Things had conspired to keep me on a PC. I liked that you could configure it yourself, that you had more free software available for it, with more platform flexibility. The x factor for Macs seemed so boutique, so full of shit that I was never really tempted. Then, one day between an open-source mp3 word processor that wouldn't stop crashing and a mysterious virus that emailed photos of my detumescent junk to my extended family and all my business contacts, something shifted. I found myself paying closer attention to the commercials, to the generally well-adjusted personalities and successful lives of the people I knew who "thought different." I began to wonder if it wasn't time to think different myself.
I went to the Apple Store. It was packed and everybody there seemed, I don't know how to put it, somehow hotter than they actually were. It wasn't that people were necessarily more physically fit, but the dudes who were 50 pounds overweight somehow knew how to wear it, and women (snaggletoothed but proud) seemed generally more interested in talking to them, about the latest accessories, about the iPad, about the ramifications of the new Iphone on communication as we know it. They all went bathed in a bright white light. I was hooked, and I almost broken down right there and bought a laptop on credit in the store. Fortunately, because I was so caught up in the moment I actually might have gone ahead with it then and there, the salespeople were too busy to answer my questions. By the time one had time for me, I had lost my nerve.
I drove home in a cloud of self-hate and lonely misery and cried for a long time. I made popcorn and jerked off and when that didn't calm me down I did it again, this time to the FBI Most Wanted website and when that still didn't do the trick I got drunk and dialed anyone who (a) had ever slept with me or (b) had even thought about it. Those few who still had the same number and were willing to pick up -- as a rule these represented category (b) -- could offer little advice. In the end, my situation was impossible. I wanted an Apple, but couldn't justify the $2500 it would cost for the computer and the cool new clothes to go with it. Finally, Ramona, definitively, sadly, category (b) Ramona, advised me to find one used and save for the clothes at a later date.
I was quite fortunate to find a used Macbook on Craigslist. The guy who sold it to was only willing to meet after midnight and at the Wawa of my choosing. He twitched a little and maybe slobbered once as he counted the money (and for a second I thought he was going to stab me and bolt) but the price was right. It worked great and eventually I would grow to appreciate the "Property of the University of Connecticut" stamped on the thing in bold, black immovable type. I think that hint of danger may have even added cachet or mystery at Starbucks, where for months after I was to parade my new laptop like a highly-convenient newborn child.
I got the clothes, as well: two Banana Republic shirts that I wash in the bathtub to save on detergent; one pair of Banana Republic pants that I wear every day and keep as clean as possible using Handy Wipes; and a pair of Berkenstocks that I wear rain, sleet, or snow.
The results have been outstanding. My world is bathed in a bright, cathode light, bold, heavenly light that emanates from behind doors and windows and through the branches of happy trees. My boss is off my back now, and on my steady diet of cupcakes and Mountain Dew I actually seem to be losing weight. The toothaches and painful diarrhea have stopped and my phone is always ringing. The best part is that I can pick up: It's never bill collectors or my mom or wrong numbers for the funeral home down the street. No, on the other end is Ramona, definitively, happily, category (a) Ramona.
10.20.2010
10.04.2010
reverse déjà vu
A selfish perk of parenting is getting to watch lessons and strategies that apply specifically to you, absorbed and expressed unfiltered by someone with infinitely less baggage than you bring to things yourself. In effect, from a very early age kids give you advice on how to live, advice that for its innocent implication or expression is somehow more hearable.
The kid's interests are catholic but skew categorically to music and sugar, to screaming for fun and throwing things, to Shrek and eggs and never going to sleep.
Subject also displays avid interest in garage doors.
For a while he would demand that I push the button, and each time he'd give a jump as the door engaged. Now, like everything (piloting a jet, open heart surgery, killing someone bare handed) he wants to do it himself.
Grandma and Peepaw have prime double garage doors, which open onto a tree-lined block filled with quiet autumn light so distilled and savory as to seem flown in from another country as a super-secret upper-middle-class suburban perk. The doors, the aura and smell of the garage are imbued with grandparent magic, characteristics of a fairy-tale world already remembered later in life as experienced now, in a kind of reverse déjà vu.
