Stung by beauty.

From the Riverhead aquarium.

Speechless nights.

My lady had a crappy day so in good conscience I don't want to go on about mine, experiencing it was more than enough. Instead I will put those good vibrations I would have expended in the bank so hopefully she can use them later.

November 16, 2010. Visiting home.

Here on LI with the boys. Wireless signal is weak at mom's so via phone, a summary of today's immersion course for the children of transplanted New Yorkers:

Sicilian pizza
Dunkin Donuts for the kids Dunkin Donuts coffee for me (where the term "regular coffee" is understood)
Sand
Paint pot rocks
Wampum
Seagulls
Ferries
Port Jefferson
Nautical history
A Greek diner.

Love is so disorienting.

One day Jack Martindale realized for sure: something was definitely wrong with his GPS device. It started mildly, occasionally dropping him off a few houses or one street over from his destination. But it got worse to the point of becoming completely unreliable. It wasn't so much random or wrong, the places it sent him, it was more like being on a wild goose chase. 

The GPS had been a birthday present; kind of a godsend. He got irreparably lost so often. There was a big hole in his neural network somewhere, he suspected. He frequently drove past his own house. Finding his car in a parking lot: a nightmare. He thought of himself as a pretty visual person, yet when he tried to picture which roads he'd come from or where he had last turned his mind eventually went dark. Attached to his windshield, the little picture his GPS showed of the roads in front of him was like a smaller window into reality. But something curious had happened inside of Jack at the same time the little navigation device gradually lost its bearings.

Jack had begun to know where he was. He had the GPS to thank for this. It was almost as if, instead of fostering his dependence on the little machine, it had taught him to find his way.

At first, "Richard," the least robotic of the gallery of voices the device gave him to select from, gave him the most minimum of direction. "Turn left, then turn right." It never announced the street names or whether he'd be turning onto an exit, a ramp, or a regular road. Quite a few times he would make the wrong turn. Fortunately Richard would quickly recalculate, and later, Jack learned to anticipate upcoming changes in direction. It was like they worked together. Anticipating changes seemed to help Jack find his way easier during those times when Richard couldn't help him. Finding his way back from the bathroom in an office building. Meeting up with his friends at restaurants with more than one dining room. In the case of this personal development, the GPS taught him through omission. Soon it began adding extra insight into the directions it gave.

One day for example, Jack had an appointment with a new dentist. The dentist's office was a disappointing treasure at the center of a maze in a particularly serpentine office park. "Turn left," Richard said, as Jack took his exit from the highway, "now turn right... then turn left again," Richard said. Richard never said "again." That was odd. This was odder: "Tip: Say 'left right left' so you'll remember. It doesn't appear you do that." Very sophisticated technology I guess, Jack thought. It's learning my patterns. It was like Pandora, or the Genius. Jack laughed at himself sometimes, realizing the funny way in which he'd come to think about Richard. He'd developed some affection for this machine that seemed to know him. It was hard for this feeling not to grow as Richard continued to give very specific advice the next several times Jack used it.

"Remember your landmarks," Richard taught him. "Always stamp your ticket in the parking garage; you will usually find a machine for that near the elevators." Knowing where he was made Jack feel more confident. Getting lost, it had always been repeated evidence of how flaky he thought himself to be. Maybe he was capable of being more on top of things, he began to realize. Around the time Jack first had that thought Richard started giving him what seemed to be the wrong directions.

"Turn right, no, turn left," Richard would say, with what seemed like increasingly human intonation. Was Richard getting lost, Jack wondered? No. Richard was looking for something. After a while, Jack could see it. A tiny pulsing blip showed up in the corner of the map on Richard's screen. It had seemed at first that Richard's mistakes in direction were random. Soon after the blip started showing up it had become clear Richard was following it.

Jack had rifled through Richard's instruction manual several times, at first out of a curiosity that soon developed into one of those mild obsessions. What was Richard looking for?

The GPS manual was written in poorly translated English. It showed fuzzy pictures of control screens clearly belonging to other products or versions of his product, and at other times omitted key details. Where to plug it in. How to download new maps. And nowhere, in any of the keys displaying the GPS' gallery of little icons, flags and traffic signs and points-of-interest like gas pumps or museums, was there a picture of that pulsing blip. In between tasks at work he found himself scrolling through PDFs online, documents he'd found in obscure corners of the product's web site. He gave up at last, starting to fall behind in his work, and getting headaches from peering at scuzzy JPEG images. He was left to reach his own conclusions about the mysterious blip, some of them practical, and the others a bit ridiculous.

Richard was either broken, and the blip was a scrap of programming fallen off its string, or Richard had begun to surpass his programming, becoming more erratic as he became more human. Jack decided to help Richard out, just as Richard had helped him. He questioned the logic in this kind of thinking less than he would have before. That's what people call the spirit of adventure, the myths we create around more mundane purposes to keep them interesting, he thought. But it wasn't completely without sense. A machine has its own purpose. Who's to say its purpose was any less important than his own?

And so one Tuesday Jack blocked off his lunchtime schedule, a big gray box appearing next to his name between the hours of eleven and two in the shared Outlook calendar used in his office. He worked relatively independently, his boss was frequently away. He could probably slip out for half the day with impunity if he wanted to. And in spite of the time he'd spent flipping through Richard's instruction manuals the past week he was well caught up on work, maybe for the first time since he'd started this job five years ago. It still takes time to lose old habits though, and he'd programmed himself to cover up any impression of possible flakiness with anticipatory excuses. He was required to attend various trainings and certifications from time to time as part of his job. As a compromise he labeled the appointment, but with only one word. "Orientation."  

Jack slipped his coat off the plastic hanger in his cubicle and felt Richard's solid bulk in his right pocket. It was rainy out so he zipped the pocket shut, then walked breezily past the rows of identical cubes meeting gazes where they came and exchanging waves or see-you-laters if they were given. He turned left and then right and then left. He stepped through the lobby and out into the wet afternoon, quickly finding his car. He set the GPS neatly into his bracket, which was suctioned onto the glass of his slightly grimy windscreen. The day was stark and striking, a vibrant blue-gray square in his view like the gray square in his office calendar.

