two default options, should he not eventually come up with something on his own. “Gabe,” I will say, “take your pick. You may either be a muralist, or you may sell handwoven baskets in the Casbah. You have a long history of being suited to either of these occupations.”

waffling

The waffle iron died--after a long life of devotion to golden-brownness--at roughly age 70. ish.

You could hardly ask more of a household appliance. To gamely cook deliciousness for 3 generations of children is a feat not to be equaled by any Sunbeam or Proctor-Silex you might find at Target today.

The thing is though, now that I think about it, that it probably only cooked for two generations, one of which was not mine. It was there during my mom’s childhood, and I conscripted it back into service for my children, but I suspect that during my grandmother’s hermit years--roughly from the 60s to her death, in the early 80s, it barely saw the light of morning.

The waffles have been sticking to the top plate for some time. It was only last week that it became clear that the upper element was a goner. I loosened the 4 screws holding the top burner to the waffly-imprint surface, and had a look inside. The wires which used to carry the current from the bottom to the top had corroded into nothingness--there was an inch or so swinging loosely just to show me how it used to work...but there was no hope of repair, and it was sufficiently amazing that the rusty old, baked-on-greasy old bake temp indicator had outlasted the wiring.

Its like will not be seen again. A waffle iron sitting in permanent attachment to a stainless steel ornamental tray with almost rococo handle brackets. ‘Tis true--the paint has chipped off the handles, but the dangly ivorine knob you grasp to reveal the toastiness of your cooked-to-perfection waffle is as jaunty as ever.

I acquired it at my grandmother’s passing--missing a cord. This was in 1982. Fortunately, a nice young man at the local hardware store, by the name of Jeff Clement, was able to fix me up with a lovely, fabric-wrapped match. Actually, he fixed my mother up with it, because I was a little too awkward to talk to him.

I wonder if Williams-Sonoma sells anything nearly worthy of serving as a replacement waffle iron. I wonder if I will want to spend that much money. I will have to ponder. Pancakes aren’t bad.

blabbedy bla

I’ve forgotten how to talk.

Well, not entirely. If you ask me a specific question, or steer me into a particular topic, there is an excellent chance that I will be able to say something relevant and reasonably coherent.

Where I seem to be flagging is in the area of pulling something out of the air, for the mere joy of it, or commenting meaningfully on something I observe, or a spontaneous thought.

When girls call me, I like to listen to what they have to say, but--as Olivia pointed out this afternoon--I don’t have much to say beyond commentary on the subject broached by the other party.

I hope it’s not a use it or lose it thing. The trouble is that in the course of the past 5 years I’ve had the habit of spontaneous conversation conditioned out of me.

I say things like: “Look--I made coffee! Do you want some?” and “We need to leave in 10 minutes. Do you know where your coat is?” And generally, this generates a meaningful response.

On the other hand, a comment such as “Victor Hugo was really smart,” or “Getting sciatica on the first day of my period stinks on ice” is likely to be met with a blank and uncomprehending stare, or at best a bewildered smile...and one can pursue it, but if the receiver is broken it’s broken, and you will get nowhere except Frustration Land. So, you do (or at least I) tend to default to keeping it internal.

Which means, after 5 years, that I am quite boring. And I apologize for this, in advance, if you happen to get stuck in a phone conversation with me, or worse, maybe a car ride.

Maybe if I practice on the dog, I will retain conversational skills at at least the rate that an astronaut retains bone mass by exercising.

So, if I suddenly say with a burst of alertness “spontaneous conversation topic!” and launch into a monologue on Sigg bottles and the overly-enthusiastic nature of EMS employees, please indulge me, and share your take.

Allegretto

Jeff wants to know, again, where his wallet and keys are.

The trick is, I know where they were, this morning--on the table in the kitchen between the monkey chairs--but that was this morning. If I’d seen them since I would have made another indelible mental note, knowing the question would come up. But he managed to reposition them, and I have not yet happened upon their new, random, situation.

He likes the feel of the keys in his pocket--heavy, poky, inclined to make worn spots in jeans pockets--though they serve no purpose there. Except for the mini versa-tool which pops out every so often to assist in the opening of a box, but must stay home when he visits Colorado, lest the BWI security guy be gifted with another sharp and disallowed implement.

There are people, evidently, who come into the world grasping immediately that it is a place where beauty and tragedy entwine in an ironic pas de deux. They are the brilliant writers of farce and satire who can hit the ground running with efficiency enough to carve a career. Then, there are those--present company included--who assumed they must be inhabiting a nice, linear narrative in a book with neat binding...until--many, many years later--they notice there is no binding. There is no book. There may not, in fact, be an alphabet involved at all. Maybe this isn’t even a graphic novel, by gum. Once I thought I understood the words to a particular phrase of Jellicle Cats, and I’d sing along...Can you ride on a broomstick to places far distant?...Familiar with candle, with book, and with bell?...Were you Whittington's friend? The Pied Piper's assistant?...Have you been in the love-nest of heaven and hell?

And guess what? That’s not how the last part goes. It’s: Have you been an alumnus of heaven or hell? And this probably makes good sense in the context of what T.S. Eliot meant for the poem to convey. But still, my mangled, misheard version holds special significance for me. Because there is one of those love-nests, and I have been in it, and so have a lot of other people. There are no linear narratives spawned in this love-nest. But there is plenty of irony, beauty and tragedy...and not just a pas de deux, but a continual, nonsensical, sensical, discordant, syncopated, messed-up, harmonious, sometimes-boring, sometimes nifty, unfinished opus.

But I doubt if anyone would publish it.

conflatable inflatables

I’m not sure which was my dominant emotion--despair or mischievous irony--when I glimpsed the deflated heap of nylon in the yard across the street. White, with red and blue accents? It is, unquestionably, an inflatable snowman waiting for air stuffing.

I’m pretty sure that in the 22 years we’ve lived on this street, this will be our street’s first incursion into the area of holiday inflatables. And this is not because we’re one of those pristine neighborhoods where everyone’s very-similar house is surrounded by neatly trimmed topiaries and a flawless lawn. Nope. Some yards are scratchy, patchy and otherwise in perfect syncopated kilter with the eclectic dwellings they surround. We ourselves decorated with a sizable dumpster for 6 or so months last decade, and I know our neighbors were deeply appreciative, at least insofar as they never got out the torches and pitchforks.

As for me, well...you can see that I am making a stab at festive, and got both lights and a wreath installed today. The tree is soaking in a bucket out back, and the lights--as far as I can discern--work.

And now...for the next 2 or so hours...I will endeavor to stay alert enough to pick Gabe up from his after-school, service-hours-earning stint at the Baltimore Ronald McDonald House, where he ostensibly assisted in preparing the evening meal for families of sick children. I am not aware that he brought a deck of cards with him today, though sleight of hand is a good gig for Gabe on these missions. Perhaps he will like seeing the lights on the house when he gets home. And perhaps the neighbors will have their snowman inflated. And I will thank them. Because if our neighborhood becomes too tasteful, we may just have to bring back the dumpster.

doing things

A day is the vacuum that piddly tasks, by nature, abhor. The real myth, I guess, is the one that suggests we should actually accomplish something of note each day. A silly idea I want to and should dump.

It’s worth noticing that life can be just about, for example, eating. There’s a goodly bit of preparing, pureeing, and equipment washing involved in my dad’s 3 squares + snacks, and who can argue with that? Clearly it’s a right and valuable use of time, when a person’s physical condition requires specially prepared food, to spend as much time as is needed to specially prepare it.

As for me, I can piddle away the waking part of a day with remarkable adroitness, and still get to the end worn out but with nothing to show for it.

I have tried this as a mom of babies, as a fully-employed (with academics) person, and as the occupant of my current weird and nondescript role. Regardless of the hat I wear at the time, the essentials get done, I goof off some, and I become useless as the sun sets. There ought to be a take-home point, but I don’t quite seem to be getting it. And why should I? If I learned anything at all from life experience I would not have this nasty headache, because I would not have eaten a whole square of chocolate peppermint bark.

Smart people astound me. How can your brain perform those feats? I wonder. Talented people also astound me. How can your brain and fingers possibly communicate with the coordination required to play any instrument--and a fiddle in particular--that fast and flawlessly?

I remain astounded. And perplexed. And headachy.

150 years to perfect my baking skills...

The Riverview Inn Bed and Breakfast, in Sunbury, PA, was built by Ira Thorne Clement--one of at least 3 Ira Thorne Clements in the Sunbury Clement lineage--and until I get better straightened out, I’m going to say that the I.T.C who built the home on Chestnut St. was something like my kids’ Great(x3)-Grandfather who had no clue how busy Highway 147, aka Front Street, would be in 2008. Still, it is interestingly situated with just 147 and a long, narrow park between the house and the Susquehanna River.

