Ten Things

i’m grateful for today, so far. (i desperately need to remind myself…)

1. six and a half hours of unbroken sleep.
2. fresh cherries and pineapple slices in the refrigerator for breakfast.
3. an hour of calm reading time with coffee before work.
4. Lauren’s voice didn’t sound like a grating box of Lucky Brands, and she was glowing from her seven and a half hours of unbroken, albeit CR, sleep.
5. the resuscitation of a long forgotten mix on the way to work, with songs from a nostalgic, bygone era.
6. traffic at the I-95 merge kept me held up for awhile,  giving me even more time to enjoy that mix.
7. morning Zen chat with Wendy.
8. Chik-Patty Sandwich from Edge of the Hood on a full hour lunchbreak.
   (bonus: free sample of Reed’s Ginger Beer)
9. the amazing opportunities for patience and compassion presented by a last-minute phone call from my boss, the sudden loss of much-needed fonts, and the five-minute lag-time between the moment i press “print” and when the document actually prints.
10. dark chocolate-covered almonds.

and it’s only 3:14 in the afternoon.

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just to say hi

it happens sometimes when i’m not paying attention. memories creep in from distant places. the smell of Chapel Street early this morning; steady rain on the windows after the sun goes down; Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea from the ipod on shuffle; tu me manques on the tv. bystander details from an innocent June day saturating all the photos i didn’t save or never took.

in my head i found you there and
running around and following me

it may not be much of an image, sometimes not even a face. sometimes it’s just a presence filling the space like in a dream where a stranger is pictured but you recognize them as someone you know in real life. sometimes it’s just a name written in someone’s particular script in the air in front of me.

but they’re there, and they don’t notice me. and of course that’s all i want. i want them to look up from their faraway lives and say hi.

that’s why i’m writing, of course.

i want them to remember me like i sometimes remember them. that ride home from the Valley, that photo taken on the Turnpike, that storm over Seaside Park.

but i suppose the best i can do is wave to them from here, whether anyone is looking or not.

i haven’t forgotten you, and i don’t think i ever will.

baker baker baking a cake
make me a day
make me whole again
and i wonder if he’s ok
if you see him say hi

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in defense of blogging

a few days ago i gave a friend the link to my blog, and she said, “i’ll check it out, but i tend to think of blogging as pretentious.” i responded, “i’ll admit it–it is pretentious and attention seeking, but i can only write when i know i have an audience.”

the whole exchange stuck with me for awhile. how is blogging any more pretentious than playing guitar and singing at the local open mic? than displaying photos at the local coffee shop? than submitting a manuscript for publishing?

presumptuous, maybe.

the artist who displays or performs presumes that someone out there wants to experience their art. they hope to be seen and to convey some sort of message. some might be more pretentious than others in their artistic intentions, but i don’t know if the mere act of displaying their art is in itself pretentious.

i don’t blog to feel important or to magnify my self-worth. but the fact that i know that (at least three) people will read what i write brings mission to my writing. knowing that someone out there is waiting to read what i write gives me a reason to start and finish. it gives me a reason to edit and polish.

when i know someone else will be looking, i have to be totally accountable for my words.

i don’t think art created with the audience in mind is any less pure than that which is created never to be seen or experienced. i think it’s just different. once an artist decides to create for an audience, the audience immediately becomes part of that art, long before anyone actually experiences the piece.

i would never claim to be an artist, or even a writer. but i see a lot of things that i want to share, and i have a lot of questions to ask and a lot of muddled thoughts to sort out.

i put it all out there, here, in hopes that someone might want to walk beside me for a paragraph or two, silently or not. you bring me comfort and inspiration, even if you’re not really there.

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early morning: rain everywhere

the morning fog is pulling everything together. the storm, my dreams, the ride to work. a long-gone song in the distance and its teary laughter. the grinding ache in the back of my skull. milk instead of half and half.

i woke up to the rumble of far-away thunder last night and went downstairs. the flashes were bright, lighting up white squares on the walls in the living room through the skylights above. i counted to 11 before the boom came.

i couldn’t sleep. i listened as the tap on the windows above became a steady knocking and then an insistent pounding. i thought about the tin roof from my house in Eugene, and the pure sound of water on metal. only rain makes me miss Oregon (which is funny–i left the northwest because i missed the sun). it was always green there, even in the winter, but the sky was always gray. always.

i couldn’t sleep. a pain gray as the Eugene sky was spreading millimeter by millimeter into the back parts of my head. maybe it was the heffie at Prime 16 earlier that night. maybe it was the Sam at the Q Club before that. or maybe it was just a headache. i dropped an Advil with some cold water and set my head down again. i can’t be sure, but i think it was awhile before i finally drifted off. the rain was still coming down.

the dreams came soft but fast, like the mist rolling off the Northwest coast in the morning. there was water everywhere. streets were replaced with rivers, and we swam everywhere as if to stroll. the air was hot and sticky, and the city was a giant, intimate party–a maze of houses of rooms like peep shows on an assortment of activities–people on couches sipping beers, sweaty folks banging on hand-drums, and other sweaty folks whose doings were not so innocent. i watched, floating from scene to scene, my eyes like a camera slightly out of focus. pictures of so many colorful, chill indiscretions–mine and yours and everyone’s.

homelessness: my reply

This is my reply to the following comment posted in an article in the New Haven Independent about federal stimulus money going to help the homeless in New Haven.

Posted by: lance | April 30, 2009 4:27 PM

most people that are homeless brought it upon themselves, I wouldn’t give ‘em anything, let alone 1.5 million dollrs worth of food. And how much of the 1.5 is going to be embezzled in one way or another?

