All the ocean waves stilled mid-arc, at dawn in fading into light from dark. A light glint telescoped skyward and down that beam slid a solitary frozen gull, also stalled mid-flight, mid-screech, mid-shit on a frozen early walker with a metal detector mid-wave too, mid-beep. The sound stopped too, not a fade or echo, a hard stop. Some other guy on a pier (old salt type) froze mid-cast, leaning back from now to past in a cacophony of clam chowder breath and musty tobacco. Now the oldies station falls quiet too, now the lifeguard towers and ice cream stands and umbrellas and pickets all topple, now the sun is hollowing inside out.
Now the sun is hollowing inside out, that new light the last the world could see as early in the sky it drifts away to dark. And in the silent summer left behind the people rise for morning one by one, rise for morning one by one and burn their houses, long farewell to seasons past.
8.31.2010
8.30.2010
Jon Runyan
Dear Congressman Adler:
Despite your negligent and doubtless poorly calculated failure to vote yes for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) this past spring, and the questions it raises about your vision and your fortitude, I wish you the best for the upcoming election. As such, I am writing to suggest a line of argument for use in sharpening your campaign.
It would be relatively easy (and delicious for your electorate) if you were to pull a Swift Boat turn and use Mr. Runyan's years of service against him. Specifically, I suggest that you make his time on the Eagles a liability. It is my sense that this could be achieved even without resorting to a renumeration of the team's NFC Championship history.
My specific suggestion is that you focus your campaign on the decision by the Eagles organization not to bring Mr. Runyan back to the team last year, despite his interest in returning. I would suggest running a picture of yourself hugging a kitten, as if to defend her from an onrushing pass rush, also standing in front of a woman or women aged 80 or greater, on one side of the flyer. On the other side, I would suggest messaging in block letters to the effect of:
In fall 2009, the Philadelphia Eagles considered Jon Runyan for an open offensive line position, after 9 years with the team. They ultimately decided no.
Who would know better if not the Eagles? You might ask the Houston Oilers, where he began his career in 1996, but they no longer exist. This fall, vote with the Eagles: vote no for Jon Runyan, and yes for me, Congressman John Adler.
Congressman John Adler: Even though I incomprehensibly didn't vote for ACA, I'm still your guy.
One love,
Congressman John Adler
The Campaign to Reelect Congressman John Adler
Congressman Adler, I trust that you may wish to make slight typographic or font modifications to this letter. That would be fine. I am free most days to review any changes you might make; but given the urgency of your campaign, please do not hold up the final draft on my account.
I wish you the best with the campaign, and whatever your future career plans may be.
Respectfully,
T. Everett Shrubkin
Moorestown, NJ
Despite your negligent and doubtless poorly calculated failure to vote yes for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) this past spring, and the questions it raises about your vision and your fortitude, I wish you the best for the upcoming election. As such, I am writing to suggest a line of argument for use in sharpening your campaign.
It would be relatively easy (and delicious for your electorate) if you were to pull a Swift Boat turn and use Mr. Runyan's years of service against him. Specifically, I suggest that you make his time on the Eagles a liability. It is my sense that this could be achieved even without resorting to a renumeration of the team's NFC Championship history.
My specific suggestion is that you focus your campaign on the decision by the Eagles organization not to bring Mr. Runyan back to the team last year, despite his interest in returning. I would suggest running a picture of yourself hugging a kitten, as if to defend her from an onrushing pass rush, also standing in front of a woman or women aged 80 or greater, on one side of the flyer. On the other side, I would suggest messaging in block letters to the effect of:
In fall 2009, the Philadelphia Eagles considered Jon Runyan for an open offensive line position, after 9 years with the team. They ultimately decided no.
Who would know better if not the Eagles? You might ask the Houston Oilers, where he began his career in 1996, but they no longer exist. This fall, vote with the Eagles: vote no for Jon Runyan, and yes for me, Congressman John Adler.
Congressman John Adler: Even though I incomprehensibly didn't vote for ACA, I'm still your guy.
One love,
Congressman John Adler
The Campaign to Reelect Congressman John Adler
Congressman Adler, I trust that you may wish to make slight typographic or font modifications to this letter. That would be fine. I am free most days to review any changes you might make; but given the urgency of your campaign, please do not hold up the final draft on my account.
I wish you the best with the campaign, and whatever your future career plans may be.
Respectfully,
T. Everett Shrubkin
Moorestown, NJ
8.29.2010
something kind of Lebanese
This weekend I came into possession of an excellent used car from 1997, an American-made automatic with a sexagenarian aura, squeaky brakes, and a functioning cassette-deck. Since taking possession of the car I have driven with slow authority and the smell of old memories wafting from inside the cushions. I have avoided spilling coffee or iced tea or donut crumbs. I have refrained from crumpling burger wrappers to accrue below decks, and have not sworn.
I have not taken the car with me to play Bingo, nor have I taken it bowling, nor have I driven it into a tree or a crowd of pedestrians. I have parked with difficulty and have driven to one diner, where I did not purchase the early bird special but did wonder about teenagers these days.
