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Fall Work, Ashcan, 5k, and Sandra Bland

1.

Winter is coming and I hate winter.  But I am coming around a little more to the idea of liking fall.  For most of my life, I’ve been staunchly against fall, citing the fact that it is a sad harbinger of winter, and the end of summer, and the season where everything dies.  But the past few years I’ve started to feel I’ve just been repeating what I’ve always said, instead of being honest about my changing views.  Fall is kind of nice.  I like wearing longer pants and hoodies.  I like crunchy yellow leaves.  So yeah, another example of allowing myself to evolve here.  Granted not on any sort of major topic, but I wanted to make it public: sure, I like fall.

2.

Work is going terrific!!! I am back to working in Harrisburg and no longer doing my crazy commute.  I work (approximately) 8am-4pm Monday-Friday.  I’m having a blast!  I’ll have a more detailed password-protected blog about it within the next week, but I wanted to give that quick update.

3.

My favorite painting of all time is John Sloan’s “Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street”.  The reasons are many.  First, Sloan is my favorite painter overall: his pioneering “ashcan” style–which denotes his muted color pallet, a brush technique that was representational but bordered on abstract, and choice of subject matter–speaks to me and to my view of the world.  This painting in particular (which I’ve included below) hits me on a gut level.  The titular streets are in the “tenderloin” district of New York City, which is another way of saying the poor or “slum” area.  In this work, Sloan chooses to show us this area in broad daylight at a busy intersection.  We are looking at a corner business that is perhaps of some disrepute–a brothel or perhaps a burlesque theater?  There are some finely dressed folks around, but they are not the same kind you’d find down by Central Park.  The focus of the scene is on a woman in distress; she is in nightclothes and carries a pail, is obviously upset.  Most scholars of this painting suggest this woman is drunk and is emotional.  The passersby–especially the two finely-clad young women nearby who could not be more different than the drunk woman–look on with judgement and perhaps even amusement, but no one in the scene seems to have empathy or concern for this woman.

There is a lot more that could be discussed about the painting.  Sloan did not waste a centimeter of the canvas (a quick for instance–Sloan’s decision to place the drunk woman at the bottom of the canvas, rather than center her, leaving him space to paint lots of sky, whereas he could have provided more surrounding context of the city instead; an interesting topic of discussion, that one).

 

4.

I have made some mention on Facebook that I have begun running, and even signed up for my first 5k (this coming Saturday)! I’m super excited but also currently undergoing a substantial amount of worry as, just 3 days ago I did my longest outdoor run yet and have had some very minor signs of some stress fractures in my shins the past few nights.  Now, these symptoms are very minor and it is 100% possible I am inventing them.  Any way you slice it, I am running the 5K this Saturday and will keep training this week on elliptical machines to avoid high impact work, and should probably know after the 5k (because my body will tell me) if I have to take a break from running and maybe evaluate my running style, etc, moving forward.  But I want to be a runner super bad so even if I have to take a significant break and make some adjustments, I’m on it.  On a side note, the running has really been a key factor in helping me get close to my goal weight: before the weekend I was 144 (goal is 140)…the weekend saw a lot of eating so I’ll know where I’m at when the dust clears on Tuesday :)

5.

Police kill innocent black people with an alarming frequency.  You don’t have to eat animals or their secretions in this day and age.  America should be a country that welcomes immigrants.  Respect women’s reproductive rights and the rights of their bodies.  Resist any and all attempts to make our culture white, male-oriented–including the language you use.  Climate change is real. There is no need to wear wool or leather in this day and age.  Do whatever you want when The Star-Spangled Banner is playing, including eating food, walking to the bathroom, keeping your hat on (I mean really) or sitting or kneeling.  Fund art programs, NPR, Meals on Wheels, and Planned Parenthood.  Oh, and in Major League Baseball, the designated hitter rule continues to be an absolute scourge.

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First Date

I don’t remember the first time I saw Karla.  It would make a better story if I could, but I don’t.  I was 16 or 17 and working at McDonalds.  It was a lousy job but looking back I can see I loved it there.  I loved my co-workers.  There was a lot of laughing.  One day Karla got a job there.  I don’t remember the first time I saw her but there’s little doubt I took notice.

Very shortly after she started working there, I had somehow finagled a date with her. I have no idea how the date got set up–this is 22 years ago, so we’re basically talking about a different life.  I don’t remember narrative details but I remember her.  I remember being mesmerized by her while I worked.  She was demure, beautiful–but it was more than that.  There was something different in the way she carried herself; everything about her movements, facial expressions, even her tone of voice suggested a deep inner life, as though her existence itself might convey an intense meaning, if it could only be unlocked.  Even as a sixteen year old boy, these mysteries were magnetic.

We went on a date.  I was terribly excited and nervous.  I had, in fact, just stopped working at the McDonalds when our date happened, and had begun working as a dishwasher at Eat ‘n Park.  We decided to go to Eat ‘n Park for dinner.  I assume we had more date planned for afterward, but again–too much time has passed for me to remember.

As soon as we walked in the Eat ‘n Park lobby, things went awry.  My boss saw me and asked why I wasn’t at work!  I had been scheduled to work and not known it, somehow.  Quite distressed, Karla and I had to cut our date short before it had even started.  I felt like a total bozo.  She left and I went to the back to start washing dishes, only to discover my manager had been wrong and I wasn’t scheduled to work!  Alas–this was 1996 or 1997–none of us had cell phones or Facebook or anything.  She was just…gone.

I don’t know what happened after that, but we didn’t try again.  We had one date and we never even ordered dinner.  Over the next twenty years, I would, of course, live a full life; I would have a list of “ones that got away”.  But even after just that one short date, Karla’s name and face stayed with me and surfaced often.  I wondered about her.  What had I missed out on?  What churned below her stoic surface?  What cosmic secrets did she hold tight to?  Few people that I have encountered in my life seemed so vested with weighty things.

At some point, social media started happening.  It took me awhile to find her on Myspace; her last name had changed and I didn’t know it.  I finally did find her, but then, as now, she has never been very active on social media, and so we didn’t communicate much.  And of course that name change meant she was unavailable, besides.

It was probably for the best, because I wasn’t ready for her yet, not then, but after many more years passed and Facebook made everyone much more closely connected and she was getting ready to change her name back…I sent a message to her that was very well-timed.  I didn’t even know that I was ready for her, and everything she brought with her, but I was.  After seeing each other twice, we both knew.  We just…knew.

Now I get to keep unlocking the secrets of the universe with this woman for the rest of my life.  It’s easy to get sad by our missed “first date”, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me–it made me wait twenty more years, until I was really ready.

Origin Story, or: Where I Started

1.

I hunched inside my filthy, smoke-laden 1983 Ford Escort in the parking lot of the corporate office. It had been a three hour drive in the early morning, from my home in Central Pennsylvania to where I was now in Pittsburgh. I had worked for the company for eight years, but this was the first time I was seeing the home office. Although my excitement and nervousness was palpable, I couldn’t deny some disappointment with the plainness of the building. It wasn’t in bustling downtown Pittsburgh like I expected, but in some suburban shopping village, and although it was not a small building, its common brick exterior and clean design was reminiscent more of an upscale middle school than what I had been expecting. But nonetheless, here I was nervous. I was preparing finally for an interview to get into management. I had been a dishwasher and then a cook while I struggled and slouched through my early twenties, and now that I had begun to straighten myself out, my boss was taking notice, and suggested I become an actual manager. It seemed ludicrous to me at first, the idea that people would let me be in charge of something. But more and more, the idea took hold within me. I had, after all, basically been running the kitchen in that restaurant for years. The more that my bosses told me I had a bright future with the company, the more comfortable I became with the idea that I was a leader, that I was already a leader. I didn’t know anything about doing it officially, but it did start to seem like a natural idea. I was nervous as heck though. I had no idea how to answer questions for a job that entailed real-world grownup things. And now that I had been thinking about it so long, it became something I wanted very much, so I did not know what I would do if I just bombed the whole thing. My manager had done the best he could to prepare me, but this was all uncharted territory for me. I was wearing a clip-on tie that I had stolen from my father’s closet. And pants that I had gotten from JCPenney just for the occasion. I swung open the Escort’s door, and, putting on a fake face of bravery and confidence as much as I possibly could muster, I walked toward the bland brick building. Once I swung open the big glass doors and walked inside, I ceased being unimpressed.

