The artist's riposte

Mr. Squishy

2009-11-10T19:49:00.002-06:00

So I have been reading the short story Mr. Squishy by David Foster Wallace. I actually have an old friend who seems completely enamored with Wallace and have been meaning to read something by him for some time. My friend has mentioned Infinite Jest by Wallace several times, but alas that book is too mammoth for my hectic calendar. Recently I was at an alumni meeting for students of St. John’s College when it was mentioned that they needed a reading for the next meeting. I offered up Wallace as a possible author and everyone seemed to agree. The only problem was, I didn’t know a short story by Wallace from Adam so I went home and G**gled short stories and David Foster Wallace and came up with a title that look pleasing, if not a bit humorous, Mr. Squishy.

When first reading Mr. Squishy I was a bit underwhelmed by the first ten pages. The story read like a litany of minutia. Small unobtrusive facts of everyday life colliding in stereoscopic wonder to the delight of the author. Wallace seemed to take great joy in his ability to create lists of facts and figures that rivaled the book of Numbers.

If I sound a little sarcastic or disapproving it is only because I was so unprepared for Wallace’s signature writing style. In fact soon found myself wondering if there wasn’t some colossal joke being played at the readers expense that I was unawares and decided to change my attitude and allow the waves of detail to wash over me like numbers on an accountants ledger. The meaning of them was lost to me, but the seer fact of their presence was evidence of the writer’s craft.

Let my reader beware. To explain I need to say something of the story itself and for that there are spoilers.

The story of Mr. Squishy is not new, at least not in its subtext. The setting is a corporate focus group in which a facilitator is leading a group of male volunteers though a session on a product that roughly parallels the Ding Dong. As I said the subtext is not new and the story seems to evolve as a kind of criticism on modernity. Where alienation is acerbated by corporate malaise and the whole world has fallen sway to consumerism and the hypnotic allure of fitting in. In fact Wallace’s bludgeoning of detail upon detail seems to mimic the ennui that the cubicle-ridden employee of the modern corporation must experience on a daily basis as they sort through mountains of statistics and redundant studies of studies that were themselves redundant.

Into this world Wallace injects a single personality, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt is the group facilitator, a “cog” in the machines of industry. A pudgy outsider who has used his brains to get ahead and fit into a world that he seems neither to like or respect; a world whose rules he has meticulously learned mastery over so as to become indispensable. As adept is Terry Schmidt at blending into his environment that at first he is nearly indistinguishable from his surroundings.

But the more I ask myself “what is this short story about?” The more I come to believe that this story is about individuality, or the loss of it., or really the illusion of it. For Schmidt the various members of his focus group are mere statistics, even as Schmidt and his peers are mere statistics for his higher ups. Everyone is a statistic to those outsiders that don’t share in our immediate experience. And for those few that our on the same rung of life that we cling to, there is a certain distance. This in made poignant but the unrequited love that Schmidt has for one of his coworkers, a married woman who has faced sexual harassment in the work place and who is basically oblivious to Schmidt’s existence. In Wallace’s world relationships represent another loss of individual identity, and so Schmidt’s love life is one of masturbatory fantasy and illusions of connection. This furthers the idea that Schmidt is an outsider longing of being “one of the gang.” By that I mean living the proscribed lifestyle of society: successful, married, good-looking, everything that Schmidt seems destine to be denied.

Religion too appears in Wallace’s story, the opiate of the masses that offers freedom in the illusion of spiritual awareness and in reality is nothing more than another road leading to conformity. Nothing is what it seems in Wallace’s world, as it is made apparent that even the purpose of the focus group is to create a rational to dissolve the position of moderator as they provide a catalyst of individuality in the group dynamic.

The only avenue of escape in this otherwise inescapable world of conformity seems to be through violence. Schmidt spend his off hours in a homemade chemistry lab growing biological cultures that his dreams of injecting into the same products he seems to be promoting. An renegade urban daredevil makes an appearance scaling the outside walls of the office building creating a crowd of onlookers who are both captivated by his appearance of individuality and terrified at the possibility that he is a terrorist bent on their destruction.

In the end the fate of the myriad of characters is left uncertain. Wallace provide scant details that would allow us insight into the fate of the mountaineer, Schmidt, or his bosses, though I am left with the feeling that even if Schmidt or the Climber were able to “revolt” against the system, their impact would be mere headline news in a cacophony of headlines and would eventually be drown out by the machine.

Homeslice

2009-11-04T17:31:00.000-06:00

no paint

2009-11-01T14:46:00.001-06:00

Well, folks that about it for my short story writing days. I may add a few chapters later on, but for now I just can’t keep the momentum. It isn’t that I don’t have ideas about where the story is headed. If anything I have too many. No the trouble is, I don’t have the time. You see, I am stuck. I am not getting much of anything done these days, least of all painting. I have completed a sum total of one, yes one painting this semester, not nearly the grand finale I was counting on to graduate soon. At this rate I might take another year to graduate, because, let’s face it, no work means no show, and no show means no diploma. Follow?

I can’t exactly put my finger on why it is I am not painting. There are numerous factors. Moving into the house and selling the old one play top of the list, along with being a good father and husband to my family. Sickness has also been a persistent factor. But if you were to say, “why haven’t you been painting?” I couldn’t point to any one. In fact If I had to single out a culprit I would say it was depression, depressed that I’m not painting that is. How do you like that for irony?

Sorry as it seems I am absolutely true. The more I don’t paint, the more I don’t paint, and the more I don’t paint the worse I feel about it. The worse I feel about it, the more I don’t paint, and so on until I am in the exact spot I am in right now.

J. suggested taking more time to paint, but of course that only meant that the universe sent even more reasons not to paint. Painting puts demands on everyone, not the least of which is J. who gets stuck with the kids and the house etc.

Another huge problem is I really don’t have a place to paint. The easel sits out on the porch right now and whenever I go out there to work I am at the mercy of small children, the weather, everything. I can’t get work done. I need a studio. There is no studio, which means it has to be built, which means more time not painting. Really everywhere I look is painting frustration. Why am I not painting right now? It is too cold and damp outside and there is nowhere to paint inside. I could go to the other house but J. is sleeping and I need to be available for the kids. There is no Internet over there so If I need to research an image or pull up a resource that isn’t available either.

No I am afraid I am in a bit of a spiral sinkhole right now. No creativity means, the juices are not flowing, and by juice I mean, of course, paint.

chapter 5

2009-10-21T15:31:00.002-05:00

I think I may have blacked out.

Seriously, one minute I am walking towards the construction site, the next I suspended in limbo. I don’t know where I am. The world feels upside down as if I am hanging from a tree. I struggle for a moment, but nothing seems to come of it. I struggle again. Am I being pinned down? Where was I last? I remember. I was walking down the bike trail. It was hot. I felt light headed. Then everything seemed to go light. I struggle again.

“Help!” No answer. “Help!” I try to roll into a ball. I can feel my legs contorting, my knees in my chest. I take a deep breath and feel damp fetid air rushing into my lungs. Suppressing the urge to cough I thrust my legs out from under me. Suddenly my head shoots up. I can feel the warm light of the sun on my face. Fresh air. Looking around I am in a pile of leaves.

“Are you alright?”

There is a face in the sunlight. “I think so.”

“Then, do you mind giving me a hand, for you see, I am stuck in here as well.”
I look around. This is no ordinary pile of leaves. It is a mountain of leaves, with peaks and valleys that stretch as far as the eye can see. “Where are we?”

“As near as I can tell, we are here. Beyond that, I cannot say.”

It was not the answer I was expecting. Shifting my weight, my hand alights on the handle of Azarias. “I think you are sitting in my wheelbarrow. If you will hold on for a moment, I think I can push us both out of here.”

“What a fortunate turn of luck.”

I shrug at this.carefully prodding with my legs, my feet find something that feels like firm ground. I press my palms into Arazias’ firm handle. “Ready? Here we go!” With a great surge of energy I heave the wheelbarrow forward. I have no Idea what direction I am even heading. Arazias groans under the weight of the man as I continue to push. “This isn’t easy” I pant.

“It never is.”

Harder and harder I strain, the crackling leaves underfoot give no sense of time or distance. “We are almost there” I say aloud, as much to reassure myself as anyone.

“You are doing very well.”

“I don’t even know your name.” I grunt.

“Most men never do.”

“What?” I wheeze “Is” groaning “ It?”

“I think you know.”

“Please. Tell me.”

“I am that I am ” rang the voice.