Having a cassette player at hand again reminded me of the Tupperware container in the basement with the old cassettes, a smattering of four-track recordings (still unplayable), microcassette recordings of an experimental improv band I played a bit part in more than a decade ago, and mix tapes from back in the day. Opening this container offered a living lifeline to a time of great hopes and short attention, and the perfect audio backdrop for a nice afternoon drive at exactly the speed limit (or 5 to 10 miles per hour slower).
I tried the improv cassettes first but couldn't find the thread. A lot of it I found unlistenable. Others moments would verge on coming together. There was a moment where it sounded like we were right on the verge of playing something kind of Lebanese, but we never really found the right scale or mood and instead it became vaguely tribal, following a safer and less descript route, treading melodic water for a few safe minutes. A linear course or sort of commute to work that echoes my current reality now more than anything else. At the time I must have surely thought it was some Pharaoh Sanders-esque journey to interstellar regions. At the time I was under the illusion that the people I knew were destiny and everything we'd make would turn to gold without the slightest effort.
I switched to one of the mixes and started thinking of the friend who'd made it for me 20 years ago, how I couldn't wait to call her to tell her what I'd dug up. I nodded my head to the songs -- which maybe I hadn't understood at the time (or I'd thought they were fine, or whatever) but which suddenly seemed so apt, so perfectly on point, like a time capsule that would know and aptly suit the mood of the person opening it a hundred years later. I really couldn't wait to call her.
The tape flipped sides and a new song started and I realized with cruel certainty that I'd dubbed over at least half of the mix with rehearsal from the same improv group.
It felt a little like getting all drunk and stoned with your best friend to go see the Wu Tung Clan on the last night of summer, only they've cancelled due to a family emergency and have asked Tony Conrad to play in their place, and you're too drunk too leave, too stoned to stay.
I have not taken the car with me to play Bingo, nor have I taken it bowling, nor have I driven it into a tree or a crowd of pedestrians. I have parked with difficulty and have driven to one diner, where I did not purchase the early bird special but did wonder about teenagers these days.
Having a cassette player at hand again reminded me of the Tupperware container in the basement with the old cassettes, a smattering of four-track recordings (still unplayable), microcassette recordings of an experimental improv band I played a bit part in more than a decade ago, and mix tapes from back in the day. Opening this container offered a living lifeline to a time of great hopes and short attention, and the perfect audio backdrop for a nice afternoon drive at exactly the speed limit (or 5 to 10 miles per hour slower).
I tried the improv cassettes first but couldn't find the thread. A lot of it I found unlistenable. Others moments would verge on coming together. There was a moment where it sounded like we were right on the verge of playing something kind of Lebanese, but we never really found the right scale or mood and instead it became vaguely tribal, following a safer and less descript route, treading melodic water for a few safe minutes. A linear course or sort of commute to work that echoes my current reality now more than anything else. At the time I must have surely thought it was some Pharaoh Sanders-esque journey to interstellar regions. At the time I was under the illusion that the people I knew were destiny and everything we'd make would turn to gold without the slightest effort.
I switched to one of the mixes and started thinking of the friend who'd made it for me 20 years ago, how I couldn't wait to call her to tell her what I'd dug up. I nodded my head to the songs -- which maybe I hadn't understood at the time (or I'd thought they were fine, or whatever) but which suddenly seemed so apt, so perfectly on point, like a time capsule that would know and aptly suit the mood of the person opening it a hundred years later. I really couldn't wait to call her.
The tape flipped sides and a new song started and I realized with cruel certainty that I'd dubbed over at least half of the mix with rehearsal from the same improv group.
It felt a little like getting all drunk and stoned with your best friend to go see the Wu Tung Clan on the last night of summer, only they've cancelled due to a family emergency and have asked Tony Conrad to play in their place, and you're too drunk too leave, too stoned to stay.
8.26.2010
real middle-aged dudes of new jersey
And you're probably wondering what life was like after Jim's lap band surgery and how Todd's divorce proceedings finished up specifically who got the kids who got the basement full of two decades worth of shit no one not even the kids had the heart to throw away and who oh who took custody of the ghosts that haunted that filthy house.
And you're probably wondering if Steve still picks his nose with savage compulsion until it bleeds raw, if he and in fact they all still scratch themselves sagely on yonder couch the same, if it still burns and itches simultaneously when John pees.
If their God smiles upon them, their women still somehow gamely by their sides, filtering, absorbing, cajoling, wheedling into line, making presentable, tolerating, heaven help them screwing, holding, occasionally joking, sitting across at dinner, playing one two three shoot to see who changes the baby helps with homework cleans up after the puppy.
What is their sandwich of choice?
Todd: Subway Meatball 12" Sub
Steve: Pastrami and Swiss on Rye
John: Wawa Tuna and Cheese Classic Hoagie
Jim: Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Sub
What is their current emotional state?
Todd: perplexed
Steve: preoccupied
John: reflective
Jim: new lease on life
What is the color of their mood?
Todd: The mood is blue.
Steve: The mood is invisible or opaque, unknown, secret even to self.
