Days: Fifteen Years Sober

Prologue

There were chandeliers.  I had rarely been around chandeliers, and even then, never so many, never so shiny.  In fact, nearly everything was shiny—the centerpieces, the candle holders, the forks and knives had glints and sparkles.  Light seemed to reflect and refract from everywhere all at once, off of balloons and from under tables, men’s wingtip shoes had tiny stars in them, large wire-rimmed glasses on women’s faces beamed chandelier light into my eyes.  The whole ballroom was like a universe.

I should have expected to be dazzled at the first wedding I ever attended.  I’d seen depictions of weddings in some movies, sure, but being only eight or nine years old, I didn’t have a lot to go on.  I knew there would be a ceremony, and they’d kiss, and then I heard we threw rice at them, oddly enough.  I must have expected there to be a party afterward, but if I did, I certainly had no idea what to expect from it.  And all this shininess—I hadn’t been prepared for that.

My cousins were there—some that I liked and some that I didn’t, but we all kept playing together, regardless.  That’s what you do with cousins when you’re a kid, after all—you play with them no matter how much you like them.  Once the pomp and trope of the adult rituals during the reception began to wear thin for us (how many times does an eight-year-old think it’s interesting to watch two grown-ups kiss? Just because someone tapped their glass?) we found our way to each other and began exploring.  We found an elevator in the lobby that we rode up and down and up and down, getting off on random floors, running to the ends of the halls.  We made a game where you tried to touch the wall at the end of the hall and get back to the elevator before the doors closed.  It wasn’t easy.  We also devised a contest to see who could, when controlling the floor buttons, go longest without the doors opening to let a stranger onto the elevator.  Again and again we were tempted to press the Emergency Stop button, but we never did.  Eventually, an employee caught onto the fact that some kids were playing fast and loose with their elevator and we got yelled at and told to stop, and, feeling like we’d just been dressed down by a Supreme Court justice, we ran out of the elevator, through the lobby, and back into the ballroom.

We played under vacant tables.  We made forts under there by using spare tablecloths and draping them over the chairs.  We moved the large potted plants out a few feet from the walls and hid behind them until grown-ups gave us weird looks.  We took M&Ms out of our gift baskets and threw them long distances into each other’s mouths.  By and large, nobody was watching us.  The adults were having a grand old time and we were left to play, to run around.  It was a unique environment for us.  Dressed in our little spiffy clothes—suspenders, skirts, ties—we felt like miniature grown-ups, doing our kid things under the shiny lights.

Occasionally, the action in the grown-up world would halt briefly while they did another of their inexplicable rituals—shoving cake at each other, somebody’s dad dancing with somebody else, and on and on.  At one point, everyone stopped what they were doing for the throwing of the bouquet, which did not sound remotely interesting to me, but my cousins ran to the crowd to watch.  I was thirsty and a little tired, so I made my way back to my family’s table to regroup and hydrate.

Nobody was there, as they were off watching something happen to a bouquet.  I pulled myself up to the table, the empty food plates still scattered around, and my mother’s purse hanging on the side of her chair, and more M&Ms in clear mason jars.  I found my Sprite and gulped it down.  It was nice to have a moment alone.  Then my eye fell upon it: the champagne flute.  Full, bubbles creeping up the sides, mysterious presences.  I glanced around and verified I was unwatched.  I took the glass, using both hands to steady it, and brought it to my lips, surprised by the blast of carbon dioxide as the carbonation hit my nose.  I barely tasted anything as I downed the beverage in one quick movement.  I sat back in my chair, looked around myself again to see if I had been observed.  In a moment, the warmth hit my stomach.  A smile crept at my lips.

 

Days of Nothing

 

It had been a hot summer. Summers are always hot, and Pennsylvania summers get that special kind of humidity working for them, but this summer had just been a rainforest ordeal. We spent every day with a thin sheen of sweat on us almost all the time, even indoors, even in the dark in the basement. It was a summer of Sloe Gin Fizzes, chain-smoking Newports, sitting on the front porch.  It was a stoop, really, but we called it a porch, although you entered through the side door, not the front.

I was staying quite suddenly and unexpectedly with two of my friends who were renting a house in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside. And I mean Countryside. At least a 20-minute drive from where anyone might consider civilization. The view from that front porch was actual and real rolling Pennsylvania Hills, green as Ireland, constantly sun-dappled, you could see the shadows of clouds as they passed overhead, rolling down the hills like boulders. Cows and sheep on the periphery, small tree outcroppings dotting the very tops of the horizons. I make it sound kind of lovely, but in fact, it was a pretty awful time for everybody.

See, if you are from Pennsylvania, it would mean something if I told you this was in Perry County, and really far out in the middle of Perry County. How these friends rented the house, how they found it, I’ll never know. But there I found myself, immediately after giving up on a semester of college, literally walking away from classes that were over three-quarters of the way done, because I couldn’t stop drinking long enough to wake up in the morning, or do homework or even read Mark Twain books. I simply threw in the towel, and after spending a couple weeks tooling around campus aimlessly, I decided to just jump ship entirely, threw what little belongings I had into the back of my 1983 Ford Escort, and drove an hour from my college out into the middle of the rolling god-damned Hills. I did this in order to spend the summer with two people who were likewise as troubled as I was, but in different ways, and we were miserable as hell together. We’d spend entire mornings out in front of the house with a two-by-four, swatting at the huge bumble bees as they flew past us, drinking 20 ounce cans of Busch beer, trying to kill as many of those bees as we could, for no reason other than there was nothing else to do. We’d sit on our plastic lawn chairs on that porch, with our view of the field, secretly hoping that it was manure spreading day, just so that there was something to look at, something to talk about, something to complain about other than the heat and the damn bees.

We spent our nights inside, in the dark basement, lit only by multiple strings of Christmas lights, the smell of must and tobacco smoke, no television, no stereo. Just imbibing and talking, and sometimes in full silence. I spent the whole summer reading one issue of Guitar World magazine, articles I didn’t even understand, once everybody else was asleep, reading these damn guitar articles in the almost total darkness, falling asleep on a dust-covered couch. It was terrible and wonderful.

One morning, as we were sitting on our stoop smoking our cigarettes watching the distant rolling hills as though something might erupt from them, an Amish boy strolled past on the street in front of our yard, walking his ancient bike beside him. He stood and looked at us, as though he were seeing something for the very first time, some true curiosity. Thinking we were some sort of cultural emissaries, we approached him and struck up a conversation. I can’t remember now what was said between us, what inane questions we must have asked in the name of science, but after a 20-minute conversation, he went his way and we went back to the stoop, thinking we had just crossed some cultural divide. I can’t be sure what we said, but I know who I was back then, so I know I was an asshole.

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In my early twenties there was a short time period when I stayed with my mother in a small apartment she was renting in the small Pennsylvania town of Dillsburg. This was during a time when she went on frequent extended trips for her job, so even though it was a place where I wasn’t paying any rent, I would find myself with my own apartment for a couple days at a time, here and there. Living the kind of life I was living then, which is to say, mildly indigent, alone time was a fairly sacrosanct rarity. On these times when she was gone, I would wake up on the couch, still mildly dizzy from my stupor the night before, find some water to drink, and commence sitting there, absorbing cable television, mixing large amounts of Diet Coke with larger amounts of cheap gin, chainsmoking generic menthol light cigarettes until the whole room was suffused with a haze as if it were packing material. Somehow having that apartment to myself, and enough booze and cigarettes and food I hadn’t paid for to last me through a couple days, felt like I had a luxury a room on a cruise liner. I would crank up the air-conditioning, raid her collection of compact discs, listen to Led Zeppelin’s “Gallows Pole” over and over again at an incredibly high volume. One such night, after a lengthy day of solo debauchery, I found myself inexplicably out in the parking lot of the apartment complex, wandering aimlessly, smoking my cigarette with a gin and Coke in a supersize McDonald’s cup. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly I heard from behind me someone yell my name. It took me awhile to realize what I was witnessing, but it was one of my more lengthy roommates from college, suddenly here in this parking lot, 45 minutes from the town we went to school in. At this point, I must have been out of college for about two years and hadn’t heard from him since (this is pre-Facebook and even pre-MySpace). I couldn’t believe my eyes! After getting over both of our initial confusions, I learned that not only did he live in the same apartment complex, but he lived with a man that we were also roommates with. The three of us had shared an apartment for about a year in college, and now they were living together and working in the town of Dillsburg, while I was mooching off my mother in the same apartment complex! It was almost too much to handle. Excited for the reunion, we both walked into their apartment, and sure enough, there was the third roommate, and he was just as shocked as us! We spent about half an hour catching up on what we had done since school, and then sat there in a kind of dazed boredom. We had nothing to talk about. It hadn’t been that long ago we were in college, pulling pranks, making silly movies, running all over the town like young people who would never die, would never have a problem in the world. But now just a few years later here we were, clearly at different crossroads. We sat in silence and watched a movie, and then I left and never went back there again.

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I don’t really remember how it happened, but I know for a fact that once, stone drunk, I found myself walking down the Carlisle Pike in the middle of night, just past the 81 North entrance ramp, headed away from Carlisle. I had just past the entrance ramp when I saw a tractor-trailer pulled over on the side of the road, presumably for the driver to sleep there for the night. None of the lights were on and the engine was off. I thought to myself, ‘I could just roll underneath a truck right there and sleep for the night. I could just lay under there, be sheltered from view and the wind, look up at the underside of that trailer, let this drunkenness and tiredness wash over me, and sleep there for the night.’ And I did roll under that truck, and I looked at the underside of it. I put my hands behind my head and stretched out in the gravel parking lot. I laid there for a little while, I have no idea how long, but even in my drunken stupor, and as low as I was in every aspect of life at that moment, even I knew this was a bad idea. I rolled back out and kept on walking, and I have no idea where I went.

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Time is a sad, dense fog over a sea, and places are lighted buoys.  The people?  I don’t know, maybe they’re boats, or fishes.  The days stretch out like dreams in a desert.

 

Days of Something

 

Just a few months after getting sober, I found myself living back in Pennsylvania, after a short stint in New Jersey.  I had moved in with a friend of mine who had a spare bedroom. I got my old job back, the same job cooking greasy diner food for a company that kept giving me chances.  I would come home everyday and see some of my friends there, hanging around this house I had moved into. Sometimes playing music, or fiddling with the communal telescope, or playing board games.   A few weeks into this living arrangement, I decided that I was going to go out that night by myself.  I ended up going to a movie, “Million Dollar Baby”, and it was a good movie, I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I’ll start watching good movies.’  I walked out of the theater, and it was a late showing, and it was winter, so it was dark and frigid everywhere, and I was the only one in the parking lot, and it suddenly dawned on me that I could do anything I wanted. I wasn’t a slave to anything like I had been before. Nothing drove me to a bar or a convenience store to get a fix. Nothing told me I had to be somewhere that I could fall asleep anytime soon. I didn’t have to work in the morning. I didn’t have anybody who knew where I was or was expecting me somewhere. I walked across the frigid parking lot to the adjacent Walmart, bought a Butterfinger candy bar and a Red Bull, walked back to my car, and drove into the countryside, smoking cigarettes, laughing my ass off at freedom.

 

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Philadelphia is a great city, but there’s nothing special about it in the winter. It becomes winter just like every place else becomes the winter: slowly, and then all at once. My first winter in the city was also the first winter I’d spent anywhere without a car. During the summer I had learned to get around by riding my bike and walking, and was just getting pretty good at it when the gradual winter hit all of a sudden. It was cold and it was windy, but didn’t snow for the first few months, and then one day, a day that I also happened to have off work, the sky opened up and dumped down about eight inches. It was a very different experience than my previous winters elsewhere, where you might go outside and walk around, do some shoveling, maybe go see a few of the local landmarks covered in the fluffy cliches. In a densely packed urban area that stretches out for miles and miles in any direction, and where local landmarks are a dime a dozen but breathtaking beauty might be a little scarce, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with myself, other than sit on my couch and watch Netflix. Eventually I decided to just bundle up, put on some heavy shoes (since I never really am in the habit of keeping boots around) and venture out into the snow and see what happened. I started walking through the streets of my South Philly neighborhood, unplowed, unshoveled, the houses squished up against each other like sandwich bread, snow building up in the trashy pedestrian alleys between them, choking the tops of open the trash cans, pawprints sometimes the only sign anyone had been down a sidewalk.  And I kept walking and walking, taking note how it was different than my previous experience, and also ways in which it was similar, compare and contrast, compare and contrast, that is essentially how I Live every moment of my life. One experience must always be similar or different from previous ones; otherwise, how do you measure anything?  Eventually the neighborhood started to change as I kept walking, buildings got farther apart, the roads got wider, the streets were starting to be plowed, cars started moving around, the city seemed to wake up. I started passing people on the street and there was an air of conviviality, of shared experience. Everyone was saying hello, commenting on the snow, and it wasn’t just what people were saying, but the attitude, the feeling, like we were all finally together, not that we were undergoing any major hardship, but just that the presence of something so different, something so sudden, almost held us together like a web. Connection.  Eventually I realized I was closer to Independence Mall, which is the cluster of extremely significant historical sites in the city, than I was to home, so I just kept on walking. I arrived behind Independence Hall probably an hour and a half after leaving my house, still trudging through almost a foot of snow, surprised to see that there were a few people milling around, but only a few, much less than the hundreds and hundreds that crammed into this park in the summer months. I circled the building, taking note of what the roof looked like covered in snow, imagining it would have looked the same to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson when it snowed in the late 1700s. I crossed Chestnut Street, which is directly in front of Independence Hall, my feet not quite hitting the cobblestones, but still feeling the unevenness of the walk, as the snow impacted into the cracks around the cobblestones, as it surely has done to other foot travelers for centuries. I trudged across the open space in front of Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell to my left, taking note that it was still open, the Park Service still there and operating, but I didn’t see a soul in line to see the famed bell. I kept on going, heading towards the visitor center, with its bright glass interiors, newly built restrooms, shiny gift shop and concession stand. I often used to stop at the visitor center in the summer, as I was riding my bike around the city, for its quick and easy access to a restroom and bottled water.  As I swung open the heavy glass and stainless steel doors, it was clear to me that everyone inside the visitor center was surprised to see me, not because of anything about me, but simply because I was a human being. I was literally the only non-employee in this entire visitor center. It’s amazing what snow does to history tourism. Despite the fact that it was winter and snowing, I was sweating greatly, and was glad of the opportunity to take my coat off, breathe a little bit, stomp the snow out of every crease and crevice. I was thirsty and hungry, as I didn’t leave the house with the intention to walk halfway across the city, so I went straight to the concession stand, got me a bottle of water, a hot coffee, and some sort of breakfast sandwich.  I sat alone in the bright, metal cafeteria, my belly growing content as I fed it.  I took note that outside, it had begun snowing again, and heavier this time.  It was quiet in the visitor center.  I was far from home.