Jack pressed the GPS' Power button and let his hands fall to his lap, taking in the cool sharp smell of the day, lingering even here in the closed space of his car while Richard went through his usual warm-up screen, a blue bar climbing across a white field. The screen blinked twice and came to rest on an aerial view of the city. No destination was programmed. Jack started the car and backed out of his spot.

"In 200 yards, make a right out of the parking lot," Richard said. Jack followed Richard's directions. "Exit left, onto the highway."

As Jack started gliding into traffic on the Interstate he saw the blip edge out into the corner of the screen and pulse three times. It appeared to be about two exits from their current location. In the relative silence, engine thrumming, wind occasionally buffeting the driver-side door, wipers whispering "shush," Jack imagined the sense of the silent weight of a shared understanding between him and the mute box attached to his windscreen. "Ridiculous" he thought, fanciful wandering pulled taut again, reeled in by logic. Logic claims to be objective. But now as at other times there was some force to it. He would find something when he reached the real location of the digital blip, he knew that. But it was most likely a cell phone tower or somebody's HAM radio or some discarded piece of communications technology leaving echoes of its former purpose.

"In two hundred yards exit left. Then exit right. Then take a sharp left. A sharp left." Jack could swear the pace of Richard's commands had sped up, the space between them decreasing. As Jack approached his exit the voice repeated, "Exit left. Exit, left." Jack followed. "Right," the voice said. Single-word commands. This machine is freaking out, Jack thought. The approaching source of the blip was scrambling the GPS signal, maybe. He was grooving down a service road now that looped the entrance to a shopping center. Grocery store, Home Depot, Target. From the display map it was pretty clear the blip was waiting for them somewhere in the sprawling parking lot, the space between it and the little cartoon image of Jack's car shrinking to a 24th of an inch at most. "Straightahead," Richard said. Almost one word. A lime-green Volkswagen Beetle sat in their path. What a Disneyesque cliche. It couldn't have been a shitty-looking Buick Skylark, right? But he shushed the thought away as the wipers whisked the remaining stray drops of rain. The sun had sort of started to come out.

Jack ignored the painted courses and cut a transverse line across the row of parking spaces toward the blip and toward the Beetle. The way the tentative sunlight bounced off the driver-side window of the Beetle Jack could see that the window was open. He pulled into the spot directly next but diagonal to the Beetle, facing the open window.

"Destination," Richard said. "Destination." And once more again.

Jack opened the door and stepped out of the car. For a moment he caught himself thinking, I should bring Richard. He didn't. The Beetle's window was a quarter of the way open. Cautiously casting a look edgewise, still aware of the possibility the car's driver would come out of Target or one of the other stores, he looked inside under arched eyebrows. Nothing on the seats or console gave any indication of who the driver might be. There wasn't a scattered pile of CDs or books that could have potentially telling titles. There were no butts in the ashtray. No piece of clothing or accessory that might give a hint of the driver's gender, even. But there was a GPS device adhered to the dashboard.

"Destination," Richard repeated from behind, still audible but muffled inside the closed interior of Jack's car. Jack turned, stepped back towards his car and opened his door. On the screen, the pulsing blip and the icon of his car were aligned on top of each other. Without thinking too much about it Jack unsnapped his GPS from its holder and took it out. Merriment at the logical absurdity of his actions and wonder at how absurd they did not actually feel took the form of a cockeyed smile that broke away from the corner of his set mouth. He felt a buzz in his chest. In the ambiguous light of possible rain the parking lot and everything around him looked grainy, almost pixelated. He turned back towards the Bug, stepped to it, arched his arm through the driver's window, and getting his hand with the GPS in it as close to the driver's seat as he could, dropped the device onto the soft vinyl. The excited buzz in Jack's chest extended out into the world, creating a uniform sense of possibility that made what happened next a matter of course. The other GPS device lit up.

A green background blinked into view, blinked again, and a start-up bar like Richard's scurried quickly across the screen. "Destination," a woman's voice said. Still in a kind of trance, the distance between practical and absurd explanations for what just happened not that great, all possibilities melding in the granulated buzz of his elevated mood, Jack turned and walked back toward his car. Jack's GPS had a volume control that changed to accommodate engine noise and Richard's voice started talking again at its lowest level. Joined by the female voice. Were they both repeating the word "destination," or had it become something else? Jack honestly couldn't say.

PS: Martha Stewart eat your balls out.

Family planning.

Today is the two-year anniversary of me and Elizabeth's first date.

So this weekend in the middle of celebrating and talking about how happy we are, about how well our kids get along, the conversation inevitably came up. I'm excited to share the results of that conversation right here with the whole blogosphere:

Yes, we decided to put both our phones on the same plan. A Family Plan.

November 13, 2010

Two years ago tonight I was preparing to meet my lady tomorrow.

1 year.

Only because I'm tired, and don't have anything else to report, I'll note that this is the one-year anniversary of quitting smoking.

It was hard, but I'm appalled I ever did in the first place.

Women are from Mars, men are from penis.

If a woman wants to get a man's attention in the bedroom it is as easy as flashing her panties, or even just undoing a button; maybe even saying the word "panties" will work. As Eddie Murphy said with more colorful language, men get excited every time the wind blows.

If a man tries to do the same thing, different reaction. Note the environment at a Chippendales show versus a topless bar or strip club. Male strippers make ladies laugh.

If I want to get my woman's attention in a bedroom way I have to put clothes on. A tie and nice shoes. Or take the kids to the zoo. Or effortlessly pull together a risotto for two, while wearing a tie and nice shoes. Being a man: most of the time it's hard.

I...AM...IR-ON...MAN

He was turned to steel
in the Great Magnetic Field
Heavy boots of lead
fill his victims full of dreeead

What makes me an addict.

Day after Halloween: We're sitting around the kitchen table inventorying candy and Lucas, sweet and generous boy that he is, gives me all of his Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I stack them up neatly. Then I pick one up. I bounce it once on my palm, feeling the weight. With just a small pull the glue comes undone at once and the paper folds open slowly on its own. I squint my eyes and bring the candy still in the package up to my nose. Easing the peanut butter cup out, the spent package falls. The crimped inner wrapper, the brown, cup-shaped one, is waxy. It holds to the chocolate but then gives all at once when you peel it away from the candy and falls, too, to the table.