Like many such towns, Sunbury has found itself having very little to do with the 21st Century--most evident in the general under-maintained disposition that characterizes it nowadays.

A Christmas light display of skaters glowed cheerfully across the street from the window of the “Overlook Room” where Jeff and I were bunked. That the park’s holiday light displays turned off at 9 p.m. probably reflects the state of the economy.

Rachel supposes that the chocolatey odor which wafted from the first floor in the wee hours of the night (fondue, said Gabe; brownies, said Tracy,) signaled that the resident spirits recognized that kin were filling the house that night, and they were doing what they could to be hospitable.

I was pleased with the trip to inter the ashes of Jeff’s mom--short though it was--and found that I appreciate the richness of human settlements even in the grayness of late fall, and the dreariness of the economy. There is always something to take in.

I wondered if my children felt any sort of connection to the place. The cemetery was quite replete with Clement markers of impressive size, and there they were, Clements every one. I feel such a connection in the hills of SW Virginia, but they did not make frequent forays up the Susquehanna in their childhood, and that may be the key.

ouch and no way.

Olivia showed up Friday with a new place to clip keys, thread her iPod earbuds wire, or snag herself on nails, in the form of a left eyebrow ring. Rachel says these grow out in time as the brow seems to inexorably push outward regardless of your attempt to convince it it’s an earlobe. I don’t mind it, but as I’ve never known a piercing to not have a red, swelly, ouchie phase, I hope hers will pass with minimal trauma.

As for me, I have no further use for holes which aren’t standard equipment, and I am very grateful that I’ve spent the last...count, count, count...34 years wearing lightweight enough earrings that I still have holes, not slits, and small, relatively non-pendulous earlobes.

It’s funny how, as a kid, you notice certain features of certain adults which you vehemently decide--right then and there--that you do not aspire to. Stretchy, slitty earlobes were a very strong one of those for me. I also wanted never to have “set” hair. That’s the thing where you go to the beauty parlor and get it all curled up into a neat little helmet which you, apparently, may not wash and must sheath in a cloth shower-cap type thingy when you sleep. On your back only. I very, very, most strenuously knew that I would never wear lipstick that would come off, leaving a deep red smudge on the teacup or on a hapless child’s face. And although I think I did it once upon a time when I was young and unformed, I will never again (ever) wear a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown.

Harvey might like to play Uncle Wiggly, anyway.

There are a couple of inexplicable things that I do. Or at least difficult to articulate insofar as I am handy with the tools of articulation. Which is to say less handy than I’d like to be.

One of these things is that I am not--despite my complete failure to toe the line with regards to my religion of cultural origin--an atheist. It is possible that I am an a-theist, in the sense that a theist purports to have an encapsulated image of god--that is, God as a discrete being, whereas one without this sort of discrete version of god may be an a-theist. But that does not necessarily leave one without a notion of the ineffable.

The other thing is that I “am” a writer. In the sense that I require this self-image. For my own psychological purposes. And despite the total lack of external validation.

So, in order to explain these otherwise inexplicable characteristics, I have nothing to offer but the Harvey defense. And here I reference Harvey, as in the big white bunny. The pooka. Jimmy Stewart’s friend:

Let’s summarize. Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart) might be nuts. His best friend is a 6’+ white rabbit, visible only to himself. His sister Veta has decided to cure him by means of an injection of Dr. Chumley’s Formula 977. The taxi driver, there to ferry him to the site of the “cure” says, yes, it will work...it will make Elwood a “perfectly normal human being; and you know what bastards they are!” It is at this last critical moment that Veta realizes she doesn’t want Elwood to be a “normal human being.” She wants him to be the same carefree and kind person he’s always been, even if it means she’ll be living, forevermore, with Harvey the pooka.

So, being a writer and being an a-theist, but not an atheist--that is my Pooka. I like it.

I would rather talk to no one than have no one to talk to, and I’d rather be what might be nothing, than be nothing.

In a completely--and I emphasize completely--different vein: I discovered something remarkable on page 18 of the Vermont Country Store catalog. It is a Penny Brite doll ensemble, complete with change of outfits, and poofy weird 60’s hair, in the exact black and pink vinyl case she came in when I had my very own Penny Brite in roughly 1965? And here’s the really great thing. You can own your very own for the bargain price of...(drum roll)...$69.95. Some boomers must really value nostalgia.

Yes, the Vermont Country Store is well stocked with delights of yore. How about some clackers--those two balls on strings that you could clack rhythmically and if you were good you could bang’em repetitively at both 6 and 12 o’clock at great risk to the faces of any kids lingering nearby. Um...ten bucks. Or how about a “Mrs. Beasley” doll, from Family Affair? You can, for $99, astound your children and cause them to ask “Yo...what's with the ugly doll? At which point you pull Mrs. Beasley’s string. She says “Do you want to play?” and your children run screaming from the room. A 12 oz bottle of “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific” shampoo can be had for the relatively bargain price of $14.95 (plus shipping--$5.95.) But don’t you want to smell the way you did in Madame Hamerstrom’s French 3? Of course you do. Well worth $20, more or less. Who knows when Chris Entwistle and his red hair will wander back into your life. You want to be ready.

not an owl

Night may forever be a mystery to me. Other people love it. They want to dress up, go dancing, socialize, have meetings, expend energy. But, when it gets past 7 p.m., the thing is, I have none to expend.

I don’t suppose there’s any evidence that it will ever be otherwise for me. A person or so told me I was nuts for having my wedding--24 years ago--at 10 a.m., so that brunch could be served. Nuts, maybe, but me...yes.

It’s not that I dislike p.m. hours. They can be just fine, and I can be perfectly happy within them...provided I don’t have to go anywhere, do anything, or think much.

Well, this will be interesting, come January, when Gabe and I take Japanese from 7 to 8:15 p.m. I hope I will manage. I remember many years ago, before I had children, taking a ceramics class at the Community College and dropping out because it went until 10, and my brain had shut down for the night about half-way through the allotted time.

I do not think I could change this by a deliberate alteration of my sleep/wake pattern. Must be the Franklin, as in Ben, genes at work.

Y chromosomes and jugs.

Genographic Project kit #3 is waiting at the end of the counter for a second swab of Jeff’s inner cheeks before it gets packed back to National Geo. for analysis. So far I can provide my children with the interesting notion that their grandpaternal lineage (my side) takes them back to Nordic roots, and that--based on me--the maternal side is, um, European. (yeah...that silly mitochondrial DNA doesn’t tell you much.) But maybe a swab of their Dad’s Y chromosome will reveal something exciting and unexpected. Like, I don’t know...an Inuit sneaked in there somewhere along the line. But I doubt it. Most likely it’s going to be Heinz 57 Euro and any hopes anyone was holding out for exoticness (from our pov, anyway,) will be dashed on a rock lying in an inconspicuous glade somewhere on a smudge between Germany and the UK.

To completely change the subject, I’d like to say something about having an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. At first you think (well, I thought,) maybe we shouldn’t say anything...no one wants to be marginalized. And of course no one does. But then you think (me again,) it’s good to have people understand what’s different and why...and there’s no shame, so why not? But now I’ve gotten somewhere different altogether...especially because we’re more or less fine. Different than 7 years ago, and limited in some ways, but fine. Fine and holding as far as I can see. Not only holding, but maybe even better than a couple years ago in a certain way. It’s as if (and here I’m more or less bull-fewmeting) there was an acute tumble down a rocky slope which happened a few years ago, followed by the perplexing state of trying to figure out what the heck happened, and maybe even a stage of inflammation associated with the downhill tumble. Inflammation which has eased, leaving us with a different set of cognitive skills, but feeling better for the easing. So, we know where we are, and why, and whatever happened has, perhaps, healed, albeit with limitations. I may be very silly, but I expect the status to remain quo for quite a long time to come, so it’s a little troublesome to suppose that the community may be watching with thoughts in their heads of the tottering or immobile old folk in the Heartlands Memory Wing, and I truly don’t believe we’re headed that way for the foreseeable future...so I’m thinking we almost need to redefine Alzheimer’s. Without a doubt it can be a continuous and markable process through the 7 stages, but it can also mean damage--in an Alzheimer’s pattern--that happens, then stops happening, just leaving you different. My present assumption is that that’s what happened to us.

Anyway, I think the silly online tarot reading I got a few years ago was right. That I had 10 jugs of some good stuff. 5 spilled. Obviously, I’m very sorry about that, but the advice is to appreciate the remaining 5 jugs. Or maybe I should call them amphorae. (I’m not sure I can appreciate Jim Kramer bellowing about stocks on MSNBC from the next room. But I can live with it. Boooyah.)

knit 5, purl 5, but the opposite when you go the other direction.