2.

I’m in high school.  I think I’m probably 17.  Maybe I’m 16.  Who can remember details like that all these years later?  Details like how old you were.  Those kinds of details or statistics rarely matter.  Anyway I was a kid still, a teenager, you know?  I don’t remember anything about the evening that lead up to this night I’m telling you about.  I know I was with three of my friends–or more accurately, two of my friends and one of their girlfriends.  I began the evening in the backseat of one of the friends’ cars.  We were going somewhere to drink, to get drunk.  But this was a special night, because I had never drank before, or at least, I had never been drunk.  Sure, I’d had a few glasses of watered-down wine at some family wedding when I was a tyke, but I’d never felt any effects.  My friends and I had never snuck or stolen any kind of alcohol yet. Tonight was our first.  One of my friends–the one with the car and the girlfriend–knew a grown man named something like Darius who lived in Carlisle, which was the bigger town closest to our smaller town. I have no idea how he knew this man.  We arrived at his house sometime after sundown.  I didn’t know Carlisle very well then but later I would end up having my first apartment by myself very close to this Darius’ place.  Life is cuckoo like that, no?  So I settle into a deep, plush chair in this guy’s apartment–he has a girlfriend there, too, and they’re so much older than us I assume they’re married.  Darius has procured us all “forties”, or malt liquor that comes in 40 oz bottles.  I crack open the cap with a high level of anticipation.  It tastes horrible.  Wretched.  Very, very hard to drink the whole thing.  But I want it.  I want the buzz, the feeling, whatever it is–I’ve seen other people have it and I want it.  We all sit there nursing our 40s for awhile–I can’t tell you how long, who can remember those details?–and it gets a little easier to get it down as the night goes on.  I feel slightly light-headed but nothing to write home about.  I was disappointed to slowly learn throughout the evening that there was no more alcohol, just one 40 for each of us.  At some point I said to Darius (or whatever his name was), “Hey, I’ll give you a few buck to go get me just one beer.”  Everyone laughed, because you can’t go buy just one beer to-go, but I didn’t know, I didn’t know.  We left then shortly thereafter and by the time I got home, even my light-headedness was gone.  I knew, as I lay there in my bed, that I was gonna chase that feeling, that I was gonna find it.

3.

It’s 5 AM. It is still very dark outside, and it’s cold. I’m taking my very inexpensive bicycle out of the back of my car. I’m in Presque Isle State Park, in Erie, Pennsylvania, way up in the upper left-hand corner of the state. Presque Isle is a forested peninsula that juts out into Lake Erie–Pennsylvania’s northernmost point and only seven miles from (still not-visible) Canada.  It’s about seven years since I started my management career, about 16 years since I took my first drink in that cushy chair with Darius, and about eight years since I had my last drink. I am putting a bicycle on a road that goes the length of Presque Isle, tracing the peninsula’s outer edge. I had set my alarm for 4:30. I wanted to be the very first person out on the peninsula this morning. It was awfully fun loading my car up in what seemed like the middle of the night, driving the 15 minutes through the city out to the lake, but when I got to the entrance to the park, there was a car already there waiting. But shortly after the gates opened, the car went a different direction, so I still felt like I had the entire peninsula all to myself. The crooning of the insects, the chirping of the birds, seems all for me. This solitary performance of nature is just another extension of my current life, the manner in which I am completely alone. Five hours from all my family and friends, when even a trip to the local Walmart poses zero possibility of running into anyone I know, it’s easy to begin to think that the birds and insects sing only for you. As I hoist myself onto my bike, I smile more broadly that I have in years. I recently discovered the joy of bicycling, and having this peninsula cutting into Lake Erie all to myself on this chilly but slowly brightening, slowly warming morning, somehow becomes the most delicious moment I could have possibly imagined for myself. As I pedal faster and faster, following the road that faces the outer limits of the peninsula, that happiness simply grows and grows. How did I come to live this life? How did I come to be so lucky? The birds and insects above increase in volume, as the lake reveals itself on my right, at this time of morning still a black mirror stretching out farther than I ever would’ve imagined, more vast than I want to ponder.

4.

I haven’t experienced as much death in my life as many folks have, but I have seen more than a few people I knew and loved shuffle off.  What a strange thing, too, when people die, right?  Suddenly they’re just not there anymore, like a phantom limb, or a dream you can’t shake.  What always rattles me most is how often the person truly fades from our lives.  Sure, we mourn them, we miss them, we still love them.  But usually we get rid of their stuff right away, clear out everything they spent their whole lives acquiring.  We loved them but not their stuff.  Then shortly after they die we consider it poor form to talk about them too much; why dwell on the past?  It might be considered obsessive to ask too many questions about what their life meant, what it meant to you or the universe, and what they might be experiencing now.  When I used to think about my death a lot–when I was sad, which isn’t now–I would imagine my loved ones saving the books and movies from my shelves, saying Oh Seth loved these, I will read them all as a tribute!  But I know now they won’t, and even that they shouldn’t.  I’ll just be gone, and this mountain I spent my whole journey climbing, crafting myself carefully out of nothing, will just fade, fade, fade.

5.

The boy had me in a headlock.  I’d never been in a headlock before—at least, not one that was meant to hurt—and so I was confused.  There’s not much worse than being confused, hurt, and restrained all at the same time.  Especially when you’re seven years old.

Really, I should have seen it coming.  Even though I was only seven and had never been in a fight in my life, I knew that the boy was bad news, and I had seen him in the church yard before I went in there myself.  And he’d been giving me awful, evil kid-signals for months.  I should have seen it coming.  But what do you want from me?  I was seven.

I walked into the church yard with a tennis ball and a baseball mitt, planning to throw my ball against the big wall on the south end of the church and catch the bounces; to this day, one of my favorite things to do.  But I saw him. The neighborhood’s resident bad kid.  The badass. His family lived in that gross house with all the trash in the back yard, and he never seemed clean; always had a brownish undercurrent to his skin, as if he’d just survived a house fire.  And the neighborhood was filled with the stories of the kids he’d beat up, spit on, ran his bike into.  I’d never been in his class at school but I’d seen him on the playground, and it seemed he lived up to his reputation.  But I must have assumed, for whatever reason, that I would somehow be safe from him.

And there he was, in the church yard on an otherwise abandoned afternoon.  Who knows what he was doing?  Probably breaking branches off of trees, throwing rocks into bushes.  Something pointless that seemed mildly primitive.  I chose to ignore him and walked around the church’s large beige utility shed toward the wall where I’d throw my ball.

(most of my life, this day at the church yard stood as my definition of terror.  Powerlessness.  Rigid cold fear.  What death might be like)

So I threw my ball.  Plunk, plop.  Plunk, plop.  Plunk, plop.  A joy in the mindlessness, in the solid feeling of the ball entering the glove’s sweet spot, in the lively reaction of tennis ball meeting brick wall.  And the emptiness of the church yard, the silence, the perfect echoes.  No cars, no distant sounds of grown-ups on telephone calls, just me, the ball, the mitt, and the echoes.

And then the boy was beside me.  I managed a weak “Hi” but I could see this wasn’t friendly.  The hairs on my neck stood up, my heart dropped to my knees.  He ran at me, but neither a fight nor a flight instinct kicked in.  I did not fully understand this development.  The moment before he struck me (with what the kids back then called a ‘clothesline’) I tried to speak, to say something, to reason him out of this, but it was too late, and I flew to the ground as though I’d been pulled by stage wires.