 

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This day started very early. I woke up around 4am not knowing what I was going to do with the day, but knowing that I wanted to wake up early enough to have a really thorough day, if you know what I mean. I was living by myself in Erie Pennsylvania, in an apartment, one bedroom, on the second level of an old house that was nearing dilapidation, but still teetering on the edge of respectability. It was smack-dab in the middle of summer, and waking up at 4am, the whole apartment was already laden with a heat, an oppressive second floor apartment kind of heat; a thin layer of sweat somehow on everything you looked at. I rolled out of bed, made myself a latte on my proudly-acquired home espresso machine, and set about pondering what to do with such a lengthy, summery kind of day all to myself.  I took a long, overly hot shower while the local morning news played on the television which I had crammed into my tiny bathroom. I stayed in the shower for the whole newscast, mind mostly blank. After the shower, while air drying mostly to cool off, I randomly selected a DVD from my bloated collection, and came up with “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, a movie that I don’t know how it ended up in my collection and no longer resides there, but at the time, a mindless comedy seemed just the ticket. I laid on my couch and let the Steve Carell comedy wash over me. Having gotten up so early that an immense amount of day still laid stretched out before me, even after my lengthy ablutions. What to do? Living by one’s self for so long, and so far from everyone you know, turns days and 31316_1458245861882_8379455_nmornings into quiet studies of one’s inner mechanics, and if you linger too long without plans, your cogs and belts begin to make a lot of noise. Suddenly it hit me: Niagara Falls. I’d been living relatively close to Niagara Falls for almost a year at this point, and it was always something bouncing around the periphery of what I wanted to do, but I never quite made it there, never quite made that my actual plan. Almost the moment that it struck me, I bounded off the couch, went to my computer to MapQuest the directions, threw on some clothes and some essentials into a backpack, and I was out the door.  I don’t remember much about the drive, although certainly there had to be a drive. It was close but not incredibly close, probably something like an hour and 15 minutes. A decent trip, but then again, much closer than almost anyone else in the world lives to such landmark. I remember having trouble figuring out where to park when I got close to it, the town itself surrounding it not exactly being incredibly helpful with instructions.  Finally I did get my car parked, and walked across a large grassy mall, the sound of the falls quite distinct, just like you expect the sound of Niagara Falls to be: thunderous, droning, like a white noise that comes from within.  I remember hearing the falls, I remember a large grassy area you had to walk across to get to it, but I don’t remember actually arriving at the falls.  In fact, the order of what I did that day and the specifics of how I did it, are lost in the labyrinth of my brain. I did the touristy things, I rode the boat, I walked up and down the path alongside the falls, I wore the poncho they provide you. I took selfies on the boat, all by myself, surrounded by revelers and families and church groups. After doing the requisite attractions, I found myself walking around the grounds, reading the historical markers, interpreting the interpretive maps. I noticed that there was a small landmass called Goat Island, out of the middle of the river, one of the features that gives the Falls that look, where it is divided occasionally, not one big solid Falls. It was accessible quite easily via a pedestrian bridge across the river, so I went out there, reading the Wikipedia entry on my phone as I went, the long and somewhat interesting history of the island, its ownership and various names. I arrived on the island to find a sweltering patch of grass, the heat dense with liquid, the roar of the falls now like a white noise outside myself, like a curtain descending. The island itself was no larger than a small park, and trees lined the northern edge, so that one couldn’t actually see the land fall away at the end.  I had the island entirely to myself. Of course the only thing to do on an island like that is to walk toward the edge. Walking through the grass I was assaulted by bugs everywhere, insects nipping at my legs, bouncing off my knees like miniature Kamikazes. The closer and closer I got to the river, the more amazed I was that there were no protections of any kind in place. One expects to find some sort of railing here, some warning signs, maybe even Park Rangers or something. But no, the island just walks right up to the river, and right up to the falls, anyone with dark designs would be in no way dissuaded.  The design of the island makes it challenging to walk right up to the falls, but instead it is very easy to sit at a clearing about twenty yards away from the actual precipice. I took my backpack off and sat in the grass, and looked out across the Niagara River, just beginning to get a real good head of steam up, just beginning to get its little whitecaps and wavelets, the water not knowing it was about to fly.  The heat washed over me, the insect buzzing began to mesh with the white noise of the falls, it all became a hot buzzing constant, I laid my head on the grass and sunk in, sunk down into the dirt, I was so far from home, and for a moment, I had no idea where I was, or maybe even who I was.

 

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“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for something or someone to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun!”

‘Time’, by Pink Floyd

 

Days of Everything

 

It was a cold night, but not too cold, which was fortunate, because we had to park very far away from the arena. I unbuckled Boy from his car seat and heaved him into the air, bringing him next to my cheek to give him a kiss in the crisp evening air. “This soccer game?” He asked. “Yes,” I told him. “This is the big building I told you about.” I sat him down and stuck out my hand for him to grab, as we strolled quickly through the immense parking lot together. He had lots of questions. He kept calling it football, which was interesting, I thought, since most of the world referred to soccer as football, but he couldn’t possibly know that, could he? Most of his questions weren’t really about the sport we were about to go watch, but the building it was in. How could a building be so big that you could play soccer inside of it? How tall was it, was it taller than the telephone poles? Taller than our house? Will there be snacks? Soft pretzels? I’ve become accustomed to the constant barrage of questions at this point, pulling from deep within me a patience I honestly did not think I possessed.  Not that this patience is without limits—but at any rate, I seem to have more than I thought.  I suspect a toddler will prove this to be true of most anyone.

I was surprised by the patience he displayed as we waited in a long line to buy tickets. It seems every day, he is making leaps and bounds, growing in things like patience, understanding, and empathy. Which is not to say he’s still not a little ball of emotions that doesn’t know how to act, just maybe a little less so than a few months ago or a year ago. He’s becoming much more of a companion as opposed to a force of nature to wrangle and watch. While for the most part, time with Boy is still all about teaching, there are moments now of truly just being.  And “just being” with a little guy like boy is more magic than I’m accustomed to.

Finally, tickets procured, we entered the concourse, looking for our section. I hadn’t studied the arena map extensively, and had chosen seats in the section on the complete opposite side of the concourse, so we had to walk past countless souvenir stands and snack bars, him wanting desperately to stop at each, and also wanting to enter into each section as we passed, with me constantly trying to tell him that it wasn’t much farther, not much farther. But through it all, he didn’t freak out or melt down or cry, just implored me strongly. Finally we came upon our entrance to the arena, and I picked him up because I knew the stairs were going to be steep and he was probably going to be shocked by the sight of walking into the big room. Carrying him on my side, we entered the arena proper, and although an indoor soccer field lacks the nebulous breathtaking quality of a baseball field, the sudden shock of green and the expanse of a sudden cavernous room had its desired effect on the countencance of Boy, which is to say, it produced a certain amount of awe. After pausing to allow him to soak it in, we climbed up the steep steps, to find our seats. We were all alone in our section, something I had to ask the ticket man to do, in case it did not go very well. Boy was beyond excited to sit here. He was very into his seat, enamored with the idea that the number on it matched  the number on his ticket, and in this enormous room, this seat was his and his alone. He was not restless as I had feared, his eyes trained on the action on the field. I would steal sidelong glances at him, see his eyes glued to the action, his head swiveling as the ball bounced back and forth, his complete concentration and immersion something only possible in the earliest years of life, and during a first exposure to things; the sights and sounds meshing with dawning understanding, realization writ large across his face. He would sometimes stop his concentration to ask questions about the goalies, which he called The Goal Guys, their different colored jerseys causing him no end of confusion. Later, as he was able to again float back into our world, he would watch me for cues whenever the arena sound system would play the tropes of modern sporting events: the “Charge!” song, the “De-Fense!” chant, and on and on. He saw and understood there was an audience participation element and he wanted to learn.  I would raise my fist and yell “Charge!”, glancing over to see him mimic it, his tiny voice bursting forth its own “Charge!”  This moment, especially, nearly crippled me with emotion.

He paid close attention to the game and stayed quite interested for well over an hour and a half when he started to fall asleep on my shoulder. I told him I thought it was time to go, and he protested quite strongly, saying he didn’t want to miss anything. And I kept giving in, saying we could stay, and then he kept falling asleep again, until eventually I picked him up, went up the stairs to the upper concourse, and told him he should get down and walk around and look at all the empty chairs, all the sections without anybody in them. The arena was quite empty, in fact, especially once one got up to the upper reaches. We got to a very high section, a corner section so high up you could almost touch the roof in a few of the spots, and as we emerged into it, it became clear that it had not even been cleaned out or looked at after the preceding weekend’s Motocross event in the arena. Everywhere there was trash, even half-eaten food and some beer cans on their sides. It was an astonishing array of trash and smells to walk into amid what appeared to be an otherwise normal arena. It was immediately too late for me to backtrack and take him out of this section, he was much too interested in the hows or whys this could have happened. I explained as best I could that they assumed they would not sell any tickets in this section for the soccer game, so they must be waiting to clean up from the Motocross. He did not want to walk around the section, but he also didn’t want to leave. I picked him up and we watched the soccer from way high up near the ceiling, looking down on all that old trash and beer cans, until he looked at me and told me he was ready to go home. I felt that I had a companion here, a little guy who I could teach and learn from, who was now going to be interested in things, who was present with me.

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It wasn’t too long ago that we had a little get-together for Boy’s birthday. My Love’s father was there—and let me tell you, I like Love’s father so much it’s nearly criminal–as well as both of my parents and my paternal grandmother. My parents have been divorced for quite a few years, and yet they get along like the best of friends, and there was my dad’s mother, chatting it up with his ex-wife, all while boy ran around and told everyone he loves them all the time, and climbed on everybody, and climbed on me, while I held Loves hand, while the room was full of talk and laughter, while there was warmth everywhere, and everywhere I looked there was future, future, future.

 

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My love and I put on our light spring jackets and walked into the crisp evening. Just the two of us, we interlocked our hands, and headed down the street toward Midtown. It is one of the benefits of living where we do, that usually, given the right weather and the right child care situation, we can walk to some of the places that we like to spend time together. This night it was simple: we were going out to eat. It was one of the last walkable nights of the year, and we knew it. The cold was setting in, soon we would be driving everywhere and stuck inside like prisoners.  So tonight, we knew, was a walking night.

There was a very popular and artsy restaurant in the middle of Midtown, which somehow we still had not made it to. Recently they had started serving a very popular veggie burger, that all of our friends were talking about, and we still hadn’t tried. It had been on our list for weeks.

The thing about taking a somewhat lengthy walk with the person that you love is that it forces conversation you don’t normally have inside the house or perhaps in a moving car. You see things that you don’t normally see, are reminded of things you might only see or think of by yourself, you’re moving at an interesting pace, a different speed. I love holding hands and walking with my love. I love the way her hand feels, I love being connected to her physically in that way, I love being able to look at her face from the side so often. I love being able to point out things, and have her point out things to me, elements of our neighborhood that we only see when we are walking the dog by ourselves.  I love kissing her outside. Many people spend most of their lives in relationships and begin to take things like this for granted, maybe even very early on in life, they assume they will have a companion in this form. Having spent so long single, small things like holding hands, walking down the street, these things never seem anything other than magical to me. My love thrills me.  Literally every single thing about her. It’s electric.

Twenty minutes later we found ourselves the only customers in the artsy eating establishment, it being only five o’clock. We were talking about the art on the wall, the interesting sculptures, the funny man who kept looking at us askance from inside the kitchen. We talked about the interesting ordering system the restaurant used, the haphazard way salt was placed on some of the tables but not others, we talked about our days, we held hands and looked at each other. Sometimes we didn’t say anything and that was lovely in its own way. When you know someone is your true partner, being in their presence is a constant salve.

The food came and it was delicious, just as delicious as everyone says it is was, and it was fantastic to share a meal with someone who shares so many of my worldviews, who has the compassion in the same places I do, love and freedom in the same proportions, to share a meal with a woman who has taught me so much. As I was finishing off my Diet Pepsi, stealing glances at this woman, I kept thinking some of the same thoughts I come back to all the time.  How I waited so long to find her.  How, when I did find her, I couldn’t and still can’t believe how perfect she is.  How my journey to find her wasn’t about me, or even the journey, but it was about her, about us.  How I still learn about her every day and she’s such a delicious mystery.  How she fits so well.  I looked at her as I sat there, finishing my Diet Pepsi, and I said to her the only thing one can say, given the unbearable weight of the world:  I can’t believe you’re finally here.

 

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The days, good or bad, really do just stretch out like deserts, uncountable deserts, again and again and again.  Some, you find, contain nothing: plodding marches under a bored sun.  But sometimes, they are filled up, filled with everything you ever dreamed, brazen neon signs of days, confetti and love love love.  I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to figure out how to keep them filled up.  I want the days of everything, forever.

Favorites, 2016

Back in the old days of the Notes, I used to write a lot more about music, movies, and books, and I would every so often post updated lists of my absolute favorites of things.  Not due to any pressing interest from the public, of course–mostly just because it’s fun for me, and also because having such a blog post can be quite handy during discussions online; I can just link someone to the entry to aid in a discussion of favorites.

Of course this is not to be confused with my annual “Favorite Music” list, where I detail my favorite music released in the previous calendar year; these lists detail my current all-time favorites, which are (like yours, of course) constantly changing.