Just a couple minutes ago I ripped a couple years' worth of knitting off the bamboo circular needles. Not a big deal, seriously. I'm using rumply purplish yarn with bluish/greenish/grayish flecks, and the basketweave I'd created was only 5 inches deep and far too many stitches across to make a reasonable neck scarf. (You always knit a neck scarf if you're just doing it as a nervous habit, have a pile of leftover yarn, AND don't like counting stitches. At all.) I will start it again. Scarf-width this time.

Wow--it's 10 p.m. I gotta go to bed.

Do not read this. It is Sappy and Too Personal. You'll be sorry. TMI! TMI!

I am attacking the dirty dishes. There are many. Jeff wanders in. Do you ever have any...emotions? he says, in the usual somewhat flat and tentative tone.

I have all the normal human emotions, I reply. Anger, sadness, happiness...

What makes you angry? he asks.

Humans acting like dumb, mean troglodytes, I say.

What makes you happy? he says.

My children, I say. They make me very happy.

He does not know what to make of my stoicism, because--while a guarded nature is and always has been my default mode--he knows that he used to experience a more open and communicative version of me. He does not realize that when the receiver broke, the transmission could not be completed. Or, to try another inadequate analogy, it takes a warm hand on the surface of the plasma globe to focus the current.

If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? he asks.

I deliberate momentarily. I decide not to answer that I would change him to who he was 10 years ago, because I seek to not pin any of my angst on him, at least not in such a way as he would notice. Instead I answer, truthfully, that I would be a contributor to life in a way that helped other people.

He thinks about this, and more or less understands, since he did not choose nor does he appreciate his own lack of employment.

But that is the end of the discussion, because now he has done what he intellectually knows he should do--that is, see how I’m doing. And he does care about the answer, I don’t mean to make it sound otherwise, but his ability to respond or connect empathically is a seriously compromised function, along with spacial orientation and following a multi-person conversation. And counting backwards by 7’s. (Yeah, there was another mini-mental at Georgetown Tuesday.)

The problem with the conversation for me, is that--even as I hold firm to the stoic façade--unwelcome emotions are burbling to the surface and I forcibly suppress them via diligent attention to the task of unloading and reloading the dishwasher. I can let them out when Jeff goes to ride the elliptical, because he will never notice--his tuner no longer detects that frequency.

Naturally, I question my lack of openness and unwillingness to be vulnerable. Is it fair? Is there any way I could try to be a warmer person? My demeanor is, for the most part, kind, but it’s a therapeutic kind of kind--not the sort that flows naturally from the joy of a fulfilling two-way relationship.

I might liken a mutually satisfying relationship to a pair of bunsen burners, each burning a unique gas. One emits a turquoise flame, the other orange. But put them together and you get something remarkable and unexpected, like a smokeless magenta flame with a purple aura. The orange burner’s pipeline breaks--its gas is inaccessible, and it feebly burns only oxygen--turquoise in partnership with the turquoise burner. And it wonders what happened to the magenta flame. But the turquoise burner cannot burn magenta by itself. It tries to fake the magenta flame, but can’t. (Yes, weird, I know. Who else would anthropomorphize bunsen burners?)

It’s like if someone took your soul mate and turned him into Teddy Ruxpin. You can (and should) hug him--it’s good for both your healths--but he will not understand you when you tell him about your day, or explain how it feels to be the “dumb one” in your family, or share any other of your stupid neuroses because he does not have that microchip. So, you will be disappointed if you try. He will merely grin back and say “Let’s read a story!”

What you should do then is hug him and read a story.

Lumps and Dirt

Today, while Jeff endured the usual poking and prodding as a guinea pig in the Merck vaccine trial at Georgetown U., I read AARP Magazine.

This is not anywhere near the dreary pastime it sounds like. Apart from a long-running subscription to Reader’s Digest (which I’m finally inclined to let lapse,) I don’t seek out magazines. But, the monthly AARP one comes with a membership and is almost invariably worth a look.

I have never read Rabbit, Run, or The Widows (or Witches) of Eastwick, or anything else by John Updike for that matter, but I surely appreciated his essay in the Nov-Dec AARP, “The Writer in Winter.” Now, in addition to the fact that I have not read the above-mentioned Updike works, I have also not written anything of consequence, so I must allow that it’s a leap of vanity, or at least presumptuousness, to claim that I can relate in any way to his words, but I can.

Particularly these ones (in which he laments that his greatest rival may be his younger, nimbler self):

...the same brain gropes through its diminishing neurons for images and narratives that will lift lumps out of the earth and put them under the glass case of published print...

...[a writer] should have in hand a provocative beginning and an ending that will feel inevitable. Instead, he may arrive at his ending nonplused...The threads have failed to knit. The leap of faith with which every narrative begins has landed him not on a far safe shore but in the middle of the drink...

Anyway, I loved the imagery. Whether or not I still have a full complement of neurons, undiminished, I can viscerally feel that sense of groping for anything that might turn lumps of earth to publishable display pieces. Threads do fail to knit. Nowadays they fail even to turn from fuzz to threads. Ok...so we’re still waiting for those fibers, and there may be no brain left to knit them, should they form.

So anyway, perhaps I should stick to journaling for now, as recommended by another article in the same AARP issue, this one entitled “Find Purpose, Live Longer.” The author is Gregory Plotnikoff, M.D., medical director for Abbott Northwestern’s Institute for Health and Healing in Minneapolis. Especially effective, says he, after “a major life change that leaves you feeling lost [such as] when a spouse dies, you retire, or your kids leave home, [i.e.] you interrupt your personal story.” Hmmm. The task, so he says, is to “figure out how this episode fits into the plot of your life.”

Well, geesh. I thought I had given up on plot. But let’s suppose I can take a giant step sideways and revisit that discarded assumption. It might be a better choice than eating too much chocolate and revisiting chocolate headaches. (I am bound and determined to have one tomorrow.)

Actually, there are several things I need to revisit tomorrow which are a good deal more solid than assumptions, including A.A. Medical to see how the dad’s doing, AACC to get the Gabe registered for Japanese, and Whole Foods to restock the supplement drawer. If I encounter any promising lumps of dirt in the meantime, t’will be a bonus.

What would Flower say?

I’ve got a pretty powerful chocolate notion today. Unsated, sadly, but at least I won’t be giving myself a headache. Now there’s a rotten deal--headaches from too much chocolate.

Remarkably, Ellen and Fred are moved in (unpacked boxes notwithstanding) and we did nothing more strenuous than transport a tupperware of baked apples. Ellen does not, she has suggested, appreciate her 70’s era kitchen cabinetry. Or is it 80’s? At any rate, whether the cabinet-chooser’s mind was numbed by The Brady Bunch or Three’s Company, I say just be grateful that Greg Brady’s coat (with cigarettes in the pocket) was not left hanging in your closet, and at least all four of you don’t have to sit on the same side of the dining room table. Imagine how your children might turn out if that were the case. Like Johnny Bravo or something. Not pretty. Indiana Jones, as Austin demonstrated for me, seems a much less dorky option. (Not that I’d be your go-to consultant if avoiding dorkiness were the goal.)

I’m having a funny, wistful sensation every time a bright and clever therapist (PT, Speech, Occupational, Nurse,) works on my dad during his current hospitalization. I admire people who do intelligent and useful things. I really do.

Here is cool discovery of the week: With Ultralingua Spanish-English and French-English dictionaries installed on your Palm Centro, you can not only read Les Mis more easily (well, the Spanish doesn't help here,) you can also conjugate verbs on demand. I'm so geeking out on this.

So, kitties are more likely to be allergic to fish than venison and rabbit, the vet tells me. Now she tells me, that is. Chessie, the tubby old diva, will be the beneficiary of the herring and mackerel food surplus when we go back to Crunchies pet food store tomorrow and seek out Thumper kibbles and Bambi-in-a-can for Little Itch, aka Hazel.

eerrrrrk

What I meant to say was that it’s plain that I cannot squeeze a good story out by dint (merely) of determination and persistence. Tried that.(several times actually.) Hence, I am willing to carry my current working notebook around for the length of time required (1 year, 7 years, 11 years) for the thoughts which I jot at unpredictable and infrequent moments to begin to relate to each other and--eventually--form the bones of a dang good idea. I cannot assume such a matrix will ever materialize, but it will be a creditable effort.

These are cute kids at the Maryland Renaissance Faire. Someday--maybe next year--I’ll get the lady who throws and interprets stones outside the little gypsy hut to do a reading for me. I think pecan pie might not be an entirely bad idea either that day.

Could there be a more boring manner of improving one’s Spanish than Rosetta Stone? Well, yes...you could read a grammar book. I suppose it beats that.