Azarias seems to be rolling of its own volition. Am I pushing the Lord of hosts? I have the curious sensation that I am falling. The weight lifts from Azarius and I know my passenger has departed. “Wait!” I cry. “I have so much to ask you.” My hand slips on the handle and it jabs me in the side. “Wait!” I cry again. “Don’t go!” Again, there is silence. “Wait!” I shout at the top of my lungs.

My eyes are open. I am laying on the ground. Someone is tapping my with their toe.
“Buddy. Are you alright?” He kicks me again.

“I will be if you would please stop kicking me.” I say angrily.

“Can you sit up?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’ve fallen on the bike trail and taken quite a blow to the head. Would you like me to call for assistance.”

Rocking forward I have the distinct impression that this man is someone of authority. “Who are you? I ask meekly.

“Officer Perkins. Do you require assistance?”

“I don’t think… No. I think I am alright.”

“Can you stand?”

“I… Yes” I say rising. I can see the officers uniform, his badge gleaming in the sunlight.

“Are you sure you are OK?”

“Yes. Thank you officer.”

“Have you been drinking or taking drugs of any kind?”

“What?”

“Are you on any medication?”

“No.” I say.

“Listen,” says the officer. ”I want you to write your name for me.”
He produces a black pen and taps the tip of it on a notepad. Numbly I reach over and take the pen from him and begin to write my name. Half conscious, I realize that I am signing a document of some kind. “What is this?” I ask.

“It’s nothing” said the officer. “It merely states that you are alright and that I can leave the scene."

“Oh” I said, rather confused. “Well” I pause “then, thank you again officer.”

“And sir?”

“Yes officer.”

“I suggest you take that wheelbarrow of yours and return home immediately.”

“Yes officer. Thank you, officer.”

“Anytime.” He said as he watched me pick up the wheelbarrow and begin to walk away. “Anytime.”

Canto IV

2009-10-17T13:53:00.001-05:00

Shaken but undaunted I made my way back up the street, glancing nervously over my shoulder several times to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I walked until I came back to the park, and then found a comfortable bench to sit down and reflect upon my progress so far.

What were the facts? I awoke this morning to discover that someone had broken into my garden shed and stolen a green wheelbarrow full of my homemade mulching fertilizer. To the average layperson this might have seemed a mere insult, but to someone who had labored with love over his garden, who had tinkered with different ingredients ranging from eggshells to bone meal and beer, and who had produced some of the most lovely plants and vegetables this neighborhood had ever seen, this was an affront.

I had been searching for my stolen property assuming the worst, that the thief or thieves had stolen my precious black compost and had merely dumped it out of spite or neglect at the first opportunity. But this was not turning out to be the case. A cursory search of the neighborhood had produced no evidence to support this theory. I was not unaware that I had yet to make a thorough search of every garbage can and dumpster in the vicinity, but was beginning to suspect that my first instincts were correct and that the culprit had targeted my garden treasure from the onset.

A thin telltale trail of manure had led me to this park once before, and it was here that I had decided to undertake my quest to find my possessions. But where was I to go from here? Surely the vandals had passed this way. But where had they gone?

I stood up and scanned the horizon. The tranquil houses became an impenetrable wall obfuscating my desire to lay sight on anything that might give me some sense of direction. I have but two choices. I begin a house-to-house search, or I continue to canvas the area in hopes of discovering more clues or the potential witness.

As I stood there I suddenly realized that the roads and streets were not the only avenue into this neighborhood. Of course! The bike trail. It was only a few blocks away and the thief would have undoubtedly passed this way to access it. Bending over I grabbed the handlebars of my Azarias brand red wheelbarrow and began to trek towards the bike path.

The bike trail was the brainchild of the municipal government and ran along a strip of land originally set aside for a series of power lines that cut through the city. It was thought that adding the trail would create a green zone. But the stark contrast between the cold industrial towers supporting thick grey cables and the tranquil domestic scene of couples pushing their strollers or walking their dogs along the path below was surreal.

The path from the park to the trail ran along the creek and emerged onto a street that separated the power corridor from the surrounding houses. Looking both ways I dashed across the street and as I angled my wheelbarrow past the yellow concrete barrier designed to keep motorists off the bike trail I imagine I got more than a few awkward stares from passing drivers.

Contrary to whatever image the name may summon, the bike trail was not home to bikes. For that matter there were no pedestrians, no dog walkers, no children chasing Frisbees. There was no one. Just a long grey slab of concrete that stretched out across the grass and vanished into the horizon.

Scratching my head, I looked first up and then down the trail hoping that some figure would suddenly burst into sight offering hope and the possibility of a witness. Realizing the futility of the situation I hiked up my wheelbarrow and began to trot along the downward grade of the trail heading back into the neighborhood.

The sun was getting higher in the sky and the weigh of my bathrobe seemed to be bearing down on me. Also, accustomed as I was to pushing my wheelbarrow, this was typically done in the confines of my yard and there over short distances. Needless to say the potent mixture of these three elements, sun, robe and physical exertion were beginning to wear on me and presently I began to feel the need for a rest.

I set myself down on a particularly bright patch of grass and used the sleeve of my robe to blot the sweat from my forehead. Weary as I was I began to think in earnest that I had made a mistake in choosing Azarias as my companion when my thoughts were interrupted by a voice.

“You alright buddy?”
I looked up into the silhouette of a biker. “I’m fine,” I said, standing.
“What’cha have that wheelbarrow for?”
“Nothing, I…” I looked over my interrogator. He was tall, in his mid fifties perhaps, and thin, to the point that you could see skin wrapped over tight muscles that hugged his skeleton. He was balding, wearing dated exercise shorts, the kind you might find in a thrift store. His bike was new. In good shape. You could tell he hadn’t ridden it much, and on the seat was taped an oversized red cushion. “What’s that?” I pointed at the cushion.
“My cushion? I have a low sperm count.” He said matter-of-factly in a way that made you think that red cushions were the solution to fertility problems the world over.
“Oh” I said, “I didn’t know they helped.”
“Didn’t either” said the man, “But Mama insisted, and I want to keep the ol’girl happy, if you know what I mean.”

He smirked and made a kind of half wink. I bared a smile as if to say, “yes, yes I do” but what I really meant was “No.”
“I was wondering if you’ve seen anyone else come this way with a wheelbarrow?”
“No. No thought it was a might odd you sitting here, but then I thought maybe you were stealing it from the construction site up the path.”
“Construction site?”
“Yeah, the Pavilion they call it, or something like that. It looks like a giant castle. It’s supposed to be some kind of mall, but I don’t think they’ve rented many spaces. Construction there is all but halted. It’s no business of mine if you did steal it mind you. But you should know these trails are patrolled and you might find yourself in a lot of hot water.”
“Thanks for the tip.” I said. “I’m actually looking for something someone stole in another wheelbarrow, thinking I might need mine to recover it.”

He looked at me rather pitifully. The same way I was probably looking at him. He didn’t seem to notice though and climbed back up on his bike. “Well you might try looking there. Lots of wheelbarrows and shovels there.”

“Thanks again” I said as he began to peddle away. The red cushion bulged out behind him. His torso rose and swayed over the mass causing the bike to lean and pitch from side to side making his departure both comical and mesmerizing

Chapter 3

2009-10-13T13:01:00.010-05:00

As I rolled Azarias drown the drive I felt a renewed sensation of anxiety wash over me. My head turned from side to side as I scanned both lawn and ditch for my precious cargo. Not knowing which way to go I made an arbitrary left and followed the curb downhill, as it was the easiest direction to push. Frustration mounted as I passed first one house and then the next in my futile search. At one point I even stopped at a nearby storm drain and bent down to peer into the inky blackness to no avail.

The search continued until I had made my way down the length of the hill. Ahead of me lay a small bridge that spanned the neighborhood creek. Approaching, I saw with horror in my mind’s eye the possibility that the thief had dumped the cargo into the shallow water below. If that were the case, the soft current almost certainly would have washed away the remaining traces by now. I leaned over the rail and gazed into the mirrored reflection of the water below. Is this the end of my search, I wondered?

My thoughts were interrupted by the distinct sound of coughing coming from under the bridge. Curious, I rolled Azarias into a clump of nearby bushes and made my way gingerly down the slope of the embankment. Standing at the water’s edge, I glanced cautiously back up the line I had descended making note of my path, then turned and looked into the darkness beneath the bridge.

“Is there anyone in there?” I asked, cautiously. My echo was greeted with silence. “Hello?” I said again more firmly. Still, if anyone was there they were not going to reveal their secrets easily. “Look, I know someone is down here. I heard you just now coughing.” The stretched out silences were perturbing. “God damn it, I want someone to answer me!” I shouted the frustration of the morning beginning to spill in fury.