Looking back at my entries, it appears as though I haven’t done a big posting of lists since 2012, so I’ll make this one fairly comprehensive.  All of these lists have changed since 2012–some very little, some quite dramatically:

My top ten favorite poets

10.  Jane Kenyon
9.   Robert Creeley
8.  William Carlos Williams
7.   Sylvia Plath
6.  Billy Collins
5.  Denise Levertov
4.  E.E. Cummings
3.  Philip Levine
2.  John Updike
1.  Philip Larkin

My top 10 favorite film directors

10.  Federico Fellini
9.  Sidney Lumet
8.  Alejandro Inarritu
7.  Christopher Nolan
6.  Paul Thomas Anderson
5.  Alfonso Cuaron
4.  Stanley Kubrick
3.  Werner Herzog
2.  Alfred Hitchcock
1.  Terrence Malick

My top ten bands

10. This Will Destroy You
9.  My Morning Jacket
8.  Godspeed You! Black Emperor
7.  Radiohead
6.  Seven Mary Three
5.  Hey Rosetta!
4.   The National
3.  Band of Horses
2.  Modest Mouse
1.  Arcade Fire

 

My top ten music solo artists

10.  Tracy Chapman
9.  Ray LaMontagne
8.  Father John Misty
7.  Leonard Cohen
6.  Jim James
5.  Nina Simone
4.  Willis Earl Beal
3.  Emily Wells
2.  Paul Simon
1.  Neil Young

My top ten favorite (non-documentary) movies

10.  Citizen Kane
9.  Night of the Hunter
8.  Fitzcarraldo
7.  Magnolia
6.  The Trouble with Harry
5.  Children of Men
4.  Where the Wild Things Are
3.  The Thin Red Line
2.  I’m Still Here
1.  The Tree of Life

My ten favorite novelists

10.  Malcolm Lowry
9.  John Steinbeck
8.  Isaac Asimov
7.  Ernest Hemingway
6. Oscar Wilde
5.  Kurt Vonnegut
4.  Mark Twain
3.  David Mitchell
2.  Don DeLillo
1.  Dave Eggers

My top twenty favorite books (any genre, fiction or nonfiction)

20.  “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
19.  “Slade House” by David Mitchell
18.  “The Terror” by Dan Simmons
17.  “You Shall Know Our Velocity” by Dave Eggers
16.  “Point Omega” by Don DeLillo
15.  “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell
14.  “Fallen Founder” by Nancy Isenberg
13.  “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
12.  “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
11.  “Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry
10.  “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers
9.  “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
8.  “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut
7.  “Dubliners” by James Joyce
6.  “Letters From the Earth” by Mark Twain
5.  “White Noise” by Don DeLillo
4.  “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing
3.  “Your Fathers, Where Are They?  And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?” by Dave Eggers
2.  “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer
1.  “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck

My top twenty favorite albums

20.  “Funeral” by Arcade Fire
19.  “Nobody Knows” by Willis Earl Beal
18.  “High Violet” by The National
17.  “The Battle of Los Angeles” by Rage Against the Machine
16.  “Swamp Ophelia” by Indigo Girls
15.  “Mirrorball” by Neil Young
14.  “Dis/Location” by Seven Mary Three
13.  “Abbey Road” by The Beatles
12.  “Graceland” by Paul Simon
11.  “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis
10.  “‘Allelujah!  Don’t Bend!  Ascend!” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
9.    “Kid A” by Radiohead
8.   “Strangers to Ourselves” by Modest Mouse
7.   “This Will Destroy You” by This Will Destroy You
6.   “Time Out” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet
5.   “Secret Samadhi” by LIVE
4.   “Infinite Arms” by Band of Horses
3.   “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire
2.   “RockCrown” by Seven Mary Three
1.  “Into Your Lungs (and Around in Your Heart and On Through Your Blood)” by Hey Rosetta!

 

My top five composers

5.  Philip Glass
4.  Cliff Martinez
3.  Hans Zimmer
2.  Felix Mendelssohn
1.  Carl Nielsen

My top ten painters

10.  Edgar Degas
9.  George Bellows
8.  Mark Rothko
7.  Johannes Vermeer
6.  Mary Cassatt
5.  Maurice Prendergast
4.  Thomas Eakins
3.  Henri Rousseau
2.  Andrew Wyeth
1.  John Sloan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can It Be True? I’m Getting Rid of My DVDs.

Last night I went out into our garage and brought in three large boxes.  In those boxes were hundreds–maybe close to six hundred–DVDs and Blu-ray discs.  I sat down with the contents of these boxes and divided them into two piles–“sell” and “keep”.  About two-thirds ended up in the “sell” pile.  Now, I didn’t do this because we are destitute and hard-up for cash.  I had just finally come to the realization that carting around that much physical baggage, representing movies that would be practically impossible for me to watch, was no longer a viable act.  (of note, these were simply the “garage” DVDs, the ones we couldn’t fit in the house.  I currently have no plans to get rid of the “house DVDs”).

I bring this up mainly because some of you may know I have continued to be a staunch advocate of physical media well into the digital age (I am a heavy user of digital media but have not abandoned the physical product like many have) and it feels significant to purge myself of all these DVDs.  The fact is, even without options like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and cable television, I would still be hard pressed to find the time to watch even a fraction of these movies.  Many of them are movies I truly love dearly, but when one has hundreds and hundreds of movies they love dearly, well…reality must be faced at some point.  Also, from a practical standpoint, these movies are tucked away in huge boxes in a garage.  The few times I’ve had a desire to watch one of them, the desire left after considering it for about ten seconds.  They’re just too difficult to get to.

Like many people, as the DVD age dawned, I delighted at the prospect of building a “film library”, and spent the next decade feverishly spending all my extra cash to own every movie I liked more than just a little bit.  Collecting DVDs became almost its own, separate pastime, mildly divorced from the pure love of film.  As I was single and childless most of this time, the extra room in my apartments made a perfect storage space for expanding Wal-Mart bookshelves full of DVDs, which I organized in many different ways over the years–sometimes alphabetically, sometimes by genre, with special sections for my favorite filmmakers and TV shows on DVD.  I kept going and going well beyond what was practical–I long ago lost the ability to even watch a tiny fraction of what I owned, often not even knowing for sure if I did own a certain film.

I became a completist of the highest order.  I loved the first three Todd Solondz films (I don’t love them anymore) and when I disliked his fourth and fifth films, I bought the DVDs anyway, to round out the Solondz section on my shelf (I can’t wait to not own “Palindromes” anymore!).  I bought every Stanley Kubrick film (these went in the “keep” pile) then had to buy “Eyes Wide Shut” again after they put out an unrated version.  At some point I began buying every movie made about a comic book superhero, because when I was REALLY into comic books as a young kid, I would have killed to see these movies–nevermind that I only liked about a quarter of them.  My superhero DVD collection grew to over 50, despite my actual ambivalence to the genre, out of some misguided favor to my younger self.  I mean, I own “Barb Wire” and BOTH “Judge Dredd” films.  But not for much longer.

It is, in plenty of ways, sad to see them go.  It was an impressive collection (people often say the DVDs in our living room are a lot of DVDs, which always makes me smile, as they’re about ten percent of the collection) and represented not just tons of money, but plenty of time and effort.  I’m also sad to, in some small way, be throwing in the towel on DVDs.  But I am definitely not abandoning them completely–with the “keep” pile from last night and the discs that were already inside the house, I’m sure we still have close to 300 movies in a physical format–and it’s hard to imagine saying goodbye to those.  And although purchasing new discs will be rare, I have no plans to stop for good.  My addiction to the Criterion Collection continues, and after seeing their slate for 2016, I anticipate buying three or four new ones this year.  I bought “Room” on Bu-Ray last month and have “The Revenant” pre-ordered.  As I get passionate about new movies, some will be added to the collection, but much slower than before, of course.

As far as other media: I stream a lot of music (but I use Tidal, which pays artists more than other streaming services.  I also use Pandora, but mostly to stream classical and jazz by people who are dead) but I still buy CDs, albeit at about 10% of the rate I did even three years ago.  I’ll probably buy nine or ten CDs in 2016.  I buy lots of vinyl–a combination of old music that’s freshly pressed (think brand-new factory sealed Beatles records), brand new music (the new Emily Wells album) and used vinyl out of dusty bins (just got The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Jazz Impressions of New York” at the local used record joint).

I read all my books, magazines, and newspapers on paper, although the Kindle ads in the New York Times Book Review make me a little itchy for one.

We currently have active subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, as well as Comcast cable…it’s an embarrassment of riches, to be sure, especially since our available TV-watching time is pretty low.  And most nights I just watch re-runs of “Shark Tank” on CNBC, anyway.  Can’t get enough Mark Cuban, I guess.

 

Some Stuff I Want

It is lately the generally accepted wisdom of the masses that one should not covet material items too much and you should spend your excess money on having experiences.  At least, this seems to be the generally accepted wisdom of my Facebook feed.  And I think I do fairly well with that; while there are certainly items I not only want but crave, I also spend a lot of my life having pretty great experiences.

All that being said, there remain some persistent bigger-ticket items that just call my name like a siren at sea, and I won’t deny it!  Perhaps it is an illness of our consumerist society, but dammit, there’s some stuff I want!  I thought it might be fun to put them here in a blog.  Please note this is just a fun exercise for me and not a veiled Christmas list.  As an adult I have never taken any joy in making out a list of things for people to buy me.  Some of these things have been bouncing around in my head as items I want for YEARS; I thought it might be therapeutic to get them out in the open.

In no particular order:

–OK, maybe in a SLIGHT order, just because this is definitely number one: Neil Young’s Mirrorball on vinyl.  It’s not my favorite album but it contains my favorite song.  Used would be fine but what I salivate over is the idea of a new, factory-sealed copy.  New copies on eBay generally go for about $100.

–I’m dying for a high-quality Philadelphia Flyers zip hoodie that goes light on the orange (but still has orange) and is heavy enough to wear for all but the coldest winter months.  Turns out all those criterion result in an expensive item.  Basically, I’m talking about this.  This would give me hoodies for all four Philly sports teams, but I don’t want to rush it and get a cheap version.  Hence, I’ve been sitting on this desire for almost two years.  I mean, who has $70 bucks for a hoodie?

–OK, I admit I have some fairly expensive interests.  I’ve been dying to get my hands on some first printings of collections of Philip Larkin poetry.  Now, this is a pretty specific area to deal in.  I am in no way talking about books actually called Collected Poems.  I am talking about the individual collections of poems AS THEY WERE PUBLISHED.  I would only be interested in them if they were FIRST PRINTINGS, which would mean they are hardcovers, usually being shipped from the UK somewhere, published in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  These titles would be:   The Less Deceived (1955, generally sell on eBay for $60-$150), The Whitsun Weddings (1964, goes for about $150), High Windows (1974, $90-$180.  This is the most desirable one).  There are some lesser collections: The North Ship being the most notable.  I do have a second printing copy of The North Ship, for which I paid $55 in a moment of weakness some years ago.

–I really want a pair of high quality Bose earbuds.  Please note earbuds, not headphones.  I like the crazy colors, too.  Specifically these.  I will never have the cojones to shell out the money for these.

–You might not guess it to look at me, but I love shoes.  It’s just that the shoes I love, which are very specific stylistically, can usually be bought very cheaply at many local retailers.  But it turns out, there are expensive versions of the shoes I like (apparently they are Chukkas), and I will never, ever be paying for them.  But look at them. Look how pretty they are.

–I don’t often feel a need to add many DVDs to my collection nowadays, although I will still add one here and there as I see more movies I fall in love with or as classics become available.  However, there is only one movie that I feel is causing a gap in my collection by its absence.  That movie is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and it has been out of print on DVD for so long that new copies are very scarce.  Here look at this: a new copy of the DVD (not Blu Ray) on Amazon costs $100. You can see at that same Amazon page that used copies start at $20, but those are listed in acceptable condition.  I certainly do not mind used copies of DVDs but I balk at acceptable.  Some second-party sellers are offering New copies for $50.  Worth it but of course I can’t spend that on a single-disc, non-special edition DVD, no matter how badly I might want it.

–I love using the Roku to stream entertainment to my television.  In fact, we already own two of them.  However, in our new home, our wifi is terrible and it is a problem we don’t seem able to solve (we have been relegated to streaming Netflix via our Blu-Ray player, which is Ethernet cabled).  The thing is, I love Rokus, and the ROKU 3 has an Ethernet port.  Would this be an item of great excess?  Yes.  But I neeeeeeeeed it.

–My art book collection would basically be complete (for now) with the addition of a HIGH QUALITY, comprehensive, hardback book on Henri Rousseau.  I’m having trouble finding one to link to online, but the kind I’m thinking of is generally not cheaper than $60.  Failing that, I would settle for a framed print of The Dream (no smaller than 32×24) or The Snake Charmer (preferably 40×30).

See, I don’t ask for much!  I also like experiences!

Karla

Despite the fact that it is an impossibility in this version of the universe, I sometimes imagine what it would be like to lose you.  It is, I understand, just a thought exercise.  But it is nonetheless intensely powerful, and a little debilitating.  The depth of sorrow I can experience in just these few moments alone with a hypothetical–it is indescribable.  You out in the wide world, somehow not in my orbit, no longer my anchor and my sail, and I am alone late at night (it is always late at night in this thought exercise) and I am always holding, for whatever reason, a corded landline phone, waiting for I don’t know what.
This isn’t a sad exercise; it’s glorious for reminding me that you are my lady, and you are a glorious lady.

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Tonight I drove to the movie theater and back.  It wasn’t incredibly late at night; 9pm on the way there, close to midnight on the way back, but it felt much later than that.  The roads were empty and even Dunkin Donuts was closed, but the night had that great mid-summer heat and glow, as though the whole world had been swimming all day in a very chlorinated pool.  I saw the new Mission: Impossible movie and it was pretty good.  I thought about you and the way your jaw juts out a little bit–really it’s practically imperceptible–when you are worrying about something.  It’s a small glimpse into your inner universe.  It’s a magical moment, when I get glimpses like that.  I wish I was in there with you.

I was listening to a Seven Mary Three mix disc I’ve made myself and I had the song Favorite Dog on repeat.  The lyrics have nothing (or very little, or who knows, really?) to do with me or us, but the dirge-like buildup and dreamy crescendo and Sisyphean lyrics bled into my ruminations.  That’s my other hand, open and empty. It wants one too, I guess. That’s my other jaw, swollen and shameless. It talks too much, I know.

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The neighborhood we live in is pockmarked; pockets of new buildings, swaths of blight, dozens of playgrounds: some new, some disgusting.  Office buildings and squalid churches and a new-ish Red Cross headquarters.  It doesn’t know what it wants to be, this neighborhood, although I’m confident some day it will sort everything out.  For now it’s enough that we live here, together, and our neighbors are nice and we have a huge bathtub and don’t worry about much and it’s a safe neighborhood.

There seem to be more people on motorized wheelchairs than I see elsewhere.  And chicken bones; a lot of people seem to eat chicken wings here and leave them on the ground, which is strange.  But the ice cream truck stops many places, and frequently, and plays cheery tunes with that twinkly horrible bell.  Sometimes when you’re up in bed, I slip out the front door and buy a cone.  They are creamy and luscious and melt down my hand by the time I’m back inside our air conditioned living room.

Last week we were driving down Harris Street toward Sixth and, outside an old barber shop that I had assumed was no longer in business, there were dozens of chairs sitting on the sidewalk; perhaps ten recliners, maybe three or four dining room chairs, and a few folding chairs.  At first we thought some small event was taking place, but as we pulled up beside them, it was obvious they were for sale.  Just chairs.  We were incredulous and we laughed and were baffled.

A few days ago I was walking our dog and just a few blocks from our house I came upon an old wooden chair that had been partially disassembled.  It sat boldly on the corner of the sidewalk as though it belonged there; I couldn’t help but remember the barber shop of a few days before.  I thought to myself, we live in a neighborhood of chairs.  I know this is nonsense and is not meaningful, but it sounds meaningful.