My working notebook, by the way, has 3 phrases in it so far. I hope at least 5 by Christmas. I’m thinking it’ll take at least 30 or 40 before the first filament of an idea coalesces. In the meantime, I can be irked. Irk is a strange word. The built-in Mac dashboard dictionary is telling me that it may come from the Old Norse yrkja meaning “to work,” which is an interesting irony in that the source of my irkedness is the sense of not being a contributor, workwise. This is why I used to want to be a pioneer. Because there would be no time for existential angst. You’d be way too busy making soap out of lye,

C'est la vie

Gabe took PSATs today. This will be a curiosity. I could not imagine how it would go. His report: He finished an hour before most of the class then took a nap. As to how he thinks he did: He thinks he did fine. No scholarship, he predicts...he thinks he performed averagely. We’ll see. I’ve been wondering for years how these standardized test experiences would turn out.

I’m back to trudging through a bit of Rosetta Stone Latin American Español. It’s a boring program, really, but I need to keep my Spanish synapses in balance in that I’m also presently reading Les Misérables en français. ‘Tis true that the version is abridged. I mean to check Cliff notes online and see just how much I’m missing. Aggravating it is to leave any out at all, but...en français...the struggle is enough and the pace slow as it is.

I like bags. I like reusable grocery bags, IKEA shopping bags, Gecko Traders rice and fish feed bags. I just like bags.

Walking through life with you, ma'am, has been a very gracious thing. (Errol Flynn as General Custer to Olivia DeHavilland as Mrs. Custer in They Died With Their Boots On.)

How could you not do right by anyone upon whose heart that sentiment is etched for you?

maybe

I’m going to reenter, slow as a snake, slow as a seep, and with tedious, but flecked sparsely with sparkles, amounts of careful consideration.

As for politics...there’s only so much you can take before you begin to feel that your adrenals have been sucked dry and your previously piqued interest turned inside-out and hung from a clothes line.

As for grocery shopping...trying to hand someone the zip-top cooler bag, weighted down with a ½ gallon each of soymilk, orange juice, and apple cider plus an assortment of dog treats and frozen berries, can be a trick indeed. Just because it needs to be held by two handles. It takes two fully available hands to position those two handles in such a way that someone will grasp them both, and if you do not position them properly, he almost certainly will grab only one, or try to stick his hand through sideways--missing them both altogether. But you want him to help, so you have to down that last ounce of Trader Joe’s coffee sample and stuff the cup in your pocket so you can attend to the grocery bag handles. It is strange what things are hard and what things are not so.

I spent all day yesterday trying to think of the word “escapement,” as in the inner workings of a mechanical clock. And I didn’t. Think of the word. I had to flip back a few chapters in the book The Discoverers, and just find it, because it was completely eluding me, the silly word.

Green porch rockers, a glass of wine, and a Bill Bryson book on a cool October afternoon make a fine combination of things.

Man, I fuss a lot.

And now I have those really deep hiccups where my diaphragm shoves my lungs up through my trachea and it's completely beyond stifling.

But I'll get over it, at least sort of.

Holes, Hoot, Matilda...

This is the character of story to which I aspire as writer. Engaging, charming, memorable. ‘Tis a gift, and you can’t have it if you don’t. Which explains why, at present, I’m stuck at about 1/3 of the way into a work which I recognize to be as flat as everything else I’ve squeezed, forcibly, out of the empty toothpaste tube which is my creative imagination.

But, says Thomas Edison, don’t forget what I said about genius being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. And I do not. Forget, that is. But I recognize that the soufflé only poofs if you, in fact, have that all-important 1%. And a darn good percent it must be, at that.

I have searched the mental files, exhaustively, for my personal 1%, and it appears to be one of those things, like athletic coordination, that they left out of my accessory package. Too bad. Because I think I’ve given it a pretty good shot. Really. After grinding out three books, I should at least be showing a spark of magic, and--not only do I feel about as magical as a tin can--I have to adjudge my works to be merely tolerable tales which will not kill you to read. Not the effect I’m going for, yet not surprising given the painful dry scraping my inner storyteller has to do to write a paragraph more.

So it makes me feel really cranky to sit here on this silly stool feeling compelled to inject something creative into the world and having no tools with which to do it. And there, in truth, is where my ability to believe in the narrative of life runs out. It’s not because I have a spouse who needs care, or because other things aren’t always so great. It’s because, although Goethe might have said “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it,” he was mistaken. Or, it only works for some people. I’m not complaining about life in general, because it has many excellent aspects to it. I’m just pointing out that it’s a real nuisance to have to carry around an urge or “calling” (and I use this word with caution, because I don’t think anyone is actually doing the calling) that you’re not equipped to carry out.

So, on to busywork. Tomorrow perhaps, sanding and painting the patched bathroom drywall. Yep.

One Day More...

For a couple days there I was thinking that I must be horribly inept when it comes to achieving a neat drywall finish adjacent to the colossal glu-lam beams that hold the roof above our heads. I have done my best with putty knife, utility blade and spackle, and still the corners most resemble the dark side of the moon, minus a landing module. But I hadn’t checked out comparable edges other rooms with beam exposure, and the truth is they ain’t much better, despite having been--in theory--finished by someone with more experience than I. It’s an iffy proposition, getting smoothness in such joints. So, we will have to write these spots off as another nod to rusticity in architecture, and paint anyway.

In other news, I have found a source for a replacement sash for the Hurd window in the family which suffered the sling of fortune a couple years back, (from a rock, not an arrow, as far as I can tell.) Whether we will be clever enough to install it, once ordered, is yet to be established. But I am also gratified that the same vendor offers replacement screens. Not gratified by the price--$107 per--merely by the availability.

This Youtube video came to my attention a day or so ago. Don’t miss Obama, as the blue, white and red Les Miz gamine, on the wall posters. I had to smile, and I also had to buy the soundtrack to the symphonic recording of the musical as I am highly susceptible to melodramatics put to a soaring score, and I haven’t seen the show in some time. In fact, and sadly, I have never seen it live. Olivia’s suggestion is that we fly to London where it’s currently running on the West End. Practicality obviously notwithstanding.

Today I came upon this quote from an old Dave Barry column on weasel-poo coffee:

But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I've had several cups. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why I'm a columnist.)

I do miss Dave Barry, and found, in this nugget, evidence that I must have missed a life cue somewhere along the trail. Unless, of course, there are other careers which are ideal for those of faulty focus.

huh...

I can’t believe I’m sitting here watching Survivor, season...whatever. It’s because I’m at loose ends. Actually, I don’t even know what loose ends are, but here they are and I’m at them. (You have to laugh when the footage editors make it look like a gorilla is just on the other side of a shrub listening in on private Survivor conversations.)

Anyway, rain is pattering relentlessly on the roof. Gabe is computering across the house, as usual. Fredfred, in one of those ridiculous belly-up dog postures, has the prime spot on the couch, and I’m on the floor in the hopes that my left hip bone will quit irking me.

And you know what? I have nothing further to say, because they gave me neither a script, nor a clear assignment, nor a roadmap.

Saturday, and a nice one at that.

It will be a record for me to get to the Renaissance Faire thrice in one Fall, but it could well happen this year. Tonight just Jeff and I went, because it was a lovely, cool afternoon, and I wanted to eat fish and chips, drink a beer, and listen to music. Thus, we did. It is so much more relaxing to go anyplace with either just-Jeff, or anyone else and not-Jeff. Perhaps I actually should get myself one of those silly, most-decidedly-NOT-Renaissancy horse tails, and insist he hold onto it at all times, except in the port-a-john.

I am one baby-step closer to completion of the neglected details in the girls’ bathroom. Remarkably, the raw and uneven edge of drywall, which has been befuddling me since I first realized I couldn’t leave the bathroom as-is forever, sanded into a fairly neat and smooth place to spackle. Baby-step two will involve the application of enough Great Stuff™ Spray Foam to fill in an ugly gap between between the drywall and the segment of massive roof beam which runs along the diagonal roofline just above Becca’s sink, and step three--the actual spackling. Then we’ve got a toe-kick to face, several shelves to cut and install, and...then the real fun: chiseling up the hex tiles where I need to level the floor so that errant shower or tub water will no longer threaten to undo the kitchen ceiling. All that will be left is to wish that handy-person tasks could give one the clever-member-of-society cachet that writing an actually-interesting book would deliver.

A thought from Gabe: He thinks it would be the coolest thing to be an expert pickpocket who could breeze through a crowd slipping playing cards into strangers’ pockets on which he’d written “is this your card?” A thought from me: Why would you discuss irregularity and yogurt with Jamie Lee Curtis? Well, why not I guess.