I stood up, not yet crying.  Bewildered and disoriented, trying to focus my vision,  trying to ask him why he did that.  I mean, I was just playing with my ball.  Had he mistaken me for someone else who had wronged him in the past?  Was he rabid, like the dogs my parents told me about?  Was he—

—and then I was hit again, with another clothesline, and was knocked down even harder than the first time.  I hadn’t even seen him coming, I simply felt the hit and went down without any warning.  But now I had wizened up just a little bit.  Still having no idea why the attack was occurring, I had at least figured out that it was occurring, and I got up immediately and began running.  I did not run toward home, as it was too far away and he would catch me for sure.  Instead I ran toward the swings and the slide.  Kids seem to figure out pretty early that playground slides are an excellent tactical position; once you’ve climbed the stairs of the slide and are safely perched atop it, others trying to get at you will have a tough time; if they try to come up the stairs, you can just slide down, then as they are coming down, you can go back up.  This is not a foolproof system, but it does buy time, and so it was to the slide that I presently ran.  And I made it to the landing at the top, swiveled around, scanning for the boy.  Sure enough, there he was, ten yards away, in front of the slide itself, as though I might be foolish enough of a child to just see a slide and go down it; as though I would have some Pavlovian play response.  He stood there grinning like the Devil himself, like he wanted to kill me.  And at that moment I believed he would.

As far as I knew, I was not just in some childhood tale of woe.  I was in a fight for my life, and I knew nothing about fighting.  I was a tiny kid by any standard.  Short, skinny.  I was also quiet, shy, a little withdrawn.  Nothing had prepared me for a moment like this.  I knew to go to the slide by watching other boys fight during recess.  It’s been largely my experience that contrary to what is portrayed in films and television, boys typically avoid beating up small boys.  It does little to advance their hierarchical positions and may even make them seem weak.  Up until this day in the church yard, I’d been left alone.

I held my ground on the slide fairly well.  He came up a few times, I escaped down the slide, and then I made it back up again after he came down after me.  A few times, as he lurked below, simply watching me atop the slide, I called down to him, asking him why he was doing this.  I imagine it must have sounded pathetic, pleading, like a man begging his executioner for his life when he knows he’s doomed.  I pleaded my innocence and the senselessness of what he was doing.  I did cry.  He was sinister.  Truly sinister.

After an interminable amount of time, he did a perplexing thing.  He sat on one of the swings that was directly beside the slide, and he started swinging.  I was, however, only perplexed for a short time.  I saw the ruse.  I would either think he was done with the attack and try to leave, whenupon he would murder me, or I’d actually go sit on the other swing to swing with him, whenupon he’d murder me.  I decided I could do neither, and so I simply continued to stand atop the slide, watching him swing.  It felt like days passed.  I wasn’t sure if maybe I could actually die atop the slide merely from the passage of time.  It seemed I probably could.  But leaving the safety of the slide also equaled death.  My young mind swam.

I finally made a run for it.  I wooshed down the slide steps, through the lawn of the playground area, onto the newly built, woodsmelling porch of the Newville Area Senior Center (an old house that stood and still stands on the church property), around the side of the Senior Center and into the bush-lined, circular sidewalk toward Big Spring Avenue.  Only about thirty more feet of church yard to go!  I could see Big Spring Avenue, and the houses that lined the street!  Civilization, and grown-ups, and policemen inhabited that street.  Certainly I couldn’t be killed within sight of the street!

But then he hit me from behind.  I catapulted through the bushes, off the Senior Center’s sidewalk, and out of sight of the street.  And then he was upon me.

He had me in a headlock.  I’d never been in a headlock before—at least, not one that was meant to hurt—and so I was confused.  There’s not much worse than being confused, hurt, and restrained all at the same time.  Especially when you’re seven years old.  But he was also seven—a thought that hasn’t occurred to me until just now.  How two boys can have such different breadths of experience with headlocks mystifies me.

I couldn’t breathe.  He had all his weight on me.  I was crying without breathing, the most alarming bout of terror I have ever experienced sweeping over me.  Here was death, here was the end.  I did not think of any of the cliché things dying folks supposedly think about.  I simply thought how horrible dying was going to be.  I was pretty sure nothing happened after you died—nothing at all.  Just an infinite blackness.  Why would he do this to me?  I had just been playing with my ball.

And then it was over.  He was off me.  I still don’t know how or why.  I never saw him get off me, or waited to speak to him.  When I felt him release me, I got up and ran as fast as I possibly could toward home, which was only one block away but to a seven year old it’s a decent little distance.  I was crying so hard I thought I’d throw up.  I was so mad, and sad, and confused.  Then, as now, being made helpless is about as bad as it gets.

I hated him for showing me that for the first time.  As I ran, I thought of the most horrible things a seven year old can conjure and wished they were at my command:  the light that shines on nothing, the mirror that reflects only another mirror, the fruit that ate itself.  These things were worse than helpless, they were hopeless, and I would engulf the world with them.

When I got home, Mom was working in the garden out back.  I hugged her so hard and cried so hard.  So much of my life has been about fear: about how much I had or how much I didn’t have.

6.

I was born on a frigid Friday in January of 1978.  There was a snowstorm, this much I know because the story is often told by my family.  It was snowing and maybe somewhat icy that day and it was a treacherous trip to the hospital.  Many of the finer details have been lost to time.  It seems as though maybe my father stayed home with my older sister–she also famously fell on some ice on the day of my birth, when she was home with Dad–but I have always got conflicting stories about when and how everyone arrived at the hospital.  It was cold.  It was snowy.  All these people that would become my family were probably very nervous and confused.  How challenging to think there was a day when you weren’t here, and the next day, you were.  Or: one hour you aren’t here, and the next hour, you are.  All crying and red and scrunched-up, a big ball of mushed-up senses.  You just…popped into existence.

7.

On this gloriously sunny and hot day just a little under a year ago, I found myself at a park about an hour from where I live, with the woman of my dreams and a delightful young boy. The boy is her son, who I am helping to raise, both of whom I found myself suddenly and joyfully living with. On this day, it’s a weekend that we all have off together, and my love has found this fantastic event for us to attend, a kind of history-themed craft and art fair. I have not been playing the role of family man for very long at this point, but already I know that this is what I want, what I need in order to become me, the real version of me. We walk together as a unit, commenting on the smell of the french fries, or the historical paintings made by local artisans. When our little man wanders away, I chase after him as he giggles, imploring him in a high-pitched comedic tone not to run too fast. My lady love buys me iced coffee, holds my hand tightly. We stop at the little kids’ events, little painting and craft tables, things where you spin wheels and automatically win tchotchkes. I love seeing his face light up, and I revel in taking pictures of her with him, as they are experiencing things together. In previous versions of my life, I would’ve come to this fair by myself, taking it in almost as a cultural anthropologist, loving the fact that I was able to be so alone amongst so many people. But here and now, I don’t miss that. I wonder who I was then, how was I like that? These two people are everything I could ever want. Eventually we make our way to one of the smaller event stages, where representatives from our local zoo will be bringing out animals to show kids. First there is a falcon, and the three of us, in the front row, are rightly impressed.  One after another more animals come out, and he shrieks, sits on her lap and then mine, and she leans into the crook of my neck, I can feel her smile against my skin, and when the zookeeper brings out the snake and walks just a few feet from us with it and the boy surprises us by saying snake, she squeezes my hand even tighter, we are so surprised together, and he squirms on my lap and coos at the animals, and I can feel myself, with such absolute astonishment, being born.

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Our Own Cause and Effect

Somebody recently shared a picture of me from back in my days as a cook for a family restaurant—a job I had for eight years (and a company I worked for for over fifteen).  I was astounded by how long it had been since I had spent any amount of time remembering  that job, that kitchen.  Eight years is a long time, but it’s interesting how easily even eight years of your life can be compartmentalized, filed away under PAST and visited only briefly and periodically henceforth.

 

My eight year tenure as a line cook saw sea changes within myself that dwarf even the largest of the recent growth I’ve undergone.  I literally evolved into the basic version of the man I am now over the course of that job.  Thinking back to who I was the day I started there—that guy is unrecognizable now.  I wonder how I would have ended up if I had gotten a different job?

