Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

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8 of 10 agree

Friday finds me feeling excited for the weekend.

As usual, Saturday and Sunday are scheduled to the hilt, much like the work week.  Mind you, the weekend schedule is full of sport and leisure (well OK, leisure at least) while the week is filled with sweat and toil – so it’s a more welcomed allotment of time.  Despite my midweek pep-soliloquy, I still found my daytime thoughts drifting too often to the coming RV odyssey.  In one of my more out-there daydreams, I imagined finding a plot of land somewhere on the cheap.  Buying it and getting the government to pay me to not grow corn.  My conscious would get used to it, perhaps.

Tomorrow Sharaun is running/biking in a duathlon.  If Cohen’s fever stays away I plan to take the kids down and cheer her along Tour de France style.  I admire her for doing this, and hope she’s happy with her finish.  Me, I’ve fallen completely off the wagon.  Haven’t been to the gym in weeks, gave up caring about what I dump down my gullet, and am hovering around where my metabolism thinks my “stasis” is (which, unfortunately, is not anywhere near where the AMA thinks my weight should be).  Eight out of ten doctors agree: I’m fat again.

Goodnight.

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i’m sorry but i killed your hops

Hey Pat I’m sorry, but I killed your hops.

I know you entrusted them to me while you’re overseas for a couple years, and I’ll admit the task really wasn’t that hard.  Two big buckets of dirt that need water and sunshine so the hops growing in them don’t die.  Well I gave them a prominent spot on the sunny-side of my backyard, you know the side I plant the garden on?  Yeah, and they are also within reach of the sprinkler’s throw so I know they got enough hydration.  I even weeded them regularly to ensure they weren’t being choked out.

Heck, for the entire first year you were gone the actually grew like gangbusters (whatever that analogy is supposed to mean, I have some doubts about “gangbusters'” potential for growth myself (look close, there’s a plural possessive mixed into those quotes, it makes sense but it’s hard to see)).  They climbed out of their buckets and found the twine I’d strung upward to the fencepost and trained around it.  They wound up all green and leafy (but never actually flowered, so their viability for brewing was questionable even before the matter was finally settled upon their brown and desiccated death).  They made it to the top of the fence and struck out for freedom; ran out to the sideyard and entangled with the decorative shrubs out there, all harmonious-like.  I kept checking them for flowers, thinking maybe I could “harvest” a couple for you and freeze them or something… as a lark.

Sometime after that first year one of the pots was colonized by ants.  I knew it had happened, but not only was there not much I could do about it but I actually figured it might be beneficial for the root system. I’m not saying this ant manifest destiny is what did that one pot in, but I guess they could’ve been feasting on the roots and I’d have been none the wiser.  The anted pot did seem to turn first, though.  It never grew as vigorously, was less leafy and overall healthy-looking than its partner.  Were I one of those vegan connected-to-the-earth types I might think that the vibrant one missed his runty friend and simply wasted away in despair after its loss.

And now it’s just one big sad funeral scene out there.  We had some bad wind last week when a storm blew through and it toppled the pot of what used to be the stronger of the two.  It’s now laying on its side halfway down the slope, threatening to spill its contents, which probably didn’t happen only because the roots of the weeds growing within held the stuff together.  Later today I’m planning to go out there and right the poor thing, say some benediction and get on with the grieving period so I don’t feel too bad reclaiming the soil for other purposes.  Like the Bible says – dust to dust.

I’m shrugging.  It happens.  I owe you some hops.

Goodnight.

 

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can’t really avoid airplanes

I’ve been taken by this vision, fantasy really, of one imagined morning on our coming RV odyssey.

We’re in Yellowstone and the morning is cool.  Or maybe we’re in the grand canyon and it’s warm and the dust hasn’t yet been kicked up into the morning air.  Come to think of it, it doesn’t matter where we are.  Maybe it’s better in Yellowstone because we’re there so early in the season and we’re posting up at such out of the way campgrounds that there’s a good chance we’ll be the only ones there.  Maybe not, but I see it that way in this daydream.  It’s just us parked in the middle of some sprawling wilderness.  The kind of place where there’s a stream and maybe you see a moose wandering around in the morning mist.  But it’s just us.  Three or four little parking skirts on dirt loops, no hookups no wifi not even vault toilets.  It’s true, we’re staying two nights at places like this.  The ranger I called and spoke to said there’s a good chance we’ll be lonesome out there, since the spots only open that same week we arrive.  Maybe that’s what planted this seed.

