Welcome the cold, dark, night of the soul. Welcome the ritual of the departed ones, in memory. We remember them, we see them as in our minds eye. We listen to their voices in the whispering trees and wish them well. We set out glowing gifts for them, as an offering of peace for times gone by, and for memories long gone. Laughing children slink through the night in images of things ghoulish, or cute, or funny, or just gross. We fill their buckets with candy, treats, and lies.
Out beyond the city lights, there is an old woman who still believes. She still does the rituals, worries that her lantern won't stay lit all night, and burns candle after candle. Her life is full of the supernatural, invaded by other worlds, and filled with fear of things that aren't there. For the rest of us, it's a representation, a nothingness filled with laughter and images of unrealities. For her, the night is real.
Let not these fake images drive fear into your hearts. These images are manufactured, are passed down from department store to department store. There is nothing in the night air, other than the coolness, and the invented magic that is made by the living on this night. The magic of remembering the dead, the images we revel in, are all of our own making, our own celebratory rites and rituals. The dead sleep. The dead are remembered, but the dead do not return.
"Well, it seems I'm not man enough to fix my toilets. Can you send a man over who is man enough to do routine maintenance on my house?"
"Your main drain? Yes sir, we can do that."
RotoRooter Man arrives.
"So...how 'bout those Sox, eh?" sayeth he...
"Yes, we do wash a lot of socks, but I'm not sure if they're the problem here...do you think they are?"
A completely different day altogether
"Hello, is that the local appliance fixit place?"
"Why yes sir, it is. How can we help you today?"
"Well, it seems I'm not man enough to fix these white clothes washing thingies in my basement. You know, the ones that make all the noise, and have recently taken to leaking water on my floor."
"Ah.. your washing machine is leaking? Yes sir, we'll send someone right over."
a long dark night
"He's awake again?"
"Yes. Again. He's not feeling well, remember? You're staying home tomorrow."
I'm not man enough to be a parent without help either. Thank God my wife keeps me sane.
"It's just...well...this isn't exactly what I expected."
I was leaning back against the rounded moss covered logs of the cabin, watching the sun set through the trees picking my teeth with a toothpick. My host had returned to his whittling, after starting a cozy fire from which a thin line of blue smoke was slowly spiraling upward through the trees above. He looked up at me with a smile, when I spoke, then went back to his task.
"I'm not sure what I really expected, to tell you the truth."
He just smiled again.
"Would you like to learn how to whittle?" he finally asked, after several minutes of silence.
"Oh, I don't know. I'm not very creative. What would I make?"
"Anything you like, son."
I took the knife, and a small bit of wood...a thick branch of a tree. I scraped my knife across the surface, and whole galaxies appeared. I scraped again, and planets formed before my eyes. Scrape...trees...scrape...seas, oceans, birds.
"What's happening?" I asked?
"You're whittling, son. Easy, ain't it?"
"Yes." I kept doing it until my host had watched me form universe after universe from a bit of wood.
He smiled, took the newly formed worlds into his hands, looked them over and said "Not bad, for a beginner." Then he tossed the wood on the fire. It sparked, flamed, and turned to ash.
"Where did it all go?" I asked, an element of fear in my voice.
"Oh, don't you worry. It's all still there. Inside you." He abruptly got up. The air was turning dark and cool as the red glow of the sunset lessened. "You want some coffee?"
"Sure." I said. As he turned toward the door of the cabin, I quickly asked, "How long should I stay here, with you?"
"As long as you like, of course." He turned, and went inside. I smelled coffee brewing soon after.
What we imagine things might be like is always different than they really are. The following came to me in a waking shower dream this morning. I'm sure it wouldn't turn out this way, but reveals my own perceived inadequacies and insecurities. I post it here because I find it funny.
I've been sitting at the bar, waiting to meet up with the other TequilaCon people, having obviously shown my over-eagerness by appearing at an unreasonably early hour. Finally, someone talks to me.
"Are you waiting for TequilaCon?"
Yes
"So...who are you?"
I'm toadman.