The first bite, something like a vapor goes up into my brain, which lights up and then puts out the call that all the pleasure centers have been waiting for. I feel the endocrine rush. Synapses awash with feel-good chemicals. I want to laugh. Remember those York Peppermint Patty commercials? Hanging completely on the present moment there's no hurry and I stretch it out into three bites.

When I like something my whole body likes it. While it gets exhausting sometimes, keeping up with a reptile brain that's always hunting after the next blood rush, it's also a privilege to get so much out of a stupid piece of chocolate. 

True Stories of Rock and Roll: Roy Orbison

"Mercy."

Legend would have it Roy Orbison wore sunglasses to hide his eyes because he was always crying. Many of the great crooners shared this disease, called lacrimegaly. Some say Roy cried all the time because he had a deeply poetic soul. I hear lyrics like, “Dum dum dooby do waa” and expect otherwise. In fact, Roy Orbison was a supernatural being, a fallen angel who did not want to be an angel, or to be a demon; he just wanted to be human. I don’t know if that can be considered poetic. I think it’s just dumb. Who wouldn’t want to be an angel? Or a demon for that matter? Roy, that’s who. He certainly tried both.

Heaven exists in a realm parallel to our own.

(In her book Life on the Other Side: A Psychic's Tour of the Afterlife author Silvia Brown claims to have seen Heaven. She says it exists all around us, invisible to anybody but psychics, who can perceive its high vibrational frequency. Heaven, according to Brown, hovers exactly three feet above the ground we walk upon. Everyone in Heaven speaks Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Heaven is full of amazing architecture. It is always 78 degrees in Heaven. You're allowed to have pets).

We know Heaven is far from perfect; in fact, in the cosmic scheme, it’s no better or worse than any of the other realms.

While Heaven is far from perfect, the citizens of Heaven are obligated to talk about how perfect it is all the time. Roy was a musician in Heaven who longed for an earthly muse to help him write songs about earthly love, because love in Heaven was so boring. You’re only allowed to love God. And so your options for writing love songs are limited to songs of praise.

You can only write so many songs of praise.
You can only write so many Rock and Roll ballads for that matter.
Roy hadn’t realized that at the time.

(The only pluses to gigging in Heaven are the white guitars. You can't quite get their like anywhere else).

One day (there are actually no days in Heaven---it’s just one long, godawful day---strafed with relentless lukewarm sunshine) Roy flagged Eros on the steps of the Amphitheater of Constant Praise and asked the portly cherub to shoot him. This choice, which combines the sins of suicide and lust, is grounds for instant dismissal from Heaven. Eros couldn't refuse. No really; he didn't have a choice. In Heaven, only one being is allowed to speak the word "No," and that's God. By his own ruling.

Next thing, Roy found himself in Hell. Hell is a porn dungeon in San Fernando Valley.

Roy opened his eyes, smoke trailing from the padded shoulders of his jacket. In front of him stood an earthly angel with a darkened face, lit from behind by a naked bulb. A sultry curve of negative space surrounded by a high-wattage halo. He could just make out the slinky blue dress. The first person he saw after being hit with Love's arrow. The eunuch lounge singer and former porn star. The Blue Angel.

Coming soon, Part 2: Roy falls for a Snip Film legend.

Note: any similarity between persons living, dead or immortal is purely coincidental. That's the god's honest truth.

Filler.

And what is a salad I ask you, other than a delivery system for croutons?

11/6/10

Remember the olden days, when Korn used to travel from town to town giving free concerts at the jamboree?

I'm afraid I messed up.

Apparently Beth's sweaters are afraid of me: they shrink from my presence.

Life with A.D.D.

PLEASE.COME.TO.BED.I.AM
ALL.LUBED.UP.AT.PRES-ENT.

Doing some research for a copywriting project I typed "whole grain serial" instead of "cereal" in Google and found this blog called Whole Grain Serial. The current post is a funny thing about sex robots. So then I had to look up sex robots and I found this cautionary science-fiction tale on a Christian web site which says sex with robots is always wrong so then I had to post it on Facebook.
Now it's nearly 45 minutes later and I still have a deadline.
Fuckin A.
No literally. "A" is an affectionate nickname for A.L.I.C.E.

A favorite piece of movie dialogue.

The girls.

Campaign promises.

Fellow Americans.

As a nation, I believe we can work harder to create situations people will like.

I am a progressive candidate. In casting your ballot for me, I can promise you will feel a certain satisfaction for having voted progressively.

After a long time working hard on behalf of all Americans to develop strong opinions, I have-developed-those-opinions. I've learned to make pauses like those you just heard, pauses that I'm convinced can benefit, or at least not harm, the majority of people who hear them.

In these uncertain times, people are uncertain. Hard-working Americans everywhere are working hard, and industry strives to remain a force for making things. These are times that demand leaders who say things with feeling.

As you can see from studying my platform, it is made of wood. It has little wheels on it. It's a nice platform, a platform all of us can decisively stand around as I, in turn, stand upon it. I encourage you today to vote for my platform. "I like this platform the best," you will effectively be saying through the act of turning in your ballot. I like my platform just as much if not more, and I'm going to shout it from the rooftops. Of my platform. I believe in this thing.

Bottom line: People today could be said to desire electing a candidate.

I'll add, a candidate who will most likely not disappoint them. I can nearly guarantee the likelihood of your not being disappointed when you vote for me (and my platform). Why? Because it's reasonably easy to continue emphasizing things. I'm pretty sure I can keep doing it. Every time I do, I'll be doing what I said. With feeling. A candidate who not only does what he says but sort of meta does it comes along but once a week.

So as a closing promise, I state loudly, with my platform as my witness, that should I ever lose the conviction to speak clearly, and strongly, in my public addresses or even in emails I send to people, adding pauses, I will do whatever it takes to summon up that feeling again. I'll take Prozac. I'm that committed.

Let's get out to the polling places today and write our choices on ballots! It is a Tuesday!

I'm Eric H-------, and I really approve of this message.

I voted. Whoopdie-fucking-doo.