“’God damn it’ you say? ‘You want’ you say? That is a fine way to call someone.”

I turned. Not three feet away from me was a man dressed in dirty brown clothes. Startled, I said “What did you say to me?”

“No matter” said the man, pushing past me with my wheelbarrow in hand.

“Wait, where did you get that?”

“Some fool pushed it into the bushes. It’s mine now.”

“No” I said matter-of-factly “it is not. It’s mine, and I will have it back.”

The old man turned and looked at me “You have some kind of fire in your belly to be shouting curses and telling strangers what’s yours and what’s theirs.”

“And you” I looked for some clever retort “have no business taking what isn’t yours.”

He looked at me rather pitifully, then shrugged his shoulders and dropped the wheelbarrow where it lay before walking into the darkness beneath the bridge. Stunned, I watched him take several steps before I realized that this man was a potential witness to my crime, and needed to be questioned further. “Hey, wait!” I shouted. “I want to ask you something!”

“Suit yourself” came the voice from the dark.

Numbly I walked forward, pausing momentarily at the line between light and shadow before passing under the bridge. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim. The old man was sitting on a small ledge of concrete busily piling small branches and twigs.

"I need to ask you a question." No response. "Look if you help me there could be a reward involved." Again, no response. I glanced uncomfortable at my feet only to realize I still had my house shoes on. "You see, I've lost something. Actually, it was stolen."

From somewhere in his pockets the man produced a small lighter. He bent over the pile of wood and attempted to light a small fire. The flint made a shower of sparks but produced no flame. Several quick successions of strikes produced the same result. "Impotent" the tramp said.

"I could help you" I offered producing a matchbook from my pocket. "But I need some information. You see someone has stolen my fertilizer."

Faster than lightning the man hopped up. "What did you say?"

"I said someone has stolen something from me, and I will help you..."

"Not that" he said eyeing me suspiciously "After. Did you say fertilizer?"

"I did."

At this the old man seems to go insane. He began to hop about muttering the most indecent obscenities I have ever heard. "And you, you little slut, think you can march in here and make accusations of me? Of me! How dare you come into my home and try to steal from me!"

"I don't think you understand" I stammered, I am not stealing from you, I was stolen from. I am the victim here."

"You? A victim? Don't make me laugh" he barked. "It is obvious you are here to steal my bucket." he pointed to a small tin pail by the side of the stream.

I knew immediately that I had made a mistake venturing to talk to this man. Clearly he was not playing with a full deck. Any minute now, I imagined, he would be upon me and I would have to defend myself. "Don't be absurd." I said, backing away. What have you got there? Nothing of value I bet. Probably just a bucket of fish heads."

There is absolutely no way to describe to you how stunned I was at his responce.

Who told you!" he raged advancing towards me with eyes blazing. "Who have you been talking to? That is my precious fertilizer. Mine! And no one can have it. Do you understand?"

I mean, how does someone guess someting like that? Your standing under a bridge talking with a crazy person and they say "what have I go in my bucket" what is the right anwer here? Your marbles?

I cursed my luck as I looked at him. "You can't be serious" I said bending down and picking up the closet rock I could find. "If that is fertilizer then I am a monkey's uncle."

Picking up the stone was poorly timed. My gesture of self defense was undoubtedly interpreted as one of attack. With a howl he launched himself at me. Instinctively I flinched and hurled the rock. Missing him the rock skidded across the pavement and into the bucket, knocking it into the water. The splash seemed to freeze time all around us. Then, a small bubble of fish entrails rose momentarily to the surface before being washed away by the current.

Turning on his heel the man seemed to forget about me and desperately chased after the the pale floating upside down in the creek. Without a moment’s hesitation I used this distraction to turn, and with one deft motion slammed into my wheelbarrow and used this motion to propel both I and it up the hill.

"No!" came the howl from below. Then all was silent.

Canto II

2009-10-07T12:41:00.004-05:00

It is no exaggeration to say that there is nothing I think I can’t do. My father would tell me as a child that I could earn a B average in basket weaving and particle physics. I like to think that my ability to apply myself equally well to whatever occupation calls comes from my prodigious intellect, but the truth is perhaps more that I lack a sense of modesty that would prevent others with less formal training from continually embarking into areas of which they have no knowledge.

What would I need in order to find what was stolen from me? One thought rose through the fog of questions and feelings. Clues, I needed clues. Isn’t that what every good detective starts with? I scanned the ground for incriminating evidence that I felt I was sure to find. A piece of cloth, a bit of hair, a crumpled business card would have been nice. But my search revealed nothing other than the damage evident to my property, the loss of my wheelbarrow, and a single tire track etched in the mud outside the garden gate.

With a mounting sense of frustration I followed the little specks of telltale earth down the drive and into the alley where they became more obscure and difficult to read. Eventually I discerned that the culprit had made his way towards a nearby park, but a thorough search of the park revealed neither more tracks or any further evidence that might be useful to my search. Deflated, I sat on the park swing and gently rocked back and forth dragging my heels though the gravel. The grating noise of the loose stone against my feet made a pleasant, albeit distracting sound, that lulled me into a state of restfulness.

Am I so easily defeated? Where had I gone wrong? Are the so-called professionals more suited because they have the most advanced technologies and training? Wouldn’t they do as I had done and comb the area for clues, canvas the neighborhood for witnesses, and make inquiries of the occasional passersby? Was I being too impatient? Giving up too quickly. Perhaps I needed to broaden my search and begin going door to door. Every thought seemed to offer both possibility and an equal probability of failure. Surely my neighbors had been asleep, or else they would have dialed 911, and no one could have been around to see anything, save the thief himself, and they weren’t bound to offer themselves up freely. So where had I gone wrong?

The answer presented itself so suddenly and with such a sense of profundity that it nearly rocketed me off of my seat. There is one thing that a detective has that I don’t, and it isn’t technology or training, it is something far simpler and more obvious. A detective has a partner.

Now let me just say at the onset, that I am not unaware that the casual outsider might at this point be looking upon my situation with a curious suspicion. “So you are going to chase after this guy who stole your…dirt?” They might say. My retort would be both simple and direct. To quote to poetess Sappho whatever one loves, is the best noblest thing in the world. If you were a stamp collector would you not love stamps? If you were a sports fan, would you not know with the greatest minutia the stats of every team, no, every player that walked the field? Then do not judge me too harshly, for while I can do many things I love my garden, and am passionately devoted to it. This theft is no less a desecration on my love than the fires that swept the great library of Alexandria would be to a bibliophile.

So where would my partner come from, who would this guide be; my Hermes, My Gabriel, my Sancho Panza? This would take some deliberation and even as I was pondering this thought another occurred to me: What if I am mistaken and in my assumption that the thief was after my fertilizer? What if he or she was a mere brigand of opportunity and simply stole what appeared to be the most valuable tool in the shed? In that case the thief may have not been interested in my fertilizer at all.

Could it have been hubris to assume the thief was after my precious mixture? My mind buzzed with incredulity. Could they have instead only been interested in the wheelbarrow itself? In that case why would they have not simply dumped the cargo and made off with the tool? Perhaps my early morning rise had somehow tipped the burglar’s hand and forced a hasty departure. That would account for the scrapes and marks left in their wake. But if that were the case, where would my fertilizer, my black alchemist’s gold be now?

These two near simultaneous thoughts collided in my mind in the most strange and unpredictable way. With a flash of insight I knew who my guide and companion would be. I hurried back to the house with a newfound sense of urgency. I climbed the steep slope of the drive and pushed my way though the garden gate.

Some guides are chosen others are thrust upon us. Of those that are chosen there are fewer in life, perhaps because it is difficult to ask for help, or perhaps because I am reticent to allow just anyone into the circle of trust. Of those that are thrust upon us we are seldom grateful. They are our parents, teachers, camp counselors, yoga instructors and the like. They come into our lives of necessity and usually depart without great fanfare, only to be appreciated later, though the lens of memory. But there is a third group of companions, born neither of necessity nor choice but some queer marriage of the two. Those guides come to us in moments of sheer desperation. Neither expected nor entirely welcome, they seem to possess the uncanny ability to cut though veil of our ignorance and reveal life in some new and altogether unexpected way.

Cutting across the path I made my way directly to the shed. I hadn’t yet repaired the door from this mornings vandalism and merely pushed it aside. In the grey interior I could make out the contents within. Buckets of seed and tackle, tools of various shape and size, a rake, a how, a shovel, and of course the red wheelbarrow.

