Posts

Posted on

alternating apexes

Up in the canyon there was a swing.

A hand-fashioned thing hung by two rough ropes (jute-rough) from the stout limb of a tall tree.  The plank for your bottom was an old fence board and there were fat washers that at one time were probably shiny silver.  The tree stood near the edge of a small butte, and the drop as the ground abruptly shifted levels was probably a good ten feet down, mostly vertical (maybe 80°).  When you got going you’d swing wide over that cleft in the land and your feet would dangle above the tall yellow grass that lay below.

Like an ocean, the seedheads stretched to the road at the property line and represented the end of the domesticated earth and the beginning of the untamed wilderness.  I would pump my legs wildly and arc out with an ache for the unknown.  I wanted to get out there… into the swaying grass and disappear.  Maybe flatten a little circle and make myself a hovel, setup camp and hunker down for an evening, wear out a flashlight and listen, afraid, to the noises of night.  Never did though.

We stayed there for a week and I was on that swing most evenings.  Back and forth.  Out from the known and into the unknown and back again.

Over and over again over the abyss and always back to the middle where my feet could touch the ground.

C’mon ground.

Posted on

reality interrupted

The picture accompanying this blog is one I took on our last visit to Florida.

I took it during a boating trip, at a remote spot on the river where people like to beach their craft and hang out and party.  White people, apparently.  I’ve been waiting for a “good” time to share it without being condescending to a whole statefull of people.  I think this blog works…

I’ve tried to stay away from politics on the blog lately… but there is so much going on in America nowadays it’s sometimes hard to.  I could talk about the Tea Party primary wins, I could talk about the stimulus and the Bush tax cuts, I could talk about Rove’s status as the GOP’s fallen angel.  Yeah, each of these things would be fun to write about, but none of them motivate me as much as the cover story from the latest issue of Forbes magazine.  For a story like this, the desire to write about politics is too strong to stifle.

Entitled How Obama Thinks, the article makes the case that Obama’s style of governing, and more specifically his anti-business stances, are owed to his “roots” in Africa.  In fact, the author thinks Obama may be ruling the United States “… according to the dreams of a [Kenyan] tribesman of the 1950s.”  No, really.  There are pages upon pages where this guy is basically saying, in nice 50¢ words, that Obama’s bloodline-connection to his bushman past means the “African in him” is driving his current policy.  The article is so ridiculous and so borderline insane I’m almost surprised the author didn’t wonder aloud how our president manages to not throw his own poo.

Newt Gingrich says that D’Souza has made the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”  He goes on to ask, “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?,” and closes with, “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”  The most accurate and predictable model for his behavior?  Wow.

And now we’re asked to wonder, could Obama be somehow less “American” than the rest of us?  Might he be subconsciously limited by the shortcomings of the “dusky race” from which he originates?  I mean why not  just come out and say what you think here: He’s a spearchucker; a jigaboo; an unpredictable wild animal who’s ancestral connections to And the Gods Must Be Crazy caricatures are to be mistrusted at best.  At worst, we may have to mobilize the mob and lynch the poor guy so his monkey-urges don’t continue to take us to hell in a handbasket.

Robert Parry might be right, parts of America certainly seem to be decoupling from reality.  Here is blatant racism masquerading as “thoughtful” political analysis, and many of the most influential folks on the right seem to be embracing it as fact.  But it’s not fact, it’s not “colonialism,” it’s straight-up “I don’t like black people, and besides I’m scared of them” racism. It’s racism.

Back to hibernation… (or maybe DC…)

Posted on

i have this purple shirt

I have this purple shirt.

A solid-colored, long-sleeved, button-down purple dress shirt.  I love this shirt and think I look great in it.  I like wearing it un-tucked over bulejeans with black dressy shoes.  With that outfit on I feel special-sporty.

Problem is, everyone makes fun of my purple shirt.  No, not like some kind of bullying that’s serious – but that all-in-good-fun ribbing that you get from your coworkers.  People walk into my cubicle and feign shock and say things like, “Whoa, what’s up purple shirt?”

I laugh, because it’s funny; but maybe, just maybe, my purple shirt ain’t doing quite as much for me as I like to think it is.  I find this hard to believe.  Again, this shirt basically makes me into a paramount of fashion, I know this for a fact in my own mind.  Yet, still, people look at my shirt and take verbal jabs.

Come to think of it, I don’t see a lot of other men wearing purple.  I think I might be the only guy at the office who even owns a purple shirt.  But on the other hand that just means it’s all the more awesome.

No wonder people are making fun of it, they are clearly jealous.  As I stride around in the color of kings they weep.

That’s got to be it.

Oh hey, before I go, I stumbled upon this Wikipedia link the other day and felt extremely validated.

Goodnight.

Posted on

been here before

I wrote something tonight that I really liked.   Then I deleted it.

It was some artsy bit about gaining perspective, brought about by re-reading yesterday’s entry.  It had a caveman and something about DNA and guilt over prayers for clean water.  Man it was bad.  Written well, but bad.

Lately I just can’t write anything I like.  I write it and abandon it or delete it.  I thought tonight about writing about how I’ve been using a couple new pieces of software I really like, but then that seemed boring.  I thought of doing the standard “Cohen is getting older” or “Keaton did something cute” retell.  Nothing seemed right and it all seemed boring.   And then here I am writing about how I can’t write again; probably the most trotted-out rehash I have and here I go pulling it down again.

Maybe it’s just adjusting to the new schedule.  The new baby, work in constant overload, the old baby.  It’s not like I’m lacking sleep, I still get most of it.  I’ve weathered storms in writing before.  In 1997 I took a three month break.  I opened that return to writing with these words, “It’s really been a while…  A lot has happened since I’ve last cared to write.”  Well it’s really been a while since I’ve not written for a period of more than a week… so ultimately I feel OK.  It’ll come back.

And anyway, while looking back to judge breaks-in-writing of the past I found this:

4/10/98

So many things have been going on, it’s hard to choose which to write about.  I truly am so busy lately, I have no time for the things that I wish I could be doing right now.  I guess that’s how it happens though, by the time you get old enough to realize that you could be doing something else – you’re too busy to be doing it.  Does that make sense?  I mean that, every day I can think of one-thousand things that I could be doing rather than what I am doing at that time, but – now that I am finally realizing what I could be doing, I am too busy to even keep that thought in my head long enough to imagine it.  It’s life setting in I suppose, the more things I can do, the less time I have to do them.

I laughed.  Goodnight.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.