"Who?"
I'm a friend of Scott. You know, the guy who writes the blog Caveat Emptor. He's a big fan of /\ (Brando)
"Oh!!! He's brilliant!"
Yes. I know. Wait, which one do you mean? Brando, or Scott?
Ignoring the question, "Have you guys ever met?"
Well...yes. We sort of grew up together.
...looking away, "Uh huh... that's nice. So.. who else is supposed to be here?"
I don't know.
disinterestedly "Do you write a blog?"
Well, uh... music in the bar gets louder yes. It's called synaptic disunion.
obviously not hearing the answer, "That's nice."
--- silence ---
"Well, it was nice talking to you...what was your name again?"
Andy. My name is Andy.
"C ya Andy! I think I see Brando and his harem at the other end of the bar! YAY!"
I don't know if it's possible to exist in two places at the same time, I suspect it's not. My mind, however, has been in two places at the same time before. It was, last week.
Sight, sound, and smell. This isn't America...well, except for the restaurants and bars. You can smell that international smell. It smells like distant body oder, and it smells good. It sounds like constant announcements about flights, luggage, and suspicious activity being spoken in Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and German.
It's the international terminal. Turban's and long sweeping sari's. People who's country of origin is indistinguishable until they speak. Lufthansa is leaving for Munich in a few minutes, final boarding call. British Air takes off for London-Heathrow in an hour. Qantas is scheduled for a 9:05 flight to Auckland-Melbourne.
I want to jump one of these flights. The one to London-Heathrow is especially tempting. I want to grab my little family, and join the international community instead of remain isolated in our sealed boarder country. I want to roam the planet, see it all, smell it all, taste it all.
Here, people are coming and going. Some are coming home, some are leaving home, some are going home. For some, their home isn't so centralized. For some, home is wherever they happen to be tonight. Their home is the world, the planet. Tonight, my home is in Spokane, but I'm waiting in Los Angeles for my flight. Tonight, I'll board a small craft bound for Spokane. Someday, I'll take my home and fly it around the globe.
Tonight, I walked the line between the land and infinity. The ocean baptized my feet in the collected salty tears of all life that has come before me while its sickle shaped lover kept its dim silver light on my path.
As the sunset light finally emptied into the distant western night I came upon a surfer struggling to hold a sea bird that was injured and floundering in the shallow tide. He was able to capture his quarry, gently, as I came closer. The surfer silhouetted against the moon silvered tide as he walked past me in his wet suit. I stopped, we conversed briefly, and I turned to walk away, but captured his board as it tried to float out on the tide, once again. I walked on.
Is that pier getting any closer? Perhaps. My perception has changed since I started this walk, now some half an hour ago. Beaches are defined by the lines the present, and the distances they portray, and the names people give them. This one, Manhattan Beach, is nothing like it's namesake, that I am aware.
What would happen if there was an earthquake, right now? Would the beach sand liquefy and swallow me whole? Would a tsunami wipe my tiny existence off this tiny planet? Would the planet continue? Yes. It would. The pier is closer, definitely. The tide is coming in too, for sure. Yeah. Fer sure.
I turn, look around. I am utterly alone...if that's possible in Southern California. The wind and the sound of the tide is all I hear. The distant lights of the pier, the lights of the beach front houses, a great distance behind me. The surfer, long gone now, up at the public outdoor showers, washing his feet. Nobody can see me. Nobody can hear me. Nobody can hear me?
Primal scream time. I've never done it, but have heard about it. The idea is that you find a deep emotional center, and release it verbally, in the form of a guttural scream. I give it a go. Just a squeak, and the mighty vast deep pacific mocks me. I do it bigger, louder, longer. I scream into the dark depths of the ocean, releasing from deep within. The ocean takes it in, more information, and files it away. Me? I just look around feeling stupid...hoping nobody saw me.
Tonight, I walked the line between the land and infinity. I was alone with my thoughts, for over an hour. No television. No iPod. No cell phone. No shoes. I experienced more than what I've written, but all that I've written, I experienced, and did. Tonight, I walked the line between the land and infinity, and what did I do? I screamed at it...what a dork.