And thought for the day: Watching CNN’s forum with 5 former Secretaries of State. Couldn’t we just appoint Madeleine Albright or Colin Powell for prez?

scary stuff

I would like the new organic market in town to thrive, and--as such--settled for just a half-gallon each of lactose-free milk and o.j. (to be guzzled by Gabe and Jeff respectively.) Maybe the stocking protocol will reach equilibrium if they get off to a good start. In the meantime, will Giant’s facelift--still in the heavily bandaged stages--entice me to partake of its vision of a mainstream grocery store? Seems unlikely I will crest the hill of indifference where Giant is concerned. Indifference, though, could be an improvement.

The roads in and around Washington D.C. were designed, I submit, by sheer accident. They make me feel as if I’m driving through a sleight-of-hand act: In the right lane you think? Presto chango! There is no right lane! (please don’t plow into the parked cars.) Oh, in the left lane now? Alakazam! There’s only one lane, and you and that sheet glass truck next to you are both in it! It’s all pretty wack...and I wonder--as I do with the beltway--how it remains as relatively free of sideswipes and fender-benders at it seems to, and why someone, somewhere along the line didn’t start a successful trend to swath all vehicles in foam rubber. Still, once again, we got in and out with a brief pit stop at the Greenbelt Starbucks to chase away my afternoon groggies, and I was left wondering: Why isn’t Starbucks coffee very good? Tomorrow, it will be the streets of Baltimore we take on--full of jackhammers and lane-impeding delivery trucks--in an attempt to get Gabe from school to his orthodontic appointment on time. So that I can, once again, hear Dr. Tull say “that hygiene is scaring me, man,” while I make a face that attempts to convey how sincere my efforts to lobby for improvement were.

Chapter more-or-less-eight of the book-of-uncomfortably-dubious-value is staring at me, in rough sketch form, from the mottled coffee-paper page of my working notebook, wondering if I would go ahead and inspect it already so I can carry on with the written-out version. “That uncomfortably dubious value is scaring me, man,” I say to it, as I turn instead to see whether Gabe is doing his oral hygiene.

nutzenboltz

Printing Concert Association tickets and watching paint dry are nice, complementary activities. Which fit right in there with the speed of the internet today. And, to be accurate, it’s not paint, it’s polyurethane. There’s that patch right at the bottom of the stairs, near the kitchen, where we filled in the wood flooring a few years ago, but rather than finishing the wood we’ve let it accumulate many moons of foot-traffic dirt, all of which I sanded away this morning. Then put down poly coat #1. Which Hazel promptly ran through. No matter, it will blend in with the rest of the cat-prints in the house.

Seems I’m on a handy roll. Several days ago I assembled three rockers for the front porch with but one disastrous stripping of an allen-wrench hole in the head of a wood bolt. That, Jeff successfully removed with a vice-grip (I was proud) and we replaced it with a hex bolt from our friendly neighborhood hardware store. Yeah, the one where I sit on the 3-person Board of Directors. (And a high-falutin’ position it is, too.) Yes, perhaps we have upped our old-folks-home quotient by having rockers on the porch...but, as I pointed out, people who knock sitting on the front porch in a rocker maybe haven’t tried it. There’s a lot to be said for it. Perhaps the reason the old folks get them is that they deserve only the best.

Then, on Monday, the monstrous-large elliptical trainer arrived, boxed, in the driveway. It seemed to make sense to cut it out of its box and bring the parts in one by one. Only later, while re-reading the reviews on Amazon, did I see that a dozen or so people had warned us against just that. See, there was this one ginormous wheel piece with the free-wheeling peddles attached which allowed itself to be lugged into the house with all the grace of a dead mastodon, pre-rigor mortis. But I finally coaxed it down 2 steps to the family room, and got all the nuts and bolts in place by midday Tuesday. And now I can attest, definitively, to the legitimacy of an elliptical workout. Personally, I turn as red as a ripe tomato, but--thankfully--my legs stop whining about 5 minutes into a 30 minute routine. The 30 minutes pass more easily, I find, if you plug in an iPod loaded with Heart, Disney songs, and the Cell Block Tango from Chicago.

I do not object to the busyness, as relatively meaningless as it all may be. Since Monday, all 3 girls have been away--a sobering preview of what it will be like around here in about 2 weeks. The three of us remaining--I, Jeff and Gabe--went to Lemongrass Monday night and enjoyed(?) a stimulating discussion about whether controlling fire or controlling smoke would be the preferable super-power. And I listen...really...I am now convinced that there are benefits to smoke-control of which I had not been aware. But I cannot think of any way in which it would speed up the printer as it spits out Concert Association tickets, or keep me from running out of ink.

Deportment of Monster Vermicules

On the drive to Nags Head the green Soobie will have 4 drivers--3 girls + Tyler--and the silver Soobie will have me. Chauffeuring Jeff and Gabe. But it’s totally fair I guess, because as I drive for 7 hours I’ll get to listen to a streaming monologue about how the best superpower in the world would be “iron face” or “air-cannon sneeze,” while Jeff sits shotgun, forgetting that he just downgraded from a driver’s license to an official Maryland State I.D. card.

I had a plan. (I admit, it was a really lame plan.) Gabe would have his learner’s permit (which we would have obtained today,) and I would make him drive part of the easier slow road down the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, and we’d cross to Norfolk via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The lame part of the plan was that this would not exactly be a restful break for me. I would be insisting that taking out a few trees as we rounded bends too fast was undesirable, while Gabe would be extemporizing on why his first car should be a tank with a rubber-band Gatling gun instead of a horn.

But, in any event, having the permit pre-beach is now an iffy proposition at best. We lined up in front of the DMV this morning, 10 minutes before the 8:30 opening, behind roughly 20 people. It is a strange thing to have to help process 2 people, both of whom appear to be humans who should be able to handle their own affairs. The desk lady gave us our numbered slips--C1 to Gabe, B12 to Jeff, and I tried to sit us where we could see the numbers when they popped up on the magic screen.

C1 popped up first. (Illogical, I know, but it did.) I accompanied Gabe to the proper window, where almost the first thing was looking into the eye-testing machine. “Read the 4th line,” said the man. “GMDV” says Gabe. “Read the rest,” says the man. “The part that comes after that.” Gabe couldn’t. Ok. Give me the dumb award now. Gabe hasn’t had glasses since about 6th grade when he stopped wearing them and never complained that he had trouble reading or seeing the board at school or anything else. It was, after all, a correction for his toddlerhood “lazy eye,” as opposed to a more clearcut case of myopia. But evidently, that right eye is really not up to snuff, and now we’re going to have to do something about it. (And how crazy is this? Gabe having to remember both his wallet and his glasses when he drives?) Still, and fortunately, the optometrist gave us an appointment for tomorrow...so we may yet be able to fulfill my dream of getting to Nags Head with my nerves shot to heck. So Gabe, insouciant as ever, struck up a conversation with an DMV employee about how the room should be filled with bumper cars, while I realized--with slight panic--that the magic board was now on B14, not B12.

”Jeff,” I say to Jeff, who is looking everywhere except at the magic board. “Did it ever say B12?” A man sitting 2 benches back points to one of the service windows. “There’s B12,” he says. I thank him, and Jeff follows me to where a lady sits rapping her nails on the desk. As the lady takes Jeff’s paperwork, I scuttle over to where Gabe is having an animated conversation with a DMV person about candy bars. All seems ok, so I hurry back to hear Jeff say “I have Alzheimer’s.” Ok, I think...guess those cards are on the table now. See, the thing is, Jeff didn’t want an I.D. He wanted a driver’s license, even acknowledging that he can’t use it because he’s uninsurable. So we were just going renew the license, and not mention anything medical...really, just to avoid that step of finality which was troubling to him. But he said it. So when the lady (nicely, in fact,) asked whether it impaired his driving, I confessed that he isn’t actually allowed to drive anyway, he just needs I.D. for airplanes and whatnot. So he has an I.D. card. Yep. That’s that. And there’s this: Next time I go to the DMV with Gabe I’ll only have to watch for one number to pop up.

behoovedness, cloven

People do the stuff they have to do. If the stuff they have to do does not occupy all of their time, they do stuff they want to do. If either the stuff they have to do or the stuff they want to do produces a result that turns out to be especially popular with or helpful to other people, then--one could argue--that they have found purposes in life.

The problem with assuming that people have purposes though, is that there is a much larger subset of humans whose activities prove neither particularly popular nor useful in any notable way.

So, you have to posit that either only a small subset of humans have a purpose (and the others do not,) or that no one does, but the smaller subset have just happened upon fortuitous occupations.

Actually, I suppose you could contend that many among those whom I’ve deemed “purposeless,” do indeed have one--it’s just smaller and quieter. Not notably popular, but possibly helpful.