Lance, how do you know that most homeless people brought it upon themselves? Have you been out there on the streets and asked them how they ended up there?

Or did you just see someone in the street, someone probably stuck in one of the worst periods in their life, and write them off as irresponsible and unfit for your compassion, let alone your tax dollars.

I wonder who showed you compassion in your lowest moment and what would have happened if they hadn’t.

And from a purely practical point of view: you and your tax dollars are going to deal with the homeless in one way or another, whether through paying police to handle their petty crimes in your neighborhood, through reimbursing hospitals for their unnecessary stays in the emergency room, or through paying for their jail time.

$13,500 = The average annual cost to provide shelter, meals, and case management for one person in New Haven (per Columbus House in New Haven).

$44,000 = The average annual cost to incarcerate one inmate in Connecticut. (http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0099.htm).

Why not provide the resources to get the homeless stable, housed and independent when it’s so much more cost effective (not to mention compassionate) than the alternatives?

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(The Independent’s site would not, for technical reasons, let me post my reply there.)

word!

from NPR’s Planet Money blog.

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life of East Rock

it’s a strange thing to run without music when i’ve run plugged into my ipod for so long. the opposite of music is not silence, it’s breath–mine and a neighborhood’s. the sound of moppy heads grinding the sidewalk with skateboards. of dogs behind fences barking at dogs on leashes. of the soft soles of a faster runner coming up behind me.

it’s been a long time since i’ve ran through East Rock (the section of town). Carrie-Lynn and i used to jog to the edge of East Rock (the rock) and then wind through the sort of suburban streets of the rare New Haven neighborhood that has somehow managed to not become too gentrified or too dangerous. we’d end at her place on Foster, and she’d invite me up for lemonade and conversation on her third floor balcony.

the houses lining Livingston all look like they’ve been alive a long time, like great-grandpas with bushy eyebrows or ancient aunts whose knee-high pantyhose are always falling down–the ones the kids love best.

and there are kids everywhere. one who keeps throwing a flat rock at the sidewalk to see how many pieces she can break it into. teenagers in Uggs outside of Hall-Benedict Drug. i smile but they don’t smile back because teenagers never smile back. white kids shooting hoops at East Rock Park; black kids shooting hoops a little further down English St. across from Rice Field.

i go a little further down English and realize that I-91 and a hidden field of cat tails keeps me from looping back over the river to my car. so i turn around.

i take the trail that girls aren’t supposed to take by themselves. i take it because it’s quiet, lined with giant, quiet trees and a quiet river. nothing has blossomed yet, but it seems to me like the brown of winter has turned gold. the jogging comes easier with gold than with brown.

and then i’m suddenly back with the oversized houses stuffed three floors high with Yale grad students and starter families. everyone smiles back when i jog past, even the dogs. everyone except the teenagers, of course.

i think i’d like a floor and a starter family.

i’m about to turn back onto Edwards where my car is parked when i notice that under the mail box on the corner there’s a pair of old ladies shoes, black flats like a librarian would wear. they just sit there, as though an old lady were standing in them.

i’m not sure i would have noticed them if i were plugged into my ipod.

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pillow talk last night

Lauren:  i just pictured us middle-aged and hanging out on a porch swing, watching our kids play in the yard, and saying, “we made it.”

Me (with happily surprised tone): kids?

Lauren: ummm, maybe dogs. i don’t know. they were really far away.

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good/evil, life, and the movies

i’ve been sick and stuck on my couch for the last 24 hours, so i’ve been stuffing myself with passive activities that mostly involve tv-watching. yesterday, i loaded Lord of the Rings – Return of the King into the dvd player and and dropped my head on my pillow for the next three and a half hours .

the LOTR movies are  up there on my all-time favorite list. why? i love the battles. i love watching Legolas surf down stairs on a shield while shooting his arrows at ugly things; Aragorn storm majestically through a crowd of orcs; and Gandolf spin with his wizard grace, taking out enemies with his staff in one hand and his sword in the others.

in fact, i love war-ish movies in general. Gladiator. The Patriot.

but it sort of goes against who i am. in real life, i find violence not only repugnant, but completely unnecessary. to me, violence is insecurity in its basest form, a desperate need to be right at all costs.

so why my attraction to such bloody movies? easy: one dimensional portrayals of good versus evil. in LOTR, orcs are bred by an inherently evil, destructive leader, so no one cares how many of them die; while Aragorn is the epitome of goodness and humility, so he’s an easy hero. in Gladiator, Maximus kills because he is forced to but he really just wants to be with his family (who was brutally murdered); while Emperor Commodus has a perverted love for his sister and basically holds his nephew hostage, all for the sake of holding onto power. in The Patriot, Benjamin Martin is also forced to kill because the ruthless English Colonel Tavington killed his innocent son on a whim.

all of these movies operate in a black/white, wrong/right universe; clear-cut choices for an audience hungry for escapism.

the problem is, though, that we carry this simplistic, dualistic view back into real life, carelessly assigning “good” and “evil” via rules we write and rewrite to suit whatever our needs are at the time.

in reality, though, people are people. people with weaknesses, people clinging to whatever stability they might have, people covering up their helplessness with brute strength and absolute truths. but they’re all people, nonetheless. not “good” people or “evil” people, simply people whose experiences have carried them to a certain place in life and created a particular perspective of the world.

back from the southernmost point

this is one of maybe five pictures i took in Key West last week,
and it’s my favorite.

it’s my favorite because the meal was great and
Lauren let me use her new camera.

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