Anyway it’s early morning and I’m awake and the family is awake and maybe I’m standing outside the RV smoking my pipe.  The scenery is enveloping and the silence is like when my buddies and I used to wake in the morning while camping – not a modern city sound to be heard.  Birds and condensation dripping and a stream rushing and maybe the rustle of a breeze.  But no engines and no sirens and no airplanes.  Can’t really avoid airplanes these days I suppose, even period-piece movies get shots fouled by airplanes missed in the editing room.  You’ve got Sir Gawain on his steed charging up a pastoral green hillock and real faint way off in the background the contrail of 747 bound for LaGuardia.  The bored passengers have no thought for their unintentional anachronistic cameo.  Some jerk on the internet first noticed it in the theater and then someone screencapped it from the Blu-ray.  So maybe there’s a plane; you can’t get away from them as well as you can everything else, but it doesn’t really matter.

I’m standing outside, the door to the RV is open and the family is knocking around inside.  Their close and I’m glad we’re here together but I’m having what they call a “personal moment.”  Gazing out into God’s country and thinking about how small I am how the stuff I worry most about in the world is some of the most insignificant in the world.  E-mail and human resources; paltry compared to the glacier-cut granite slopes hemming in our private campsite.  I’m out there marveling and puffing my pipe and – listen this is the important part, the part that makes the fantasy, the daydream capstone  – from out of the RV’s front-cab windows pours the Grateful Dead.  Yeah I said no noise but in this case it’s not noise it’s all compliment.

It’s not just any Dead.  It’s the 1976 New Year’s Eve show from the Cow Palace.  It’s one of my personal favorite shows; the band was so hot, 100% on and soaring.  I think it’s an underrated show.  If you haven’t heard it, you should go listen to it.  Sharaun says she finds the Dead repetitive; it’s actually a pretty fair criticism as criticism goes so I can’t really fault her.  But in the morning of this fantasy maybe “Eyes of the World” is blaring and it’s just blending perfect with my morning in the middle of everything and nowhere.  Tobacco always makes me salivate, so I’d be spitting on the very landscape I’d be adoring – maybe that seems contrary but it has some sort of old-country charm in my head.  Anyway, the Dead are just burning with a fever through the cab’s windows and for those ten minutes everything is about as perfect as things get.

It’s me and the family and God and the wildness and the Dead.  Oh man how silly.  But that’s the fantasy, that’s it to a tee.  I see it all the time and I’m the kind of foolish that’ll try and make it happen when that morning comes.  I’ll put on the Dead and light my pipe and stroll around and it’ll be good.  Kind of silly to pre-see it like that, though.  The best mornings will be the ones I haven’t pre-seen.  Those, those’ll be the knockouts.  I sometimes think I have too much time to think about this trip; that I better cool it with all the daydreaming or I’ll ruin the thing for what it can actually deliver. We’ll see.

No proofread; go.  Goodnight.

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if i ever get it by the collar

Sharaun’s at the gym, pre-dinner.  She cooked half of it, readied.  Then she caught her spin class.  I tried a spin class once and found it daunting; I had to fake some of the effort, I couldn’t hack it.  Never went to another one; prefer self-motivated gym activities (laziness, to be sure).  Keaton and Cohen are on the nursery floor, rolling around playing with each other.  Well, as much as a four year old (one week left, I’m gonna count every day before the Lord takes another year) can play with a seven month old.  She’s wonderful with him, really, keeps him entertained and watches out for him.  I’m listening to a 1968 record called Salvation by a band of the same name.  A San Franciscan outfit that lasted long enough to make two records of psychedelic rock, had one hit with an A-side called “Think Twice.”  Obscure, but pretty good.

What a squandered three-day weekend.  A buddy asked me to go camping with him and his son in Death Valley, said to bring Keaton and the kids could have a blast.  The drive would’ve been long and the time in-country short, which is just the sort of “camping” trip I despise, but now I wonder what we might’ve missed.  Oh I had a lot of fun.  Hung out with friends, spent time with the family, a lot of good times.  But maybe camping in Death Valley would’ve been spiritual or removed from it all.  That stupid leave-it-all-behind nirvana I’m always after.  The same nirvana that I’ll be chasing to every day’s horizon behind the wheel of thirty foot RV come June.  Maybe that same nirvana I’ll be hunting until the end, or maybe not.  I’ll let you know if I ever get it by the collar, I sure will.