There's a quiet peace about whittling. It takes patience, caution, and concentration. That's where I found him; deep in concentration, calm, steadily creating something, out of only a bit of wood. He was leaning back on what must have been the north side of the cabin, a thick covering of moss threatened to completely obscure the logs with which it had been built probably eons ago.
He stopped briefly, and looked up at me. I couldn't hold his gaze, but quickly looked away, to the forest of green needles, golden leaves, the deep reds. Again, the light filtered through the canopy, casting a golden mellow light on the surrounding air.
"Nice, ain't it?" he said.
"Very nice." I replied.
"I like how it just kinda manages itself, you know?" I heard his knife scraping again.
"I don't follow you."
"Well, you know, it don't need no proddin' or nothin', just sorta works itself out into seasons." One of the whittling chips landed lightly on my foot, which I now realized, were bare. I knelt down, and picked it up...I remained kneeling as I turned the chip over in my hand, noting it's clean cut lines, the fibers of the wood, and the smell.
"It grew out of chaos though, right?" I mused.
"No. Ain't no such thing as chaos, is there? I mean, if there's rules for everything, even for chaos, then there ain't no such thing, is there? Chaos can only be called chaos if it don't follow no rules. It follows rules. Trust me. You people just ain't figured it out yet." He stopped again. "You hungry?"
"Yes. Very. Do you have any food?" I asked, suddenly sharply aware of the growing void in my middle.
"Sure. You go on inside, I been waitin for ya. Have a seat and I'll join ya directly."
I turned and walked toward the door.
I will be out of town from Sunday to Wednesday on a business trip, and am not sure if I'll get to write much while I'm away. Please bear with me.
Reagan lifts a glass to the kids of his era...those of us, GenX'ers, who came of age during the 80s. He was the first president we knew, for most of us. His image dominated our world-view, for better or worse, for years to come. A lot has happened since those simple times of Rouskies and commie threats and bad synth music. Maybe too much. Our happy trickle down life has been disrupted by current events.
Where are they now anyway? My fellow genX'ers? Where have they gone? Are we melting into the background like so many other generations to come before us? Are we taking to much from the planet, like so many other generations before us as well? What are we doing?
We're just surviving. Just above the waterline. We're serving in the military, without younger Gen Y brothers and sisters, taking orders from our older Boomer brothers and sisters. We're in the middle, unknown. Or are we?
We're only now beginning to get our own spokesmen. Stewart, Colbert. Though they're just a bit older than us, like a helpful older brother, showing us the world around us...using humor...to explain the unexplainable. Using satire to explain more easily to our overly cynical ears what we've been complaining about all these years.
Our tattoos are fading, or growing across our expanding skins. Our piercings are beginning to get in the way, and we fear for our children in this brave new fearful world of unknowns. We never did say we were going to change the world. We weren't like the boomers, with their causes and their sit ins and their national movements. We're not that together, but we're coming of age, and we have something to say...maybe...if we want to...which mean, we probably won't say anything at all.
Living in the woods, you get a lot of ideas about what God is up to.
- Louis Jenkins
It must have been about the third day, because I was really starting to get hungry. The forest had opened up into a valley of fall color so radiant that the ground at my feet seemed to glow with the colors of the trees around me. As I looked, in the distance, I could see a thin line of smoke rising up through the spires of the pines, and the red and golden crowns of the maples. From where I was standing, it looked like it was rising from the very center of a shallow bowl, hidden from all directions, first by low mountains, then by snow covered spires. I wondered who could possibly live down there, in this uncharted wilderness.