The wheelbarrow itself was not immediately visible, rather its two yellow handles stuck out from beneath a heavy canvas tarp that had originally covered both wheelbarrows. Dutifully I removed the tarp, shook it gently, folded it and set is aside.

Grasping the two grips I pulled the slumbering wagon from its rest through the shed doors and out into the sunlight. Looking down I could see the manufacturers name and logo stamped into the center of the basin: Azarias Industries Inc. I have for years joked that this was my shepherd, the guardian of all the tools I used to prune and sculpt my various plants. This would ever be the partner I would need, faithful, fleet, and sure. I rolled the cart down the path, through the gate, and onto the drive beyond. I had yet to canvas the entire neighborhood, and on the of chance that the perpetrator had unloaded my precious cargo into some neighbors lawn or gully, Azarias and I would most certainly be ready to recover my stolen treasure.

Chapter One

2009-10-05T17:01:00.002-05:00

I awoke in the night, as if from a dream, where everything around me was strange and unfamiliar. It was as if the world had grown stiff and course in my slumber or perhaps refreshed I was only now seeing it for the first time.

Tossing the sheets to one side I rose and walked to the sliding glass door that over looked the garden. Staring into the grey for a brief moment I could recall a part of my dream, a mere sliver of some much larger tale of which I had no recollection. I was lying in a kind of wheelchair. I had no use of limbs or faculties, and my eyes bulged in my sockets like great watery orbs. Without, I was a vegetable, but within I was capable of such great imaginings that light of the world paled in comparison.

I stared into the garden again. The dream had all but faded. I flicked the lock, slid the door open, and walked out onto the brick terrace. The cool stone felt refreshing against my bare feet. Almost at once I stepped on a nettle. Wincing with pain, I bent over and pulled the thorn from my sole. Cursing my luck I threw the barb into a nearby bush and slid my feet comfortably into the gardening shoes I had discarded nearby the night before.

Armed with a newfound sense of confidence, I strode out into the lawn and surveyed the wonder of creation. I took pride in my garden. Each part neatly manicured with confidence and precision. It was important to me that nearly every part of my garden was edible, chives and rosemary, quince and blueberry. The whole layered spaciously to look slightly wild and unkempt but with an order all its own that made the gazing at it so much the richer.

I kept my tools in the shed along with two wheelbarrows. One red for collecting cuttings, weeds and debris, and the other green for fertilizer; an organic mulch made of compost, mulched leaves and cow waste. This was my favorite tool and I would spend my hours endlessly winding along the garden path sprinkling my mulch in the various beds of flowers and shrubbery, turning the soil into an alchemist’s black gold.

As my early morning walk through the yard progressed I found myself nearing the shed when I noticed something was not right. The shed door, which should have been tightly shut and locked was stilling slightly ajar. The right door had come off its track and was sitting wedged between the earth and the frame at a disquieting angle.

Quickly I walked over to inspect the situation. As I drew closer I could smell the sweet earthy scent that emanated from within. Peering into the darkness I could see my tools in disarray. For a moment I imagined some wild animal burrowing its way between the doors and disheveling the contents within, but as my eyes leveled on the vacant spot where my green wheelbarrow should have been I knew that I had been robbed.

My foot moved back, almost in impulse, as I hesitated. Was the thief still here? No, that is nonsense, the wheelbarrow is gone, and the thief has taken it and departed.

I turned and scanned the yard. This time, ignoring the vines and the flowers, looking instead for the telltale signs of intrusion. A wheelbarrow full of dirt is not an easy item to simply scamper over the fence with. There must be some other signs of entry. I hastened to the gate, and found it closed, but by narrowing my eyes I could see a slight scrape in the paint indicating that the thief had passed this way. I opened the door and looked beyond. There was nothing. Only the still of the morning, the slight rushing of the breeze against my face, my wheelbarrow was gone. “Gone” I croaked with utter despair “Gone.”

As I walked back to the house my mind was filled with conflicting images. On the one was the thief, executing with midnight bravado the daring theft. On the other me, patiently explaining to the patrolman the value of my precious mulch.

“Dirt?” he asked questioningly.
“A special blend of organic fertilizer” I replied. “It is the secret of my garden’s success. Everyone knows this. It was highly prized.”
“This” he said, searching for the term “dirt?”
“Yes” I said patiently.
“An when you say ‘Everyone’ whom do you mean exactly?”
“Oh, well, the neighborhood, I suppose, and my church group. Don’t be fooled there is more than one or two grandmothers that would like to have gotten their hands on my mulch.”
“A grandmother” he said, then paused and continued “wheeled a truck load of dirt across the garden, unlatched the gate and then sauntered down the alley with cargo in hand without so much as breaking a sweat?”
“Of course not” I said indignantly “there could have been accomplices. Look isn’t there supposed to be a detective or some such person here to take this information down.”
“Oh I’ll be making a report,” he said “don’t you worry. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up. These things aren’t usually resolved as quickly as you might hope.”

He looked me in the eye and I knew at once what he meant. No one was going to investigate a stolen wheelbarrow. There would be no crime dogs, no team of forensic investigators to document tire tracks and fingerprints. Mine was not a high priority case and would, in all likelihood be brushed aside and forgotten, dismissed as a teenage prank or as a simple case of vandalism.

Weary and broken, by this imagined conversation I turned and trudged back into the yard and stared down at the latch on the gate. How can so small a thing make the difference between serenity and insanity? Why had I not given locking the gate the same precious care that I had given concocting my fertilizer? Leaning against the fence post I rubbed my fingers deep into the corners of my eyes.

I stand there motionless, like some caricature of myself. I want to weep, but feel to tired, too emotionally drained. I want to shout, to rage against the injustice of the smirking police officer, against the thief, against the world, but none of it seems to matter enough to muster even the most inaudible groan. I feel lost. The mechanisms I had grown to trust, friends, neighbors, even civic law enforcement, had let me down. The paths that I had trusted would not be the ones that would lead me away from this place.

From this paralyzed pose I suddenly had a lucid, singularly inspired thought that had not occurred to me before. What if I track down the thief? My hand clenched and unclenched spasmodically. Could I do it? Would there be any danger? What would be the cost? This thought made me pause for a moment before I settled on the cost of getting my wheelbarrow back, I decided. But would it be intact. Would my mulch still be there? It seemed impossible to know. Night was departing and dawn was rushing forward. “I must do this,” I said, standing. “I must.” I launched myself forward towards the gate and the drive beyond. “If only to put an end to the unknowing.”

plumbing is a messy business

2009-09-29T11:07:00.001-05:00

I’m not really much of a plumber. I guess you could say I know enough to be dangerous. I’ve soldered a few copper pipes together, installed a disposal in the kitchen sink, and repaired or replaced a few leaky faucets. So when the guest bedroom toilet backed up and sewage came up out of the shower drain I thought, “I guess I’d better snake it.”

Standing in Home Depot, surveying the different brands of drain augers, a sales employee approached me and said “you need any help?” I described the problem and he said “You are looking at the wrong tool. You need to rent a bigger auger.”

I decided not to listen and took my chances with the fifteen dollar solution, but when that didn’t seem to get my anywhere I headed back to home depot armed with the knowledge that I needed something bigger.

My experience with the clerk behind the rental desk was an entirely different exchange. He took one look at me and my auger and said plainly “You need a plumber.” Taken back I asked him what he was talking about and with annoying alliteration he said “You need a plumber.”

Chagrined, I asked him why Home Depot would rent the equipment if there wasn’t an outside chance that the average layperson couldn’t accomplish what the seasoned plumber could do? His response was pretty much “YOU need a plumber.”

It’s funny but I knew, at that point that he was probably right. I listened to his advice with good cheer when he spoke of my choices between going through the toilet or an outside vent and when I left I muttered “thanks for the vote of confidence.” At home I took one look at the toilet and knew that it was an all day if not all week job and felt totally deflated. I paused for a moment and wondered how I would even begin finding the outside vent, fought back a sea of emotions ranging from helplessness to despair and humiliation. Then tucked my tail between my legs and went to J. and said “we need a plumber.”

The next morning I overheard J. and the plumber talking. I could barely look at him. I heard him say in a clear voice “I am going to need to go through the outside vent. That will be an extra two hundred dollars.” My heart sank. J. left for the store and I sat on the couch numbly watching a show on ancient Egypt. What did Egyptians know about plumbing? They just peed in the sand. Afterwards I went outside to survey the plumber’s work. He was climbing down a ladder with the exact same model auger I had rented the previous morning. “I could have done this” I thought. I gave up too easily.