Friday night we did dinner and games with friends.  Had an old-man’s fill of beer, four, and woke the next morning with a headache.  Sad stat of affairs, that.  Saturday Sharaun was working a race (like taking official times and handing out water or something) with a friend, so the friend’s husband and I took ourselves, and the four children left in our charge between us, out to an early breakfast.  Breakfast turned into a day of leisure hanging around the house together, even once the ladies got back.  That afternoon we took the older kids over to the college practice field and launched model rockets.  They played on the softball field (it was muddy and loose from all the recent rain) while we packed up the equipment.  Sunday we gave a little praise to the Creator and had another fine home-cooked meal courtesy of friends.  Monday, Monday we did nothing.  Met friends for lunch, attempted to take the family bowling (place was packed, every lane taken and an hour wait), and read a lot of my book.

Been a while since I wrote something like this… the boring “what we did” thing without flair or fiction or whatever.  At least it’s words and words are what make this site go.  Goodnight.

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200% in love

As an engineer steeped in the culture of my Fortune 100 sawmill, I am data-driven.  In fact, I horde data.  Collect it in raw form because I know that, through the power of pivot tables and frequency analyses and causation/correlation studies, it can be an endless pool to draw conclusions upon.  Interpreted the right way, data can justify spending, get people hired, get people fired, win arguments and lend credence to points.

In fact, at the sawmill we place so much emphasis on data-backed execution that it’s become part of my life.  I can’t stop seeing data, craving data, generating and storing data.  I do it for things like my finances, my diet and exercise, my personal time.  I try to make decisions based on data, and work to capture and store useful data for that very use at a later time.

I guess most folks, analytical folks, do this sort of thing anyway.  It’s pretty much a subconscious human behavior.  Going to a new restaraunt, ordering the fish while your wife goes with the lamb.  Realizing, after the inevitable sharing-of-bites from each other’s plates, that the lamb is fantastic and that the fish is, even without comparison, nothing to write home about.  Realize it or not, you’ve just created a file on this in your brain.  You have a piece of data which says that, based on prior experience, it’s better to go with lamb than fish at the Overton House.  Maybe later along you have an opportunity to talk to someone, whose opinion you value, about their dining experience at the Overton House and they, unlike you, thought the fish was fine.  In your brain you may file a “minority report,” or some “note of doubt” against your personal fish-at-Overton-House experience.  It’s all data; we all do it; I just think I see it for what it is because it’s what I breathe all day at work.

I spent those paragraphs setting up my data-driven nature so I could talk about Keaton turning five.  It happens before the month’s out, and the milestone has been on my mind more and more as the day approaches. Five years old.  Wow; I find that… simply amazing.  I was writing a mail to my mom the other day and had the occasion to muse, “When I was fifteen or so I can remember thinking it seemed like forever until, as a kid, you turn eighteen and get to go out on your own to college.  Now I find myself thinking eighteen years is a pittance to spend with my kids, and get downright sad when I realize my little girl is already almost 30% to that point.” It’s that bit about 30% that got me a-thinking on the data-driven nature of my thoughts (great sentence, that one).  At the time, I hadn’t actually done the math – but my mental wizardry told me that five was at least a third of fifteen, so it must be something close to 30% of eighteen.

Turns out five is actually about 28% of eighteen (check my math, I’m not so good at it).  And, for that matter, 28% is pretty close to 30% (uh-oh, I’m heading down that slippery slope of strategic-estimation to make things appear better or worse; my brother used to be able to convince himself that his birthday was “tomorrow” by deciding that the day before, the current day, maybe tomorrow, and other chosen days simply “didn’t count”).  So, I wasn’t that far off.  My little girl is some 30% through to that arbitrary age where we think of “kids” as”adults.”  Without having their first solo lion hunt and kill; without getting the tenth ring around their neck or walking across the hot coals; without being proven in battle or bedding the village wise-woman. Coming of age tied to naught but the right to vote and serve in the military (poor gits can’t even drink in most states).

I’m not really sad about it; I know we still have a lot of great time together to be had… I’m just intrigued by the statistic of it.  With any luck, I’ll live into my nineties and therefore still have the better-side of 50% to spend with this family we’ve created.  God knows I’m pretty much 200% in love with them all.

Goodnight.

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the underground kingdom of SMUD

This intensely gorgeous Sunday afternoon finds me typing on my laptop in the garage.