Face it, participatory democracy is a hassle. Why else would there be the need to give out "I voted" buttons unless it were some kind of effort. My ex came from a funny family. Her uncle calls taking a dump "voting," as in, "Excuse me, I have to go vote." He was in Vietnam by the way, so no shit about patriotism please.

I was born on Mussolini's birthday and I'm a little Italian. (I'm short and lean towards stocky if I don't watch out with the pasta and I'm a mere 1/4 Sicilian, so you can take little Italian in both ways). Maybe that's why I've always had a secret thing for fascism. Not the concentration-camp kind. I just like the uniforms, and the idea of gesticulating on balconies seems like a good time.

First time I saw Star Wars and ever since I didn't fantasize about defeating The Empire, I wanted to lead The Empire...

...I don't want to use my mind to choke anybody or blow up planets, I just want to walk around in that black costume for one day, pointing at people and smacking one gloved fist into the other. I want to glide ominously on ringing boots past a row of obedient Stormtroopers to the tune of the Imperial March and stand at the observation deck looking out upon a subservient universe bending the paths of the stars to my oppressive will.

No, I'm only a fascist in as much I tell my kids to suck it up when they whine about my rulings, or grab them by the arms and frog march them into the naughty corner when they're fucking up, or have the ability to blow my voice out into an all-encompassing bellow which doesn't scare anybody, but is loud enough you'll do what I say to make it stop.

So go turn in your ballots, you mewling children, suckling at the teat of the coddling mother that is your old republic. Do it and recruit your friends to do it too. I'm a write-in candidate. If I get elected it will be all your fault. I do have one campaign promise though. Elect me: you'll never have to stand in line at a polling place again. Oh, and the trains will run according to schedule. Now if you'll excuse me it's 9:30. By my body's schedule it's just about time to go vote.

On Jupiter and Mars.

With a mom like this in my corner, how can I ever go wrong? Everyone should be so lucky.

La luna

It is Saturday, October 16th and the waxing gibbous moon is standing sentinel in the southeastern sky. Bright, slightly yellow and showing just a hint of her shadowy  earth shine  she guards all the lovers on earth tonight. For the first time in...   Read More. 

-

The details of my son's golfing accident.

11/1 11:11 am

Just glanced at the time. Yawn. No Rapture. Oh wait... what is that? The walls of this room are dissolving into colored light. I see... Jesus! And there's Johnny Cash (that's random). Together they are holding a large saucer-shaped object. They're saying something to me... I can't make it out... Oh. No, I didn't order a pizza. It's 11:11 am for Chrissake.

My best nightmare.

Half grown.

She said:

It's just the two of us tonight. We went to two restaurants and had drinks and appetizers and now we're going to watch Alien Resurrection.

Are we 38 or 13?     

I say:

A little of both. You fell asleep.

Remind me to explain.

October 28, 2010

Have had a headache since 6:30 this morning so enough already good night.

I don't... live today. Maybe tomorrow. Just can't say.

Regarding posting something every day, today was a rough day, so I'm actually posting this tomorrow and effing with the date. If you have traveled back in time one day this is a message from the future. Note that it will be gray and cold in the midwest tomorrow, so if you live there, be prepared.

And lo, the angels said Fuck You Eric.

Discovered this yesterday afternoon on the heels of Sunday's post. Suck it you guys. I think it looks even more evil this way.

Things overheard at organic coffee shops.

The coffee shop where I bring my laptop to work is organic and fair trade, and has meeting rooms in the back that non-profit groups can reserve for free. There are certain kinds of conversations you hear there that you don't overhear elsewhere. For example earlier today a woman was talking to a friend about a couple she knew, "Do you know Ted and Melinda? They're both naturopaths?" You hear that kind of talk all the time. It was pretty heavy in there on Columbus Day. I must've heard the words "patriarchy" and "colonialism" ten times each.

Later this morning the woman at the table next to me took a phone call and started an earnest conversation. I tried to block it out but bits came through. She seemed to be talking about the leadership of some organization she worked with. She was pretty indignant. The Board membership was not sufficiently diverse to reflect whoever its constituents were:

"I mean currently, there's only one person of color and one trans...and they're the same person!"

I don't eavesdrop; the customers tend to be loud, full of righteous feeling. Sometimes perhaps they're a bit flush with the confidence that comes from doing activism when you have financial resources to fall back on if your cause goes out of business. I'm not quite there yet but I'm thinking of starting an organization myself. Reduced-cost water-birthing for lesbian kittens? A home for orphan vegetables? Veterans of PETA?

I know... A Free Earplugs program for the Disillusioned Children of Former Hippies. Not a great acronym, but who cares? We won't make a difference anyway.

I am Legion, for we are many.

The face of your jack-o-lantern: the shape of your soul?

A holiday about demonology and death should be my favorite, and yet this weekend I was really hoping I could carve a pumpkin as fast as Lucy does in the Great Pumpkin. I'm still sick and have midterms coming. So I didn't think about it too hard and went for something easy I call "Demon howling in hell."

Merry told me it looked sad. That's kind of the point. If you're a demon the Devil created you to be bad then punishes you for it. Sounds like the Old Testament God in fact. Here is Merry's pumpkin. A bit irreverent and Devil-may-care:

Here is Lucas's. With pumpkins, as with all things aesthetic, he has strong opinions and favors the traditional. His timeless face is patterned with intention:

Ambrose drew out a challenging design. He told me cute was what he was going for and I think he nailed it. I begged Elizabeth to carve it for him, he had asked me to, and she did a fine job. With a knife, she is the best of us.

Ezra worked a long time compulsively perfecting these scars. The face bears the marks of careful but merciless determination to endure a thousand cuts grappling with angels.

Here is Beth's. The eyes are a gothic flourish. Without the flash in this picture you can't quite get the rakish slash of its maw. Beth's pumpkin is unapologetic. It doesn't suffer like mine, wracked with fruitless guilt, tortured more by its own self-judgment than the judgment of pompous angels. At the end of time, confronted for its crimes against God and his world Beth's is like "What, me worry?"

Look close and see our souls. The family that slays together stays together.

Child labor.