I don’t know which of those is the case, if either. No purposes at all, in particular, or merely unflashy, under-the-radar purposes for most. I lean toward the former, but in case the latter is true, and one is to be assigned a purpose later in life, it would behoove one to exercise the mind and body so as to be fit to take it on. It would behoove one to exercise the mind and body even if no purpose will be assigned, also.

And that will have to do for a philosophy.

(The amazing thing is that there is a noun, singular, form of behoove that looks like this: behoof...meaning benefit or use. That's a pretty good word which appears to have nothing to do with feet.)

Remember Grasshopper--real life is not bumper cars

Some day I’m going to buy myself a big fat present--whatever I want--as a reward for teaching 4 kids how to drive.

I’m on the 4th and last. Today was his first time ever behind the wheel. It was different on several counts.

For one thing, the first 3 were girls. I realize this doesn’t apply to all girls, and I can name a few exceptions, but I find that--in general--girls are predisposed to not want to crash into things. There is, very often, just this primordial sense of caution in females which Y chromosomes, apparently, eradicate. So, as we’d lurch to a halt 3 inches from a sapling, he’d guffaw instead of freezing with that deer-in-the-headlights mien. So I would point out--again--that the consequences of not keeping your vehicle clear of other objects are generally negative. And he would laugh--again--and speculate about what you’d do if a full-size house suddenly burst through the pavement in front of your car.

We are starting out in a stick-shifted Soobie. Before, I have taught the girls basic driving in an automatic before we’d tackle the manual transmission learning curve, but I decided to jump into the frying pan right off the bat this time. After all, if kids prior to the 60’s did it, why can’t Gabe? Right. And he did very very well. Honestly. In 30 minutes of driving around the Community College parking lot there was only one instance of that lurching jerking stall-out that so characterized the girls’ early trials. And there was absolutely no discernible frustration. But here’s something that hadn’t occurred to me before today. When you are so focused--in your first lesson--on acquiring the moves needed to start, shift to second, shift to third...there is less cranial capacity available to allocate to basics such as gauging turning radius, lane position, comfortable U-turn velocity...the sorts of things which are pretty much all you’re thinking about in your first automatic transmission experience. So it may be this as much as gender which precipitated our close encounters with several trees and stop signs.

At any rate, 30 minutes was about all I could handle for today, but taking it slowly and steadily over the next year seems a prudent approach anyway. Driver’s ed is scheduled for October, and it’s entirely likely that the kid will hit his 17th birthday, next April, before we actually ink the license deal. And therein lies one more difference between Gabe and his sisters. He himself is as indifferent as he could be. Not that he didn’t enjoy the experience--I think he did. But there is quite obviously no fire in his soul to acquire the license, hence, there is no tugging on the reins required of me. Taking it slowly will suit everyone as far as I can tell.

In fact, I will pretty much have to blackmail him into taking the online practice theory tests 30 or so times until he knows every question inside and out. Because when we go to the DMV to score that learner’s permit, there will be no chance of his flunking the test and my having to appear in that mob one time more than necessary.

I have a fantasy called “drivers’ camp.” You’d send your teenager to...I don’t know...the middle of Nebraska, where’d they’d spend a month or more being taught by professionals who’d send them home trained, licensed, and ready for the Washington Beltway. Or at least Severna Park on a Saturday.

Life always makes me say "oh."

What does it mean when you can actually feel the mental brick wall you keep having to bash through when you’re on a steeply pitched uphill learning curve? Fie on USPS barcodes and the pony express pony they rode in on. Are there people who absorb new levels of technical complexity with ease, or does everyone’s brain hurt now and then?

For my next trick, I will help Olivia get her new MacBook up and at ‘em. What wonders await? (Frankly, this should be easy. It’s my...what...8th Mac set-up?) But even remembering where the heck I put the Office:Mac install software seemed taxing...as it does every time. Had we not missed exercise this morning, I could have aching triceps to balance my brain.

Here is one good and unexpected thing: We got, with the Mac, a “free” iPod Touch, and “free” printer. Which means not really free right then and there, but there’s a rebate. I hate rebates. I hate rebate forms. Usually you need 3 receipts, a UPC code sliced off the actual box, several copies of everything, and reading glasses to fill in all the numbers. But I have never experienced such a quick and simple rebate submission as the online Apple one I did this afternoon. Go to apple.com. Enter receipt id#. Hit go. Done. This is something Apple is definitely doing right.

Today 3 tuition packs came in the mail, from St. Mary’s. 3? Wait a minute...didn’t someone just graduate? I remember something about a blue mortarboard and rain...but there it is, on my desk with the undergrad ones: Math for teachers. Exceptionality. Educational Psychology. So, does this mean we maybe are thinking about the Masters in teaching? Thank goodness I’m not the first to find these things out. What a burdensome drag that would be. (smirky smile at Zoto, who will read this.) At least I was only the second to find out that I may keep all children on my health insurance policy until they are 25. No, seriously. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, if your brain explodes like mine is about to (thanks to postal barcodes) and we have to replace it with silicon, (which could be pricey I’m guessing,) it will be much cheaper if we just have insurance on you in the first place.

We had Chipotle for lunch. We like Chipotle. We do not eat there infrequently. It tends to be busy, and your orders are processed individually, assembly-line style, as you advise the Chipotlers on what else they should toss on your tortilla. I got to the the cashier, people piling up behind me. There is my burrito, waiting. I turn to Jeff, behind me. “Which is your salad?” I ask. “I haven’t ordered yet,” he replies. But wait. He’s behind me. We’ve reached the cashier. We’re 12 feet from the person he was supposed to tell, and the throng is getting heavier. I say to the guac-girl “He forgot to order his salad down there.” She seems to understand, issues a quick command to the guy at the starting end, and they’ve fixed the flub in fifteen seconds flat. It went well. Later, Olivia says to me: “That’s why you make Jeffy go before you.” Yes, indeed.

we accomplish some stuff

Tonight Tyler bribed Gabe into learning how to shave by promising to play Super Smash Brothers afterwards. I listened from the stairway as Gabe was coached through the steps...women’s shave foam because (said Tyler) it’s softer and smells better, and (and here’s something I didn’t know as I have yet to shave a face) never go sideways--always go up or down. So, I am grateful to have that rite of passage broached by someone more in the know than I. So one more thing is added to the arsenal of hygiene functions which--while he may not employ them to best advantage now--Gabe will at least have the wherewithal to accomplish.

Here’s what I’m exceptionally bad at: Dance Dance Revolution, aka DDR. Like most forms of digital entertainment, it requires much more mind/body coordination than comes easily for me, so it takes quite a bit of determined rewiring to bumble my way through anything involving a screen and associated physical responses. Come to think of it, I have the same problem with my fiddle. Committing anything which requires even moderate dexterity to memory--and muscle memory--is an arduous process. But doing so anyway seems better than accepting slothlike reflexes as the unbreachable status quo. The thing is, I just made up the word “unbreachable” apparently, but it seems to fit.

hodge podgerie of dumbness

Some things are too idiotic to make public. Some people are idiotic enough to make them public anyway. I’m trying to decide (and, being of the above-mentioned ilk, admitting to it) whether I’m really going to find myself as directionless as it looks like soon. And what does one do with finding oneself a) not in the market for a job in the classic sense, b) without young children in need of attention, and c) with an (a)vocation which appears to have been proven untenable?

Many people might have an answer to that, and that’s partly because their vocations are not--or have not yet been demonstrated to be--untenable, so they still maintain a vision of pursuing them. But for the purpose of this exercise, you must assume your vocation has been ruled out. What then?

I can do some unilateral brainstorming and propose a few things.

I could become a scholar. I don’t know if it will work. My attention and focus have been pretty sketchy lately, but there’s much I want to study, in theory.

I could let other people hand me their ideas of fulfilling (or at least useful) volunteer work, but, frankly, I have enough and don’t want more. Nor do I want someone else’s idea of what I should do. It has to be at my instigation, useful or not.

As for fiction...it’s creative hiatus time. I’m just going to be working on other stuff for a while.

Sell Apple/Buy Bucyrus? I hate buying/selling. Makes me feel so...imprudent. And yet, and yet--if it is the one thing Mr. J is able to take a meaningful interest in and the proposed exchange has the hallmarks of a sound buy/hold decision and it’s a shift away from a more volatile industry...well, ok then. Ok.

Who’s up for another crack at Wagon Wheel in August? Me. I want to put the fiddle riffs where they belong. And this time we have to sing. Yes. Really. We’ll sing it. I’ll harmonize. It won’t be that bad.

Anyone want a lichen-hued, pollen-covered, nonoperational minivan? Right. Thought not. (No, you can’t jump it either. But you can call AAA and have them tow it to Hondaman.)

I'll cut it out soon, I promise.