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…and they’re barking at me, yeah they’re working on me, just like my favorite dog.  Geronimo!  Look out below!  I love that rusty water like it was my favorite dog…

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Much, much more than most people (I assume) I become instantly and strongly aware that I am a creature scurrying across the outer crust of a planet in the massive and unpredictable universe.  You know how, in science fiction movies, sometimes the protagonists land on a planet they weren’t prepared for, and when they step out onto the surface, it is often something recognizable to us but also partly mystifying and different, and you think how you’d like to explore that world, see how it works?  I am frequently struck by that sensation on our own world.  From our current house, I need only walk six blocks to be standing beside the Susquehanna River–massive amounts of water which has all found its way into one spot, moving along together, flowing, flowing, never stopping, against a backdrop of a blue atmosphere and low mountains dappled with bushy green trees.  I’m on a planet, I think to myself, and nearly faint.

A few months ago I was at my father’s house out in the country when an especially intense weather pattern blew through the area and I stood outside with the neighbors, watching in awe as a tornado almost formed in the farmer’s field across the road. The massive dark and white clouds were moving faster than I could have imagined, swirling into and out of each other, turning on end, pitching and yawing, an intricate dance choreographed by pressures beyond my ability to fathom, powers pulled from even beyond the Earth but the laws of the universe itself.  Suddenly the pressures above turned their powers toward us and a gush of air was blown directly down, the strangely warm air like a very strong wind blowing at the ground.  A gargantuan black cloud passed over our heads so close it was almost fog, and so fast it was almost an airplane, and then in an instant, it was gone, had moved past us, onto the next crop of onlookers elsewhere.  As I walked inside I said to my father in the living room, I have never felt so much like I was on a planet!  As I was walking out to the kitchen to get a drink I heard him reply I already know I’m on a damned planet! 

Just a few days ago, my dear, we were driving on one of these lengthy but truly scenic highways that Central Pennsylvania supplies us with by the dozens, and when we rounded a bend, we saw the light coming through holes in a cloud, we could see the light’s rays dancing on the air, and we could see it land, slantingly, on the nearby bulbous mountaintop, lighting individual treetops.  It almost looked like a forest fire was raining from the sky.  I was breathless and you let me take your hand and you let me be amazed and you were amazed with me, here on the surface of this world.

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…that’s my other head, open and bleeding, it thinks too much, I guess. That’s my other eye, swollen but fearless. It’s seen too much I know.  Geronimo!  Look out below!  I love that rusty water like it was my favorite dog…

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It’s enough–it is so much more than enough–that your hair falls across your ear the way it does when you lay on the couch.  How you sigh after a long day’s work: it is tired but determined.  It is so much more than enough the way you always offer me water when I walk in the door, it is so much more than I ever would have asked for.  The way that your lips taste, always so sweet, like you had just put a dab of sugar on them, even that is all I need, all I could ever need, here in our neighborhood of chairs, here on the surface of our planet.

Spoiler Alert

It rains and rains some more.  Some would say That’s summer and some say This should be over by now, but in the end, it’s raining a lot and the rain doesn’t know what month it is. I wonder if the months themselves know what month it is.  It’s my understanding that months don’t care about much.

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I saw the new Jurassic Park movie.  I liked it well enough.  It entertained me, which is more than many movies do, but of course much less than I ask of the movies I’m passionate about. One can’t deny it is occasionally nice to be simply entertained.  But even as the genetically-engineered dinos were (inevitably, terrifyingly) taking over the park, it can be difficult to shut off the part of my viewing mind that wants to pick everything apart.  Is the female character strong enough?  Does she exist just for the male character to obtain glory (in this instance, it passes my feminism test–but just barely).   What does a movie about resurrected extinct creatures (even if said movie is a summer popcorn flick) have to say about animal rights and the ethics of genetic cloning (in this instance, quite a bit, but it’s all a little aimless and lacks coherence).  These and many other questions I simply CAN’T turn off when I’m watching a movie, but ultimately, sometimes I just want to be wowed.  And at least this dino flick provided me with interesting questions to ask in between raptor maulings.

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My love’s son (which makes him My Little Love, or for the sake of brevity, in the future on this blog he will be My boy) is a very active and delightful little guy.  My love and I spend hours playing with him in the backyard (meaning: we chase him around) and we have developed quite a few fun routines.  One of our favorites is when he balances on the row of bricks that line our patio.  He carefully balances on one before moving to the next.  As he reaches each brick, he pauses and announces to all assembled one of two things: he says either Doo-Doo, or Dee-Dee.  There doesn’t seem to be any particular significance that causes it to be a Doo-Doo or a Dee-Dee.  He can walk around the approximately dozen bricks and one will hear a random assortment of the syllables, like this:  Doo-Doo, Doo-Doo, Dee-Dee, Doo-Doo, and so on.  It’s a special kind of adorable.  My love and I now find ourselves saying it moments when the boy isn’t around, when we have a moment of careful or precarious walking, or some such thing.  Secretly I’ve started thinking of it as a mantra for any moment that requires great care or special attention, or when you are close to great accomplishment.  Holy moly, that cop almost gave me a speeding ticket.  Dee-Dee.  Or maybe We got the discount even though the sale ended last week.

Doo-Doo.

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I went hiking today with a dear friend of mine.  It’s been a long time since I went hiking.  I used to be very familiar with the woods and parks and trails around here; it was a passion for me.  Then I got gripped by the circumstances of my life and ended up spending a few years in a city, far removed from any kind of real wilderness.  Today was a real joy for me to spend time in the real woods again (and with Michael) but it raised more questions for me than it answered.  Do people necessarily have to be Country People or City People?  Is this like the old Cat Person/ Dog Person question, where people won’t let you be both?  How did I spend so long away from the woods and not feel like I was missing something?  And how did I love the city so much yet not feel its absence now? What is the true sound of my soul–cicadas or car horns?

Can you even imagine–I mean can you imagine–what this land looked like to the first European settlers when they landed here?  Here in what would become Pennsylvania, it was all trees.  Very literally.  All trees.  The going must have been rough if you were trying to bring your boat inland for any reason, or build a fort.  Clearing a little land to plant some crops.  I can imagine some of those scraggly be-hatted Euros probably thought of the amount of trees as an actual hindrance.  Imagine!  Today Michael and I spent two or three hours at a picturesque Pennsylvania State Park–in which our government has politely provided restrooms, clear hiking trails and other amenities, all while doing a fair job of conserving nature to a high degree.  The whole time we were there (it wasn’t a beautiful day, but it IS June) we saw about 7 people.  I bet on a similar day in 1950 we would have seen 700 people.

This isn’t just a typical bitching about people not enjoying nature anymore.  I’m just wondering.  How long will it be until nobody remembers why we’re keeping these places around?  How many country boys will hear car horns in their souls?  It’s even been brought to my attention recently that most people dislike sweating!  What will become of the parks?

We saw like a thousand frogs today, and one big fish that was standing still underwater like it was dead, and then it disappeared.

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Shackleton, after being stranded in the arctic with his men for two years, finally saved them all with zero loss of life.  He did this by sailing (with four of his crew) for 800 miles in a tiny boat to the whaling outpost on South Georgia Island, which, coincidentally, was the same island they had embarked from on their mission two years earlier. One can only imagine (you can only imagine) how much these men must have thought about, talked about, and dreamt about getting back to this island, which itself was a far-flung outpost of civilization.  Ernest Shackleton and his 28 men were eventually all returned to their normal, day-to-day lives.  Shackleton had already been quite famous and of course he became more so then.  But somehow, only four years later, he found himself back on remote and barren South Georgia Island, preparing to embark on another quest.  But as luck would have it, his luck had run out, and he had a heart attack and died, right there on South Georgia Island.  And he’s still buried there.  The island he made a monumental and Herculean effort to get to, so he could get back to civilization, that’s where he’s buried.  Doo-Doo, Dee-Dee.

The Scent of Bitter Almonds, and etc, etc.

1.  Nothing says “I’m a boring person” quite like posting pictures of your alcoholic beverage to Facebook.  Seriously.  You went out to a bar or club and you think the interesting thing that is supposed to happen is the drink itself?  Uninteresting, repetitive pictures of the person you’re with, or even another selfie, are more interesting than a beverage in a glass.  We’ve got the whole internet, and you want us to look at a beverage.

2.  I’ve brought this up before, but I just have to keep digging at this one.  Why are there two kinds of screws and screw drivers, ie flat head and Philips head?  I’m not over here like, meh, there should only be one kind! I am confident there are very good reasons for there being multiple kinds of screws, but I just for the life of me can’t figure out what those reasons are.  Anyone with any insight, please comment!

3.  War is terrible, but man, for a nation so young, we’ve had two very interesting wars!  I’ll be damned if the Revolution and the Civil War aren’t two of the most amazing stories ever told.

4.  With Philip Seymour Hoffman dead, the greatest actor of this generation (ie the generation currently the correct age to play the most interesting parts in the kind of films that get made the majority of the time) is James Franco.  Discuss.

5.  I get pretty tired of taking the trash out.  I mean, we really just have to keep doing this?

6.  Look at this picture of my dad and sister on vacation in Brigantine, NJ in 1980.  What’s not to love about this picture?  I want to sit on a porch listening to that radio, wearing those socks, next to a child dressed like that:

7.  I recently asked a few friends of mine which baseball team they would like, if they had only to consider the teams uniforms/ colors and logo.  Where you grew up and your previous loyalty should be not considered.  I got a few interesting answers—Billhanna said the Astros, which was a damned good answer.  My answer?  The Marlins or Blue Jays.

8.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez died this week.  He is one of my (and many others’) favorite novelists.  His most famous book is “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, which I love, but my favorite book of his is “Love in the Time of Cholera”, a book about a man who is obsessed/in love with one woman for his whole life, and dedicates his whole life to being with her.  It sounds creepy, and at times, it is, but what I love so much about it is that it is the only work of art in any medium that I have ever encountered that treats the obsessive side of love with the tender and insightful kind of care that most people reserve for “romantic” love.  It is a game-changer of a book.  Here is the first sentence from that book: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

9.  I understand you didn’t ask for my postcard or letter in the mail, and I understand, in this day and age, you’re not really sure how to respond to such antiquities.  I really don’t care too much.  Ideally you’d send a letter back, but I’m not expecting that.  You can ignore it.  That’s fine, you didn’t ask for it.  You can text me a response, which is the main thing people do, and that’s fine, if a bit gaudy.  But please, please…don’t post a picture of it on Facebook.

10.  What about this?

 

You Can’t Buy Me Happiness, but You Can Buy Me Fraggle Rock

I sure am happy right now.  I’m going through an extended period of inner peace, tranquility, and contentment.  It rules!  I’m not trying to get all new-agey, or brag about my emotional state.  The fact is, I’m often pretty content, at least moreso than most people (with, as I have noted at length on my blog, a steady undercurrent of fear of death and general despair that has been with me always and always shall remain…but it’s usually a little out of sight…my main operating mode is usually “happy”).  I just note this extended happy period here because it seems so very unusual for most of humanity.  This is only based on my very unscientific casual observations.  But even folks who most would describe as happy are, frankly, pretty unhappy.  Or at least uncomfortable, or full of worry or self-doubt or fear.  Isn’t it strange how difficult it can be for us to be happy?  Oy vey.  I got tempted to go super-deep on the subject there, but I’ll resist it.  I think it is impossible to go deep on this subject without sounding like a douchebag.  I just want to note that I’m super happy.  Tranquil is an even better word.  I’m under no impression that my life is always going to be easy or that things will stay like they are now, but I’m tranquil with that notion.

That being said, this winter sure does suck.  I know I know, someone wants to tell me It’s winter, what do you expect??? Well you see, here’s the thing: winter is uncomfortable.  Physically.  I do not like the sensation it creates upon my general physical being.  So yes, although I am certainly aware that winter is coming, and I know what it is going to be like, that foreknowledge does not lessen it’s wretched impact upon me.  I mean seriously, why does it keep snowing???  What kind of winter thinks it needs to snow this much??  Or be this consistently cold?  It’s all pretty lame.  Oh hey, also, look at this painting, “Chilly Observation”, by Charles Sidney Raleigh:

 

Another note on my happiness (and again, I’m not trying to get all zen on you here, I’m just thinking out loud.  Except not literally out loud.  I guess I’m thinking publicly), I’ve noticed lately I’m getting much less satisfaction from the acquisition of material goods.  Despite all my cultural philosophizing, I don’t think I’ve ever denied that I derive a lot of pleasure from buying or acquiring things.  Not big-ticket items, usually.  Most of my life I’ve just loved getting more and more books and music and movies and things like that.  And just random consumer goods.  Hats.  Backscratchers.  Wall art.  Random shit like that.  Well anyway, lately, I’m getting less and less pleasure from acquisition.  I suspect part of this is because of my natural tranquility right now, so I don’t have to supplement my happiness with the artificial high of stuff.  but I also think that I might just kind of have enough stuff, finally.  For one man, I have ALOT of books, records, DVDs, and the massive amount of random crapola that life in America will allow you to encircle yourself with.  I have so much stuff (note that I am passionate about most of it and find it delightful; I’m not knocking my actual stuff) that I can’t begin to properly enjoy most of it.  So I might need to chill on acquisition for a bit and start really paying attention to what I already have.

(although take note, I still really need some books by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a vinyl copy of Neil Young’s “Mirrorball”, one of these, a really nice digital camera, the complete series of “Fraggle Rock” on DVD [I aint joking about that, and it’s getting pretty affordable], Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” on Blu-Ray, that really nice hardbound version of the collected “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books that Barnes and Noble sells, an Ilya Bryzgalov Philadelphia Flyers jersey [even though he doesn’t play for the team anymore…oh and size Large], early editions of the individual collections of Philip Larkin’s poetry [specifically, I’m thinking about “The Whitsun Weddings” and “The North Ship”…first editions only, really, anything else is useless], a year-long membership to the Barnes Gallery…oh I guess there is still some stuff I need…)

Hoffman Film Fest, Day Six

There aren’t many movies out there about the adult relationship between a brother and a sister.  And while the relationship portrayed in “The Savages” between Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character and Laura Linney’s character is nothing like my relationship with my own sister, it still stands out as a unique film for this reason alone.  Plenty of movies dig around in the grown relationships of brothers, or sisters, but any movies I think of where the main siblings are a brother and a sister either glancingly explore the relationship, if at all, or the characters and their motivations are shallow. (if anyone can think of a movie that explores this that I’m missing, let me know in a comment!) I actually just watched “The Savages” less than a month ago when my eyes fell on it on my DVD shelf.  It was the Phil movie I’d seen most recently before he died.

Because “The Savages” is available to rent on YouTube, there are no clips really available anywhere on the internet, but here is a GREAT little tribute/ featurette about the movie that includes some nice little scenes and people talking about Phil:

Hoffman Film Fest, Day Five

Nobody was more surprised than I was when it was announced that Philip Seymour Hoffman would be starring as the villain in the third installment of the “Mission: Impossible” films.  I have always been quite a big fan of these movies—they’re a little smarter, a little edgier, a little more artistic than you’re expecting—but it still seemed way outside what we are accustomed to from Phil.  But of course, the moment he pops on screen—about 2 seconds into the movie—you forget you ever thought it might be strange casting.  Phil is immediately perfect in his role.  In addition, he is later required to play Tom Cruise’s hero character wearing a hi-tech mask that looks exactly like Philip Seymour Hoffman (it’s kind of meta, but makes sense when watching it and it’s totally amazing).