When I was fourteen I was challenged to an arm wrestling contest by a larger boy. We sat arm in arm struggling for what felt like an eternity. I remember to this day the conscious decision I made to give up. Not because it was momentous, but because of what the other boy said right after “Man I am glad that is over, I couldn’t have gone another second.” I remember it now because in my memory it sounds a lot like “You need a plumber.”

I was sending some Rumi passages to a friend the other night when I came upon one that feels a lot like how I feel right now.

No intellect denies that you are,
But no one give in completely to that.
This is not a place where you are not,
yet not a place where you are seen.

I know neither the boy nor the Home Depot clerk defeated me. Instead of focusing on them and my feelings, I remind myself that none of this really matters. No one will remember this day, except for possibly me. True, I don’t like feeling like I can’t do something, and I like it a lot less when it is me that tells myself “I can’t do this.”

It helps even more to remember that this isn’t a zen thing, nor is it an exercise in humility or grace, well maybe it is, but for me it is more a recognition of my own imperfection. I want to think that my problems come from without, or that if they come from within, spiritual guidance will solve these problems. But really it is just me being human, and trying later to be kind to myself that sometimes I make a call that isn’t right or isn’t perfect, and that it doesn’t matter, and I can go on with my day, and what is more important, that I can use the toilet again.

secrets in the dark

2009-09-26T22:48:00.001-05:00

I was hanging out with a few friends the other night when one of them said “Now I know your tongue gets a little loose when you’ve been drinking, but I don’t want you to repeat this.”

I think my first reaction was to feel a little hurt, followed by the realization that yes I liked to “share” but that this was only done in moderation and then only when I was certain I was safe, followed only later but the self introspective thought of “what is ok to share and what isn’t?”

I’m going to tell you another story.

D. reminded me, however casually as we were driving down the road, that she knew that I was prone to semi-suicidal thoughts and that this was no time for such self indulgent thinking.

As you absorb that one I have to tell you I cannot for the life of me (no pun intended) remember what we were talking about or why she would have said this. But I was so stricken by the fact that my eleven-year-old daughter knew this very intimate and powerful detail about my psyche that I nearly drove into the curb.

You know, I don’t think I keep secrets very well.

I used to like to “play” at revealing secrets; that is I would pretend to be ignorant of the fact that I was revealing something about Christmas or a Birthday and then take a secret glee in the reaction. “Oh Patrick! Can’t you keep a secret?” For some reason Unknown to me, I used to think this was terribly humorous. And while I do not think it is funny anymore, it lead me to think that people thought I couldn’t keep a secret because I had conditioned them to believe it so.

But the more I think about this. I begin to wonder.

Let me ask myself this question and see what happens: Do I keep secrets.

Yes.

How do I know? Ask another question.

Are there things I would never tell anyone? You bet’cha.

But then if this is the case, why do I raise the question at all? Is the question rather can I be trusted?

I don’t think it is because I know that I can. Loyalty is very important to me and I am very loyal and would take your secret to the proverbial grave if need be.

I don’t, however, feel particularly secretive about things in my own life. And maybe that is where the incongruity begins to seep in. Because I will freely tell you about MYSELF things that I would never repeat if they were about you.

I am not an exhibitionist. I don’t know what I gain from this, but I don’t mind being vulnerable if I think it will strengthen the relationship or if I think someone can be aided by my own experience strength and hope, especially when it comes to being human and making human mistakes. I am an expert here. That and, if you know me at all you will know that I love to laugh, and laughing at my own mistakes is joyous!

That makes me think too that I am a bit lousy at keeping secrets that are themselves joyous hence the Christmas, birthday, expectant baby kind of secret breaking.

I asked J. if she thought I was a good secret keeper and she said politely “I think it is an area that you struggle with” and then went on to say that when it were spelled out in no uncertain terms “Do not share this” that she knew me to be the kind of person that wouldn’t say a word.

The thing for me, that I struggle with, as my wife so adroitly puts it is that I like to process my experiences and have a hard time setting boundaries with others, so when other people have expectations about their own boundaries that are different than mine, I find difficulty.

(I find myself holding my head between my hands in shame thinking “I am a terrible secret keeper” as if to say “I am a terrible friend” or “I am a leper”)

I keep thinking about this when the solution is right there. I need to clearly define what needs to be “secretive” with others when those situations occur. Because the real shame is not that I might be a poor secret keeper. The real shame is that I might break a friend’s trust. And that is something I do not ever want to do.

Still the notion that I am a flibbertigibbet nags on my conscience and is unsettling to me, and I suspect it will for sometime. I think the question I need to resolve for myself is: Is this a character defect? And right now I don’t think I have the answer to that question. SO I resolve to wait and see, to be a better friend and… as a dear friend recently told me “never miss an opportunity to shut the hell up” even though he was talking about his own excessive know-it-all-ism and not secrets, the similarities are striking.

Crazy

2009-09-24T22:43:00.003-05:00

Editor's note: Crazy, written by Willie Nelson and sung by Patsy Cline, is the song I used to rock my children to sleep with

What do you do with your spare time? Anymore “spare time” is time driving from point A to point B, and so my quality time is time spent in the car. Still, I shouldn’t complain, because my drive time isn’t loaded with kids as I am mostly driving to work or driving to school, whereas my darling wife is driving to the kid’s school or is working on the kid’s problems.

I should be honest. I can really enjoy my drive to school. But most of that is my Ipod, and most of that is remembering to plug it in, charge it and getting the latest podcasts. Otherwise I am stuck with two and a half hours of yours truly, and that is, well, tedious. (At this point I should probably do an Oscar-like thank you to those of you who have spent serious time in the car with me) It can be an emotional experience. I don’t passenger well. Usually I get car-sick. I am prone to flights of fancy, or flights of fantasy. I can be joyful, bitter, soulful and annoying. I am highly critical of your driving, and I hate talk radio.

Let us pause here.

Talk radio is, well, horrible.

I hate it.

I hate Diane Rehm, though I listen to her constantly.
I listen.
I listen until the callers call in.
I can’t listen to the callers.
I can’t listen to the vitriol.
Can you?

The Republican Party is so…
(I like this)
(I hate this)
I turn off the radio.
I drive
I turn on the radio
I listen
The Democratic representative believes…
(I like this)
(I hate this)
The show continues…

I cannot stand the vitriol.
It makes me angry.
I do not want to be angry.
(I blame the radio.)

At this point if you were to stick your fingers in your ears and whimper “Na Na, Na Na Na Na” you would get the idea.

I hate vitriol.
I hate conservative god fearing republicanism.
I hate my slavish dogmatic loyalty to the other side.
I hate this.
I hate this.

I hate this.

How did I end up here?

Isn’t that the question I ask myself most often?

How did I end up here?

Is it the radio? The kids? The faculty? The insane look I get from people I think understand me?

Am I crazy? Or is “crazy” a word I made up to make sense of my misunderstanding of the world?

That’s crazy.

I read somewhere that acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today.

O.K. I accept that I cannot change the what people on talk radio believe. I can only change the way I react to it.

O.K. While I am waiting for that to happen, I turn off the radio.

The Birds of Appetite

2009-09-23T10:30:00.001-05:00

Notes from Merton’s Zen and the Birds of Appetite

We imagine two systems: Christianity and Zen. The first is language, the other anti-language; a radical reversal of philosophical logic. While diametrically opposed, these systems can interact with one another, to prepare the way for one another, and can be defined as the relation of objective doctrine to subjective metaphysical experience.

Because Language is rational, ordered, and logical, the nature of objective doctrine must be reducible to some form that can be shared, and is therefore easily recordable in a set of symbols that are easily accessible to others. Anti-language, or the metaphysical experience, on the other hand, resolutely resists any temptation to be easily communicable or conform easily to comforting symbols, and is acceptable on the basis of its absolute singularity. That it is un-communicable is only resolved in an awareness that it is potentially already there but is not conscious of itself, an awareness of being in the here and now in the midst of the world.

End of Notes

I woke up this morning or at least re-awoke this morning with the idea of writing a book in which the characters were resolved in creating two different systems which, while opposed to one another, could be used to define both past and future events, something akin to Asimov’s “psychohistory”. One of the systems I decided would be based on Dante’s Inferno, while the other would be what? I thought about this for a moment and then spied Zen and the Birds of Appetite lying on the counter. I flipped it open and found the description of my “world” lying right there on the page in front of me. Merton was describing the difference between the Christian and Zen Experience. Reading these pages I began to form the idea that my so called “world” already existed, and that rather than independent of one another, Zen and Christianity might be thought of as opposites that came into being because of one another, trying to balance one another out.