As I approached, I could see the cabin. It looked old. Very old. The roof was covered in grass and moss, the base of it's stone chimney was completely obscured by lichen. Oddly, there was what looked to be a rusted out Harley Davidson motorcycle that was at least 80 years old or more. I had only ever seen photographs of this kind of motorcycle in documentaries about the first world war. It leaned against a wooden table, and pine needles belied the fact that it hadn't been touched in ages. But there was one anomaly. There was a book laying on the table that hadn't yet been covered by needles, and must have been recently laid there, though it's spine was worn, and it's edges curled up.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the title. Robert Pirsig. I wasn't familiar with this maintenance manual, and was picking it up when I heard a noise. It must have been the creaking of a screen door, because, soon after the noise, I saw a white headed and white bearded man look around the corner of the log cabin, busily drying his hands with a cloth. He looked up and saw me, and didn't seem surprised in the least.
"You know anything about Harley's like that?" he said.
"'fraid I don't, sorry." I replied as I placed the book back on the table.
"Well, that books been no help at all. They just don't have quality manuals on that type of bike anymore, I don't guess."
He turned and walked to the far side of the house.
The day was winding down, almost done. Tasks completed, tomorrow planned, email already closed and done with for the day. Then, the cell phone rang.
In 1973 I was three years old and lived with my parents in North Richland Hills, TX on Norton street. My best friend was a basset hound named Gomer. He and I went everywhere together, and I dreamed of being a dog.
"What?! For over thirty minutes? I'm on my way."
Lights off, out the door. My bag, left behind. Where could he be? I should have never let my brain ask that question. Minds have a way of projecting the worst possible scenario into your mind at the first sign of danger. It might be a simple survival skill, but right now, it was annoying.
I had no idea, I was three. I don't even remember the incident. I only remember that I was fussed over for quite a while. I didn't want to be fussed over, I just wanted to go back to acting like a dog and crawling around with Gomer behind the bushes.
In my minds eye, that deceptive and horrible minds eye, I saw our sons smiling face. Saw it transform, the smile gone, the air thickened, a greyness hung around him, and I saw his lifeless body lying on a cold stainless steel slab in a quiet morgue.
NO! No. Thats not going to happen. The mind is a horrible thing, sometimes. Fear takes over, emotions drive us out of our skins into events that are improbable. But, it's not to early to call the cops, is it? Should I call her back and see if she wants me to call it in yet? I mean, over thirty minutes. Before I could, the cellphone rang again.
In the end, I was asked to act like a dog in the back yard. I was three, that was ok. Gomer and I, best pals, had the whole back yard in which to have adventures. We didn't notice the whole neighborhood suddenly shut off to us, at least I didn't. I didn't know I was lost.
"Where was he? Hiding!!?? Why? Oh."
Behind the Yew bush, in the front yard, for thirty minutes. He waited there, trying to avoid the trouble he might be in, because of something he'd done. He hid there as my wife called to him, walked around the neighborhood looking for him, with a neighbor, even. He hid from us. What he did wrong, paled in comparison to this, as well it should. Sometimes the lost don't know they're lost. Sometimes the lost want to stay lost. Sometimes the lost have been taken. It's hard to know which it is, in the first thirty-five minutes.
It sometimes entered my mind that it was endless. I would, even when I was under ten years old, wander for hours, not only on our little ten acres of north Texas grasslands, but on other meagerly delineated parcels as well. My dirty blond straw straight bowl cut hair, partially sticking to my forehead from the oppressive Texas summer break-from-school heat, and the red dirt covering my shoes and socks, a lone black hawk circling on a thermal, the buzzing sounds of bugs, or maybe rattlers. Always scorpions, and those burrs that get stuck in your socks and in your pants. Dust. These are the things that I remember.
I'd wander far afield, wondering if I could get lost, sometimes finding out that I could. Lost is never something I was for very long, though, for I knew, highway 114 was just over that-a-way, even though I couldn't hear it, and the creek was just back there a-ways, beyond that line of oak trees, though there was no water in it. My dog also, he knew the way home, tagging along with me like some sort of quiet guardian angel that kept it's nose to the ground for any sign of.. well, anything at all, his dark golden-retriever tail, covered in large burrs that I'd have to remove later with scissors.
