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giving chase

Tonight we watched E.T. with Keaton; being not yet five it was her first time seeing it.

As a kid, I can remember the scene where E.T. is “dying” as something that absolutely broke my heart. I mean I had nightmares about those little round suction-cup monitors they had all over Elliot and E.T.  I’d forgotten just how good the movie is, and just how sad the sad parts can be.  I think I cried more because I could see Keaton working hard to stifle her owns tears than because E.T. had to leave in the end.  As the spaceship lifted off she broke down and sniffed hard, letting a single hear dampen the side of her little nose.  She snuggled up close to Sharaun (she’d moved to the couch with mom when things started getting a bit emotional) and worked hard to stem a flow.

I love movie nights with the family.  More and more this is what I want from life.  Not money, not a social life, not goods; just time where I can be still.  Time with my family and my God and my thoughts and my self.  In those brief moments I catch snatches and drifts of a more sublime existence; a place where it’s Fall and my neighbors go to my church and I can send my kids out trick-or-treating without adult supervision – some unreal nirvana; a catchall fantasy that has me surrounded by only that which has meaning.  Where work stays at work, summers are long and stress is low.  Where the cost of living matters not compared to the quality of life.

Sometimes the urge to drop out and chase the fantasy is strong.  Truly strong.  Right now is one of those times.  Lately all I want to do is give chase; my brain is dripping with sweat for all the dwelling I do on it.  Feeling like, maybe, it’s only a question of getting all the tumblers aligned just right and click, your every action has meaning and your every breath is fulfillment.  Gaining distance from the folly of the past and a wide berth to define what matters and what’s right.  Between being consumed with these thoughts I manage to get some work done, but it’s getting hard.

Truly strong.

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benny goodman bought my colonial

Sharaun was watching a PVR’d Oprah tonight, one of the episodes where she “hooks people up.”

In these schmaltzy shows, Oprah does all sorts of benevolent things for people, some of them meaningful and of substance and some of them trivial and, in truth, folly.  During the parts I saw, she sent some Cher fan to Vegas to meet Cher, had Justin Timberlake give golf lessons to some pie-eyed woman, and invited will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas to completely pay off the mortgages of two families who were hit by the recession, had fallen deep in debt, and were at risk for losing their homes.  All very altruistic gestures, to be sure, but I think the houses-paid-off folks probably feel a little more gratitude than the I-met-my-favorite-famous-person folks.

How odd would it be to explain to people that the dude from the Black Eyed Peas paid off your house?  Think about twenty years from now when your kids, now grown adults in their own right, see a rerun of an old Oprah show (still in color, no less) where they learn how some pop-culture artifact plucked up off the top stairs on the stoop of the poorhouse.  What a strange twist to things.  Maybe something to keep in mind if things ever get that dire – don’t discount reaching to random rock star philanthropists.

Goodnight.

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not the week for writing

It rained today, the first time since the summer’s heat.

Makes me think that Fall is truly coming.  Football is here; I’ve started thinking about Halloween; and we’ve got all our holiday travel booked.  Maybe Fall is truly coming.  Maybe that’s good, might give me something to write about.  I’ve had so many things to write about this week and absolutely no time to get them out.  Work again, as my primary foe, has proven resourceful this week at keeping me away from it.  Sometimes work should take a hike.

Cohen turns two months old next week.  I find this hard to believe even though I know it to be true.  He has gained more than two pounds from his birthweight, and while I don’t have measurements I can already see he’s so much “longer” than he used to be.  He’s still a perfect little newborn, sleeping most of the time but spending an increasing amount of time awake and “playful” post feeding.  He’s great at night, doesn’t fuss too much and, like Keaton, never spits up. Knowing what some people go through with babies, he’s been our second blessing in that regard.

It’s like 11pm and I’m stuck again.  Maybe just not the week for writing.  Goodnight.

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“tell cohen i love him infinity times…”

“… but explain it to him.”

This is what Keaton now says as the denouement to the most recent incarnation of her borderline-OCD bedtime routine.

How did we get here?  Well, a few months ago Keaton began wanting to tell mom, on night when I put her to bed, just how much she loved her.  She’d emphasize the reaaallly in her, “Tell her I really love her, OK dad?”  Over a few nights, this turned into multiple “reallys,” as in, “Tell mom I really really really love her, OK dad?”  One night I made the mistake of proclaiming a really-count after she’s conveyed the magnitude of her love for mom: “Wow, you love mom thirteen times!  That’s a lot!”  This, of course, turned into a “really” arms race… each night’s count bidding to outdo the night’s before.  For a while it was fun… until we got up into the 100+, 150+, and edging-at 200 marks.  By that time, I was tired of counting reallys… and I decided to figure a way out.