It occurs to me that I should 1)not have gone back to bed and 2)Not have done any heavy thinking before my pot of morning coffee.

what we must

2009-09-21T19:11:00.011-05:00

Here’s the thing. What if nobody read my blog? Would I blog? The answer to that seems fairly self contained as I am relatively sure that there are only a handful of faithful readers, and only a few of those who can cut through the preponderance of B.S. that lurks in every writing to find themselves reading on a regular basis. but then:

I am not a writer.

I can’t even tell you why I blog or what my blog is about even though this fact in itself may be why only a devoted few will ever keep coming to the blog in the first place, but then, while I have felt the desire to attract readers and occasionally will yield to the temptation to publish something heartwarming or gritty, most of the time, my blog is just about all of the crazy s**t that is floating around in my brain, and a somewhat half hearted attempt to occasionally be analytical about my own self analysis.

Not that you can trust any of this. I am not an analyst. But I do believe that we need to listen to ourselves, to our thoughts and to our dreams. Especially to our dreams as dreams are just parts of our own self talking with one another. That being said:

I don’t dream about dating my sister (which she will be glad to read because I know she is one of the half dozen or so that does keep reading) but I did dream about smoking a cigar last night, or at least SUCKING on one like some G.I. gung-ho sergeant from any of a dozen war movies. In fact the dreams have been powerful lately and when my sister was here the other day I recounted a dream to her early in the morning in which I was arrested tried and nearly convicted for rape, theft, and drunk driving. The dream really got out of control when the jury of my peers ended up being my siblings who materialized out of the columns and absolved me of my sins just before the dream wrapped itself up like a day time soap opera when the whole thing became a dream within a dream.

Blogging isn’t always all it is cracked up to be. Neither is dreaming or painting or any of a myriad of other activities, but then, really, nothing ever is. It just is what it is. Our job is to get used to this fact while occasionally adding rhetoric or poetry or something. That I can do. But usually it is at the expense of common sense.

A close friend recently told me that he was probably going to stop blogging soon, if he hasn’t already because he felt his readership was compromised. I felt perfectly at home in this conversation because he was quoting me when he made the decision to turn the machine off. So many friends these days have dropped off the blogging bandwagon, either because of personal problems, time constraints, or that blogging just isn’t what I thought it was going to be.

Gradually anyone who puts him or herself out there begins to realize that the things that we say have a way of coming home to us. But this is true whether we are blogging or walking through the halls at work or in the grocery store. There is an inverse relationship between the closeness of the people we make idle comments to and how quickly those comments find their way back.

The choice here isn’t what do I say or not say on facebook or in my blog or in twitter or in any of a dozen other outlets. The choice is of choice. How much do I risk. We start out thinking we can risk it all and gradually pare down the list until we think “this is all I have” and “this is not enough” and rather than admit the futility of the whole thing we just walk away. But really the fault isn’t in how we risk ourselves it is in the what. I see this choice as a flower. Choose this. Choose some aspect of yourself. Start small and let it grow. Risk this and watch it bloom. Watch it develop. See where this thought can lead and everything else is, well, personal or sacred, then the choice isn’t about what needs to be cut away, but what else can be added. Otherwise, nothing is risked and nothing is ventured, and so, as they say, nothing is gained.

So I persist, even though I am sure to get a phone call from my sister, and my analyst (if I had one) I wander through the ah ha-halls of my imagination, tugging on the strings of arrant thoughts that seems to sometimes blossom, other times whither and mostly come up from the soil so easily because they were never really as fully developed as I had imagined them to be. They never bloomed. But that this, as my friend Chauncey Gardener might have said, is how the garden is tended. This is how stronger roots are made. We clear out the old growth, the over growth, the neighbors competing for resources and the weeds that were never meant to be there in the first place. We keep writing because adding poetry and meaning to life’s little biscuits is what we do.

“Dude. What is up with your Blog?”
“Why.”
“You, um, had a hard week.”

And another said “well, you seem to have had better days.”

To which I say “Yes, but when I stop blogging, painting, or otherwise creating, that is when you really need to start worrying.”

work and play

2009-09-21T08:45:00.003-05:00

There is nothing wrong with guilty pleasures.
There is nothing wrong with guilty pleasures.
There is nothing wrong with guilty pleasures.

The coffee gurgles as I log in to facebook, update my pithy morning comments on the status line, make a quick check that the baby isn’t choking on a piece of cardboard, and dash off to the restroom for a the morning “constitutional.” Some things feel like habit. Other things feel like guilty pleasures. When the boundary of understanding between the two begins to dissolve, then I am spiraling into excess.

Back at the computer I sip on the coffee and peruse a Times article on Jung’s “Red Book” and find myself half fantasizing half imagining Jung as alternately mad man and Buddha, the Red Book a blend of the “Celestine Prophecies” and the Holy Grail. Is this fantasizing just me being self-indulgent? I scan my thoughts and decide “No” instead the author of the article has done his work. I am a believer. I have been swayed.

Why am I so concerned with the self-indulgent/over-indulgence? The answer rises from the gut. Everything seems so crazy right now: School, Work, New Home, Old Home, Life. I am fearful of self medicating. Of letting my guilty pleasures become full on distractions that keep me from feeling the reality of the moment. There is nothing wrong with a face book status line that makes me chuckle. Nothing wrong with a sliver of chocolate or even the whole damn bar washed down with a beer. It is when I do these things at the expense of everything else that I know I have disappeared down the rabbit hole. I am in la-la land.

I want to play.

G. and S. have taken to locking themselves in their room for long hours playing Polly pockets and Barbie’s. Play for children is essential. It is the rehearsal for adulthood. Play for adults is good too. The micro-vacation of the mind that allows us to get back on that horse where “horse” is a cubicle or a factory job or long hours pent up at home with small children, or the frustration of no job and no home. I want to play, I just don’t want to play all of the time.

Sometimes work feels like play, especially as I am struggling to turn my passion into my job. How to make money and surviving doing something you love? That is the question, isn’t it? But even then, work can feel work. I mean, its work, isn’t it. It isn’t play. Its just that, when you make play work, the temptation is to make play into everything, and that just doesn’t work.

Libertine Buzzkill

2009-09-14T08:16:00.003-05:00

“Be careful Anais, abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.” -Henry and June (1990)

I like to think that embody the idea of "moderation even in moderation" but truthfully this is not how my personality works. Given a taste of excess, I find myself becoming overindulgent, an ever widening sphere of excesses, till excess is normal and normal is a distant memory.

Or do I?

Because I know that I can easily become exhausted by excess and yearn for greater and greater degrees of moderation and temperance.

It is as if the body has an internal clock of sorts that says "party's over." We know the internal clock that wakes us at 6:45, but is there one that says "your too heavy" or "your eating too much crap or drinking too much wine or your staying up too late."

Except that my clock is no Big Ben and I do not run on GMT. Normal can be all over the place for me and there is no one standard that I "return to."

The body has an internal roller coaster might be a better metaphor.

Perhaps the problem is that I don't live by a schedule.

The moderate need schedules. Not too much of this, just enough of that. Everything measured and in its measure.

I don't live that way, so do the rules of moderate or immoderate apply?

What would I do with moderation? Or is moderate just another way of saying "standard operating procedure." In which case one man's excess in another man's moderation. Is it all subjective or can these disparate lifestyles be reconciled?

this moment, now... no, now...

2009-09-13T08:14:00.002-05:00

So my new mantra is “getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

No small task.

I am so familiar with processing feelings in my head that it is almost impossible to put them anywhere else. The other day I was able to at least recognize that I needed a time-out, but whether or not I really got comfortable with my feelings is another subject all together. By nighttime I had fallen into my old patterns of “dialoging” my problems: feelings become personified by familiar faces and I begin to talk to them, often time reenacting the moments that lead up to the painful experience. Frustration becomes Professor no.1, anger become professor no.2. I have done this numerous times, and I have become very efficient at it.

I tried to find the link to the post where I first discovered that my brain isn’t trying to kill me and that this dialoging is actually just different parts of me trying to work through tough experiences, but to no avail. It was a really important lesson for me because it helped me to view people more compassionately. (I am not arguing with professor no. 1. Professor no. 1 is not here. I am arguing with myself.) However, this did not cause the behavior to subside, rather it merely rechanneled this thinking in a new direction.