Scout Pack leaf-raking project this morning. Ambrose, smiling prankishly: "I'm not a Cub Scout anymore. I quit." But he didn't, he did a fine job, that is as long as I followed him around providing direction. Unsupervised, the paths of his own direction go outward and back again in jagged spikes. Sort of shaped like a leaf I guess, if you charted it.

Ezra hung over his rake idly dragging one leaf at a time through the grass into sad piles, his face drawn like a child with sooty cheeks chained to a machine. Lately he has dark circles under his eyes and a sullen cloud follows him. Unless he is playing piano, I have to give him that.

(Yeah that's one of those obnoxious comments that parents drop. "We don't understand it! Wendel just loves to play with fractals. And spend hours on the dulcimer. It's exasperating.")

I think the kids got the spirit of the event when I explained it: we were cleaning up the grounds outside the church because they donate space for popular events like the Pinewood Derby. But both boys still needed some help connecting that with the importance of putting in effort to actually get shit done.

"In Africa they walk two miles every morning to boil water and carry it back home, still boiling hot, on their heads. While carting their little brothers and sisters under each arm. And fending off bandits. Sometimes mom bandages the burns as a reward."

Ambrose stopped for several breaks. The Scoutmaster is generous and had brought coffee, juice and donut holes. Once I caught Ambrose with four of them in each fist, leaf shreds mingled with sprinkles and powdered sugar. Ezra still moaned and dragged. But Ambrose deserves credit for efficiency and self-discipline. Ultimately he really threw his whole self into the work.

These two people are in luuuv

Let there be light! And too much of it.

On the seventh day god looked out on all his works and thought they were pretty good.

He took a nap, and during that time the devil created headaches.

I've been eating somebody's porridge.

Somebody snuck in the house over the weekend and shortened this belt. Or put my pants in the dryer over and over again.

Leaving Paumanok.

This past weekend I visited the fish-shaped island where I was born. It makes me wonder, is home a place you return to or a place you leave? Can you have two homes... can you have more?

I've already posted some random thoughts and pictures of this past weekend, when Beth and I flew back to Long Island for my brother's engagement party. We got in Thursday night, late, and my brother took Friday off so we could spend some time together and meet up with my Mom. Also so I could drink more than one large Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which I can't get in Minnesota. Just to make sure it still works I asked for a large "regular" coffee and the man behind the counter gave me one with cream and two sugars just like he is supposed to. Any other kind of coffee is irregular, like the weak black farmer's coffee families make in the Midwest.

Saturday morning we ate at the Shipwreck Diner in Northport down the street from Gunther's Tap Room, where Jack Kerouac spent his final miserable days as a slobbering towny. We stopped for a view of the harbor there, and then at Crab Meadow where I took this movie. We met my mom and my stepdad for lunch and I had an egg cream, something I order when I go home even though I never really drank them when I lived out there, just because they don't have them in Minnesota. However short was our time together that day, and, in fact, our time together in this world---it was a family that only stayed that shape for a few years---it is the true family of my childhood, inviolate memories of a mom and a dad.

That night we drove out to the place we rented in Southold on the more Northern of the forks of the tail of the fish that is Long Island. We had real pizza Friday night and I convinced my brother to order a Sicilian, something else you don't get in Minnesota.

Saturday morning we walked out onto the floating dock behind the house for this view and encountered a swan. You can just see him in the second picture. I ran back out with the camera only as he was nearly gone. Then we went to a wine-tasting at a vineyard which was, for me, two things. One, an interesting cultural experience.

I'm sober, so I have to occupy myself with people-watching at events like wine-tastings. In this case it was more like skank-watching. There were a lot of back tattoos, zebra print coats and lace up boots there for some reason and at least a few no-necked guidos. The only guest who looked like what I'd expect from a wine-tasting on the North Fork was a fellow I named Blaine Worthington III---a pretentious douchebag I'm sorry to say---with Matthew McConaughey hair and a tweed jacket. His orange handkerchief matched his v-neck sweater vest. He smoked a cigar awkwardly with self-conscious attention, aspiring to little more than the suggestion of a J Crew catalog model but not really belonging there in any fashion.

Second, the wine-tasting was an opportunity to talk to my brother and his fiancee and friends and Beth in a very characteristically East-End/North-Fork landscape---you can enjoy farms and rural stuff, but in the same breath smell the ocean rustling long sun-bleached sea grass on the backs of mute and purposeful dunes not too far away. You don't get that parallel in Minnesota.

We ate Italian food Saturday night and all of us stayed up playing games, most of us drinking but not me of course. Then everybody wanted to watch Paranormal Activity. Beth tried but she couldn't take it---she hates horror movies---even the setup, which was all we made it through, was giving her palpitations. And I was tired anyway as well as having my guts roiling with paralyzing gas so Beth and I went to bed. I played music on my iphone speakers to get her mind off the movie, but it didn't help because the tv was loud and we kept hearing screams from the other room. I got the movie in my head too, imagining what happened after the part where I left off, like I said just the setup, picturing people with night-vision eyes being dragged out of bed, disappearing into black closets. And the music on my iphone was keeping me up. I woke up in the night to urinate and had to leave the lights on paralyzed not by my own fear but by Beth's.

From the other room I heard the baritone of my brother's voice. This is something else we don't have in Minnesota.

A few houses down we were allowed access, as part of our weekend rental, to maybe 15-feet worth of private beach. The next morning Beth and I walked down there right before we left and I dug my fingers into the strip of sand. It didn't matter how small of a strip it was; it separated the land from the water and that is a beach. I rubbed the grains between my fingers. This isn't like that dirt they have around Lake Harriet, babe!, I told Beth. We don't have real sand in Minnesota. And as long as that sand runs in my veins, and the Ocean air rolls around in my lungs, Minnesota will really never have me, either.

Death comes knocking.

When you've had a cold for two days it isn't very encouraging to get a coffin brochure in the mail. Apparently Trappist monks manufacture earth-friendly caskets. If you act now and contact them for a catalog you get a free wooden cross.

I started re-reading The Stand again (Stephen King's tale of apocalyptic plague) and got sick right after so I'm especially aware of every cough, sneeze and headache. Now this. Death has a fucked up sense of humor.

Sound.

Just a couple pictures from this weekend.