That’s when I decided to teach our four and a half year old daughter the concept of infinity.  Nevermind that she won’t be properly introduced to it until algebra, and even then won’t appreciate its peculiarities unless she takes a higher math like calculus or set theory or whatever.  I just explained it thusly, “You know Keaton, there is a thing called ‘infinity.’  It means the biggest number ever.  No number can be bigger than it.  It’s the most; always.”  And then, “So, if you reaaally want to tell mom how much you love her, and it’s reaallyy the most ever, you can just say you love her ‘infinity times’ and it’s the biggest, most, highest number of all.”  So what had become a multiple-minute string of “reallyreallyreallyreally” became a much more managable, “Tell mom I love her infinity times.”

Then came Cohen, and of course he got added to Keaton’s love-list.  But after a couple nights of, “Tell mom I love her infinity times, and tell Cohen I love him infinity times too,” she asked, “Dad, does Cohen know what ‘infinity times’ means like I do?  Does he know it’s the biggest, the most?”  I had to be straight with my little thinker, “No, he doesn’t.  He can’t understand that kind of thing right now… but he definitely knows you love him by the way you play with him and talk to him and treat him nice.”  (Not a bad answer, if I don’t say so myself).  And so she changed her wording to account for poor Cohen’s unenlightened mind:

“Tell mom I love her infinity times, and tell Cohen I love him infinity times but explain it to him, OK dad?”

To which I reply, “I will babe.”  And she’s not happy until I kiss her, leave the room, and she can hear me in the distance say, “Cohen, Keaton loves you infinity times, and that means she loves you the most anyone can ever love anyone.”

Awesome.

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nomads & their garlic-hands

I made dinner Sunday night and I had to chop garlic.

Anytime I do this, chop some fragrant spice for dinner, typically garlic or onions, the smell seems to leech into my fingers and can linger there for days. It’s not something overpowering, you wouldn’t turn your nose were I to walk by or anything, it’s just a subtle note of the aroma when you’re close.

For instance, if I put my hand to my chin to smooth my beard, as I often do at work subconsciously, despite the fact that my beard is cropped short enough that it hardly needs “smoothing,” I’ll catch the scent on my skin. I can even increase the potency and notability of the thing by warming my hand; seems to bring it out. I do this, too; I’ll make a little tunnel, fingertips to palm, and blow softly therein. The warm moist breath spikes the residual scent, bring it more to the fore. Or I’ll wring my hands together, letting friction warm my skin.

Sure it sounds odd, but I like the “primal” feeling I get when I note that my hands smell like spices. It’s the same kind of ancestral “connected pride” I feel when I labor with my hands and find them rough for a day (before they regain their cubicle-dweller suppleness); throughout time humans were rougher and smellier and more physically tied to the things they did.

Sure fifteenth century nomadic Frenchman’s hands smelled of garlic and rosemary and whatever else grew in the folds of earth he hunted and abided in. Men and women alike probably also carried a deal more unsavory odors along with them; blood and feces and age-old sweat and dirt all other manner of “down in it” things. They were surely also roughened with work and exposure, hardened, creased and maybe even often pained. Tirelessly rooted to the elements that both governed and sustained them.

Yes, when my hands smell like garlic, I think of nomadic hunter-gatherers of the middle-ages. Strange.

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go on little sister!

There’s a song, the last song, on the new Sufjan Stevens EP, All Delighted People, called “Djohariah.”  It’s seventeen minutes long and doesn’t have any words for the first ten or so.  It’s amazing.

Over the past week I’ve listened to this song non-stop.  The last time I became so engrossed with a single song was with the famous “take 20” leak of 2009.  I’m seriously sick in the head about this tune; addicted.  I’ve started measuring time in “Djohariahs;” how many Djohariahs can I get in at the gym in the morning?, before that next meeting?, while I wash up after dinner?  Sharaun tells me we have to leave the house in fifteen minutes so we’re not late for church and my brain goes, “Oh, that’s almost one whole Djohariah,” as I fumble to hit play.