 

I knew every inch of that kitchen.  Every contour of stainless steel, every equipment wheel, every floor tile—I had a history with it.  I knew where the problem areas were, where grease pooled and mops didn’t reach.  I knew which reach-in doors closed too slowly and which hood baffles would cut you.  I had a physical and emotional relationship with the kitchen.  Of course I had an even larger and more complex relationship with the restaurant and company itself, but it is this relationship of minutiae with the kitchen that my memory is most apt to gloss over.

 

My personal evolution in the kitchen itself seems more significant the more I ponder it.  My first day in cook training (I had spent my first few months with the company as a dishwasher) I was timid, clueless and constantly intimidated.  Although I had worked (in the kitchen) of a fast food restaurant for three years prior, I know now this could hardly be said to be experience with food—it is basically putting Legos together.  And while foodies would say this job cooking for a family restaurant is much of the same—that may be true, but the Legos are much more complicated.  My first few hours in the kitchen, I was hard-pressed to remember how to make the toast.  Literally.  Eight years later I was the unabashed, brash, dare-I-say courageous acknowledged leader of the kitchen staff, making decisions with store management about things that would affect the operations of the restaurant.  My evolution within the kitchen lead me to a career in management, first with the company I had cooked for, then leaving the nest and essentially never looking back.

 

Over the past five years, since leaving the original company I cooked for, I have worked for two organizations, both times as a store manager.  Granted, I’m not a Five-Star General leading troops into battle, but I do lead people, every day.  I’m responsible for entire buildings, and everything that happens in them.  This is what I do for a living, and it is a reflection of who I am.  While I am the last person alive to define themselves by their profession, I can’t deny that part of who I am inside as a person is why I’ve ended up in this career.

 

What I can’t seem to figure out is how I became that person.  Was that kitchen the exact right place for me to evolve the way I was meant to?  Or did I evolve the way I did because I was in that kitchen?  It’s kind of a nature vs. nurture question.

 

Time and experience have conspired to make me lose sight of that kitchen, and who I was then and how I changed (I think you’ll find time and experience have done similar things to you).  Now, I come into work every day, take it for granted I am in charge of everybody and everything, start making decisions with a well-used decision muscle, delicately maneuvering my operation to where I want it to go.  This from a guy who was once intimidated by toast.

 

Once we start pondering our own cause-and-effect (how we got where, what motivated us, what propelled us) the only natural thing to dwell on then is the now.  What forces are acting on me now?  Where is my current situation leading me?  Our human minds naturally think, at every moment, we are currently and finally the finished version of ourselves, but ask: how am I changing, now?

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Polar Vortex, Schmolar Schmortex

I am the first to admit in many areas I am a huge wuss. In many facets of life, I am just a fantastic pansy. I am not afraid to admit this. But it should also be noted, especially for the purposes of this blog entry, that there’s some areas of life in which I am a total fucking champ. I suspect this dichotomy is true of most of us. My champings do happen to include working my ass off,  functioning amazingly on very little sleep, and successfully and with very little comment braving the elements. Granted, I complain about the cold a lot and how much I dislike winter, but a brief review of my record I am sure would show I am usually a pretty big champ when it comes to the cold. I begin with these caveats in order to illustrate the true gravity of the story I am about to relate to you. This morning was one of the more terrifying moments of my life.

As most of you know, even if you don’t live in the Northeast, or Midwest, today was one of the coldest days in history of the entire world. (sarcasm, but only kinda) Something called the “polar vortex” snuck down into our region bringing with it arctic temperatures. Now, every winter we are used to seeing a few days of single digit or even negative degrees. What made this day unique was that unlike usual, the temperature was never going to climb into the teens. Today’s high was forecasted to be somewhere around nine, with a low around three. That is, quite frankly, ludicrous. Depending on where you live, wind chills were forecasted to make the temperature feel in the negative 20s all the way up to the negative 50s. I wasn’t too worried about this. This is not the sort of thing I’m ever too worried about. However, there was one small hitch: I was scheduled to open my store today.

Now, I haven’t been opening the store very much lately. For the past five or six months I’ve been working mostly evenings. This has not really been by choice, but a necessity born out of the availabilities of my employees. I’m currently very close to getting back to being able to work daylights, even though I am a night owl by nature, my role as the store manager dictates that things would go easier for me if I was there during the daylight hours. Nonetheless, I am still very much in the nighttime sleep pattern. This morning marked only the second time since I moved to Philadelphia a month and a half ago that I actually worked an opening shift. Now, I did not work extremely late last night. I got home around seven last night, so it wasn’t a brutal turnaround. But nonetheless, my sleep pattern lately dictated that I still didn’t fall asleep until almost 2 AM, so when my alarm went off at 4 AM, it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Of course, I saw all this coming. For quite a few days we had known that Tuesday was going to be the most frigid day in the history of the known universe. And of course, I could do nothing but shake my head with grim resignation knowing that that would be the day I would have to pedal my bike 2 miles in the city at 4:30 in the morning. But what can you do? This is not the sort of thing I dwell on, because what was done was done, and I was going to have to do it. I knew that I would not get much sleep. I knew that I would be very very cold. I knew that I would be very very tired. I knew it was going to suck.

Let me now say also, it has come to my attention over the past month and a half that while it may not have been a problem when I was younger, riding my bike in any serious fashion in the extreme cold is not nearly as easy as I expected it to be. Even before the polar vortex showed up in Philadelphia, winter has not been an easy time to be a bicycle commuter for me. My leg muscles simply do not want to work as hard as I need them to work in subfreezing temperatures. I know that it is the temperatures causing it, because any day there is a brief and sudden warm-up, I ride my bike like a champ again. But once again, this was not something I was going to worry about. What can I do about it? Sure, I could’ve looked into taking a cab or the buses to work, but at that time of day that sort of thing seemed almost as much of a pain the ass as actually writing my bike there. So while there was certainly some dread on my part going into the commute, it was just one of those things that I do. Brave the elements, and just fucking do it.

So I begrudgingly rolled out of bed after two hours of sleep. I was really really tired. But this is not a sensation that is new to me. Working as long as I have in the service industry, one becomes accustomed to such turnarounds. Sometimes we called them doublebacks, some places refer to them as Clopens (close+open, get it?), but nonetheless, they will always happen occasionally. They happen to me much less now in my capacity as a Starbucks manager than they did in my capacity as a restaurant manager, but they are still an occasional fact of life. The sensation was not new to me. I got out of bed, and not having left enough time for me to take a shower, pulled on some fresh work clothes and quickly walked down to my living room. I hadn’t planned what I was going to wear. I just knew I had to wear a lot. The news had been talking for a few days now about how easy it would it be for people to get frostbite in these temperatures. It wasn’t something I worried about too much, but I couldn’t have avoided thinking about it even if I wanted to, with all the media coverage. I figured I would just bundle up, go outside and ride to work and I was going to be really cold. But it hadn’t escaped me that I needed to have all of my extremities as covered as possible, and the media stories had made it very clear that no flesh should be exposed for even a few minutes in such frigid temperatures. Overtop of my work clothes I put on a hoodie, followed by my winter coat. I put the hood up over my head, and then put on my big fuzzy extremely warm Eagles hat. Then I wrapped a scarf around my face, put on some gloves, and that was that.  I got my bike and took it out of the house and locked the door behind me.

At this point I will detail for you the two major mistakes I made before I even left the house. On this particular morning, I was opening the store with two other employees. Usually a manager only opens the store with one other employee, but one of them today is a trainee who I am on my way to getting trained to be a manager, so that I can work a better schedule my own self in the near future. And the other one is a normal opening employee. As happenstance would have it (and when I say happenstance I mean my own poor planning) these are actually the only two employees whose phone numbers I don’t have stored in my cell phone. That was a major error.