Rented a house in Southold, LI with my brother, his fiancee and a few of his friends. It was an engagement party. I didn't take enough pictures by any stretch. We went to a vineyard on Saturday. Here is Beth.

Here is the view behind the house.

The stairs lead out to a floating dock.

During the short trip we grabbed any views of the Sound we could (see the last post) but otherwise had a pretty tight agenda, and were relying on people to drive us around. There was a private beach a few houses down from the floating dock, just grass leading down to maybe 15 feet of sand. The morning we left I dug my fingers into what little sand there was and rubbed it my palm. This isn't like that dirt they have around Lake Harriet, babe, I told Beth. This is real sand.

Coach.

Sat in the first row of regular seats behind First Class. There still is a class system in America. My dirty nose was pressed up against the window watching people in suit jackets eat warm nuts.

The Sound.

Beth never saw the Long Island Sound so I had Ethan take us to the beach just quickly Friday. I took a little movie too, and listening, you can hear the roar of the wind. I wish it was easy to post it right now because the noise is as important as the view.

October 15, 2010

Flew home to Long Island last night with Beth. We sat on the tarmac an extra 45 minutes --- and --- the toilet was broken for the whole trip. "At this time," they said, "we regret to announce..." I just like the way on a plane everything you say starts with At this time. It's also the only time you really call things "items." The flight attendants fit the profile of all male flight attendants and we puzzled over why that was. One of them was funny, sarcastic with us. He also seemed to be storing personal garbage in the bin over our seat. He visited it several times, once retrieving four or five empty Target bags and twice the same Burger King bag stuffed tight with I don't know what.

Ethan couldn't find our terminal so he parked 20 minutes away. In his defense, La Guardia is kind of a maze. He told me he consulted a map of the aiport before he left, remembering that to be the case. But apparently American doesn't have the same kind of visible signage as Delta or the others. When I can't find the right terminal I keep driving around the loop until the person I'm picking up calls to give me a landmark. He chose to just park and he came and found us on foot.

It was pissing down rain as we walked and walked back to his car, walking well past the parts where traveler walkways are provided. Into and beyond the employee areas. Dark, wharehouse-y looking buildings with grimed over windows and razor wire. Rain, rain, rain. I told Ethan he'd pulled an Eric because this is more like one of my misadventures.

We got to the car and everything else was perfect. We talked with my brother in the car and with Christina when we got to his house in Northport. Time to laugh at a few inappropriate jokes even at 11:00 pm. I saw Sid again and loved him up. I met the new cat who gnawed on my arm but I can take it. We slept well. We'll be able to see my mom and stepdad for lunch today.

We're actually here on Long Island to share a house with Ethan's friends in Southhold as an engagement party; my brother is getting married next month. The bathrooms in the rental house work as far as we are told, and we have a map.

Flew to
La Guardia
Home now
Good night

Hiding right here.

Usually ambivalent about having facial hair, today I'm thankful because a beard plus these cheap sunglasses mean the overzealous yoga lady from Ezra's old preschool who always smells like hummus doesn't recognize me.

Saw a van on the highway with one of those "Baby on Board" stickers. I passed in the left lane. The driver had both of his hands off the wheel, picking his teeth while he stared closely at his open mouth in the rearview mirror.

Apparently you can post blogs from an iPhone. Good to know cause we're going away this weekend. Should I let Beth use it...

Both of the people who sat at the table to the left of me today were studying pictures of brains.

Are you a cake person or a frosting person? I do not trust cake people. They must be lying. Like people who order salads, or water.

Hard act to follow. In fact, the worst.

What do you do when when you're on line for the bathroom, and the person who went right before you left it in a bad state? There are people waiting behind you. The woman in front of me tried this one: Jogging out of there with a stressed-out kind of grimace. I'm supposed to think she's in a rush. She couldn't possibly have been in there long enough to do that kind of damage.

I have compassion for her because I used this trick before. However, it failed:

I was at a networking Happy Hour event a couple years ago. It was at the headquarters of a creative agency I was hoping to team up with on some projects. They do good work and are nice people, the kind of people you'd definitely like to have a beer with. But I don't drink anymore. So at events like these I drink a lot of coffee which, by the way, has the opposite effect alcohol does to ease your nerves in social settings. It doesn't. It also makes you have to go to the bathroom a lot.

The bathroom was occupied. After a few minutes one of the principals of the firm came out. I walked in after him.

People who know me puzzle over this paradox --- I have a scatological sense of humor myself, but I'm horrified by other people's, you know, business. I have OCD but nobody ever diagnosed it. I check the stove burners three times sometimes before leaving the house. And I have a thing with public bathrooms; I still use my shirt cuffs or a knuckle to open the door.

This guy had left a, um, smell in there. This situation kicks off my compulsive paranoia. I'm somehow going to breathe poo into my mouth and lungs.

I think I might've damaged my ureter trying to get done as quickly as possible. And, like the woman I mentioned above, I rushed out right after I was done. Hopefully there would be a window before somebody else got in line. If someone was waiting in line, hopefully it would be clear I'd been in and out quickly, doing the quicker of the two things you can do in there. No luck. Next in line was one of the more hipsterly people in the firm. She's a girl, she's my age (the guy is a little older), she's a copywriter, and she's super sarcastic and funny. Shit.

I looked down quickly and walked back to my seat. My face was hot. I continued staring at my shoes, studying the laces, trying to lose myself in the patterns on the carpet, because out of the corner of my eye I could see the copywriter walk back into the room. Why was I so ashamed?

The actual perpetrator, the guy who'd been in there before me, was about to make a couple announcements. I like to pretend that even my closest intimates never, ever take a crap. So now I'm picturing somebody I don't really know that well in that compromising situation. I can't help it: this makes him drop in my esteem. Picture Abraham Lincoln taking a dump. Or somebody hot like Meghan Fox or George Clooney. See? Even animals. The fleet greyhound or noble Husky all huddled up with its back arched, looking nervously about, inelegant and craven. Do I look like that? Of course everybody thinks like me, so the copywriter must have been looking at me the same way.

Worse? It's a casual firm and it was a younger crowd, so the guy was comfortable saying "shit" a couple of times during his welcome announcements and introductions. It's also a digital firm, so it was also not surprising when he used the term "data dump" at one point.