Saturday we were at it again, me the holder at switch-height, him opening and closing those vaunted doors. This time you could see a new thread: the boy was trying to conquer his fear. Each time he would push the button, each time giving a jump when the door engaged. Each time too, though, the jump would get less pronounced.
The kid's interests are catholic but skew categorically to music and sugar, to screaming for fun and throwing things, to Shrek and eggs and never going to sleep.
Subject also displays avid interest in garage doors.
For a while he would demand that I push the button, and each time he'd give a jump as the door engaged. Now, like everything (piloting a jet, open heart surgery, killing someone bare handed) he wants to do it himself.
Grandma and Peepaw have prime double garage doors, which open onto a tree-lined block filled with quiet autumn light so distilled and savory as to seem flown in from another country as a super-secret upper-middle-class suburban perk. The doors, the aura and smell of the garage are imbued with grandparent magic, characteristics of a fairy-tale world already remembered later in life as experienced now, in a kind of reverse déjà vu.
Saturday we were at it again, me the holder at switch-height, him opening and closing those vaunted doors. This time you could see a new thread: the boy was trying to conquer his fear. Each time he would push the button, each time giving a jump when the door engaged. Each time too, though, the jump would get less pronounced.
10.02.2010
impact
I work for a charity in the South Bronx. Most of my job is stringing together words, and shaping and polishing other people's writing. Sometimes I go to meetings where people ask questions about the words we've written, and I do my best to answer, or punt to someone who can.
The chief impact of my work is financial. I bring in money to help pay the salaries of other staff, who go out into the world and have real impact. On good days that equation is enough to justify my work. On bad days I wonder if it isn't circular, if I'm not changing the world at all, but rather just being a guy who polishes words and thanks people for their contributions and does his best to sleep at night.
My relationship to the South Bronx -- like my relationship to many things -- is one of distant love. I walk around in love with the neighborhood and the people I don't know and the Spanish they speak that I rarely fully grasp. Then I retreat to the top floor of the tallest building on the block and polish words, looking out at the people on the street below.
From that view you can't see much of people's faces but you can see their postures, how they walk, and you can infer what you like about how their lives are going. It's hard to assess direct impact from that height and maybe it's just as well.
Last year someone gave me a coat at random, a nice winter coat with a lot of pockets. It was a generous thing to do and the coat fit me perfectly. I could've afforded it I guess (one of the real impacts of my work to polish words). But it's a nicer coat than I would've purchased. I'm just not a very stylish person.
Tonight I left work late to meet my family in Manhattan for a late dinner. I was wearing the coat for the first time this year. It's one of those rare coats that makes sense in fall and winter, somehow it just adjusts magically to the temperature. It's a comfortable coat.
The walk to the subway is short, but tonight on my way down the hill a woman stumbled from my right to land face-first on the curb. She broke the fall a little with her hands and a lot with her mouth and forehead. It look liked she'd blacked out. She struggled to get up but she crumpled on the sidewalk. Someone walking by said drugs in Spanish and kept going. A couple of us stopped.
The woman was bleeding from the mouth and couldn't really right herself (though she kept trying). One of the people who stopped called 911. We tried to convince the woman that she should stay lying down, because she looked pretty bad. She really would've rather left, but she couldn't. Still, it looked kind of sad to see her lying there on the cold sidewalk, so I took off my coat and put it under her head while the same few of us waited for the ambulance to come.
It wasn't drugs, or if it was it wasn't just drugs. The woman said she was diabetic, trying to get as comfortable as she could, bleeding from the head and mouth with a coat for a pillow on a busy street, barely able to express herself.
Maybe she still has the coat with her at the hospital. Maybe I'll find it on my way in to work on Monday, crumbled in a ball and in real need of a wash, but I doubt it. Sometimes the world passes you objects and sometimes it asks nicely to have them back. Sometimes the way the world asks isn't as nice as you'd want.