John: The mood is brown red, the color of foreboding curry.
Jim: The mood is green, like first sprouts.
What is the new lease on life?
It is a lighter load, a quicker walk, the shrinking of distance and the opening of possibility, it is the reignition of sex life (flower once thought dead reassumes form and once again battles gravity), the occasional guilty snack. It is the consideration of cholesterols good and bad with anything less than an insurance analyst's cold calculation of expectancy. It is the woman perhaps a year or so younger who smiled at him when he was getting gas and for a second his heart lifted hundreds of feet in the air to float smiling above Route 38, right where it meets Church Road, to float free.
And you're probably wondering if Steve still picks his nose with savage compulsion until it bleeds raw, if he and in fact they all still scratch themselves sagely on yonder couch the same, if it still burns and itches simultaneously when John pees.
If their God smiles upon them, their women still somehow gamely by their sides, filtering, absorbing, cajoling, wheedling into line, making presentable, tolerating, heaven help them screwing, holding, occasionally joking, sitting across at dinner, playing one two three shoot to see who changes the baby helps with homework cleans up after the puppy.
What is their sandwich of choice?
Todd: Subway Meatball 12" Sub
Steve: Pastrami and Swiss on Rye
John: Wawa Tuna and Cheese Classic Hoagie
Jim: Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Sub
What is their current emotional state?
Todd: perplexed
Steve: preoccupied
John: reflective
Jim: new lease on life
What is the color of their mood?
Todd: The mood is blue.
Steve: The mood is invisible or opaque, unknown, secret even to self.
John: The mood is brown red, the color of foreboding curry.
Jim: The mood is green, like first sprouts.
What is the new lease on life?
It is a lighter load, a quicker walk, the shrinking of distance and the opening of possibility, it is the reignition of sex life (flower once thought dead reassumes form and once again battles gravity), the occasional guilty snack. It is the consideration of cholesterols good and bad with anything less than an insurance analyst's cold calculation of expectancy. It is the woman perhaps a year or so younger who smiled at him when he was getting gas and for a second his heart lifted hundreds of feet in the air to float smiling above Route 38, right where it meets Church Road, to float free.
8.18.2010
my question is what happened to you
everyone else in the wild puzzle i more or less understand; my question of late is what happened to you to make it turn out so this way for you, to make you act as catalyst to so many emotional catastrophes without the slightest mental map of the emotional world yourself. yet all of that was ten or twenty years ago, now when i see you it's like you're a teenager trying on emotions for yourself for the first time.
it isn't that living in the suburbs has been for the best. i have real doubts that that's true. i think it's made us all crazier if anything. it has made me more aware though (particularly with these newly fierce new jersey seasons) that things grow as much as they can and die, that's all they do, it isn't that there's some overarching destiny or logic or transcendence to it, more a dumb blind imperative. the weeds find purchase whereever they can, the grass, the wild flowers all push into every place that allows the faintest glimmer of root. like how on the backdrop of those decades your soul has found a place to quiet down now, to begin some long-delayed reckoning, and in a quasi-patronizing way i'm happy for you.
now i find myself somewhere between you and a completely different person. emotions for me are a bizarre confusion but sometimes i know the names, sometimes i even know that this-is-an-emotion-i'm-feeling. it doesn't prevent that from be a disorienting grid on which i'm more likely to hurt others than not. it just tells me i should know better. maybe my dumb growth will to be more quiet in my failings than you were, to keep them better hidden from the surface of the earth. maybe my achievement will to be a better and more subtle weed in the lives of the people i know.
in death though. maybe that's where we find transcendence, moving from the dull provincial limits of blind individual growth and back into soil and carbon, into the wild dumb flowing pulse of nature. i think stereolab could have convinced me of the joy in that in a song in the 1990s, i don't really know where they sit on the subject today.
it isn't that living in the suburbs has been for the best. i have real doubts that that's true. i think it's made us all crazier if anything. it has made me more aware though (particularly with these newly fierce new jersey seasons) that things grow as much as they can and die, that's all they do, it isn't that there's some overarching destiny or logic or transcendence to it, more a dumb blind imperative. the weeds find purchase whereever they can, the grass, the wild flowers all push into every place that allows the faintest glimmer of root. like how on the backdrop of those decades your soul has found a place to quiet down now, to begin some long-delayed reckoning, and in a quasi-patronizing way i'm happy for you.
now i find myself somewhere between you and a completely different person. emotions for me are a bizarre confusion but sometimes i know the names, sometimes i even know that this-is-an-emotion-i'm-feeling. it doesn't prevent that from be a disorienting grid on which i'm more likely to hurt others than not. it just tells me i should know better. maybe my dumb growth will to be more quiet in my failings than you were, to keep them better hidden from the surface of the earth. maybe my achievement will to be a better and more subtle weed in the lives of the people i know.
in death though. maybe that's where we find transcendence, moving from the dull provincial limits of blind individual growth and back into soil and carbon, into the wild dumb flowing pulse of nature. i think stereolab could have convinced me of the joy in that in a song in the 1990s, i don't really know where they sit on the subject today.
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