Once, I took a little CB radio with me, out into all these different places I used to wander without my parents knowledge, to see if I could pick up the truckers over on hwy 114 that was, just a bit further that-a-way, I was sure, though I still couldn't hear the trucks. I remember walking so far that things started looking unfamiliar. I hadn't wandered into these fields before. I wonder who owned this parcel. I wonder if there were cows here, and, if there was a bull I needed to be wary of.
The dry grass crunching under my feet, and the silent crackle of the CB radio, and the vision of my dog's tail going back and forth in front of my path, as though clearing it of any hazards, and the sense of unfamiliarity with my surroundings at that moment, enters my mind now, these many years later. I never was able to pick up that signal, on that CB radio. I was convinced that the problem was that the radio was too weak, but I never was able to find that spot again.
It's not that we didn't know what was going to happen to him...we just didn't want to give him too much time to fret. We know our son. He frets. Worries. Gets anxious.
As we were leaving the dentists office, choking back tears and anger, he said "Dad. I didn't like that at all."
"No son, I didn't think you would. I'm sorry."
"Why is it always me?" he cried.
"You're the oldest. We don't know what sorts of dental problems your little brothers might have to have...but for now, it's just you, yes." I replied.
"No Dad, it's always me."
I knew what he meant. Last year, it was the skin strep...the "spots," he called them. He sometimes feels singled out by diseases and health problems...and it's true.
Maybe someday he'll understand why. I hope he does. Maybe someday, he'll grow out of his childhood illnesses and anxieties, and be a stronger person. We can only hope. But for now, he's a child, just a child, trying to make sense of a world that hurts him.
....has broken the music industry into tiny little shards of nothingness.
When Radiohead's contract with their previous record company ended, they quietly and politely said "That's ok..we don't really need you all that bad." And they're going to prove that what they said was true...on October 10th.
In a typically simple and short message on their blog on October 1st dead air space, Johnny says:
"Hello everyone. Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days; We've called it In Rainbows. Love from us all."
It's being sold by them, and nobody else. From their website, as a download. Or, you can pre-order an amazing physical copy which includes a second cd, a free download, the entire album on vinyl, and all the artwork you could possibly imagine. This is the one I'll be trying to get. They're doing it all without the "help" and "assistance" of dubious record companies. The download is also, essentially, free. If you go to www.radiohead.com, you are forwarded to the website for the album www.inrainbows.com. Here, you are given two purchase choices, digital download, or Discbox edition. If you select the pre-order of the digital download, and view your basket, the price field is empty, waiting to be filled by you. What? What is this? So many questions in your head. The good boys at Radiohead have provided a clickable ? to which you may direct your questions about this apparent lack of price. All it says is "It's Up to You." That's refreshing. Cheapskates, please note, if you choose to pay nothing, be aware that there is a one dollar credit card processing fee (oh the horror!). People may say "Oh my, how will they ever make a profit from this?" Easy. No record company to pay...and more people than ever will have access to their music.
They are my new musical heroes.
Why are they shirking the Big Label Record Companies? Because they can. Let's think about what record companies actually give us in this digital age anyway. They give us...uh...hang on a sec...it may come to me in a minute....oh yeah. Marketing! Yay Marketing! You too could have images of your band plastered and forced upon an unsuspecting public for a hefty fee of, well, frankly, most of the profits from your album, and a little bit of your soul. Radiohead doesn't need this "branding," this "demographic targeting" or any other b.s. that the language of marketing blabbers on about. None of that matters anymore.
I haven't even heard any of the tunes on this album, slated to bring down Radiohead's download server on October 10th from sheer demand, but that doesn't matter at this point. The point is, they did it...they're doing it...they're showing us what the future of music will be like...without monster record companies. It's a brave new world. A lovely new world. A kinder, gentler, musical world.
Thank you Radiohead.
I've embedded two tracks from one of their older albums below: Paranoid Android
Our youngest is getting teeth. We're a little concerned about their size. If they remain this big, we may have to fine a 1978 single-wide Marlette park to live in, instead of our nice little 1930s quiet suburban home.
I think these teeth may go into remission, however, with enough exposure to properly spoken English.