The chief impact of my work is financial. I bring in money to help pay the salaries of other staff, who go out into the world and have real impact. On good days that equation is enough to justify my work. On bad days I wonder if it isn't circular, if I'm not changing the world at all, but rather just being a guy who polishes words and thanks people for their contributions and does his best to sleep at night.
My relationship to the South Bronx -- like my relationship to many things -- is one of distant love. I walk around in love with the neighborhood and the people I don't know and the Spanish they speak that I rarely fully grasp. Then I retreat to the top floor of the tallest building on the block and polish words, looking out at the people on the street below.
From that view you can't see much of people's faces but you can see their postures, how they walk, and you can infer what you like about how their lives are going. It's hard to assess direct impact from that height and maybe it's just as well.
Last year someone gave me a coat at random, a nice winter coat with a lot of pockets. It was a generous thing to do and the coat fit me perfectly. I could've afforded it I guess (one of the real impacts of my work to polish words). But it's a nicer coat than I would've purchased. I'm just not a very stylish person.
Tonight I left work late to meet my family in Manhattan for a late dinner. I was wearing the coat for the first time this year. It's one of those rare coats that makes sense in fall and winter, somehow it just adjusts magically to the temperature. It's a comfortable coat.
The walk to the subway is short, but tonight on my way down the hill a woman stumbled from my right to land face-first on the curb. She broke the fall a little with her hands and a lot with her mouth and forehead. It look liked she'd blacked out. She struggled to get up but she crumpled on the sidewalk. Someone walking by said drugs in Spanish and kept going. A couple of us stopped.
The woman was bleeding from the mouth and couldn't really right herself (though she kept trying). One of the people who stopped called 911. We tried to convince the woman that she should stay lying down, because she looked pretty bad. She really would've rather left, but she couldn't. Still, it looked kind of sad to see her lying there on the cold sidewalk, so I took off my coat and put it under her head while the same few of us waited for the ambulance to come.
It wasn't drugs, or if it was it wasn't just drugs. The woman said she was diabetic, trying to get as comfortable as she could, bleeding from the head and mouth with a coat for a pillow on a busy street, barely able to express herself.
Maybe she still has the coat with her at the hospital. Maybe I'll find it on my way in to work on Monday, crumbled in a ball and in real need of a wash, but I doubt it. Sometimes the world passes you objects and sometimes it asks nicely to have them back. Sometimes the way the world asks isn't as nice as you'd want.
10.01.2010
for the branches of trees
Funereal for the branches of trees, for leaves. All night the wind shook the house and when we woke up we were out to sea; the cat, the boy and I left you sleeping for once and rowed us back.
When the wind stops carrying portent take me out to pasture, plant me in the ground to ward off crows. Do leave a television with Netflix Instant, do lobby them to stock it more generously with the rare celluloid written thoughtful and crisp but for chrissakes let me be, don't make the mistake of talking my way. One day someone will get a bright and novel idea to pave over the field to build another thoughtful shopping center for the import of faraway vegetables. I venture they will still need a warder off for hassling crows, or at the very least someone to hoist out from the cellar every autumn to spice up the decor.
Funereal for the branches of trees, rotten where they sheltered years of alright suburban yard. A canopy not so diminished by the loss of one or several planks, a nature's structure hedging its bets in layered lattice until one day the whole thing gives way and falls, or some lawyer-fearing yardsmen call a tree service and extract further any hint of mystery from this old soil.
When the wind stops carrying portent take me out to pasture, plant me in the ground to ward off crows. Do leave a television with Netflix Instant, do lobby them to stock it more generously with the rare celluloid written thoughtful and crisp but for chrissakes let me be, don't make the mistake of talking my way. One day someone will get a bright and novel idea to pave over the field to build another thoughtful shopping center for the import of faraway vegetables. I venture they will still need a warder off for hassling crows, or at the very least someone to hoist out from the cellar every autumn to spice up the decor.
Funereal for the branches of trees, rotten where they sheltered years of alright suburban yard. A canopy not so diminished by the loss of one or several planks, a nature's structure hedging its bets in layered lattice until one day the whole thing gives way and falls, or some lawyer-fearing yardsmen call a tree service and extract further any hint of mystery from this old soil.
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