Horses are the only mammals who can shit with any dignity. They stand tall, looking off into the distance, and simply let it drop. Maybe I should try that.

A holiday (Columbus Day) message.

Happy Patriarchal Exploitation of Marginalized Indigenous Peoples by Colonial Imperialists Who Don't Recycle Day

Headphones on.

Pianist Glenn Gould used to murmur to himself as his fingers worked the keyboard. Young lady sitting next to me at the coffee shop with her laptop, you are not Glenn Gould.

Can't think of a title, so, Chidren of the Corn (lame).

.

Went to the "Corn Maze." It includes a pit of kernels kids can jump in:

...and the actual Maze. Merry took her job very seriously.
We lost the boys for a while. The view from the Overlook Bridge was not very helpful.
At the end of the day we took a hay ride. Who are the extroverts in this group?
For more corn pictures please click here.

Cassie hates Halloween, when the old costumes come out of storage.

October 9, 2010

It's Saturday --- took the kids and the dog to the high school football field. The dog nosed around in the grass while me and Ezra tossed the football 300 times. We dropped the first several and then got into a groove that was addictive; Ezra throws good spirals and his catching is not bad at all; I noted this with relief and pride. Ambrose called out Dad, look about 20 different things that interested him as he wandered around the outskirts of the field looking for things to climb on and discovered other things like geese, and then Ezra and I practiced kicking field goals after which Ambrose joined us to play touch football --- an excuse for me to practice seeing what it would be like to run 20 yards fast weaving between albeit stunted defenders --- and then we all played Frisbee.

We went to the library and Ambrose brought me a tall tumbling pile of books he wanted to sign out while Ezra selected a pictorial study of the song "We Shall Overcome" with included the notations. I got a Chopin CD for Ezra.

We went to Sonic and one of the carhops wore roller blades.

We went to Ikea and bought a reading light for Ambrose's top bunk.

We returned in late afternoon. Ezra studied piano tutorials on YouTube sitting in the rocking chair. I slipped the Chopin CD in and told him to put his headphones on and close his eyes.

The kids played for hours and last I saw Ambrose he was reading Cat in the Hat whispering the words to himself under his new reading light.

I get pushed out the door.

Today is the four-year anniversary of this blog. I started it a few days after being fired, with an inaugural post about terror and I guess faith. In the post I debated whether I was let go, or laid off, or fired, or made redundant as the English say. Whatever the terminology was, the situation involved me walking out of the office I'd been working in for 364 days with all my shit in a box. Fall day. My eyes went all trippy and everything looked over-exposed. If there is a floor in the bottom of your guts (well there is, it's called the pelvic floor, I've since studied anatomy) it really felt as if it had dropped out and the trunk of my body was just an empty cavity.

Here had been my boss's parting words: "My advice to you? Don't over-promise and under-deliver." Let me share two more facts about the day. One, she terminated me one day before I would have received a one-year bonus. Two, she fired me on the first day I was back in the office after having flown to England to attend a funeral. It wasn't just any funeral, it was for one my step-siblings. Once upon a time I knew this person who had a blog. After making precautions like not using his or her last name, ever, on that blog --- and after making sure none of his or her work contacts knew about the blog, nor were on Facebook where he or she sometimes posted his or her stuff --- this person may have hypothetically said that his or her ex-boss was a "crazy-ass bitch married to a pot-smoking asshole who ran their shit-for-nothing company into the ground."

If I really stretch my imagination I can picture how this anonymous blogger felt.

After that initial post four years ago I didn't write anything in it until 2009. I've since deleted all of those drafts. No reason, just none of it was inspired at all or turned out being any good. However, that doesn't mean things weren't "busy, busy, busy" during that time, as it is written in Vonnegut's Books of Bokonon. No.

Between the years 2006 and now I enrolled in a Masters program for acupuncture, got separated from my wife, worked at another place for two years and got fired from there also, and met Elizabeth. I started a commitment to start writing again earlier this year with a post about my dog. Then last month Elizabeth and I agreed to start writing in our blogs every day.

I've been terminated from four jobs in my life. The first time I was 23 or 24 and got fired from a job as a security guard.

My job was doing nothing. I was supposed to sit in a K Car with lights on the roof that did nothing in the parking lot of a high school to help the attendees of an adult ed ESL program feel safe when they went to and from their cars at night. My boss and the client, the woman who ran the program, effectively said, for real, you have to do nothing. The ad for the job said "Study While You Work!" It was hard to study under a dome light in the front seat of a K Car that you couldn't keep running in the middle of winter because it burned a quart of oil every time you drove it. I had to fill it up before and after driving from the dispatch office to the site.

In between the beginning and end of the night class I was supposed to sit at a desk in the lobby and, like I said, do nothing. The high school janitor took his job very seriously, a man my age with a long pony tail fond of Winger tee shirts and denim shorts. He resented me openly for the fact that I did nothing. Apparently someone slammed a door on my watch and it broke a "cotter pin." I never heard it. Another time there were these two girls, the teenage daughter of the director of the program and her teenage friend. They hung around while classes were going on, typically making noise. The janitor knew them and would stand in the lobby during classes telling them stories, with his chest kind of puffed out into his Winger tee shirt, about heavy things he had lifted and broken things he had fixed. One night two of the men who attended ESL classes, both of them maybe in their late 20s, appeared to be looking at the girls. It's hard to be sure, I don't speak Spanish. Maybe they were just looking in that direction while talking about something completely mundane in animated tones. The girls raised their voices.

"Ewww! Stop looking at us! You're gross!"

This was very awkward. I had no idea whether or not they really were ogling the teenage girls and didn't want to insult them. Latino men and women on Long Island have a pretty hard time because Long Islanders are typically openly racist and to be honest, call it liberal guilt, but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. At the same time the girls were teenage girls and I thought maybe I should be valiantly protecting them. But I had been told to do nothing. The girls got louder, the director of the program bolted out into the hall to see what was going on, I quickly stood up to appear like I was doing something even though I'd been trained to do nothing, and the janitor swept in, clapped his hands on the men's shoulders and valiantly told them to move on---these are teenage girls, guys.