D. and I had one of our blow-out explosive confrontations the other night. Later as J. and I were processing the episode she said “I think you were really angry.”
“When? With D.?”
“No before that. When you were unpacking in the kitchen. I heard you muttering to yourself. I think you were talking with your professors, and you were really angry.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I think you were so zoned out that you didn’t even realize how angry you were.”
I thought about this for a minute. I knew I was there, talking to them in the kitchen. Having one of my delightful instant replays. Was I angry? Damn right I was. Oh my God, I thought, I took that right into my talk with D. I felt like such an idiot. That little girl never stood a chance with me,

Walking through the grocery store yesterday I could feel the impatience. “Idiot” I thought of the man who was blocking the aisle with his cart. “Moron,” came my thoughts of the woman walking slowly in front of me. “Give me a break” came from staring at the old couple that was meandering about, not really buying as much as looking. When I think about how judgmental I was I feel dirty and I want to go and take a shower. Judgment is the greatest of all sins in my book. Perhaps second is indulging in it, relishing the sense of superiority it brings, and worse, pretending that those feelings of frustration are “being in the moment.”

I am making headway here. I am beginning to see again how my moments are manufactured. How the “now” I am living is not really the “now” that I am in. Another way of saying this is. I’m not living in the moment, because I am too busy judging it, or analyzing it, or processing it. Do you see what I mean by this? Regardless, I am not going to be too hard on myself about this. It may not be who I want to be, but today it is who I am. Acceptance is the first step to change.

Doorways

2009-09-11T11:28:00.002-05:00

Often my life seems to mirror the lament penned by T. S. Eliot “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

Sometimes we are given the opportunity to say exactly what we mean. (only to have it fall on deaf ears)

I wonder. (who is deaf)

Today I was given the chance to present work that I done in the last six months.

“Amaturish”

“Formulaic”

“Unrefined”

It was a hard, grueling experience, which, to my credit, I weathered pretty well. I fought down the urge to “defend” and tried to keep the tone “conversational.” But the end, I felt sick. I felt like crying. I felt angry and mostly I felt misunderstood. “I’m not going to drive home right away” I later told J. on the phone. “I think I am going to give myself some time. I think I am going to let it be a hard, grueling experience, and not try to chase that away. Getting in my car right now would be like locking me up in a sensory deprevation chamber and watching my sanity slowly melt away.”

Some moments are hard. Wisdom can teach us to stear clear of them. Experience can teach us to prepare for them. But nothing makes the hard go away. Nothing takes the sting out of the of the hornet. Acceptance tells me that. Accepting how I am right now makes being who I am right now palletable. Not that it is enjoyable. I am going to get real comfortable with this 'being uncomfortable.' I am going to allow myself to feel this.

I tend to think that if something is wrong I can fix it and it will be right. This is god-like thinking, and I am not God. Some situations cannot be fixed. Some deaths cannot be avoided. Some expereinces just have to be felt, and in feeling them I am myself. Truly. Wholly. Honestly.

This is a doorway. I am going to walk through. There may be another side, or there may be nothing. I do not concern myself with these choices. Today I am going to work on just walking through.

three quotes

2009-09-04T18:11:00.001-05:00

I. In Zen Enlightenment, the discovery of the “original face before you were born” is the discovery not that one sees Buddha but that one is Buddha and that Buddha is not what the images in the temple had led one to expect: for there is no longer an image and consequently nothing to see no one to see it and a void in which no image is even conceivable. “The true seeing” said Shen Hui, “is when there is no seeing.” -Thomas Merton

II. The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Zeus' palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Zeus the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Zeus sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men. –Homer

III. When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.

Seeds feed awhile on ground,
then lift up into the sun.

So you should taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.

That's how you came here, like a star
without a name. Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights. –Rumi

cloudy with a chance of muse

2009-09-01T00:05:00.006-05:00

Dear reader, I know that so many of my blog post don’t make any sense but then again, they really aren’t supposed to make any sense to anyone but myself and even I have a hard time rereading a few of them. One upset someone close to me the other day and my first thought was, "this is my life, my thoughts, what do I have to be sorry about?" Except that this kind of thinking feels so conceited and selfish that it is hard to hold on to, and I end up feeling like I ought to make a better apology... Incidentally the one I made was something like “I’m not sorry I said it, I’m just sorry you got hurt” and right away I knew that this apology was way crappy and that I needed to go back to the drawing board, but then so much of what I say and do is like this that the drawing board is full most of the time and I think "forget it, I’ll get back to it later."

J. sometimes says, half jokingly, that I lack in internal auditor, and maybe this is true, but most of the time I feel that the auditor is so busy dealing with yesterdays business that today’s doesn’t stand a chance. It's like one of those horrible New York Times articles that has some poor beleaguered S.O.B. sitting behind a desk with his out box empty and his in box full and the caption reads “I’ll get to that tomorrow” except that I don’t want to get to it tomorrow, not when it is important, and, after all, isn’t right now important? Isn’t why my inbox is so full and my outbox so empty because I have been neglecting this moment for so long. What is happening to me right now?

(Crickets chirping)

What is my emotional-self saying right now? I mean, other than, “I’m tired” and “why won’t you just let me go to sleep?”

“Pipe down!” I say.

J. and I got into an argument today. Apparently neither one of us was listening to the other. Or, at least, I was so busy trying to find an emotional center that I found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything else, and the things that I was able to concentrate on didn’t sound like anything that I was talking about. In retrospect I think we were both working really hard on a solution and were impatient with the other. I know when I get impatient people tell me I look angry. It is hard to look composed when you are disagreeing. It takes skill. I haven’t got that skill. I feel all befuddled. Nothing makes sense. Part of me wants to run, the other part wants to dig in his heels. Nothing is accomplished here.

Someone recently told me that their blog was compromised by it readership. OMG! Yes! Yes! Yes! I know exactly what you mean. I mean, we want readers, but then when we have invited our friends, family, co-workers, the occasional student, and an internet full of strangers into our house that is our brain, how it is not compromised? It is all compromised. Still, can I say “Dude. I know where you are coming from but you are driving me crazy.” Or do I just let it lie?

(Pause)

So here is the thing. I know where my emotional-self is and most of the time it lives in the question, “Am I a failure?” Now before you rush to judgment or rush to type the heart warming comments to the contrary, you should know that a fear of failure is a huge motivator for me. It gets me out of bed, it usually pays the bills, it forces those half baked apologies from me, and usually allows for more heart felt ones, it makes me paint, it helps me teach, it drives me to read and to the grocery store and most of the time it keeps me alive.

Not that this is any way to live. It is not a philosophy I recommend.

“No shit” says the casual reader. But I tell you, it is a thought as addictive as any drug, as powerful as any emotion, it will not let you sleep, not let you settle, not let you doubt, though doubt you will, and all the time until you find some type of closure.

Some might think I am being sorry for myself, but I don't feel that way at all. In fact, I am really rather amused at the way in which my mind (which as it turns out isn't trying to kill me at all) has somehow managed to turn this blaring character defect into an asset. As sort of internal "try, try again." You might even say I am channeling my inner Holden Caulfield.

I stand before the canvas, the canvas yawns back at me. It’s bored. It wants amusement. It waggers a stiletto knife at me and taunts “is that all you have? Why don’t you give me your wallet and we’ll call it even. “ I recoil. My palms are sweaty. I don’t fear death. I fear ignobility. The hand wavers. The knife slackens. I reach out making a furtive gesture to wave him off but my hand makes contact with the blade and it snaps in two. I am terrified. My assailant doesn’t know what to do. On the one hand I should die, on the other I have to upper hand. The knife is broken. He sees into my eyes, and knows my terror. “I’ll let you off this time, but just until we meet again. Then you are mine!” As he leaves I bend down and pick up the broken blade and push it into the palm till it draws blood. I wonder, what was I afraid of, and in the same moment, know, with a dread certainty, that I will be afraid again.

four

2009-08-29T21:40:00.006-05:00

Little Elle can climb. Little S. can tumble. G. can run and scream and put the fear of god in you and D. swims like a shark.

(sigh)

It drives me crazy when I tell people I have four daughters and they look at me like I am some poor dumb guy who doesn't stand a chance.

They repeat after me: “Four?”

I hate it when they say “four.”

Four.

Foooooouuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Seriously, it makes me crazy and I wish they would stop the parroting. "Yes, I have four daughters. Why? Is it written somewhere that having four girls is bad?"

Seriously. I want to punch them. I mean what are they saying anyway?

I also hear this one a lot: “Four daughter is a lot of work.”

?????????????

My favorite responce to this is a line a friend of mine gave me: "You go from man to man to a zone defense."