Just yesterday I had told both of these employees that they should not be in any way early. I instructed both of them to show up right at 5 AM, or later if need be. The idea being that I was going to do I best to show up exactly at 5 o’clock, and as cold as it was forecasted to be, I didn’t want them waiting outside even for a few minutes before I got there. The second major error then would be that I did not leave with more time than normal for me to get there. It takes me about 20 minutes to get from my apartment to where I work on my bicycle, I usually leave about 25 minutes before I want to get there, owing for some time for red lights or cars or whatnot. I did the same this morning, leaving my apartment at about 4:35, to get there at 5 AM. That was my second major error.

When I first walked outside with my bicycle, it seemed cold, but not anything out of the ordinary. Just really cold. I said to myself, I can handle this no problem. I got on top of my bike and started pedaling, and rounded the corner of my block onto Front Street. It was immediately apparent, immediately, that this was not normal. Within moments of being outside and pedaling , the bone chilling cold was absolute. I hadn’t put on any layers on my legs, I was only wearing my work slacks, and I could feel the skin on the tops of my thighs begin to sting within 30 seconds of riding my bike. I hadn’t gotten 100 yards away from my house before I realized that I had fucked up a lot.

My employees were going to be outside the store in 25 minutes as per my instructions, in this freezing ridiculous cold. I had to pedal 2 miles to get there, in conditions that were inhospitable after 100 yards. I could not turn back and look for an alternate way to get there, such as a bus or a taxi, because I had not left myself enough time to search for an alternate way. I could have backtracked and looked for an alternate way and opened the store late, if I had the cell phone number of even one of those two employees, so I could instruct them to stay home or seek shelter somewhere. But I did not. I had no choice but to ride my bike there and to do so in the normal amount of time.

After a few blocks on Front Street, I then turn left onto Snyder, which is a main thorofare and hence much wider and open. It is here that the wind started for real. This wind would be prohibitive to riding a bicycle in 70° temperatures. As soon as I started down Snyder my progress almost completely stopped. The wind was blowing directly against me, and I had to work with all my might to move the bicycle. Neverminding for a moment the cold, this is where the fact that I only got two hours of sleep the night before, and had just rode home from work less than 12 hours ago, comes into play. The cold was restricting my muscles, they hadn’t rested, I hadn’t had time to recuperate from my previous ride, etc etc.  There were just too many factors working against me.  I had yet to travel even 1/16th the length of my journey, and with every cycle of my legs, I was grunting out loud.  Oof, oof, oof. I was almost immediately desperate. I didn’t know what I was going to do. It became abundantly clear that I might not get there in time, and it is something that is rare for me to do, but I began to panic. Started breathing heavier, my breath making the inside of my scarf against my face moist, and ironically hot. I was grunting and yelling with every cycle, I couldn’t even move this bike faster than I could walk it. The wind started to make my eyes dry up, maybe even freeze a little bit. I could feel the cold on the tops of my thighs like pinpricks, and I began to suspect I might get frostbite through my pants. I veered off the street and onto the sidewalks, thinking if I got closer to the buildings the wind might be lessened. There were absolutely no signs of human beings about at this point in time. No cars, no pedestrians, not even lights on in houses. The wind did not seem lessened on the sidewalks, but I continued to ride on them anyway. After about a quarter of a mile on the sidewalk on Snyder Avenue, I was passing under a tree when somehow, someway, a bunch of branches hit my bicycle. I wasn’t sure what happened at first, except that I noticed that my pedaling was causing a noise that had never happened before. It was like that moment when you know that something is wrong with your car. I couldn’t imagine actually stopping to look at what was happening. The bike was still moving, but it was even more labored than before, and there was this sawing kind of noise. After three minutes or so of continuing to ride, and weighing what appeared to be incredibly difficult options, I decided to stop my bike and get off and look at it. This might not actually seem like a huge deal to read, but at that moment, making the decision to stop the bike and get off and look at it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I could feel my body starting to get colder than it has ever been before, and I was still well over a mile from my destination, with no options for help, and time running short. Stopping my forward motion was not an easy decision. But I was afraid that whatever was wrong with my bike might get worse, and then I would be in an even bigger world of hurt.

I plunked down my kickstand and disengaged myself from my bicycle. There were not incredibly bright streetlights around, but I began inspecting my chain housing for any sort of foreign bodies. The chain around the rear wheel had something poking out of it. I couldn’t tell quite what it was. It looked at first glance like some sort of man-made object, a cigar length rigid piece of plastic. I couldn’t be sure, in the light and in my panic, if it was a piece of the bike that had come off or was in some way damaged, or was some foreign body that had become attached to the bike. I remembered the branches hitting the bike, but wasn’t sure what that had caused. I looked closer at it, but still couldn’t tell in the light. I have very little time to figure it out, and I knew that I had to either keep going or fix it quick. I put my hands down to feel this thing, but through my thick winter gloves, I still couldn’t tell what it was. I knew that taking my gloves off was going to be a huge mistake. There was no way that I wanted to expose my extremities to the direct cold. But I saw no choice. So, despite all my thinking screaming otherwise, I took my gloves off, both of them, and reached out for the object. It was in fact just a stick. It had somehow gotten lodged inside the chain mechanism. I wrapped my already freezing hand around it and pulled, but of course it would not come out easily. I had to try for a good 30 seconds of swiveling it, turning it, and bending it before it finally broke free of the chain. I attempted to put my gloves back on, but found that my hands were already so numb that putting the gloves on was difficult. I was looking at the gloves but could not feel them. After slowing my breathing down and concentrating, I got both back on and mounted again on my bicycle. It was only when I was back on my bicycle seat that I realized that in my panic with the stick, I had actually taken my scarf off. I had draped it over my handlebars. I have no memory of doing it, nor am certain why I thought it necessary subconsciously, but there it was. It wasn’t until I saw the scarf that I realized the entire front of my face was now exposed to the wind and cold, and as soon as I realized it, I felt it.

It was a sudden, jolting pain, like having a face covered in hair, and having them all suddenly and simultaneously plucked.  I groaned, loud and suddenly and without any thought for who might hear.  I now had to get my scarf back onto my face–with hands that had gone numb and were inside bulky winter gloves.  It soon became completely evident that I needed to take the gloves back off in order to get the scarf on.  What followed–including then getting the gloves back onto my hands–was a flurry of disbelief and trauma beyond what I could describe.

I do understand that if one is reading this account from a bit of a remove, it might seem a bit tedious and overwrought; yes, here is a man trying to put his gloves and scarf on in the cold.  Yawn.  But understand: this felt very much like a life or death situation to me, and I’m confident that is exactly what it was.  Here I stood, at a time that is basically the middle of the night, on a dark city street with no humans around me, in temperatures that are lethally cold, in turns again and again exposing my extremities to the air, in a position in which I am responsible for the well-being–some might even say the lives–of two other human beings over a mile away from me, whom I have no method of contacting, who will soon be waiting outside a building which I have the only key to, and the only way I can get to them in time is to stop this foolhardiness and somehow make my bicycle take me there, using my own physical movements to power the bike through astonishing wind.

Add to this maelstrom of physical and psychological plight the fact that my cell phone is the only way I could tell time during this ordeal, and there was no real way for me to get it out and look at it, and so I couldn’t really tell how much time had passed and how much I had left.  Obviously, if I was a few minutes late, these employees were not going to die, but they’d be far from happy, and it was no doubt dangerous to make them stand out there.  And God forbid I would be more than a few minutes late.  I had no was of knowing how well they were dressed, how prepared they were, how desperate their own situations were.

Somehow, someway, I got back on the bike with gloves and scarf on and started pedaling.  But the damage was done.  My hands and face were the coldest I’d ever felt them, and the gloves and scarf were not going to warm them back up now.  For the rest of the trip, my extremities will exist in a realm of frigid pain that I can’t come close to describing, but I was almost certainly close to frostbite.  Add to that the continuing deterioration of the tops of my thighs—getting so cold they felt like they were on fire–and you have a definition of a certain kind of misery.