I’ve set the music to shuffle “all songs” for the Dead, and Jerry is dreamily noodling behind me, “Playing in the Band.”  I’m drinking a Downtown Brown and smoking my pipe; I broke into a old tin of Dunhill’s London Mixture for the occasion – to this American it’s a lavish tobacco and it works perfectly against the brown ale.  My feet are bare and I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  The baby is sleeping inside and Sharaun’s about to leave for the gym.  Keaton is playing in the front yard with her next-door neighbor friend.  I brought my book out here with me so I can read when I get tired of writing, or “wake up” to the fact that everything’s going on around me whilst I stare at a damned screen like I do every day at the office.

I’ll bet you didn’t know, friends, just like Keaton and the neighbor girl didn’t, that there’s a secret underground kingdom beneath our front yard.

Yes, I know, it’s hard to believe – but it’s there; I have proof.  You see, we found a door.  It’s been there all along, right in the corner of our yard!  And to make it more obvious, the name of the subterranean lands which lie hidden beneath its hinges is stenciled right on front: SMUD.  The secret underground kingdom of SMUD, hiding in plain sight all these years and we’ve never thought to think about it.  But no more!  Today the scales fell off and we got interested.  Keaton, the neighbor, and dad went into full-on explorer mode.  By jove if there’s a door to a secret kingdom right in our own front yard we are duty-bound to make contact with the inhabitants and establish neighborly relations (even if these neighbors are underneath rather than to the left or right).

At first we tried knocking, but no one answered.  Silly explorers, we forgot that our daytime is the darkest dead of midnight in the kingdom of SMUD – everyone must be sound asleep!  But we couldn’t wait until nightfall, there had to be another way.  Keaton had an epiphany and ran inside, double-timing it back a minute later with an array of keys we could try in the door.  Nothing worked.  Perhaps, dad pondered, there might be a secret password!  Like in the story of the forty thieves or when Gandalf gets the crew into Moria.  We try several guesses: “abracadabra,” “SMUD,” etc.  Dad offers up “open sesame,” and we even speak the most magic of all magic words: “please.”  All to no avail.

Presently, I’ve left the girls to the chore of waking or breaching – and they’re a dedicated duo!  I, on the other hand, am taking a break.  Every so often they run over to test a new thought, “Maybe we need tools!?”  “Good idea,” I encourage, “Here take this wrench and look for some kind of bolts or something!  Let me know how it goes, explorers!”  And they run off again into the sun.

And this, friends, is how to spend a Sunday.

Goodnight.

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some sad songs

Hi Thursday.  Work today might suck, so I wrote this in preparation.

I like writing about music, so I thought I’d write today about songs that “move” me.  A lot of songs move me in positive ways, making me happy or pumped-up or reminiscent, but the sad songs seem to get the short shrift.  So today I want to focus on just a few songs which make me feel… sadness.  Some, in fact, move me to the point of tears; not because of some associated memory or anything, but just because the songcraft or words or whole package is done juuuust right.  Here then, are some songs that make me sad.

Save the Life of My Child – Simon & Garfunkel (from the album Bookends, 1967) [listen]

How can a song about teen suicide not be sad?

Poor kid.  Who knows what’s driven him to this.  To climb out onto the ledge of a building and contemplate ending it all.  Paul Simon narrates from a 3rd-party perspective, showing us the crowd and the cops and the poor child’s mom, begging someone to rescue her child, to not let him die.

Where does it wrench the gut?  Oh, people, if you’ve heard it all the way through and you don’t know… they you ain’t got blood in your veins.  After all that time up there, all alone with his thoughts, the crowd that’s gathered below is growing hungry with bloodlust.  As night falls and the the police train their spotlight on our protagonist, Simon almost laments, “He flew away.”  The song changes drastically, and is a cue for us to recognize that we’ve now entered the mind of our young jumper.  We hear his thoughts as he falls, “Oh my grace, I’ve got no hiding place.”  Over and over again.  The lack of resolution makes the resolution clear.

As soon as I hear that, “He flew away” bit… I get chills and can almost feel the weight of that fictional kid’s choice.  What an awesome song.

The Ballad of Humankindness – The Dears (from the album, Gang of Losers, 2006) [listen]

Who said sad songs can’t be powerful?  Because, let me tell you, if a dude did say it that dude was dead wrong.

By now you’ve maybe queued up the song from the Grooveshark link and it’s starting.  You might be wondering, “Dave… this sounds cheesey.”  Stick with me!  Please, I beg.  Just make it through the trumpet solo (and don’t let the fact that there’s a trumpet solo turn you off).  Right around the end of that solo, you’ll hear a stray tambourine… it’s your warning bell, your omen, your hint of the amazing denouement to come.  Musically, this track is like a lovely jack-in-the-box, winding and winding and winding and finally exploding into an orgasm of arpeggio guitars, steady tambourine, sing-song chorus, and that final strum-hold/strum-hold/strum-through rhythm.  Musically, it’s bright and powerful and… maybe you’d say… happy-sounding.