It is better than the cynical, derisive comments that I want to say:

“You poor stupid bastards, you don’t have daughters, do you?”

Daughters are awesome. I wish I had twenty and I am so, so, so glad I had four.

They make me laugh, they make me cry, and most of all, they make me glad.

There was a time when I loved three… but four is the magic number.

reverence for

2009-08-23T23:14:00.006-05:00

Listen! Listen! The king is in the counting house, counting out, counting out. The king is in the counting house, counting all the money. One. Two. Three. Four. All ready?
Looks like we made it
Or I thought so, till today
Until you were there,
Everywhere, and all I could taste was love the way we made it.
Well, you're a fishmonger! You're my everything, you are my sunshine, you're old and grey and full of sleep. You're my pickle-faced, consumptive Mary Jane!

Boredom, sleep and full of pain, “you don’t sleep well, do you.”
“No, I never do.”

You have to read this.

[rant]
There are things that we take for granted, things that we celebrate because we are so proud of who we have become. We allow ourselves a certain pride because there isn’t anytime in human civilization when so many have lived so well, knew so much, had the opportunity to live so well… what complete bullshit.

Where is the authenticity? Ok I am completely saturated in Television and Internet and media and I know so much more than my father, or my mother or more than anyone else in history (except that this is hubris and there are so many people who know so much more than I do)

“Today's amature knows more than the experts of one hundred years ago. “ Absolute nonsense.
[end rant]

One. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three.

Eyelids flutter. The mind achieves a kind of focus. “I know this. This is so familiar.” Mindfulness is replaced by awareness. I am, and I am, and I am. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So incredibly bored with ourselves that we seek to be entertained all the time. “O.K. world, Wow me!”

Monday. Tuesday. (so predictable) Wednesday (profound insight) Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Thursday. Thursday, FriSatSunday.

Those of us who know are scored by our elders as knowing only what is vapid and banal; what I did what clever, but clever by regurgitating what I have heard over and over and over until everything I know is merely a convenient truth and everything I say is (yes clever) not what I mean.

It is impossible to say exactly what I mean.
We who are tired of the sarcasm, of the arrogance of the ingenuous criticisn of life that has become so ubiquitous.

O.K., O.K. I get it. The world is bad. Life is evil, consumerist or greedy or self absorbed. But there is also something very simple at the root of this. There is a voice within the voice. There is a point at which criticism stops cutting and start sounding like a pained, helpless moment of endurance for those who treat plan old human troubles and emotions and with reverence and conviction.

There is no longer a why.. nor is there a how. Modern. Post mOdern. These definitions no longer seem to fit. We find outselves levitating in the moment wondering if anyone is noticing and wondering how this moment could be possible. (The levitation, after all, seems natural)

I am not an arrant god, nor was meant to be.

Profound truth.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Mirror games

2009-08-21T18:26:00.002-05:00

So, if you are a patient, faithful reader, you will know that one of my big “discoveries” of the past year has been that my brain is not trying to kill me. Rather, my brain is working extra hard to try and figure things out for me, look at the really hard, painful stuff of my life and try to make sense of it. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. Most of the time I don’t want to see it. So I blame my brain for my… well for my shortcomings. My brain, it turns out, is not trying to kill me. Who Knew?

If you are a patient, faithful reader, you are still reading.

Favorite movie quotes.

One. “A spear” and two “it helps, it really helps.” One is from “Apocalypse Now”, and the second is from “Harry Potter: Prisoner from Azkaban”. Why bring them up here?

Imagine if you will the shock I experienced when my life long companion, no, not my wife, but the voice inside my head, turned out not to be my enemy but my friend.

“A spear” Chief Phillips looks at his mortal enemy and realizes that it was not his perceived foe, but a random act of savage violence, that would end his life.

“It helps, it really helps” Professor Lupin offers Harry a piece of chocolate after his first dementor attack. Sometimes the simple creature comforts are cures for those things that ail us.

You know. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that are wrong in my life. I think about fame and fortune and everything thing that goes with it. I want them all.

One night in college I had a lot to drink. I stumbled back to my dorm room and slipped into my bathrobe. I was about to turn out the light when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was dirty. My hair, unkept. But the more I looked, that more I became engaged with the image of myself. I stared until all I could see where my own eye looking back at me and still I continued to stare. My vision blurred, my eyes waters and still I continued to stare, I could see the faint red lines of the veins in my pupils. I could see them pulsing. I could see the pock marks on my skin, the hairs in my lashes. I have later discovered that this kind of intense focus is not hard to arrive at, but at the time, perhaps because of excessive drink, I thought it was amazing.

“This is who I am” I thought to myself. “This is me.”

I have to tell you, I am pretty sure I went through the same kind of experience when I was thinking about the way I thought about myself. “My brain is not trying to kill me!”

Neither is a vision of who I am.
Remarkable.

Recently I rekindled a relationship with a friend of twenty years. I won’t go into the details here but at the end of a recent conversation, my friend pointed out the similarities that existed between us then and now. “Some things have changed and some things are still the same.” Eerie. It is funny but, in a moment I realized I am so much more than these parts.

Damn it! Now I have to go back and reevaluate the whole thing all over!

Sarama

2009-08-05T23:48:00.003-05:00

Someone has stolen the sacred cows
and hidden them among the mountain caves.
They dwell on the far side of the river
that separates the world of gods and men
from the world of demons.

Prophets have told of the decline.
We either live in an age of poverty,
Or one of great abundance.
There is hardly a distinction
In the World as Will and Idea.

The Panis have stolen something of ours.
“These are the cows which you desire,
lovely lady, having flown beyond the ends of the skies,
who would give them up to you without a fight?”

It is hard to imagine a people
who have no language of their own.
Harder still to imagine the vanquished
Who have never known battle, only prayer.
Does modern life have a place for poets?
For Homer? For Goerthe?

“Your words are no armies.
Your evil bodies may be proof against our arrows.
But where you go we will follow,
Where you hide you will not be spared.”

There is little reflection. Oh Muse!
You are as fickle as the night,
As constant as the dawn!
What we admire we lavish only in its decline.
To do else-wise would impede your progress.
We criticize what we cannot hope to understand.

what if's

2009-07-28T18:51:00.002-05:00

I like the “what if’s” of life. I used to have a teacher, actually she was the principal of my grade school that would say “uh-uh, no what if’s.”

How sad.

What if the sky was pink and the oceans were lemonade.

What if I had a better job, and why don’t I go get it right now.

What if people treated each other better, or if government had a better mandate for the people or if religion taught individual salvation, what if sandwiches were the reward for the well lived life, what if, what if, what if.

What if I added olives to my marinade?

What if I drank another beer?

What if I told that S.O.B. off, like s/he so desperately deserves.

What if I tried to be less angry, more hopeful, less sullen, more joyous, less proud, more proud.

I think what if’s get the lawn mown. Get the trash taken out. Get dinner made and get us out of bed in the morning.

If I had a chance to go back in time and finish that particular conversation (there are so many) I would tell her, what if’s are the things of dreams, the imagination of children, the aspirations of adults, they are the reason we live, the reason we die, why we try and fail, and why we try and succeed.

Dog Daze

2009-07-14T14:00:00.002-05:00

I can’t help but sit here and think about all those novels set in the deep south that begin with a description of the long wearisome heat of summer that bears down on the mind and the senses. Something about women bathing before noon and gentlemen wiping the damp from their foreheads with a yellowing handkerchief. Every one of my pores breaks out in an absolute panic each time I set foot outside. I am like a deep-sea diver descending into a foreign land, my sweat like a layer of armor against the elements.

Yesterday S. and I were the pool where I fished a dead cicada out of the water. “What is that?” she asked.
“A cicada., the trees are full of them.”
“Why” she asks, not so much to further the conversation but really more to say “I have nothing at all to say to that.”
“Listen” I say “you can hear them all around us.” The trees are full to the aching whine that is the distinctive sound to the insect.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Incredulous I point to first one group of trees and then the next. “There” I say “and there. No?” Nothing. Like a pungent aroma that seemingly vanishes within minutes of first detecting it, she has managed to pushed the sound out of mind and memory till it has become completely undetectable. “Nothing at all?”

Cicadas aside there is a kind of meditative stillness to the long, hot, dog days of summer. Total immersion creates a kind of restfulness that monks achieve after years of contemplations. Standing in my make shift studio in the garage, the banter of my mind is silenced by the drone of the fan blowing against me. Paint stiffens in the heat and the wet bristles of the brush begin to wilt. The eye darts from canvas to canvas making spontaneous decisions in an effort to out pace the heat.