Below is the opening scene in the film (about two minutes into the movie…it’s part of the movie’s genius that it appears to begin in the middle of the story)…if you haven’t seen this movie yet, WATCH THIS CLIP.  It’s incredibly exciting, and features not just a surprising and badass job by Phil, but a bravura performance by Tom Cruise, an actor I continue to love dearly and defend intensely:

Hoffman Film Fest, Day Four

During my college years, there were a few movies that we just watched over and over and over.  Some we watched hundreds of times. When I say “we” I refer to a changing cast of characters, different roommates and friends and acquaintances who maybe only crossed paths with me for a few months, or maybe, like Paul, were there for most of the college years.  With Paul, we had two or three movies we watched endlessly: “Friday” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, and to a lesser extent, “The Borrowers”.  With other groups or roommates, the movies were different.  I spent countless hours getting wasted while watching “A River Runs Through It” with one set of roommates (things don’t always make sense in college), and a different roommate and I watched the Star Wars trilogy on a virtual repeat for an entire semester.  Another film I watched at least 50 times sometime in my sophomore years was “Scent of a Woman”, which was probably my first exposure to Philip Seymour Hoffman, although I didn’t know it at the time.

It’s not a huge role for him.  He plays the asshole friend.  I didn’t even know he was in it until a few years after I became a big fan of his, and I went back to watch it again and there he was.  It was a very formative time for me, as far as my movie tastes went.  Who watches “A River Runs Through It” and “Scent of a Woman” while getting wasted?  We did.  I think we were getting used to the fact that we might like serious stuff, that we might be into grown-up movies.  But we were college boys.  We liked to party.  The endings of these movies were like rumors to me, barely-remembered dreams.  I was always blackout drunk by the ends, so it wasn’t until I finally stopped drinking that I can rightly say I enjoyed them all the way through.

There isn’t a great clip of Phil in this movie that I can embed on my blog, but you can see probably his best moment in the movie by clicking here.

Hoffman Film Fest, Day Three

There was a stretch of a few years where Philip got typecast as the kind-of-unhinged, almost-maniac who would do a lot of shouting from time to time.  This is not to detract from those performances–they were always nuanced, accurate portrayals of real characters, but for awhile it seemed it was almost all he was getting.  His performance in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” came near the end of this phase, and it is one of his finest performances.  The film was directed by Sidney Lumet, an all-time great and a personal favorite of mine (“12 Angry Men”, “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Network”, and on and on) so it was exciting to see Mr. Hoffman in a Lumet film.  Additionally, one cannot now discuss this film without noting that in it, Phil played a heroin addict.  I implore you to watch this scene below, for what is now a chilling hindsight:

Hoffman Film Fest, Day Two

I first saw “Jack Goes Boating” in the dead of winter, when I was living alone in Erie, PA.  I wasn’t just living alone, but far, far from all my family and friends.  I lived there for two years, and for the most part, it was a very solitary existence.

Anyway, like I said, it was the dead of winter.  For some reason, this little unknown arthouse flick was playing in the “dollar” theater, the run-down piss-smelling 6-house theater that literally cost just one dollar to get into.  I’d been waiting with some excitement for the directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman, but I doubted I’d get to see it in Erie, where movies like that typically didn’t play.  I was taken quite aback when it showed up at the dollar theater.

I went to the latest showing possible, on a weeknight, to do my best to avoid other humans.  Frequent readers of my blog will know that I don’t shy away from discussing this aspect of my personality: I love people, but I’d rather they be somewhere else.  I’m often unhappy about this part of myself, but I’m also much happier alone.  So.  Go figure.

I ended up in the theater completely alone.  That movie theater made one dollar off that showing, not counting my enormous Coke Zero.  And the movie that unfurled before me set me ablaze, all alone in that stinky theater at 10 o’clock on a probably Tuesday in the grip of deepest winter.

It’s really just a love story.  On paper, it’s a well-told, dramatic love story about broken people getting together.  But the way Hoffman made that film grabbed something further inside me than the desire to be loved.  The way he played his character and the tone he set for the entire film spoke to me about the deep oceans we all are, the blankness I feel within myself, and the wide gulf that exists between people, even when your connection feels intense.  It spoke to my loneliness, and it made me question my self-imposed isolation, so far from those who loved me.  Although many and arrayed forces conspired to eventually get me to move to Philadelphia (closer to many loved ones but still comfortably far enough away from most of you to say, maybe next month, or if only I lived closer), it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that “Jack Goes Boating” set my mind wandering and wondering if maybe I didn’t need just a little less isolation.

As happened many times when I lived in Erie, I walked out of the movie theater that night to a desolate, nearly-empty, locked-in-ice parking lot, with nobody to talk to about the movie.  I was ok with that.  Most people don’t know how to talk about movies.  But this drive home was a little different.  For this one night, the hole inside of me bothered me.

Please watch this:

Hoffman Film Fest, Day One

For the next however-long-it-takes, I’ll be watching a Philip Seymour Hoffman film every day, starting with the ones I own on disc and maybe venturing in to ones available to stream.  I’ll post brief photos and videos here, and maybe a few words on the film.  I’m starting off today with the “biggie”, for me anyway, “Magnolia”, which I talked about at length in yesterday’s blog post.  Watch the clip of Phil in this film below:

 

Philip Seymour Hoffman was important to me.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was important to me.

How does one write a blog entry about how the death of an actor is going to cause them to literally mourn without sounding like a cheeseball dweeb?  I’m pretty sure one does not accomplish this.  So here goes.  Prepare for the cheeseball dweeb.

Celebrities and artists die all the time, and I see people getting all verklempt over it and I think they are fools.  Get over it, I think.  You morons.  You had an emotional connection to Paul Walker? I think to myself.  What jibberjabs.

But Philip was different.  Philip was an artist.  He connected.  He was important.

My first exposure to him was in the movie “Magnolia”, which I would watch probably a hundred times during the most desperate years of my alcoholism, and which is probably the most important movie in my own personal history.  “Magnolia” is not a happy movie.  It is not a hopeful movie.  “Magnolia” didn’t help me get sober.  But I learned things from that movie that continue to shape who I am today.  Things like owning my regret and not denying it.  And recognizing when obsession goes too far and finding another place to put your love.  Embracing my inadequacies.  And on and on.  Now I grant you, Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t write this movie, and he didn’t direct it.  But he did act the fuck out of his part in it.  But more importantly, he chose to be in this movie.  That was his true gift: choosing the right projects to be in.  Movies that meant things.  Movies that were high art without being art films.  Movies that could move you without being trite, or saccharine, or unnecessary.

Even Philip’s few “sellout” movies were well chosen.  “Along Came Polly” might be a populist comedy, but his part in it rings true, and gives the movie heart without giving into sentimentality.  Also, in it, his character coins the term shart, which is still floating around our culture.

Philip didn’t just act.  He directed exactly one movie: “Jack Goes Boating”, an adaptation of a Robert Glaudini stage play (Glaudini wrote the film’s script, too) that most people missed, but such is my love for Mr. Hoffman that I saw it in a theater, and own the blu ray disc (not many can say that, I assure you!).  “Jack Goes Boating” touches me deeply—makes me come to terms with uncomfortable truths about myself, such as my depth of selfishness, my fears of commitment, my reasons for pushing others away—and much of that power is owed to Phil’s perfect sense of tone (oh how I wish he’d directed more!), his powerhouse acting performance in the film, and, of course, the fact that he chose the project.  He knew what to choose.  Watch this clip from “Jack Goes Boating”. 

I felt like I knew Mr. Hoffman.  If I’d ran into him on the street, we would have just started talking, I think.  I wouldn’t have been starstruck.  I would have thought, oh, it’s about time we hung out.  Maybe this makes me creepy or weird, but I think it’s just a testament to a man who built an astoundingly successful acting career by putting trust in his audience, and there being an audience out there who wanted desperately to be trusted.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was important to me.

I Wear My Heartburn at Night

There is something very unique about living alone.  Obviously, I guess.  Certainly it is not for everyone.  Mostly, it is for loners and pricks, I guess, but I must say it does agree with me.  I know I’ve covered this area a lot in things previously written, but I just can’t get over how…interesting…it is to not utter one word to a human being some days other than while I am at work.  Of course, my job requires me to say A LOT (“verbally exhausted” is the industry slang) so oftentimes, the break from speech is quite welcome.  This isn’t important.  Just thinking out loud.

I was riding my bike down Snyder Ave. in the bike lane this morning and three teenagers were standing in the lane, craning their necks down the street, presumably looking for their bus.  As I neared them they didn’t budge one bit.  I also did not alter my course.  I buzzed by them, inches away.  I made eye contact with them as I passed, and they were obviously pissed.  One of them started to say something, but I wasn’t sure what, and I didn’t even let him remotely finish before I blurted out “Get the fuck off the road, kids.”  Either: A) I am a badass motherfucker or B) what the hell is wrong with me?

I have watched the movie “Meek’s Cutoff” three times this week.  It is an exceptional film.  I watched it when it first came out, in 2011 (and it even took second place in my top ten movie list of that year) and I promptly bought it on DVD, but I waited until this week to even view it a second time.  But then a second time became a third, and then a fourth.  It is an extraordinary film.  It is now one of the things that I will come to associate with this, the winter I moved into Philadelphia.  Watch this clip:

I rarely hear my neighbors, despite sharing walls with them on two sides.  However, when I do hear them, it is a bed squeaking rhythmically.  Sex or masturbation, I don’t know, but I guess I’ve lucked out, since there are no vocalizations to go along with it.  It’s just awkward, is all.

My mom and I went to the Hard Rock Café in Center City for my birthday.  Here is my mom there:

Oh, my birthday, by the way.  I turned 36.  So it goes.  That sounds pretty old to me, but I guess if I’m lucky, someday it will sound young.  People say life is short but it seems pretty long to me.  Longest thing you’ll ever do, anyway.

This blog entry just took a turn for the sour because I have heartburn now.  That’s what I get for drinking coffee after midnight.  There, as far as I know, is no certified medical reason for drinking coffee after midnight to give you heartburn, but alas, it always does so, to me.  And yet, I continue to do it.  Lesson learning is not, nor has it ever been, my strongest trait.

It is unseasonably warm.  Can’t argue with that.  Everyone likes unseasonably warm.  Everyone.

Philly Journal, 11/26/13

It is, ultimately, not easy to live in the city without a car.  But it also is, also ultimately, completely glorious.

I will have a better feel for how physically challenging it is to live like this once I’m finally done “working” on my apartment, but my first two weeks here have been really tiring.  Mind you, this whole time, I’ve been working my regular job, which during the holiday season, is especially trying.  Then, on my time off, I’m still putting my apartment together, which normally isn’t too much work, but my place includes really narrow, really steep stairs to the second floor, and really unreliable, really steep stairs to the basement, and I’ve taken approximately one million trips up and down both—usually carrying things that weigh 100 pounds—in my first two weeks here.  Then, there is the bike ride to work.  I must admit, it is a little tiny bit further than I’d anticipated.  It’s about two miles each way, which isn’t a lot as the crow flies, but city biking is not your typical leisure riding, and of course the weather hasn’t been making this any easier, and of course the one million trips up and down stairs have not been making the biking any easier on my legs, which never seem to get completely rested before I ask another enormous thing of them.  Then, on top of this, any time I realize I need something for my new place that I don’t have–a dish drainer, a certain light bulb—I have to literally go ride my bike to get this, or walk to get this.  Luckily, unbeknownst to me when I moved in here, I am ridiculously close to tons and tons of convenient retail.  Literally two blocks from my apartment there is a Target, Best Buy, Lowes, a chain supermarket (for locals, it’s a Shop Rite), and tons of other stuff (there’s a Wal-Mart about half a mile away, but across a very busy road.  I’ve gone there, but that’s more for biking only, it’s not practically walkable).  So I got lucky there.  But coming from an entire life lived hopping in cars, it is a massive adjustment.

Now, having said all that, now I must tell you I love it.  It’s just a lot going on at once and a lot of things to adjust to all at once, but a few weeks or a month from now, when I’ve been settled in for awhile and my body has adjusted and it no longer gets dark at noon (I’m confident that adjusting to these changes at the same time as the clocks going back has made it more difficult for me) that I am going to 100% be all about this life.  Already, in many ways, I can’t imagine having a car.  I see these neighbors of mine worrying about parking, and soon, the snow, and all these one way streets and all the silly tangential bullcrap that comes with a car in general, and is totally amplified by having a car in the city, and I could not be more thrilled to be out of that rat race.  I need milk and soda, I get my little handcart and I walk over to the Shop Rite.  I breathe the air and nod to other pedestrians, immersed in our own, more slow, more visceral version of the travelling world.  Later today I will be going to a movie for the first time at what will be my “new” theater, a United Artists about .4 miles from me.  I will bundle up, hop on my bike, and ride it for seriously just a few minutes.  I will hitch it to a post or a bike rack at the movie theater and go see a movie.  Having paid for no gas, looked for no parking spots, waited for nothing to heat up.  Just using my own power, taking whatever route I want…I will just…go there.

There is a lot more to talk about and tell you about this lovely, lovely experience of living in the city, and now that my apartment is nearly done, blogs will be coming more frequently and, maybe, even more eloquently written than this one.  Stay tuned!

Application to be my girlfriend

Copy the application, and paste in an e-mail, along with your answers, to sdellinger1978@gmail.com.  You will receive a reply within two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

 

1.  What is your favorite season, and why?

2.  Rank the following authors in order of their academic relevance:

–Barbara Kingsolver
–Wally Lamb
–Thomas Pynchon
–Dave Eggers
–Stephen King

3.  Do you think gay people should have the right to marry each other?

4.  Say you and I go out to dinner at a diner.  Not a fancy place, just a straight-forward diner.  The waitress is not a bitch, but she isn’t very nice.  The food comes out on time and is of an acceptable nature.  The bill totals $18.  How much do you tip?

5.  On a scale of 1-10, to what degree would you say you have a “badonk a donk”?

6.  Without using the internet, can you name a poem by Robert Frost? Nevermind, I have no way of knowing if you used the internet.

7.  If you could move anywhere in the world, where would it be?

8.  You can have a full bedroom set made out of walnut or cherry.  Which do you choose?

9.  What is the best shape of pasta?

10.  Do you own any white denim pants?

11.  What is the ideal amount of band members to be in a rock band?

12.  I need lots of my own space and am frequently grumpy and sensitive.  There’s not a question here, I’m just letting you know.