Those who know me would undoubtedly say hyperbole is no stranger to me, but I do find this track some kind of “transcendental.”  I have listened to nothing but this song, over and over and over and over, for days.  My last.fm profile says I’ve listened to it 113 times since the EP leaked on Sunday.  That’s 113 x 17 minutes, or 32 hours of Djohariah; averaging over half of each of my working days this past week.  This is an amazing statistic for me: one hour each morning at the gym, a couple hours combined each day at work, and evenings at home.  Sharaun has been more than accommodating of this fanaticism, and I think even likes the tune a bit – although won’t likely get as much mileage from it as I can.

It’s not just the music here that’s amazing.  Not just the eleven minute opening guitar-work, reminiscent of a set-closing “Cortez the Killer” and having all the magic spontaneity and wonder of a one-take masterpiece ala Emerson’s “Lucky Man” closer.  Not just the swelling chorus of human voices used where others might simply use a synthesizer to fill the space.  Not just the attention-grabbing changes in tempo and mood.  No way y’all, this track says something.  The more I listened the more I wanted to know what the heck the track was about.  I Googled “Djohariah,” and found a link to some hippy-spiritualist lady… which, being that we’re talking about Sufjan here, sounded plausible.  But a couple links later I learned that Djohariah is, in fact, the name of Sufjan’s sister.

Oh man it’s a song about his sister.  That made it all the better.  Would that I be able to write something as awesome about those that I love.  Then I listened.

Djohariah got caught up with the wrong kind of guy and he did her wrong; left her and the child God gave them; split.  Sufjan is writing to encourage her, his little sister, now a single mother.  Her man has left her, squandered their money, neglected their house and yard, and she’s ashamed at how the neighbors see her.  Sufjan asks her not to cry, reminds her what a blessing it is to be a mother, and implores her, “Go on! Little sister! Go on! Little sister! For your world is yours, world is yours! All the wilderness of world is yours!”  I don’t know if it’s really biographical or just germane fiction, but it’s emotive and powerful and personal and it has all the markings of a heartfelt composition in both sound and words.  I love this song, Ms. Stevens you must be one amazing woman to have engendered such an organic outpouring.

You can listen to Djohariah right here, and buy it for a buck while you’re there.  Enjoy.

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what would it be?

It was so hot yesterday when I got in the car after work I touched the metal bit on the seatbelt and burnt myself.  That’s hot.

Sharaun is asleep on the couch; has been since 9pm.  Early, even for her.  I’ve got the home theater PC playing a nice random shuffle from the collection, right now I’m jamming to part of Colosseum’s 1969 The Valentyne Suite.  It’s good Sharaun is asleep, actually, she would absolutely revolt if she had to listen to this frenetic mess of stabby organ.  Actually it’s good for more reasons than simply sparing her the Colosseum’s psychedelic-prog-jazz – she really needs the rest.  I have to remember she’s up three times during the night, and at about forty minutes a piece she’s getting two full hours less sleep than I am.  Combine that with eight hours spent at home with Keaton and Cohen and I’m surprised she wasn’t out before 9pm.

Despite her exhaustion, or maybe in defiance of it, she really helped me today.  My alarm went off around 5:45am and I arose intending to go to the gym for my morning workout.  But when I sat up in bed, something was wrong.  Well, two things were wrong: 1) I had stayed up far too late the night before and was in no mood to sacrifice an hour of sleep to the elliptical and 2) I immediately remembered something.  That something was the fact that, the afternoon before, I’d printed out a bunch of paperwork before leaving the office – with designs on reviewing it in the evening for a back-to-back string of important meetings I had at work the next day.  That night, however, I completely forgot about the printouts and the need to review them.  Waking the following morning then and remembering that my meetings started at 8am and went solid through 3pm… I became quickly horrified that I’d entirely forgotten to review and prepare.

I sat in bed agog.  How could I forget something so important?  It was now 6am and just a couple hours stood between me and those meetings.  I told Sharaun what I’d done (or not done) – she was awake feeding Cohen – and, deciding, said, “I’m going in.”  I was at work by 6:30am and spent the wee hours preparing and readying and am happy to say those meetings went quite well.  My wife though… and this is where it gets good… my wife had obviously read perfectly the stress and slight panic in my face as I sat bolt-upright in bed.  Around 9am she texted, “I’m thinking about you, I hope your day is going well.”  Then around noon she e-mailed, “Hope your day is still going well. I wanted to know, if there was one thing that you would like to see get done while you’re at work, what would it be?”

And even though my day hadn’t gone even remotely close to being “bad,” I think that if it had she’d have turned it all around with those couple of notes.

Too bad I’m such a jerk of a husband though, I responded with, “Israeli–Palestinian peace accord.”

Not really.  But that would have been funny.

I love my wife.