Now back to pedaling, I had been counting on my adrenaline to kick in to at least power me there, but it was not to be.  My body had withdrawn from the race.  Each pedal was the hardest thing I could remember doing.  For over a mile, I yelled/ screamed/groaned with every single downstroke of my legs.  At some points I even resorted to very dramatic, pathetic cries of “Why?!” or “No!” and other sad things of that nature, and I became more and more certain I was imply not going to be able to continue.

But I did start getting closer.  Finally, somehow only 5 or 6 blocks away, I allowed myself some positive thinking–and my scarf promptly flew off my head.  I have no idea how, or where it went.  It just flew off and my face was now fully exposed.  I didn’t spend any time debating whether to stop and look for it and try to put it back on.  I was very well aware that riding the last six blocks with no scarf was incredibly dangerous (especially since I was actually going quite slowly), but I knew without a doubt that stopping to look for it and then trying to get it back on would be even more dangerous.

(I have skipped over quite a few things, really—run-ins with a car or two, skidding on some ice, a child watching me out of a ground floor window, etc)

I did make it, obviously.  I pulled up to the store door at what turned out to be 4:59, to the sight of two bundled-up employees who were very cold.  As I stepped off my bike and fumbled numbly in my pocket for the door key, I managed to utter to them both, That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, to which they chuckled, obviously assuming I was exaggerating.

We walked inside, and began our workday.

 

Philly Journal, 12/29/13

Four things:

1.  Being in the city of the sports teams I root for continues to get more and more cool.  With tonight’s upcoming Eagles game in Dallas being for the conference title, this city is downright electric.  I just rode my bike home from work (it’s about two hours before kickoff) and boy-howdy…people are out everywhere, and yes, they are drinking, etc, but there is no feeling of impending doom or danger.  There is just this energy in the air, like an uncorked celebration.  Of course, if we lose, it will suck.  But now, this right now, is a great argument in favor of the communal bonding agent that professional sports can be.

 

2.  One of the things that has surprised me about living in the city (and maybe you won’t find this surprising at all) is just how incredibly hip it makes me feel.  To some of you who’ve lived in cities before and think it’s no big deal, or are just hip as heck all the time anyway, this sentiment may make me seem like a doofus.  And don’t get me wrong: I fully expected to feel hip.  Just not THIS HIP.  It’s not just that I live in the city, but also that I am the store manager of a Starbucks in the city (yes, I’m mentioning it publicly for once).  About once every two days, I’m in the middle of something and I have to stop and think to myself, wow, this is me, doing this right now.  I know I know, I’m talking like I’m a rock star or something, and sure, I’m probably still functioning well below my potential in life, but damn if I don’t think this particular version of my life is something special.

3.  Dear Philadelphia bus riders: why do you stand in the middle of the street all the time, looking off into the distance as though it will make the bus appear?  Do you not see me riding a bike directly at you?

4.  With New Years approaching, and with the fact that I live right in the middle of Mummer country, I am beginning to hear the bands practicing from various buildings as I ride my bike around.  It is a very neat thing to experience.  Just now, as I mentioned earlier I just rode home from work.  It is dark and a bit cold but not frigid, and the night was electric already, and every 3 or 4 blocks the sound of a horn or a fiddle would float out to me from otherwise unassuming buildings.

 

Philly Journal, 11/3/13

Me with my precious.  Yes, I know the S is out.  They’re working on it.

 

The Love Letter I Got Today

Faithful readers of my blog may remember a short while ago when I came across a very curious letter to a banana at my place of employment.  Well, a similar thing happened to me today.  As I was walking out the door, I glanced at the stand we keep some of our retail merchandise on just to see if it was placed well and looking good.  As I was looking, something underneath one of the travel mugs caught my eye.  It was a small envelope.  I picked it up and tucked it in my pocket.  This is the envelope:

I opened it on the street, eager to see what zaniness I had found this time.  Inside was a card.  The outside of the card looks like this:

This is the inside of the card:

Interesting, right?  You’ll see there is a website on there.  This appears to be part of some kind of movement.  This is the website written inside the card.

Umps, Bananas, Walruses, Oh My!

1.  Animals are funky, am I right?  I mean, giraffes, hippos, fucking walruses.  I mean, what the heck?!

2.  Why are street festivals so entertaining and fun? I mean honestly, most of the time, the things occurring at street festivals are only moderately enjoyable, at best (if there were a funnel cake truck set up on a street corner on a normal day, but not part of a street festival, I dare say a majority of people would walk past it), but when a street is closed off and we give the festival a fun name or theme, people flock to it in droves.

3.  It’s surprisingly easy to forget about the fact that somebody you know has a very unfortunate last name.  I know people with last names like Graves, Tomb, Fish, Hair, and Noseworthy.  (sorry if any of you are reading this)  The first time you meet them or get introduced to them, it strikes you as perhaps odd, and you may think, wow, that last name sucks, but in no time at all, you’ve forgotten the real-world meaning of their name, and it is just…their name.

4.  What is going on with baseball umpires this season?  Until now, they’ve been pillars of self-control and poise, almost like they possessed some kind of super-human ability to not inject themselves personally into the sometimes incredibly monumental events they are a part of.  Now all of a sudden, this season, it’s like an umpire reality show going on. What the heck?

5.  A few days ago, I went in to work on an opening shift (I don’t use the name of my employer online, but I work for a very famous international chain of coffeehouses).  I entered the building at about 5am, turned on all the lights, and walked through the “bar” area (that’s behind the counter) to see how the close had gone the night before.  My gaze swept past the front counter where we sell pastries and assorted other goodies, and I noticed a piece of paper of some kind sitting in the basket of bananas.  I approached it.  It was very unusual.  It was a small envelope with just the word “Banana” written on it.  This is the envelope:

I opened it to find a carefully folded piece of paper, with what appeared to be a handwritten poem addressed to the banana.  Before I show you the poem, I’ll skip to the end of the story: that afternoon, the guy who had closed the night before came in, and I asked him what was up with the envelope.  His response: “Some girl came in, who I’d never seen before (read: not a “regular”) and handed it to me and asked me if I’d give it to the bananas.  She said I could read it if I wanted to, but if I did, I had to read it aloud to the bananas.  I left it here cause I figured you’d get a kick out of it.”

Dear Banana,

I am sorry…we may have to split ways.
You’re delicious and nutritious but as far as
most of us can tell, produced in a world that is
fictitious.

I’ve been asking for a very long time,
why can’t you just grow in my backyard?
Why do you have to travel so far?

Please don’t take offense.  I hope you understand,
it’s not you, it’s my foes.
Oh this is too hard, I hope I am making sense,
it would have been awful for me to live at
your expense.

Flemington, Again

As stated in this post, my mother and I visited Flemington today.  It was an incredibly surreal experience.  It was truly lovely, but proved to be a very interesting exercise in the nature of memory and how I perceive the passage of time.  Until visiting there, I still had myself convinced that living there had been a “recent” occurence.  But being there again proved to me that it is most definitely verging on “a long time ago”.

Here are some pictures of the house we lived in (taken today):

We only lived on the top floor. The large window in the middle was the living room. My bed was up against the window that is seen at the far left of the picture.

And here is the best poem I wrote in which this house makes an appearance:

Like It Always Has

The dog runs away when I come near,
like it always has.
Off to the garage somewhere,
or to nose around in the garden,
maybe.
The skinny gray cat, however,
allows me to stroke him.
I like the cat, with his rough,
sandpaper coat and vibrating
contentment.
The cat meets my gaze with honesty,
commiserating over the heat,
the long days,
and the loud cars
which are ceaseless.

The house towers above us,
is taller than even our cars.
It is lit up like a ballroom,
and tonight it promises
to keep all wild things out,
like it always has.

OK, it’s me again.  Here is a picture I took today of the Boston Market I worked at while living in Flemington:

One of my lesser-liked poems from this period(the few people who have mentioned it to me usually call it weird or something like that) is a poem that was inspired by my job at this Boston Market, called “Growing”.  It is not actually about something that happened to me here, but employs a literary technique called Magical Realism in order to say what I’m thinking by presenting an impossible scenario.  The poem is about my fear of growing up and, ultimately, my fear of growing old—not unlikely topics to tackle at my first job after getting out of rehab and moving in with my mother.