13.  What is the farthest you would drive to see a Revolutionary or Civil War battlefield?  Don’t lie to me about this, I’ll know.

14.  Salt or pepper?

15.  Discuss the last time you thought the Academy Awards got the Best Picture award correct.

16.  If you could choose one animal to represent you, what would it be, and why?

17.  What did you score on the SATs?  I didn’t do that great, I’m just wondering.

18.  Favorite Ninja Turtle?

19.  Can you “do the Carlton”?

20.  Will you shave my neck?

 

Young Blood

1. Let’s talk a little bit about Facebook, and/ or any other online social media you’d like to apply this to: my Facebook page is not a magical realm of free speech and considered debate.  It (as well as, obviously, my blog.  Hey, you want a blog too, you can get one!) is a place where I put the stuff that I already think.  Sometimes, that stuff is “I like Triscuits”, but other times it might be “We need stricter gun control in this country, because guns and people kill people.”  Those are my opinions, and I didn’t get them from numbskulls like you, I got them from the world, and my observations of it.  Now, you are of course more than free to have your own opinions, and even ones that are different than mine, but these people that seem to think that everything needs debated all the time, and that you need to listen to all sides of a debate! are mistaken for a few reasons.  Yes, debate is healthy and necessary, but I don’t spend all my time online, nor do my opinions get formed or forged there.  By the time I’ve “statused” an opinion, I’ve read about, watched something about it, talked to a human being in person about it, observed something about it, etc.  I communicate things via social networks that I already think.  Now, you may ask, what’s wrong with even more debate?  And my answer to you is, nothing is wrong with more debate, but not Facebook debate.  Facebook debate sucks.  Nobody is ever swayed by anything said online, it makes me hate you, it reveals your lack of grasp of the English language, it wastes my time, and makes people who like each other say things they regret.  Just don’t bother.  And then, the topper, is when since it is after all MY Facebook page, I delete the contrary comments so as to avoid the debate, the person notices I’ve deleted the comments and wants to get all high-and-mighty as though I am oppressing their free speech or quashing some important, vital public discourse.  Listen Chachi, this aint Meet the Press, you aren’t the Op-Ed page, and Facebook isn’t housed in the National Archive. Step off my status, Anthony Scalia, I already know what the fuck I think.

2.  I just saw “Gravity” in the movie theater.  This was a fantastic experience.  Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about to become my “favorite” movie, but it is very unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in a movie theater.  It is an experience.  I don’t want to oversell it here, but listen, this thing has GOT to be seen on a big screen, in 3D, if you want to grasp what the whole point of the endeavor is.  Do it.  Go.  Soon.

3.  As you may know, for many years, I was a very vocal opponent of professional sports.  I thought they are a nuisance distraction from what is generally important in the world.  I thought the energy and attention that followers of sports devote to them was a drain on other places they could be placing that attention, such as government and world affairs, the fine arts, the world of science, and the great story of human history.  Guess what?  I still absolutely think that is true.  There isn’t really any getting around it: professional sports are, by-and-large, a great waste of time by otherwise fantastic cultures.  It’s just that at some point a few years ago, I made a conscious decision to drink the Kool-Aid.  I now follow sports like a 70s housewife followed soap operas; all-too aware of their impotence in the world, but completely invested regardless.  And it is through that lens and with those caveats that I now say this: why the fuck do some of you people make a conscious decision to have “your” team be a team that is nowhere near you?  Like someone from Pennsylvania, with no connection to Colorado, being a Denver Broncos fan (hey! We have two pretty neat football teams in our very own state!) or someone from California being a Green Bay Packers fan (again…THREE serviceable teams in that particular state).  Now, I hear what you’re out there saying: But Seth, didn’t you just say that sports were essentially meaningless?  Didn’t you compare them to soap operas?  If so, isn’t my choice to follow the Vancouver Canucks just like preferring “General Hospital” over “One Life to Live”?  Well, that’s a pretty good point, but you’re wrong.  One of the few socially relevant and culturally significant facets sports do afford us is the ability to help define our regional cultures, bring us temporarily and intensely together as citizens of a common area, form loose bonds out of otherwise unrelated people, and energize regions and cities with not only economic growth and civic pride, but a kind of localized patriotism which, even though it arises from games that in reality mean nothing, it serves to define us as people from a certain place, with a certain history and tradition.  Once you have bought into this artificial but nonetheless powerful facade, you become part of the tapestry of the history of a place and culture.  And you want to go and just…like some team colors?  For a team that is from a place you’ve never been, and which you know next-to-nothing about??? That is NOT like choosing one soap opera over another, it’s like watching static on a screen while “Gone With the Wind” is on the other channel.  Put some meaning into your meaningless sport, I don’t care how long you’ve “liked” the Yankees.

4.  My buddy Kyle knows a girl who is in a band called The Colourist, and it turns out, they might actually be on the cusp of being a legit famous band!  (how do we know they are going to be famous? You have seen them in a commercial! This commercial!) They are currently on tour opening for a band called The Naked and Famous, which is a band that is currently enjoying a fair amount of stardom, at least on the “indie rock” scene.  Anyway, Kyle, knowing my penchant for concert-going and thinking one or both bands might be down my alley, asked his friend who is in The Colourist (her name is Maya) if she could put me on the guest list for their upcoming show in Philly at the Trocadero, and she did!  So tomorrow night, I get to go see a rock show for free! Yay!  Now, I have not been able to really familiarize myself all that much with the material of either band, but the listening I have done, I like but don’t love.  Both bands do make, generally, the kind of music I like, but they seem to draw a bit more from pop influences than usually suits my taste, but again, I haven’t listened too much.  But I certainly like them enough to go see them play!  Thanks again for the hookup, Kyle!

Here are the songs I have liked most so far from The Colourist as well as The Naked and Famous:

It’s My Thought That Counts

It occurs to me with no lack of regularity that, because of my persistent status as single and childless, that I have significantly fewer opportunities to receive presents as the rest of you romantic and procreating beasts.  And hey, listen, I’m gonna admit something most people avoid saying out loud:  I would like more presents!

So recently, I was thinking, maybe it’s not just the lack of Valentines, Father’s Day, and anniversary (as well as the extra gifts one gets at Christmas and birthdays etc, from your significant other and children) that are preventing me from getting a significant amount of free goods.  Perhaps part of the problem is, when gifting times roll around, many of you potential gifters think my interests are limited to just a few things, like pompous music, post-1930s American and British poetry, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and you just don’t know how to buy presents for a guy like that!  And, while it is true that I really love those things, the fact of the matter is, I have literally hundreds of interests, and with the advent of the internet, there is nearly no shortage of ways you can spend money on me! And the internet also means it is very easy for me to re-sell something you may accidentally get me that I already have!

So, in case you have just been hankering to buy a gift for a guy but don’t know who the hell Philip Larkin is, I will here lay out for you a massive list of interests I rarely talk about, but I assure you I am just crazy for!

1.  Soundtracks to movies made before 1980 on vinyl records

2.  Anything to do with early thought on city planning, especially dealing with pioneer Jane Jacobs

3.  I like hats

4.  I like notebooks to write in, but not one with Hallmark-y or sentimental messages printed on the cover

5.  Corduroy clothing

6.  I collect old postcards, preferably with messages written on them, preferably from 1915 and earlier

7.  Single-issue Marvel comics (any title) from between 1993-1997 are usually a good bet

8.  Anything celebrating the state of Pennsylvania, especially including its coat of arms

9.  Back-issues of Discover magazine, pre-2005.

10.  Post-it notes, white-out, index cards, legal pads, mechanical pencils

11.  Owls

12.  Games for the original Game Boy (original only, no Game Boy color!)

13.  First edition of any book by Orson Scott Card, Dave Eggers, Flannery O’Connor, or John Updike

14.  Hoodies or winter coats ordered from the websites of any of my favorite bands.

15.  Anything that you see on this list, if you can find a mousepad that in some way depicts or deals with it, I would like to own that mousepad

16.  I have a genuine interest in the Johnstown Flood.  Aside from the famous book by David McCullough, I own nothing about it.

17.  Aside from the DVDs, any merchandise or materials related to the film “Labyrinth” would be a home run.

18.  I have a high interest in the European particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC (sometimes also called CERN).  Yes, there is merchandise.

19.  I love Grey Flannel cologne but haven’t owned any in years.

20.  Any DVD that says it is part of the “Criterion Collection”…you can buy me that.

21.  I am a big fan of motorized inclined planes, or “funiculars“.

22.  I love backscratchers.  It is not possible for me to own too many of them.

23.  Books or materials about early American filmmaking are always great (post 1910 and D.W. Griffiths only, I have no interest in Edison’s important but dreadfully boring experiments).

24.  Dr. Strange is my favorite comic book character.  I have plenty of stuff but feel free to take a leap of faith, there’s a lot out there.  Statues, figures, and busts are especially desired.

25.  The easiest thing on the list:  I love all Philadelphia sports teams.

26.  I have an interest in Quantum Physics.  There are tons of books and DVDs on the subject.  I will read and watch them all.

27.  John Sloan, the painter.  That man painted my soul.

28.  I am intrigued by the lost colony of Roanoke and would love to learn more about it.

29.  Post-Revolution, my favorite historical figure is Aaron Burr.

30.  I could always use a new (good) digital camera.

31.  I have an interest in but have not read much about behavioral psychologist BF Skinner.

32.  I am a major evangelist for Dr. Pepper, and even more specifically Diet Dr. Pepper, and I will, without irony, wear, brandish, or otherwise use merchandise imprinted with this soda’s logo.

33.  I have always been smitten with now-deceased scientist Carl Sagan, and any of his books are welcome.  Likewise, his television series, “Cosmos”, and any materials related to it, are high on my love list.

34.  In the realm of living scientists, I have a bona fide man-crush on Neil DeGrasse Tyson and will gladly accept his books, DVDs, or tickets to see him speak somewhere.

35.  I get weak in the knees for Ben and Jerry’s “Late Night Snack”.

36.  Art Spiegelman’s masterpiece of graphic novel literature, “Maus”, is an all-time fave, but is always priced just out of reach.

37.  Toblerones.

38.  Coffee-table sized books featuring the art of Henri Rousseau, and/or merchandise featuring his paintings “The Dream” or “The Snake Charmer“.  If I listed all of these items in order by what I’m interested in right now, this one might be #1.

39.  I have an odd interest in the history of the Mormon religion, specifically the handcart disaster, the Mountain Meadows massacre, and the early life and “visions” of founder Joseph Smith.

40.  I’d love a Polaroid camera.

41.  I love coffee, of course, and there are a few things I still need, primarily a pour-over set for iced coffee and a French Press.

42.  If I hit the lottery tomorrow, two of the first purchases I’d make would be the complete series of “The Fraggles” and “24” on DVD.  Don’t judge me.

43.  My favorite living poet is Billy Collins.  I have all his books.  See what else you can do.

44.  I love riding my bike.  But I’m not a serious biker, like, wearing spandex, etc.  I do it just to cruise around.  But I could use a new lock, gel seat cover, or other biking stuff you might think of.  I could also use a new bike, but if you want to go that far, we should probably collaborate on that.

45.  Anything relating to the old TV shows “Northern Exposure“, “Twin Peaks“, or “Picket Fences“.  I own the entire series of “Northern Exposure”, but other than that, it’s open season.

46.  I find the Donner party very interesting.  I have read this book on it, but nothing else.

47.  I like to use caramel coffee syrup in my coffee and oatmeal.  I can never have too much of it.

48.  I love newspapers, but it’s not easy to find merchandise regarding them, such as hats, shirts, etc.  My favorite newspapers are The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and USA Today.

49.  Museum memberships.  Any kind of museum.  Art, history, whatever.  I can’t imagine a gift I would love much more than a membership to just about any museum.  Currently, I am a member of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but no other museums.

50.  Old coinage, pre-1900, from early America or other countries.  Confederate money would be very cool.

Lists

Chances are, you care about none or almost none of my top ten lists presented here.  But you have to live with the fact that this post exists anyway.

It’s no secret that I love making top 10, top 5, or even top 100 lists of the things I love.  Not only do I love making them, but I find having them in the public sphere (ie, my blog) handy from time-to-time, as I’m discussing my favorites of something with someone and I can say, hold on, I actually have my list made, let me link you to it.

Over the past few years, I’ve made a few big lists (bands, books, directors, etc), but I find that some of these change so fast, use of the list in any sort of real-time discussion becomes moot.  So I am here updating them, although a few of them remain relatively the same as their original lists, others have changed drastically.

I am including a list of my top ten favorite movies for the first time since I made a very controversial top-100-movie list 6 or 7 years ago on my MySpace blog (most of which has disappeared for no reason).  This movie list will no doubt cause quite a stir with Kyle; it would also doubtless cause a stir with many of my other movie-centric friends, if in fact any of them still read my blog, the bastards.

All lists are in order, and are a list of my favorites, not what I consider “the best”.

My top ten favorite poets

10.  Randall Jarrell
9.   Jane Kenyon
8.  William Carlos Williams
7.   Sylvia Plath
6.  Billy Collins
5.  Denise Levertov
4.  E.E. Cummings
3.  Robert Creeley
2.  John Updike
1.  Philip Larkin

My top 5 favorite hockey teams

5.  San Jose Sharks
4.  Phoenix Coyotes
3.  Buffalo Sabres
2.  Columbus Blue Jackets
1.  Philadelphia Flyers

My 10 favorite (non-documentary) film directors

10.  Lars von Trier
9.  Sidney Lumet
8.  Terrence Malick
7.  Christopher Nolan
6.  Darren Aronofsky
5.  Danny Boyle
4.  Stanley Kubrick
3.  Werner Herzog
2.  Paul Thomas Anderson
1.  Alfred Hitchcock

My 5 favorite sodas

5.  Coke Zero
4.  Mr. Pibb
3.  RC Cola
2.  Tab
1.  Dr. Pepper

My top five football teams

5.  Detroit Lions
4.  Seattle Seahawks
3.  Buffalo Bills
2.  Cleveland Browns
1.  Philadelphia Eagles

My four favorite seaons

4.  Winter
3.  Autumn
2.  Spring
1.  Summer

My top ten radio shows

10.  Tell Me More (NPR)
9.  Science Friday (NPR)
8.  Mike and Mike in the Morning (ESPN Radio)
7.  On the Media (NPR)
6.  MLB Roundtrip (MLB Radio)
5.  A Praire Home Companion (NPR)
4.  Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!  (NPR)
3.  Talk of the Nation (NPR)
2.  On Point (NPR)
1.  Car Talk (NPR)

My top ten bands

10.  The Beatles
9.  Pearl Jam
8.  Godspeed You! Black Emperor
7.  Seven Mary Three
6.  Death Cab For Cutie
5.  Explosions in the Sky
4.  My Morning Jacket
3.  Band of Horses
2.  The National
1.  Hey Rosetta!