But lyrically… lyrically I want to re-cast it for you.  Listen to Lightburn’s words.  Listen.  Bemoaning the plight of the homeless, Lightburn asks himself what he’s been doing about it.  Indicts himself for simply “living with” such a terrible situation.  The part that cuts me to the bone is the impassioned, “I’m gonna change, I’m gonna change, I’m gonna change, I’m gonna change!” verse.  It’s a song about being disgusted with yourself for not heeding your WWJD bracelet.  Maybe the words are a bit over-the-top, but I love the sentiment.  The guilt, the shame, all of it comes across really well for me – and qualifies as a song that makes me sad.

Little Dancing Girl – Harry Connick Jr. (from the album Lofty’s Roach Souffle, 1990) [listen]

There are no words to this song.  In fact there are no words on this entire album.

But people, this is one sad song.  I don’t pretend to know what it’s about, other than maybe a little dancing girl, but I like to imagine a story in my head of a father who, for whatever reason, has lost his daughter.  Years ago, maybe it was an accident, or a divorce, or even just bad blood and a broken relationship.  This song is him remembering when things were better.  When she was maybe five and he was her idol and her rock and everything she looked up to in the world.  He can think back to that day, maybe she was just dancing around silly in the house, maybe it was her ballet recital, but it’s a perfect memory and he holds onto it.

The song really gets bad, sad-wise, when everything else drops away and all you get is the upright bass, somewhere around the 3:40 mark you get that little bass solo.  So deep and round are the notes on that big bass that you have to turn the stereo waaay up to hear it.  But this bass breakdown represents, to me, my fictional dad’s breakdown.  He knows his memory isn’t reality and this is the part where it all falls apart.  Dang.  Tearjerker (in my own mind).

She Sends Kisses – The Wrens (from the album The Meadowlands, 2003) [listen]

I wrote about this song already, back in 2004.  I loved it then and I love it now.  The lyrics are so perfect, 100% unrequited love.  The girl is gone.  She’s been gone.  He spent a lot of time missing her, still misses her, maybe not rawly or every day anymore, but he still loves her.  He’s got all these memories of the time they spent together, how much he worked for her, how badly he wanted her.  “Hopes pinned to poses honed in men’s room mirrors,” and “I put your face on her all year,” are simply amazing bits of lyric.

And then, around the crescendo things go dim.  My eyes go damp, my chest goes tight.  This poor, sad, pining sucker.  This dude is head over heels and this specter from the past just sent him a note signed with Xs and Os.  Those are stupid-letter-code for kisses!  Kisses?! That bitch!  After all this time she’s going to do this to me?!  He reads the note and sees those Xs and Os, knows what they mean and all of the sudden, “Back doors blow open.”  Every memory cued at half speed, it all comes flooding back.  Xs and Os.

Oh you poor man.  Down the rabbit hole again.

Thorn Tree In the Garden – Derek & the Dominos (from the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, 1971) [listen]

A gorgeous song by Dominos member Bobby Whitlock.  An unbelievable stereo mix, the guitar and sparse knocking percussion clear and present and balanced.  The harmonics repeated in the background almost like bells.  I imagine I can hear Whitlock’s held-back tears.  At the end, when he goes falsetto to wonder, “And maybe some day soon, some way…” you want to just put your arms around they guy and tell him it’s going to be OK, it’s all going to be alright.

I wonder how many people have listened to this song whilst bawling over their very own lost love.  I wonder what they’d think if they learned Whitlock was actually singing about a dog.  Yeah.  A dog.  A roommate of his took his dog and killed it. Bobby hated him for it and wrote this song to “out” him to the world as the guy who did such and awful thing to the pet he loved.  Don’t worry though, those of you who may have misappropriated the track, Whitlock himself clarifies, “It’s all about love anyway. There is no love of this and not that. There’s no measure of it. Whether it’s a dog, your mother, dad, brother, sister, your companion, your horse or your neighbor, it is that one thing. It doesn’t have a distinction. There’s no barrier, it’s just one thing that encompasses everything if you stop and think about it.”

OK, that’s enough for sad songs.  Here, have a tissue.

How about you?  Got any songs that start the waterworks every time?  What did I forget?  “Tears in Heaven?”  Cash’s “Hurt” cover?  Yeah, saaaad.

Goodnight.