Growing

Yesterday, at the ordinary restaurant where I work
a quite elderly woman bossed her way to my drive-through
window wanting food.  Upon passing me her hard-lived-for
money, my fingers briefly scraped the tips of hers,
and they were terrible, dead things,
scabrous extensions depleted of vigor or tautness
hardened at the end like pencil eraser nubs.
Whether these hands were worn heavy with worry,
decades of turmoil and injustice and life’s folly,
or whether these lecherous ladyfingers had become laminate
as the hands that doled out beatings, ear-cuffings,
being the manacles that held down and slapped,
I won’t pretend to know.  But like dried candybars
they crumbled and dissolved as I put her change
in her despicable palm, her fingernails crunching
like bugs under her tires as she drove off.
I laughed, and so did everyone else who saw it.

OK, me again.  The time I spent living in Flemington was so early in my sobriety, I was counting the days I had been sober.  Today is day ten, today is day 27, and on and on.  It is a practice unlike any other, to count one’s life back into existence.

Within the recovery community, the first really big milestone is 90 Days.  Newly-sober people are often encouraged to do a “90 in 90”, meaning to go to an AA or NA meeting every day for your first 90 days.  I did not do a 90 in 90, but my 90 day anniversary was still a big deal.  As such, my mother took me out for ice cream to celebrate. She took me to a little village of shops in Flemington–the chic kind of place with cute little shack-like buidlings with outlets in them, and quaint little restaurants with only 6 tables in them.  We had ice cream (I had pistachio) at a free-standing ice cream shop in the middle of a brick-lined shopping plaza.  For whatever reason, it’s always been something I remembered very distinctly, and I hadn’t been back there until today.  It’s all mostly the same, but the ice cream shop is a bakery now:

When you’re writing so much poetry (and often with such grandiose ideas), you end up missing the mark a lot.  One of my biggest disappointments from this period are my “thick days” poems.  It was my big poetic ideal to, on certain anniversary days, to write a poem about what it felt like to be sober that many days.  I ended up with three poems,  “75 Thick Days”, “90 Thick Days” (written the day of my pistachio ice cream) and “Thick Days Forever” about being sober, y’know, from here on out.  It was a good idea, but it was pretty much all idea and no substance, and I’ve always cringed when reading them since (they appeared in my second collection of poetry from Flemington, The Mundorf Bench).  But, even though they suck, I’ve never presented them online before, and being back at the ice cream stand today convinced me to do so, warts and all.  I also find it interesting and a tad terrifying that I refer to myself in these as young man.  Here they are:

75 Thick Days

I have inserted
75 thick days
between it and myself
I have licked
and kicked
and battered
the beast
for 75 thick days
and it is rather amusing
spying it reeling
still possessing strength
to lob me doubts
are you strong enough
young man?
Will time really tell?
When does
one of us
win?

How vigilant are bottles?

90 Thick Days

Such optimism
such a varicose life
laid before
and neatly stacked
beautifully puckered
within each day
such soberism
makes a nice wife
but a bad whore
old days packed
away and suckered
for this new way
these thick days
each day a prism,
the sharpest knife,
the brightest shore,
the ceiling shellacked.
90 days puckered
as if to say
they are here to stay.
I now await the next one with ease.
They have taught me something new:  “Please…”

Thick Days Forever

There will always be the graduations of younger folks
and who doesn’t like to see those fast happy times,
and music never stops being made for us to listen to,
bless those musicians.  Maybe dancing.
Or maybe singing; one can always take lessons
and, presumably, become good at almost anything,
with time, with enough days,
and so much usable time, so many precious tickings,
the message of moments easily lost or confused
so that choices become blurred or marred.
Perhaps hangliding, or bungee jumping, or such things affirming.
Or just to wander curiously about, not limiting
yourself into opulent categories or expensive specializations
but just to peek and peer under this,
above that,
seeing what such-and-such is made of
and how it does it.
Oh, with enough time, enough days
the world could become a tiny place indeed.
Nary a thing undiscovered, unfetched.
The days taper off like a coastal shelf,
and with enough of them, one becomes immersed.
What a view from here!
From these thick days, forever.

My 54th Favorite Song of All-Time

is:

“The New Year” by Death Cab for Cutie

(note: I wrote this entry about 4 or 5 months ago.  Isn’t it interesting how it ties in so perfectly with my life right now??)

I not only love this song because it’s an amazing song, but for the time in my life that it evokes in my memories.  First, about the song:

It has pretty much established most of my thoughts about “new years”, as we call it in this culture, and things like resolutions…all the kinds of shit I bitch about starting around December 28th.  Like most of what Ben Gibbard writes, every word is absolutely perfect, the meaning is intensely conveyed and no word is ornamental or extra.  The pulsing, undulating chords of the music reflect the solemnity of the lyrics, and the desperate yearning of the final repitition…”there’d be no distance that could hold us back” reeks of the honestly of a man who knows the past is unreachable.

I bought the album this song is on (Transatlantisicm) a few weeks before I got hired in my current job as a manager for a restaurant company.  This was a major step up for me.  This was also shortly after I’d bought my first-ever brand-new car.  This was a banner time in my life, a life which had only recently come back from the very brink.  Musically, I was just starting to branch out into “indie” music, an area of music I knew I wanted to be a part of but hadn’t yet figured out my entry point.

So anyway, I bought this Death Cab for Cutie album right before my company sent me to Pittsburgh for two weeks for training classes.  They put us up in a hotel that was about a ten minute drive from the corporate office, so every morning, bright and early, in this brand new car and in this amazing brand new life, I would find myself driving through early-morning Pittsburgh as this album played.  “The New Year” is the first track on the CD, so I heard it often (and often had it on repeat).  It was a truly magical time, and this song takes me back there.  Also, fuck resolutions.

So this is the new year,
and i don’t feel any different.
The clanking of crystal,
explosions off in the distance.

So this is the new year
and I have no resolutions.
They’re self-assigned penance
for problems with easy solutions.

So everybody put your best suit or dress on.
Let’s make believe that we are wealthy for just this once,
lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
as thirty dialogues bleed into one.
I wish the world was flat like the old days
and I could travel just by folding a map.
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways.
There’d be no distance that could hold us back.

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Veil

Those folks who I’ve known only in the post-sobriety portion of my life (which, at this point, is actually the majority of people I interact with daily) often have difficulty imagining me as troubled.  This is not to suggest I live a perfect life or that I’m a paragon of emotional stability, but to all but a handful of my friends and relatives, it’s difficult to imagine me anything other than generally contented most of the time, in a way most people are not  (nevermind my temper, which can be practically elemental under the right circumstances). This leads the folks who have known me nine years or less to occasionally comment doubtfully upon my past as a pillar of depression, substance addiction and general misanthropy.  “I don’t believe it,” they say.  “You’re just so not like that.”

And they’re right.  I’m not.  Not anymore.  The lion’s share of my time, I spend marveling at how unoffensive  existence is.  Granted, I don’t exist on the improbably happy “pink cloud” of early recovery; my happiness is not super-human nor is it impervious to the ups-and-downs of the normal course of human life, but it is certainly a more even-keeled and consistent satisfaction than I witness in most of those around me.  I don’t often think much about it, or question it.  It’s just the way I’ve been since the moment I “put the plug in the jug”, as the old-timers in AA like to say.

Last night, for whatever reason, I had a moment.  Just…a moment.  That somehow clarified or confused my perceptions of happiness and sadness or whatever you want to call these dualities of human existence.  I was working the overnight shift, for just one night, which is always an eclectic combination of emotions and sensations for me.  Waking at dusk, just as the last of the day’s sun fades from view; dressing and primping myself as that evening’s prime-time television shows play in the background; driving to work as the other cars passing the other direction are heading home to their various comforts, and arriving to work as just about everyone else is leaving.  These aren’t all depressing facets; some of them leave me feeling a kind of ownership of the world, like I’m sailing alone on a ship on a vast, empty ocean.  A little bit sad, a little bit amazing, these moments before an overnight shift certainly make me feel different than usual, and perhaps a bit more receptive to epiphanies.