My top ten favorite TV shows

10.  Firefly
9.   Mythbusters
8.  Breaking Bad
7.  Seinfeld
6.  Picket Fences
5.  Carnivale
4.  24
3.  Mad Men
2.  LOST
1.  Northern Exposure

My top 5 baseball teams

5.  Baltimore Orioles
4.  New York Mets
3.  Kansas City Royals
2.  Cleveland Indians
1.  Philadelphia Phillies

My top ten favorite movies

10.  12 Angry Men
9.   Rope
8.  Citizen Kane
7.  Fitzcarraldo
6.  Children of Men
5.  Night of the Hunter
4.  Magnolia
3.  Where the Wild Things Are
2.  I’m Still Here
1.  The Tree of Life

My five favorite novelists

5.  Orson Scott Card
4.  Mark Twain
3.  Dave Eggers
2.  John Kennedy Toole
1.  Kurt Vonnegut

My top 5 (pre-my-birth) presidents

5.  John Adams
4.  Abraham Lincoln
3.  James K. Polk
2.  George Washington
1.  Franklin D. Roosevelt

My ten favorite books

10.  “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers
9.  “Maps in a Mirror” by Orson Scott Card
8.  “Slaughterhouse-5” by Kurt Vonnegut
7.  “Dubliners” by James Joyce
6.  “Letters From the Earth” by Mark Twain
5.  “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut
4.  “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
3.  “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
2.  “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
1.  “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck

My ten favorite friends of all-time

Ha!  You thought I was gonna do this one???

My ten favorite albums

10.  “Plans” by Death Cab for Cutie
9.   “Infinite Arms” by Band of Horses
8.   “Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever” by Explosion in the Sky
7.   “Seeds” by Hey Rosetta!
6.  “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw” by Pelican
5.   “Secret Samadhi” by LIVE
4.   “Abbey Road” by The Beatles
3.   “RockCrown” by Seven Mary Three
2.   “High Violet” by The National
1.  “Into Your Lungs (and Around in Your Heart and On Through Your Blood)” by Hey Rosetta!

Top women I’ve slept with

1.  Seriously, read this

Philly Journal, 9/7

Philly Phacts

1.  Philadelphia is the fifth most populous city in the United States.  It’s kind of a big deal.

2.  The city of Philadelphia is its own county—the only instance of a city-county in Pennsylvania.

3.  The Greek translation of “Philadelphia” is literally “brotherly love”.

4.  It is one of the twelve “four sport cities”.

5.  As of December 31st, 2009, there were 829,873 registered Democrats living in the city, and 134,216 Republicans.

How I’m Doing!

I am really having a grand old time.  Living around people I know again, as well as working at a job whose main training tool is basically telling you to be really really nice to people, has started to make me come back around to caring about my fellow human again.  I love my new job.  I have really, really fallen in love with my mother’s cats, and I dare say they’ve started falling for me, too. Living with my mother is not only easy and tolerable, but downright great (and I don’t care how that sounds coming from a 34 year old; you can stuff your societal norms where the sun, it does not care to shine.  I am talking about your bunghole).  I have way too many fun and interesting things to do, all the time.  This new setup is redefining what I am interested in, and how I spend my time and money; where I’ll end up on that spectrum remains to be seen.  I will say that without a doubt, there will not be a year-end “Top Ten Movies” list of 2012.  I just cannot seem to muster the interest for movies right now (although there most definitely will still be a music list).  I finally got back to Central PA to visit friends and Dad.  It was a transcendant time.  Dad and I’s developing interests in local history are making for lovely, lively, emotional visits.  I only got to see a few friends on that visit but plenty more will be coming soon.  Paul is coming here to see the Phillies vs. Marlins with me next Wednesday, so that should rule.  I’m drinking a lot, a lot, a lot of coffee, and not just at work.  I got a new, finally very nice record player.  I’m kind of obsessed with it.  I’ve decided I like owls now and my sister keeps finding rad owl statues/ figures for me.  I cautioned her not to overdo it but with finds like these, I’m not sure overdoing it is possible.

Here’s a picture of my sister and I at the Franklin Institute

My 41st Favorite Song of All-Time

is:

“Wise Up” by Aimee Mann

One of my favorite movies of all time is “Magnolia”, and the extraordinarily talented Ms. Mann  is responsible for most of the very distinctive soundtrack for that movie.  In my early and mid 20s I watched the movie roughly once a week—that’s an average, meaning some weeks, I watched it daily.  It’s sights and sounds bring back immense amounts of memory material.  But nothing can compare to the scene in the film (which is not a musical) when the characters–who are all in an immense amount of turmoil and pain–quite unexpectedly sing the bitterly painful Mann song “Wise Up”.  That scene from the film is embedded below:

Philly Journal, 8/10

There are five cats here, but two of them are skittish, so I never see them.  Still.  Three cats.  Not bad.

It’s been so hot.  Hot all the time, everywhere.  I like the heat but nobody else does, so I just feel like a creep.

I haven’t been home to see anybody yet.  I swear I’m coming soon.

There are lots of airplanes in the sky all the time.  I know this comes from being so close to Philadelphia.  But still.  I’ve never quite grown up in this regard.  Airplanes are amazing.

My mom and I watch a lot of MSNBC, and Philadelphia Phillies games.

We also eat a lot of turkey burgers cooked outside on the grill.

And chicken burgers, too.

I’ve only gone to one movie since I moved here.  I don’t really miss the movie theater, despite having gone about once a week for the past 5 years.  There have been plenty of movies released that I have interest in, too.  And there have been times I could have gone.  I just…don’t feel like it.

I also haven’t been reading as much.  I’m not sure what I have been doing, but it seems a bit more fun or interesting than movies and books right now.  Who knows.  Things change.  Then they change back.  Then they change again.  Such is life.

What do I have an unquenchable desire to spend all my money on?  Philadelphia Phillies merchandise.  I didn’t see that one coming two years ago.

My nephews are becoming real people.  It’s cool, but also scary as hell.

New Jersey has 1% less sales tax than Pennsylvania.  I just found this out today.  Just sayin’.

Bryan Cranston’s performance as Walter White on the television show Breaking Bad is by far the most impressive, sustained creative effort I’ve ever borne witness to.  The universe in general has certainly taken notice of it.  The stars and planets probably know about it.

I sometimes eat lunch, on my breaks during work, at a Whole Foods.  I’d never been to a Whole Foods before.  That shit is good.

 

 

Seven Parts Blog, One Part Turducken

1.  My Diet Update

I guess it’s been awhile since I updated everyone on the status of my diet.  And I’m sure you are all just dying to know how it’s going.

When last I left you, I had just made it to 150 pounds—ten pounds shy of my goal of 140.  And, interestingly, that is exactly where I still am.

Now, I suppose in some undeniable ways, this is a setback.  But I quite honestly don’t feel like it is.  Out of the gates, I just went at an unbelievable pace.  It required a level of obsession and single-mindedness that even I could not sustain.  The diet was too extreme and the exercise regimen too punishing.  I’m glad I did it like that, so that I could get to this more comfortable point and then settle in here, but there’s just no way I could keep that up.

Please don’t misunderstand me:  I am still, like, all about fitness.  I still go to the gym five times a week, sometimes more, depending on if I get out on my bike much, which I often count as a workout if I go hard enough on the bike.  I’m still eating about a thousand times more healthy than I did from 2003-2011.  But I do allow myself a reasonable caloric intake now, and have had a couple stretches of all-out “off the wagon” eating (not binges, just ending up at the wrong restaurants two days in a row) which I quickly correct; my experience with substance addiction recovery comes in handy when I fall off the wagon—I’m already very familiar with my psyche’s tendency to reason with itself thusly:  well, you’ve already fucked up, you might as well just keep going.  Just like I eventually found out that this thinking with alcohol or cigarettes would end up taking me down the black hole, I know this thinking with food will make me fat again.  And while I may have this belly for a long time, to varying degrees, I swear, I am never going to be that fat again.  I’m not trying to get married, be in magazines, or pick up one-night stands, but I prefer to be able to tie my shoes without falling over and being out of breath.  Also, almost more than anything (perhaps unreasonably) I really hate the double chin.  So, any of you who might see me in the immediate future, you will not be seeing “skinny” Seth, but you will definitely not be seeing “fat” Seth.

In addition, another of the major reasons I’m not shedding the pounds as quickly is I have really thrown myself full-on into weight training.  Like, the kind of lifting designed to gain mass.  Stretching back to my teen years, this has always been the kind of “working out” I most enjoy.  I like how it makes me feel physically, I like how it makes me feel psychologically.  I like seeing the results, and I like planning out the strategy of the whole thing (which day you’ll do which muscle groups, how long to wait until you go back to a muscle group, what to eat after a workout, etc).  So, while the belly is still hanging around, if I were to take my shirt off and suck my belly in, you’d be all like, Dang, Seth, if you had any formal training or even the most remote inclination toward physical violence, you’d totally Steven Segal my ass right now, wouldn’t you?  Because above the belly, I am fucking stacked.

2.  Questions

Do you own stuff or does stuff own you?  Why are we afraid to ask for help?  What have you left behind?  How important is it that you are liked?  Are you openly admitting your addictions?  Is there a cause you would actually die for?  How much of our lives do we imagine?  How do you find calm in a hectic world?  What is beautiful about life?  Are you thanking the right people?  When was the last time you did something for the first time?  Who is the most loyal person you know?  What was the last thing fear stopped you from doing?  What are you a product of?  What makes you relevant?

3.  Oil Creek State Park

4.  Speak For Yourself

There’s a common punchline on Facebook, or on other platforms where people might be referring to Facebook and our generally lived-online lives:  folks claiming everybody is living much more boring lives than they pretend to live online.  There is always some meme floating around or someone cracking wise about “yeah, like their lives are as interesting as they say they are!”  Well speak for yourself, Buttafuoco.  The ones throwing that unoriginal nugget around are probably the bored ones, waiting to see their favorite television commercial.  Believe it or not—and you probably won’t—but (to my standards, at least) I actually live a more interesting life than I present online.  I worry about clogging people’s newsfeeds, I struggle with the idea that what I find interesting others might find boring, and most ironically, I think if I documented every thing I actually do, folks would probably start to suspect I’m lying about it. (you may claim I have more fun because I’ve moved somewhere that I feel like a tourist, but I’m confident if you went back to old Facebook posts of mine in Carlisle, you’d find the same guy).

But I don’t bring this up just to point out that I personally am really enjoying life (well, maybe that is why I brought it up; our own motives are sometimes hidden from us) but rather, to highlight the uncontrolled cynicism that online life breeds.  Granted, I’ve been known to throw around my own share of cynicism, but I try to reserve it for artists or cultural movements I deem unworthy of praise (a cultural guardianship that some of us actually take seriously, despite how it makes us look like pompous jackasses.  We’re taking one for the team).  The wide sweeping cynicism that life in general sucks and is boring and wherever you happen to live, well, there’s just nothing to do there, so hopefully everyone else is just as damned bored as I am…well, I just kinda hate that kind of cynicism.  There’s nothing I can do about it.  I just wanted to point out that it sucks.  (is it ironic to say cynicism sucks?)

5.  wtf

Sports history seems to have largely forgotten Mike Schmidt.  Wtf?

6.  August, a Wood Path

This is “August, a Wood Path” by Sanford Robinson Gifford:

7.  Sometimes When We Touch, the Honesty’s Too Much

You may have noticed, for good or ill, a slightly more…honest…tone to my blog lately (and you will notice even more of it in The Rub and Tug Capital of the World, a little booky-wook you are about to get in the mail from me, if you haven’t got it yet).  I do apologize if this more straightforward approach has stepped on anyone’s toes or generally made me seem like an asshole.  Apart from the fact that I actually am an asshole, I also had gotten bored and a little frustrated trying to censor everything I wanted to say by first thinking of everyone who might be reading it and trying to figure out if they might think I am talking about them or calling their lifestyle or hobbies or commercial-watching into question.  It is way too hard to think about all of those things and still write anything interesting.  And I humbly think I have some unique and important things to say, most of which I always feel compelled to not say.  Well, I’m just gonna start saying it.  Allow me to take this little moment to say, I don’t ever write about people I know in veiled references.  If I’m bitching about “people”, well, that’s really what I’m talking about:  people in general.  If there’s something you do that I just can’t stand, you either already know I can’t stand it, or it’s something I can’t stand about hundreds of people, so I am most assuredly not writing about you.  OK.  Disclaimer over.

8.  I Drink Your Milkshake

Dark Days

Today is my ninth sobriety anniversary.  Rather than write some dramatic celebratory entry (a quick perusal of the Notes reveals surprisingly that I haven’t done this for a few years, but it was a big tradition for me back on the MySpace blog, so it feels like I still do it every year), I thought I’d share with you a little bit of my own private tradition.  I have two basic traditions on the anniversary:  1: eat a meal with my dad at the Carlisle restaurant The Hamilton, which, unfortunately, is postponed while I’m living in Erie, 2: I watch the documentary “Dark Days“.

“Dark Days” is a documentary by filmmaker Marc Singer.  Singer has only made this one film, but it’s impact is so grand, he’s still a rather sizeable celebrity to those of us who follow the genre.  The film follows a group of homeless addicts who live in abandoned subway tunnels underneath New York City.

Now, granted, I am an alcoholic from suburban Pennsylvania who, essentially, got scared straight when I almost had to spend one night in a homeless shelter, but the people in this movie, and the life it shows, have always seemed eerily close to my heart; you can argue that I have been nowhere near these people, but I know different:  I am these people, even now.  I narrowly escaped it and watching things like “Dark Days” is what I need to do to remind myself, whether it is ten years sober or 30, that I have been at and over the same precipice, and that every day is a miraculous blessing.

I implore you to explore the clips of the film I’ve embedded below.  Not only is it an amazing story that is prime viewing for folks in recovery, it is a masterwork of the documentary form.  One must consider what Singer had to go through to make his film (after spending tons of time becoming part of the underground community and convincing them to let him film them, he then actually trained many of them to operate the filming equipment with him.  A major hurdle was, of course, getting the stuff down there.  Once the movie made a profit, Marc successfully used the money to get most of the addicts out of the ground and on to their feet.  Some of them are successfully sober mini-celebrities, to this day).

The first clip is the first ten minutes of the film.  To me, just an absolute film-making marvel.  I’ve included some random clips after that.  If there’s a list of things that “keep my life saved”, then “Dark Days” is definitely on it.