I wrote this:

The nice thing about harsh realities is that existential angst just can't, in the face of them, maintain its grip. Oh, for sure, some existential tricks are helpful, but angst just isn't worth the bother.

But I was mistaken. You might not think angst is maintaining its grip, simply because the general busyness of crisis distracts you, but if angst is fated to be your traveling companion in life, you can be certain it will reassert itself in time.

I was thinking I should give it a name, seeing as how existential angst doesn’t skip daintily off the tongue. So, what I’m going to do right now is see if I can Google-up a random name generator since meaningfulness is not one of my stronger attributes...(so hang on there a second...)

Ok, I’m back. And I’m going to have to confess--the generator was random, but I had to fire it off several times before the right name popped up. So here is the new moniker of my angst-friend: Nitza. Oh, it just makes sense and you know it.

Nitza has been very evident lately, and I’ve had to think why. Because thinking why is something I can do now so effectively that the whole story becomes quite transparent.

Odd there, that I even used the word “story,” because, right now, what Nitza is on about is the dissolution of my default narrative. The default narrative(s) went like this: There is a guiding force in life from which I can discern a path, a purpose, and a means to creatively contribute to the collective is-ness. It’s a pretty story, and who wouldn’t want live in it?

In fact, it was a portion of the following quote (which is often mistakenly attributed to Goethe, when in fact, only the final couplet is a rough translation from Faust) which provided some of the psychological rocket fuel I needed to get myself through the first book I wrote:

...the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

In fact, this is a passage from W.H. Murray’s 1951 The Scottish Himalaya Expedition. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but magical thinking--regardless of whether one’s muse is Goethe or Murray--was probably better abandoned along with baby teeth.

I do favor narrative, so it’s understandable that I’d want one. But I expect that there are many people who are able to make life meaningful without imagining the guiding nudge of a thinking cosmos, so that’s what I’m working on now. Restructuring the way I see things, perhaps using a material which Nitza isn’t so prone to shake. Until I get at least a good foundation built though, she’s rattling away at the bit of time-space continuum I’m occupying. She likes to remind me of how old I am, and point out acts of notable creativity by others who are not me, and ask (in her tremulous alto) “what did you write those books for??” To which I can only, so far, respond “Nothing Nitza. I wrote them for nothing. And we will make that ok.”

Actually, I’m hoping that now that I have outed Nitza, I won’t feel compelled to write about her so much. On to something more interesting. Like how April showers bring...May showers, which bring, apparently, ants.

Rabbit wisdom

The number of concert association renewals waiting for me to process them is roughly...a lot. And I will. They just need to sit there and age a bit, so that their characters fully develop. Meanwhile I will spend a little time wondering why blank days on the calendar add a special twist of flavor to my baseline anxiety level.

On that note...well, not really that note, but at least in that key and mode...I’m wondering whether it would be appropriate to change my default identity from “writer” to “slacker.” Or whether there’s a more descriptive term than slacker, because that’s not quite what I mean to connote. I don’t particularly evade work and responsibility, and I’m not--as far as I can tell--marked by apathy. I need a word that means “existing without an externally validatable identity.” (She who makes up words when none of the dictionary-approved ones suit her?)

Yes. If you have time to worry about this stuff, perhaps you have too much time. One of the tricky aspects of the aforementioned blank-calendar days. You might say “You need more to do.” I might reply “I have, as I mentioned, a stack of concert association renewals. I just don’t want to do them. They’re tiresome.” You might say “You’re tiresome.” I might reply “Yes. Thank for a defining word.”

I am struggling to continue the book. (though I will. I do feel I owe the characters that much.) But the struggly part is perfectly understandable (to me anyway,) in that I have three completed books and nothing to do with them. It’s kind of like making three delicious cakes, decorating them with Cool Whip™, and saying “Couldn’t we just look at them for a while?” So here I am thinking “Let me hurry and finish the 4th! Heaven knows 4 moldy concoctions stinking up the fridge on their way to the garbage must be better than 3.” So, that’s the thing. Purpose is a bit elusive here.

Which leaves me the determinedly healthy, if sort of labile, support-partner to a wonderful but fading person who can no longer provide the sturdy presence which kept me sane.

So Fred-fred and I went on a sanitizing walk this morning and stared down a good many bunnies. Who continued to nibble their clover, as if to say “don’t you have some concert association stuff to work on?”

I would just rust if I had iron

So great. I’m now, officially, the worst arm-wrestler in the family. It is almost a draw with Becca but I perceive that I would wear out sooner. Sad. Still, I will keep rowing that imaginary boat and lifting that imaginary Earth over my head, Atlas-style, at the community center. I just need bones. Bones are what I need. I suppose it’s not surprising that when you mix an ectomorph and a mesomorph you gets kids who are more mesomorphic than the ectomorph. But now, without further ado, I can quite honestly defer heavy-lifting jobs to whomsoever else happens to be handy, on the grounds that he/she is proven in clinical studies to be musclier.

Yay for the online health insurance apps. Seemed to go without a hitch. Jeff gets part D, and the rest of us have a cheapo (relatively speaking,) low-premium, monster deductible United Healthcare safety mat. I’m still voting Democrat, and I’m still hoping for something better.

In the good citizen department, I tried to donate blood today, at the Community Center. Hemoglobin, as measured by the little red gizmo, has to be 12.5. My first fingerstick turned up 11.5. “You want to try again?” asked the lady. “Sometimes it goes up” (for no apparent reason, I might add.) It did. To 12.0. So two stuck fingers later I was still a reject. I’ll try again in August.

In other news, I realize what’s bugging me. The world isn’t magic, and I wanted it to be. I was really kind of hoping for Yoda, or Clarence the wingless angel, or the celestial voice of Mufasa...or something. I might even accept a talking tub of margarine. I just hold a worn blanky of a myth that there should be further instructions, and there aren’t. Well, at least there’s coffee.

Here's a haiku, most excellently generated by this silly little haiku engine:

Haiku2 for messandclutter
who lives here who thought it would be a matter of throwing a few things
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Here are more:

that which had plopped
was breakfast not for us and
sadly for her not

the breakfast shoppe where
the eggs homefries and toast were
fine but the coffee

abstraction that is
simply playing tricks with our
imaginations

did I say I was done with the angst? oops.

I’m looking through The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or ADD. (Anything to avoid facing the book-which-I’m-afraid-to-write. You wouldn’t think that at halfway into book 4 I’d be afraid to write any book, but I am. If I dragged myself through the last one with a psychological broken foot, I’m limping through this one on 2 broken feet and wobbly inner-ears.)

The K&W, meanwhile, is something with which I want to familiarize myself anyway. Now that Olivia’s college roulette ball has staunchly seated itself in the indentation marked SMCM, my attention turns to Gabe and what-the-heck we’re going to do with him.

I need to have more confidence in the guy. I’m comfortable that the girls are raised, as securely as anyone gets raised...but Gabe is such a different story. Not just different. Written in another alphabet. In characters that no one ever taught me. Speaking of which, he wants to take Japanese. Seriously? Can I entertain the notion that this could work? Having no other notions to entertain, I will for now. So where--in the K&W--do they offer Japanese?

American University, for one. Not exactly the small town atmosphere--Massachusetts Avenue, District of Columbia. <6000 Undergrads. At least it’s not College Park. Still, I can’t imagine it, but I’m suffering from a failure of imagination across the board these days. So there’s another function I’d like to turn over to somebody else for 10 minutes or so: Driving, food planning, household maintenance, and imagination.

Olivia smeared me in an arm wrestle yesterday. An absolute rout. And that’s good. Despite my basic strength, and the resistance training at the Community Center (I’m keeping all my osteocytes, thank you,) it is no surprise that a full-grown girl with the female equivalent of her father’s mesomorphic structure would smash a long-boned equatorial like me. So it’s good, because the WWF is not a club I aspire to join, but somehow it has contributed--in a minor way--to my overall feeling that I’m 85 years old, fading into obsolescence, and am done. (Except for getting Gabe situated, that is.) Fortunately--I guess--that feeling of doneness is at least slightly counterbalanced by an angry sort of determination that not only will I keep my osteocytes--but I’ll keep my neuronal pathways cobweb free, my spirits up, and my tendency to be delighted by stupid little things like squirrels fully functioning. Right. So schizo as usual.