Last night, I left for work half an hour early.  And not on purpose.  By total accident.  I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to work, and by then it was too late to turn back.  But instead of going to work early, I opted to spend half an hour walking aimlessly through the Wal-Mart that is near where I work.

Perhaps it was the unique mood created by the preparations for the overnight shift, but I was not at all emotionally stable when I walked into that Wal-Mart.  Immediately inside the front door, there was a smell.  You know what I mean.  It doesn’t smell like anything you can put your finger on, like wet dog or cantaloupe, but instead, it just smells like your past, like a very specific day or time period or phase of your life that you can’t pinpoint or immediately recall but you know that it makes you feel a certain way and that you had never expected to smell it again and you’re amazed at the amount of feelings and sensations that it brings back.  Well, that is what I encountered immediately upon entering the Wal-Mart; a smell that brought back acutely the absolute immensity of what sadness used to feel like for me.  It was crippling.  I hadn’t even been that happy as I walked into the Wal-Mart, but the difference between what I felt like now and what I had felt like in the days of sadness was tremendous. I quickly was able to discern what the smell was:  stale cigarette smoke in a cheap motel room.  Just what the smell had been doing in the Wal-Mart entryway was certainly a mystery, and it was gone just as quickly as it appeared, but it’s job was done.  I was transported, and I would remain transported.  For years, I’d remembered as an undeniable fact that at some point in my life, I’d been terribly sad, for a long time.  But it had long since ceased to be a feeling I could remember.  Sort of like a war story an old man has told so many times, he no longer remembers the memory, but only remembers past tellings of it.  Now suddenly I felt it again, and not the memory of it, but it.  Not twenty feet into the Wal-Mart, I was looking at merchandise on shelves not as the self-sufficient thirtysomething who loved historical novels and art museums, but the twenty-three year old who couldn’t roll out of bed without a snort of gin, who couldn’t muster up the energy to shave even after he’d been threatened with lost wages if he didn’t just shave once a week, who stunk and was getting stinkier, who was convinced that he didn’t deserve anyone’s love, and he was dying—slowly, methodically, painfully.  The world felt shut off to him, and so now suddenly it felt shut off to me, too.  These Ritz crackers in front of me—such a simple, unimportant item—I couldn’t afford them, and even if I could, they weren’t for me.  They were for people who were fully of this world, fully in the world, full citizens.  I felt like I stunk, like I was unshaven, like I had 5-day-old bender breath and onion armpits, like I was staggering even before I drank, like I was being looked at, watched, judged at every turn, unworthy of even the simplest of life’s luxuries, like bubble bath or RC Cola.  I’d remembered plenty about this era of my life, many times over before, but this pure sensation of human uselessness and dismal despair had been shelved since the last time I truly felt it.  After a minute or two, I managed to push it back out, put it back in the past where it belonged, but it was an intense few minutes, to put it mildly.

For the next twenty minutes, I roamed the Wal-Mart trying to piece together what had happened after I smelled the smell.  Mostly, I was intrigued by the idea that purest happiness and utter despair seemed, for that moment, so close to one another.  Like a thin veil of this material world separated them like a silk curtain.  The curtain was pulled back, and while I remained in the same time and place, one extreme version of me became another, however briefly.  And, I thought, now that I’d witnessed it, I could almost will it into happening again, if I chose, for whatever strange reason a person would choose such a thing.  And to think that we must all be walking around, all the time, right beside that veil, able to peek around it or rip it down if we could just figure out how to.  If you’re sad, just throw back the curtain and be happy.  Or if you’ve been happy as a damn idiot for nine years and need a refresher course on what brought you here in the first place, move the veil aside, smell your bender breath, and be reminded.

Very soon (April 3rd) I’ll be celebrating my ninth sobriety anniversary.  I’d been waiting until the day itself to figure out what I would write (if anything) on the day, but I think now that this entry will stand as my anniversary entry, because those few minutes in Wal-Mart after the smell made me realize that, more than anything, what I celebrate on that day is having traded sadness for happiness.  Pure and simple.  My happiness may not resemble most people’s.  It doesn’t involve spouses or kids or houses (although Cheerio to you if yours does).  My happiness is selfish and aloof and not the type of thing that you make movies about starring Channing Tatum or Reese Witherspoon.  But, to the guy on the other side of that veil, looking at Ritz crackers like they were golden nuggets, it is everything he would have imagined, if he’d even dared.

Portrait of the Blogger as an Angel

.

Overheard at work today:  one of my servers trying to offer a guest a top-off of coffee, accidentally combining the words “smidgen” and “pinch” and asking the guest if they’d like a pigeon of coffee.

What Almost Happened to Me Today (or: Why You’ve Always Got to Be Really Careful)

Co-worker:  Hey, do you want this cupcake?

Me:  I don’t know.  I just ate.  Why don’t you want it?

Co-worker:  The person who made it is kind of dirty.  I don’t trust anything that comes out of her house.

Me:  Hmmmm.  I don’t know.  I mean, it looks really good.  *smells cupcake, inspects cupcake closely*  Nah.  I don’t think so. 

Co-worker:  Oh well.  If you don’t want it, I might eat it anyway.  There’s lots of alcohol in it.

Eat ‘n Park wins National Business Ethics Award

While I avoid talking specifically about work as much as possible, I just had to give a shout-out to my company, Eat ‘n Park, (which I have worked for for 15 years now, but who in no way endorses or has anything to do with this blog) for recieving this year’s National Business Ethics Award.  This is not nothing–the previous two winners were Lockheed Martin and Hewlitt Packard.  I do love this company, and it’s now being validated that, in fact, we are a company full of good people and good intentions.  Please, if there’s one near you, patronize an Eat ‘n Park and support a good company.  Read the article here.

Audio Poem from “This is What is Invisible”, #4 of 12

As a reminder, I’m posting an audio version of each of the 12 poems in my new collection This is What is Invisible.  This is the fourth posting, and it’s called “Nest”:

Nest

Two days until the weekend
and only 42 days more
until vacation
and 2,292 days to retirement
the janitor on outdoor duty
in one idle moment
lifts a rake effortlessly
and transforms
the meticulously built nest
of a starling into mulch

 

 

 

Monday’s Song: “Another Pilot” by Hey Rosetta!

Another Pilot
by Hey Rosetta!

Crows pitch on the lawn, screeching a song.
The inmates wake up and they’re pulled to the bars
to pine their regrets and their rusting corvettes
and the tragedy they once had a part in.
They said “You ruined our lives.  You pissed on our prize.”
It’s still pulling your knuckles to your palm.

(fucking conscience, you’re siding with the wrong side)

You know the devil’s not deep–no, no, he’s brushing your cheek,
and hearing him breathe you remember a song:

just another angel through the clouds and into the ground
just another pilot through the clouds and into the ground
just another child through the chrome sets out on his own

Birds shit on your car, you’re scraping it off.
Do they know who you are? Don’t they know who you are?!
They sing “You ruined our lives  You pissed on our pride.”
Still pulling your knuckles to your tie.
You carry on, hunched over your job.

(start the engines i’m dying in the long line)

But you wanna get off and run away from it all…

You plan your escape, at the end of the day, you plan your escape
you take what you saved, and you get on a plane, yeah you take what you saved
and you start fading away, as you’re turning the page, you start fading away

(just another angel through the clouds and into the ground
just another pilot flying down
just another devil out of the dirt and back into the earth)

(fucking conscience, you’re siding with the wrong side
start the engines, i’m dying in the long line)

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Quote of the night:

Employee:  “Seth, I just thought you should know the only reason I work here is the free soda.”

Does this piece of chicken look like a frog or not????

Nest

Two days until the weekend
and only 42 days more
until vacation
and 2,292 days to retirement
the janitor on outdoor duty
in one idle moment
lifts a rake effortlessly
and transforms
the meticulously built nest
of a starling into mulch