A week later the janitor confronted me in the parking lot, asking me about the "cotter pin." This was in the broader context of my generally doing nothing. He brought up the incident with the girls and the two men, and the way I had stood up dramatically, for show, because that's all I was, for show. I felt heat coming into my face and my muscles started quivering but I didn't yell, I didn't get in his face, I didn't tell him to wad up his Stryper concert shirt and shove it up his ass. I did quietly suggest he didn't have to be such a douchebag because I was just doing my job. The word douchebag nailed it and I was politely dismissed the next time I came into the office. The manager of the security firm told me I would have to, quote, "turn in my badge."

Soon after, still in my 20s, I was even more politely dismissed from another "Study While You Work" job as a retail salesperson in a store that sold woman's handbags called, I checked, it's out of business so I'm safe, "The Nauti-Bag," in Port Jefferson, Long Island. Not only did I have to get comfortable with the fact that I worked in a shop that sold purses but also, whenever I told people who asked where I worked, it sounded like I was saying "Naughty Bag." There was a giant leather sandal hanging outside the door of the shop and 60 times a day I heard people from the street through the open door in Summer say "Look at that big sandal!" The bags were knockoffs, and people would wander in several times a day and ask me if they were Coach bags and I'd have to say No. The owner, a nice Greek man, wanted me to dust the bags and make sure they were hanging neatly on the racks instead of just reading my Early American Literature textbooks. He ended up telling me, like I said, politely, that the Naughty Bag wouldn't be needing my help anymore.

The third time I got terminated is the time I already told you about in 2006 and the fourth time was on April 30 of this year. A Friday.

I got laid off this time because, while I did "excellent" client work, I wasn't making enough sales to bring in revenues and the small firm couldn't justify the cost. This last one was a big one. I keep meaning to write a dramatic post about how scary it was, still having two kids and now being a single dad, and how significant it was to be blogging again unexpectedly about big changes, and about terror, and about, I guess, faith. But it's kind of anti-climactic. By that Sunday I'd pretty much locked up a contract job through somebody in my personal network. Soon after I got another contract and another and have actually been so busy I've debated hiring someone at a few points. I like my clients, a lot. They have been very happy with my work so far, and I think they like me a lot, too. I'm also pursuing a couple of entrepreneurial ventures I didn't have time for before, and am proably going to be teaching a class as well. I'm on my own schedule so I can finish school faster. The money is OK. I'm working on my laptop at a coffee shop right now. I'll also add I still have very positive business ties to my most recent ex-boss. Our relationship is far from over, it has just changed. It works better. This time getting let go was a big present.

So if I were that other person I was telling you about with the blog I'd probably want to wish the ex-boss who fired me in 2006 a big, giant Happy Anniversary.

I would express condolences that I've since heard she'd fallen on hard times, for the very reasons I suspect she couldn't appreciate how much of an asset I was to her business, namely, being crazy and disorganized and a terrible business person with unreasonable expectations she can't communicate so nobody could live up to them. If I was that other person I might write something like that. I might also say I hoped the door of her office didn't hit her in the ass on the way out when she had to, as I've since heard, close that office; if I said that it would be much like the parting shot she gave me on my way out the door four years ago.

If I were that anonymous blogger I'd want to wish my other ex-boss a big, giant sandal.

I'd tell the janitor he wasn't just a douchebag but a big, giant douchebag. I'd say I hope the door doesn't hit him in the ass on his way out of my life, because he'll just have to fix that "cotter pin" all over again.

Labyrinth Outtakes

"My codpiece is long
Goblins hang from the tip
It's just like a div-ing board
for fairies." ♫

Some guy called me "douche-y" yesterday. He thought I was trying to steal his parking spot apparently. Fine. In keeping with this cleansing theme and since he was such an ass he should now consider himself my "enem-y."

Now there is a child in here with a parakeet on each shoulder.

There's a new dad here in the coffee shop standing his infant son up on his knees, looking at him. The wobbly little fellow has that characteristic newborn's flat head which keeps lolling around as he tries out his legs, which buck as he bounces and then suddenly give out so his dad catches him. Dad has not stopped smiling the whole hour that I've been here and keeps standing his son up again just so he can look at him.

Was blogging in one of my other blogs today.

haiku

trivial pursuit
in front of a roaring fire
i have won the game

-butnevertheless

hamlet, scrooge mcduck

you got the easy questions

vs. lakes in egypt

Synchrointhecity.

Well, I did not.

Yesterday morning at 9:00 am a short little fellow with long hair and a long beard was reading Carl Jung at the coffee shop. (He was on line in front of me and we happened to have ordered the same kind of Pu Erh tea). It was one of those things that seemed symbolic, as any random reference to Carl Jung would for me, especially on a windy fall day such as it was. I remembered that anecdote in which Jung was listening to a patient describe a dream about a golden scarab beetle and suddenly one of them, rare for that climate, banged against the window.

So I decided to test it by writing the post above (to clarify I didn't expect to see an actual insect but at least some reference somewhere to the particular beetle). As of 12 am last night, no beetles.

Maybe a truck labeled "Scarab Piano Tuners" had passed me on the highway and I missed it. Likely one in the long string of new age stores on Lyndale in Minneapolis that I pass going to and from the coffee shop would have been a likely place to see one, obsessed as those people are with Egyptian shit, about which incidentally (not co-incidentally) I did happen to write yesterday. Perhaps I looked away at the wrong moment and missed the scarab stenciled onto the window of a crystal shop. Maybe the springs in this couch are manufactured by Scarab Springs Mfg of Munger, MI and I'll never know.

One day a month ago I was talking to my mom on the phone outside of the same coffee shop, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk as I do. Things had started coming together for me after two years' worth of some pretty trying times, the tremendous good fortune of being paired up with Elizabeth via magic algorithms notwithstanding (did we cover this, the fact that it was a computer who first introduced me to my lady?). I commented to her how odd it was that all at once many of the pieces were falling into place.

The words were coming out of my mouth as I looked to the right and saw a decal on the storefront window: "GUARDIAN ANGEL Security Systems." Life kicks holes in my occasional tendency to not believe although in this case, it could have at least used some better imagery.

Sometime today I am going to see a scarab beetle.