For some reason I keep running into (in the magazine sense) Maria Shriver and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom declare that they’ve reached points in their lives where they’re fully indifferent to success as understood by the general human public. Meaning in life, they say, is not about that which brought them to fame--it’s about relationships, family, making a positive difference. I absolutely, absolutely believe them. Furthermore, I didn’t need either one of them to tell me that. I have a complete intellectual understanding that this is the case. But I wonder if--without having experienced the accomplishment--without having crossed that plane where people can see, acknowledge, and validate that you did indeed do something, have a career, make use of your brain--without having done that, would they still be able to claim to have reached this more enlightened state of mind? I’m not sure. But maybe I too will own that knowledge within the next decade or so. In which case I’ll check back and assure everyone that external validation is not required.

salad daze

I am really wired, beyond a helpful amount, at the moment. I’m sure that I can pin the condition, at least in part, to the additional cups of coffee we bought at the Marvelous Market on Nebraska Avenue, which--truth be told--was less than marvelous. I’m mainly gauging this quality ranking by hotness of the coffee. In this case it was tepid, reminding me of why I prefer Gary’s Grill to The Breakfast Shoppe for breakfast. Coffee should be served at a not-quite-drinkable hotness. This is not a rule that is bendable, except in cases of medical-based mouth-sensitivity conditions.

Still, this particular trip--to and from Georgetown for dose #2 of the hypodermic substance of unknown composition and efficacy--was, for the most part, pleasant and unfraught with peril. I made up the word unfraught. I hope you like it.

No, the only dicey aspect of the medical visit was that Jeff kept lying down perpendicular and abdomen-up on the bed in the room, with his head hanging backward over the edge, which made the nurses fret that he’d be dizzy when he stood up. I was not worried, as I have known Jeff to recline in odd positions for what seems like forever.

Upon being sprung for the afternoon, we headed up Wisconsin Avenue in search of food. I slowed down in the neighborhood of a parking meter, but ultimately bypassed Heritage India, because I knew that although Jeff would not push his preference, it leaned in the direction of the Tex-Mex place I mentioned having seen many times in passing. Instead, we continued north, parking 3 blocks west of the Cactus Cantina where I feared I’d have to ferret carefully between menu lines to avoid meat and cheese. I ordered a salad--a “Sunshine Salad,” expecting to be gustatorially bored. I was not. Heaped with orange slices, avocado, walnuts, corn, pepper strips, dried tomatoes, and field greens, deftly bathed in a peanut dressing, it was a most satisfactory concoction, and I scarfed the whole pile, which was unlike me. Then I snarfed the rest of the tortilla chips so as not to be carb-deprived. Jeff seemed equally pleased with his chicken-accented Monterey salad.

Here was the only event of concern at lunch. We entered the lively dining-joint which was festooned with cowboy boots and placards of Mexican cinema...(example: El Caballo del Diablo. Well, if you aren’t interested in a film about Beelzebub as a horse in need of a good exorcism, I’m not sure where your priorities lie)...and we sit down. No, wait...

Before we sit down we have to follow the hostess to our table. Which I do. Then, I turn around and realize I have lost Jeff. I backtrack around a column and espy him standing 15 or so feet down the corridor, looking dazedly this way and that. I wave. He spots me. Then we sit down.

There is, just across the street, a derelict corner being retrofitted into a wine bar, and the predominant architectural feature--at the moment--is tarpaper. Jeff says That’s a familiar sight.
What?, I say.
The tarpaper, Jeff says.
Where have we had tarpaper outside the window before? I ask.
Here. he says certainly.
We’ve never been here before, I say...but just as I say it, I am ready to kick myself. He looks at me like a kid who’s just been told there’s no Santa Claus, and, by the way, that he’s really adopted. He does not pursue it, but I can see that this is a troubling thing, and that we’re beginning to touch the edges of that time I know is coming when my kindest response will be to accept whatever he says as his reality. Not until we’re leaving does he bring it up.
Come here, he says, pulling me toward a 2-sided glass case full of southwest paraphernalia, through which you can see the dining room we just left. We sat right there. He points slightly south of the table we just vacated.
No, I say, It must just look a lot like somewhere else we’ve eaten.

The rest of the drive home is better, but there have been those moments throughout the day, and I wonder, not entirely seriously, if that’s what happens when you hang your head off a bed for too long.

want a cubyrop candy?

Gabe is off all week due to Spring Break. My options include tolerating his nocturnal, raccoon-like habits which extend to rummaging through every food-bearing receptacle in the house all night (between blowing away zombies and antlions in Half-Life 2), or coercing him into the odd field trip in a futile attempt to nudge him toward humanoid behavior. Today, we opted for a field trip.

So, piled into the Soobie--Gabe and Jeff in back, Olivia riding shotgun (after convincing her dad he had more leg-room that way,) we forged the dusty--or at least exhausty--trail to H Mart in Catonsville.

The real name of H Mart is Han Ah Reum, and heaven-knows-what in Korean characters, but they helpfully gave it the pronounceable moniker for the benefit of the subset of customers who appear to hail from many latitudes of the Americas.

Our goals were, in part, specific: Pocky--a stick-pretzel snack dipped in a variety of flavors, and Ramune sodas, otherwise known as “marble drinks” for the glass marble trapped in the bottle’s narrow neck, over which the drink must flow to reach your mouth.

Things I was surprised by:
Fuji apples the size of softballs. We bought 4.
Durians. I imagined these spiny fruits to be kiwi-sized. They were bigger than footballs. We bought none.
Green bean popsicles. Gabe, deciding they would be perfect for his friend Matt’s birthday, went on to select several accompaniments: A canister of wasabi peas, a can of Grass Jelly Soda (which I can tell you, based on personal experience, is overly sweet Coke with gelatinous blobs floating in it. yum.), and one of the aforementioned gargantalossal apples.

Not surprisingly as these adventures go, Gabe’s science teacher called my Palm Centro as we were contemplating packages of seaweed roughly the size of boogie boards. Seems that Gabe neglected to mention that he needed to bring in $14 for an upcoming science center field trip. So, I am trying to get the gist of this while steering out of the way of shoppers who actually want seaweed*, and Jeff is scrambling to stick a pen and sticky-note in my face in case I need it but I am ignoring it because I’ve determined that I don’t, but am still multi-tasking while on the phone. Which means temporarily disregarding family members. Whose feelings get hurt. Jeff disappears.

You hurt Dad’s feelings, says Olivia.

I was trying to hear Gabe’s teacher, I say.

But this is just like what you always tell me, she says, He doesn’t understand.

So we hope he will not go far, and a short while later, after we’ve snagged shark-themed ice cream bars, Hello Kitty marshmallows, and mango juice, we send Gabe out to find him while we navigate the checkout lane (which is roughly 2 feet wide.)

Olivia exits ahead of me in order to corral her dad and brother, so by the time I push the cart out she has them in line.

Now I am home thinking that we should have bought more in the way of actual food, but noting that one could not identify the components of just any product offered at H Mart, due to the fact that I can’t decipher Asian characters of any sort.

*note to Fred, my brother-in-law, who did actually want seaweed. I got confused in the seaweed aisle. But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll go back.

jazz man

Jeff bought a trumpet player when he was in Florida. He told me about it, and said he’d arranged to have it shipped here, but that was three weeks ago and I’d been wondering whether I’d gotten the accurate story, or whether details had fallen through the cracks like forgotten phone numbers, or the specifics of how locks are rekeyed.

He came today. In a big old taped up UPS’d box that set the dog berzerk and occupied way too much space on the kitchen floor. I knifed through box #1, then box #2, then finally breached box #3 sans knife after entreating Jeff not to lift anything but the payload out of box #1 lest styrofoam peanuts overrun the house.

He was mummified in plastic wrap and tape, so I carefully clipped him free. I was struck by three things: his lovely face and hands, that he only existed from the waist up, and that parts of what there was of him appeared to have been eaten away by alien flesh-eating nano-bots from outer space.

This was disconcerting and unexpected, but I resolved to focus on the positive space, rather than negative, and we set him on the piano as a sort of traumatized musical muse.

When Olivia got home from track practice we made her look. She gazed in momentary wonderment, then said ”This is relatively disturbing...I mean I like, it, but it reminds me of a horror movie I saw where this woman kills people and turns them into puppets. This part (she said, indicating the roughened, hollowed-out cavity where our trumpeter was missing part of an elbow) reminds me of the inside of one of the victims’ heads.”

Clearly we were in need of another opinion, so we pried Gabe out of the computer room to have a look. ”Heh...” (said Gabe.) ”It looks like something ripped the top half of his body off...cool.”

Nonetheless, he remains on the piano. His face is enchanting, his hands and arms, rippled with the veins of a lean musician, are inviting to caress. Perhaps we will adapt to the missing chunks. I think I can imagine what the artist had in mind. Sometimes a chalk portrait will fade out into jagged edges...and it works in 2D. But in 3...well...there’s a juxtaposition here between photographic realism and abstraction that is simply playing tricks with our imaginations. Still, we do not discriminate here against people who are gradually disappearing, whether it be to nano-bots or to other sorts of degeneration, do we?