The Adventures of Kiteman

Recently, when I was making the blog entry “Remember Me as a Time of Day“, I was going through old home movies, trying to figure out which ones to use for the blog entry.  I was especially taken by a movie made by myself and two of my best friends from high school, Brock and Jeremy (both of whom, despite the miracle nature of the internet, I have no contact with) called “The Adventures of Kiteman”.  It is horribly made (we only had an old VHS camcorder and our only method of editing was rewinding the tape and beginning filming where we wanted the cut to be, resulting in some pretty unintentional hilarity), but despite it’s enormous flaws (and the fact that it’s only a third completed) I find some moments of true genius in it.  So I figured I’d upload it all to the internet.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a convenient way to digitize the VHS, so what you have here is the tape filmed off a tube television onto my digitial camera (I was even a tad too lazy to hook my VCR up to my flat screen).  “Kiteman”s run time is around 18 minutes, and YouTube’s time limit is 15 minutes, so I had to split the movie into two parts.

The names on the opening credits are clearly not our names, they are our “stage names”.  Also, caution to those offended by strong language.  PSS, thanks to both my parents for turning in star performances here!

 

My 79th Favorite Song of All-Time

“Dream is Collapsing” by Hans Zimmer

That’s right.  Hans Zimmer composes classical music for Hollywood movies, otherwise known as the film’s “score”, and this particular song is the centerpiece of the amazing movie “Inception”.  Now, I’ve been a “movie buff” for a long time, and have often been wowed by scores, but Zimmer’s “Inception” score was the first one that followed me over into my music-listening life.  His score made me think about the ways all music is connected: how rock and roll is, essentially, the same thing as Mozart.  Listen to “Dream is Collapsing” and tell me you don’t have some similar thoughts:

Manic Panic

I am currently in the midst of a months-long creative and intellectual mania.  I often say I don’t have enough time in a day, but it has certainly never been more true than it is now.

I attribute this primarily to getting healthy and exercising; it definitely kickstarted an increase in energy, and a change in mood to the extreme end of “good”, and energy plus super good mood=extreme mania, and it’s lasting a long time.  Which is good—damn good—but my lack of ability to do every single thing I want to is getting a little annoying.  Let me describe a little better what the mania entails:

First and foremost, I want to do stuff constantly.  Like, outside of the house stuff.  It being winter, there are a limited amount of things to do, but I have lists of things I want to do when I have time, like “take pictures on Raspberry Street” or “tour the Watson-Curtze Mansion“, etc etc.  When I do have time for activities such as this, it’s damn difficult deciding what to do.

Secondly, I have an enormous list of creative and artistic projects that I want to start, work on, or complete, and the list of projects itself has become a project.  When I’m at work or out and about, I find myself typing ideas into my cell phone’s “notepad” for me to add to the project list when I get home.  Hell, my list of potential blog entries alone is staggering.  This aspect of the mania is the most frustrating, as I am getting more and more interesting and ambitious ideas and I simply don’t even have the time to start on most of them.

The mania is also driving up my appetite for media/ information consumption, even as the mania means I have less time to partake of that particular fountain.  For many years now, most of you know, rather than watch much television, I’ve (through Netflix) watched, on average, one new movie a day.  Even as my appetite for film continues to grow, my attention to other projects and interests is decreasing my time for them.  And the mania has only increased my desire to read; I currently could probably read all day for four straight days and not get sick of it.  Information, information, information, my mind screams at me.  I currently have very little desire to read fiction (although, Mom, I really DO want to read that Stephen King book you sent me, and probably will start it in about 2 weeks).  I read the Erie newspaper every day, and often stop somewhere for a USA Today, New York Times, or Wall Street Journal, depending on what’s happening in the world or if I heard about an article or feature in one of them from one of the websites I simply can’t stop reading thoroughly every day (Slate.  Huffington Post.  Oh, and Hacking Netflix and Deadline).  And my magazine consumption, which I had finally whittled down in recent years, has skyrocketed during the mania.  I can’t seem to read enough science writing.  I currently read all of the “big three” science mags (Popular Science, Discover, and Scientific American;  I’ve been a big Discover supporter for years but right now it’s just not enough), and it seems my hankering for history now bleeds over into magazines.  America’s Civil War has been a mainstay on my bedside table recently, as have some oddballs such as Archaeology and The Saturday Evening Post.  And these are all in addition to the standard entertainment, arts, news, and cultural magazines you’d expect me to be reading.  Oh, and yes, I read books, too!

I have also taken quite a shine lately to just listening to music.  I have found that, in most of my adult life, I have rarely simply sat down, doing nothing else, and listened to music intently.  And now I have started doing it and it is changing my life.  But where is the time???

Oh, and I have REALLY started to enjoy just puttering around my apartment, re-arranging things, finding new homes for this or that, hanging the artwork in new arrays, paging through my old books, putting old photos in little frames, etc etc.

In short, I literally do not have enough time in a day right now.  I already start out with a deficit, working 50-60 hours a week.  Then, remember, I’m spending between 8 and 12 hours a week in the gym, so there is potentially almost 80 hours unavailable a week.  And then there’s sleep, at some point, and getting on the internet.  I have essentially zero downtime.  Please do not misunderstand me: I am loving this.  I am in a constant good mood, and never even remotely close to being bored or sad.  But damn.  Who knew there could be so much to do (without, really, doing anything)?  Also, this is a way of explaining to some of you how and why I might occasionally sound out of my mind, especially after a day that may have been devoted to intense, marathon bouts of reading, followed by writing or otherwise creating something incredibly personal and emotive, followed by going to a hockey game or something, and then back home to shower in the dark while The National plays on my stereo.  It’s a whole lot of fun, but sometimes can make me a little crazy.

I anticipate things leveling off as my body continues to adjust to being some degree of healthy.  But I just had to put it out there how wild and fun and jam-packed my life is at this point, even if it might not sound particularly fun to a lot of you, it is for me.  And almost everything I’m doing or want to do is free or relatively cheap (not to mention my food budget being more than halved in recent months) so I’m actually saving a lot of money recently (concert-going has all but stopped, and there’s much less time to go to the movies now).  How one starts saving money by doing more stuff is some sort of mystery!

Hey, have an awesome day!

My Friend Paul

My homeslice Paul and I just had a public tiff on my blog.  Which sucks, because there aren’t many people in this life more important to me than Paul is, so I thought maybe I’d write a blog about our friendship.  Although it should be noted that we do have a nice history of being little bitches to each other and arguing about stupid shit, but that was mostly over a decade ago, while we were cooking together at the same restaurant, probably sleep-deprived and hung-over, but still.  We fight.

I’m sure I knew who Paul was before he knew who I was.  Why?  Because he played football for my high school.  He was a year ahead of me, and we weren’t within light years of each other’s social groups.  I wasn’t extremely aware of him, but I was aware of him.  Years later, I’d frequently have dreams that I’d been transported back to high school (with all of my intervening memories and experiences intact) and I’d seek out Paul, who, when I found him, had also been transported with his memory intact.  And so there we were, in high school, finally knowing each other.  They were weird dreams.

In the months following high school, I became a regular at the restaurant Paul worked at.  I frequented it late at night with my friend Jeremy and his girlfriend Cory (who I would later coup d-etat away from him); Jeremy had known Paul in high school, so Paul would come visit our table.  I remember being suspicious, because Jeremy had been the star of the soccer team, and here was this Paul guy, also an athlete.  And Cory, although she didn’t attend our high school, was the captain of her cheerleading squad.  I suspected I might soon find myself on the outside.  I know you’ve all seen pictures of me in wrestling or baseball uniforms, but I assure you, I was no athlete.

Fate is a fickle broad.  Before I knew what was happening, suddenly, I worked at that restaurant, too, and before long, I was a cook there, too, and before long, I was working overnights in the kitchen with Paul, too.  And (long story short here) we ended up going to the same college and being roommates and having the same group of college friends.  Paul and I had quite rapidly become insperable, the kind of friends that when you show up somewhere alone, people always ask you where the other one is;  although how that sort of thing happens is beyond me.  All these years later, it just seems natural that Paul and I are hetero-lifemates, but back then, it didn’t seem so simple.  Paul and I are quite different men (as good friends often are).  We share some simliar interests, but actually have more differences than similarities.  And not just the surface items like, he’s into sports and I’m not, or I’m into poetry and he’s not, as these differences are what can make a friendship keep ticking over the years (the male friends I do have whose interests most align with mine, I mostly don’t care for all that much, and I just keep them around because I might need them some day…for what, I have no idea).  But Paul and I’s differences seemed a bit deeper than that to me.  Mostly, he was a good soul and I was a bad one.

Now, he’ll probably want to argue with that, and he certainly could make a case for it.  After all, we were damn young, and drunk and tired pretty much ceaselessly, and in college, and—dare I say it—completely captivating to the opposite gender.  Neither of us were perfect young men.  But in Paul, one could see the seed of a quality adult, and a man who could discern right from wrong (even if he still sometimes chose to ignore that distinction), and how to be honest, and forthright, and helpful.

I, on the other hand, was a total shit.  It was probably obvious fairly early on that, while a whole bunch of us were partying constantly, I was the only one who couldn’t have stopped if I tried.  And no matter what you believe about how much I am to blame for that addiction, the fact is that being a drunk is not often accompanied by positive personality traits.  All those positive traits I listed above for Paul, think of their opposites, and apply them to the me of back then.

But somehow, we fit together.  We picked up some company on the way (“Nature Boy” Chris Davey, Burke “Testudo” Bowen, Heidi “Heidi” Dagen, “Mello” Cory Kelso, “Sultry” Joel Holtry, and quite a few others) and within a year of meeting Paul, I suddenly had a brand new group of friends and a new lifestyle, the old high school chums all-but forgotten.  And this was just in time, of course, for my descent into serious alcoholic oblivion.

There are lots of people to thank for how they handled my alcoholism and for what they did to help me, but as far as my friends go, nobody can really get more credit than Paul, a fact I’ve never really told him (fuck!  I’m crying now!).  Paul never made me feel like I was a bad person because I was unable to stop drinking.  He always seemed to understand that it was like any other addiction; for instance, his own reliance on cigarettes.  Now, he never said that to me, but his actions and the way he treated me suggest he thought that way.  He never told me I needed to stop, or slow down (that might sound reckless to you, but it’s my philosophy that “intevention” methodologies are counteractive.  Making somebody feel like shit never chased an addiction out of their skin, a philosophy my parents also seemed to share, which is another big reason I think I’m alive today);  when I would, on rare occasions, talk to him about my addiction and my fear relating to it (being in the grip of an addiction to a mind-altering substance is absolutely terrifying), he was understanding and helpful, never demeaning or judgmental, but forthright and honest in ways that showed a maturity and understanding that I’m not sure I could master even now, at age 34.

I still remember the day I decided—firmly, absolutely—that I could get sober, and that I would go to rehab and attempt to live the rest of my life and not die ASAP. I was at the apartment of Paul and his girlfriend at the time, Shelley.  I was drinking, but I wasn’t sad, I was just talking to them about being addicted, and how much it sucked.  I’ll never be sure which one of them said it first, but someone said, “Why don’t you just go to rehab?”, and they said it so…normally.  Like it was just something you could do, if you wanted.  Now, obviously the time was right, and there were plenty of other factors and people that contributed to that moment in time, but I said, “OK.  I’m going to!”  And I got the phone book and called a rehab and reserved a bed, that very afternoon, and then called my mom and dad (by then, that was two seperate phone calls) and told them “I’m going to rehab“.  It would be close to a year by the time I celebrated my final sobriety date of April 3rd, but that afternoon in Paul’s apartment stands out as the beginning of the beginning.  And he’s been so beautifully understanding and intuitive in regards to my sobriety.  He was my first friend to order an alcoholic beverage when out to dinner with me;  it was time, I was OK with it, and he just knew.  He knew that at that point I’d prefer him to do what he’d normally do.  It was more important to me that I not feel like the freak.  He was the first friend of mine who seemed to understand that I hadn’t really changed; sure, I had always been known as the guy who drinks all the time, but the core me was the same and now more me than before; the diseased filter had simply been removed.  Many friends felt the need to treat me, for a few years, like a kid who had just barely recovered from Leukemia.  Paul seemed to know that was unnecessary, and just kept treating me like the same guy from before, only without a drink in my hand.

I would love (really, I would) to just keep writing and writing and tell tons of little stories from our lives together.  Paul and I have lots of great stories.  But maybe I’ll just hit some highlights (and maybe there will be more blogs like this in the future…I feel as though I could write a book.  Tonight.  In two hours.  But anyway, the highlights):

—Paul and I share an intense love for two bands: Seven Mary Three and Hey Rosetta!  And these loves mark two distinct eras in our lives: college (7m3) and now (HR).  In an intereting twist, the first TWO times I saw both these bands, it was Paul and I together (along with others).  And these were amazing experiences that have shaped my idea of how concert-going should feel: like you are touching the hand of god.  It rarely is that good, but it is an ideal to strive for.  In many other ways, Paul and I’s musical tastes diverge, but they align where it counts. (hey Paul…the trip to see 7m3 in York…remember D’Marco Farr?  And please always remember, I called the opener in DC (“Peel”), and also, remember that fancy restaurant you picked for us to eat at in Ithaca, NY, the night we saw Hey Rosetta!?  That night was the beginning of my ongoing love affair with the Americano.  But I now drink them iced.)

–The Chair of Good and Evil.  Paul and I found a horrid, ratty, falling-apart recliner by a dumpster when we lived in college.  For reasons unbeknownst to us, we took it into our dorm room.  It really was a horrible chair.  It’s existence to us was more of a joke than anything else.  We wrote all over it in magic marker.  Quotes from movies, things we said all the time, lines from 7m3 songs (“A little motivation goes a long way down, down, down.”)  I somehow got the chair to my dad’s house for a year or two after college, but I’m sure it’s long gone by now.

–Remember that dorm room I mentioned? Yeah, we got kicked out of it.

–“Circus Midgets Ate My Balls”.  That’s all I’m saying about that.

–Movies we watched dozens or even hundreds of times together, even if they weren’t that good:  “Friday”, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, “The Borrowers“, “Mallrats”.

–The first time I visted Paul after I got sober and moved to New Jersey, we played golf and I beat him.  Which is the only time I can remember beating him at anything other than MarioKart.  So I bring it up here again, even 8 years later.  The gloating continues.

–I had the disctinct pleasure of giving the toast at Paul’s wedding to his fantastic wife, Liz.  I have never felt more honored in my life, and that honor continues to this day.

–Paul is a big Baltimore Orioles fan, so for his “bachelor party”, fellow Paul bud “Mello” Cory Kelso and I took him to an Orioles game, making the odd fact true: the last major league baseball game I attended was a Baltimore Orioles game.

–Mr. Turnpike, Nature Boy, and the Wise Guy (Man) in the Back Seat

–Ham on Both Ends

–Aint got me on tape.

I love you, Paul.  You continue to be the model for the type of man I want to be.  Thank you for being part of my life (and helping to save it).

L-R, Paul, Me, Davey (code names: Mr. Turnpike, Wise Guy in the Back Seat, Nature Boy)

Davey, me, and Paul, the first time we ever saw Hey Rosetta!, in Ithaca, NY.

Picture of Paul on the day I beat him at golf. He sucked that day.