Four years as dishwasher at a local pizzeria taught me that I will never succeed as a short-order cook, delivery person, or server. I learned how to wash a large number of dishes effectively in a brief time. I also learned to have unrequited crushes on women totally out of my league (e.g. every waitress/counter girl in the restaurant), and how my best strategy for getting close to them was to present myself as totally pathetic. Over time I was able to perfect this particular skill and am now married to a woman totally out of my league.
Ten years as an IT guy taught me that writing email(and writing in general) is a wonderful way to escape reality into a kind of mental pseudo-reality free of all inconvenient physics and biology. Over time I was able to hone that skill and am now a successful nonprofit fundraiser.
In five years as a nonprofit fundraiser I've learned that dishwashers have an amazing impact on the world. Every night they are presented with a target number of dishes to wash and every night they meet that target before they can leave. No one writes a bullshit report about how the dishes would have been washed but the policy landscape shifted and here are some lessons learned. There are no pressures to invent a new washing technique, and no middle managers who exist solely to watch the dishes get washed or coach the dishwashers.
I have identified my path to self actualization. Or, as the poet wrote: The search is over...you were with me all the while.
4.05.2010
4.02.2010
rare perk of sobriety
A year plus in I'm starting to notice an actual mental payoff to not drinking. Yes -- even above and beyond the lack of daily hangovers.
A, um, new kind of internal strength. Sharper focus. Remembering more day to day, being more aware of the subtexts to a conversation. More aware of what I want from the world long-term/how the world should/could be. What needs to be done to avoid getting killed on the road or run over by my professional life. More aware of how individual and family dynamics evolve and relate. Of the need for closeness and clarity. Of how beautiful Spanish is on the page.
Even hanging out in drinking situations has gotten easier. A fun project to match the trajectory people take when they drink and loosen up on your own. In a way I actually over-compensate and loosen up further than people. So I'm the asshole who says the wrong thing with no relevant cultural pretext to back it up. Crackpot role to relish.
A, um, new kind of internal strength. Sharper focus. Remembering more day to day, being more aware of the subtexts to a conversation. More aware of what I want from the world long-term/how the world should/could be. What needs to be done to avoid getting killed on the road or run over by my professional life. More aware of how individual and family dynamics evolve and relate. Of the need for closeness and clarity. Of how beautiful Spanish is on the page.
Even hanging out in drinking situations has gotten easier. A fun project to match the trajectory people take when they drink and loosen up on your own. In a way I actually over-compensate and loosen up further than people. So I'm the asshole who says the wrong thing with no relevant cultural pretext to back it up. Crackpot role to relish.
3.21.2010
birth signs of a new world
Today I jogged outside for the first time in ten years or more. Although the goal I set was modest I didn’t make it. Early on I thought I was going to have a heart attack. You know when you're driving in your car and you see somebody trying to convince themselves they're running but really they're walking in a stupid way. Today that was me. For about an hour after I kept thinking I was going to pass out. All day since I've felt more grounded than I have in 5 months.
This afternoon N. and I went grocery shopping together. We just needed parsley, strawberries, and milk. You know when you're shopping and some idiot keeps getting in your way trying to have fun with his kid? Today that was me.
Right around mall closing time I went to get my hair cut. The woman who cut my hair had a lot on her mind. She said Jesus conquered death and defeated Satan and no other God had done that. She said his name was on every tongue. She said recent events told her that the end times were close. She said earthquakes and storms and even the President in power now read like signs and wonders straight from Revelations. She got in my face and peered into my eyes to see whether I saw her point. She said these were signs but more were yet to come, that they were birth signs of a new world.
You know sometimes it does feel like the end of the world and you could almost agree with a person who spoke to you in such a manner? Today that person wasn't me. This world doesn't get to end on my kid. I gently made my case against her vision and we left it as friends who disagreed but in respect. The haircut's pretty good.
This afternoon N. and I went grocery shopping together. We just needed parsley, strawberries, and milk. You know when you're shopping and some idiot keeps getting in your way trying to have fun with his kid? Today that was me.
Right around mall closing time I went to get my hair cut. The woman who cut my hair had a lot on her mind. She said Jesus conquered death and defeated Satan and no other God had done that. She said his name was on every tongue. She said recent events told her that the end times were close. She said earthquakes and storms and even the President in power now read like signs and wonders straight from Revelations. She got in my face and peered into my eyes to see whether I saw her point. She said these were signs but more were yet to come, that they were birth signs of a new world.
You know sometimes it does feel like the end of the world and you could almost agree with a person who spoke to you in such a manner? Today that person wasn't me. This world doesn't get to end on my kid. I gently made my case against her vision and we left it as friends who disagreed but in respect. The haircut's pretty good.
3.20.2010
floor plan
The storm that blew winter away was so fierce, it seemed like the trees had grown tired of being surrounded by suburban blight and one by one would take their shouting splintering revenge. Five feet of rain in a weekend. We added a couple hundred pounds of salt and made our basement into a giant aquarium. Now we have an octopus and a Portuguese man-of-war and some Atlantic blues. We have jellyfish and a skate and a depressive tuna. We have diving suits in his and hers and toddler sizes. We have a coral reef and even sunken treasure, a piggy bank split open along the floor bed, nickles pennies and quarters awaiting the intrepid diver. I hope we've properly sealed the drainage. In the morning the baby whale surfaces near the top of the basement stairs and gives us a good morning spout.
We've knocked out the walls of the ground level of our house and turned it into an indoor soccer field. Our young son is Ronaldinho or Diego Maradona or better yet Zidane, running up and down the field with the ball in his hands. He's impossible to catch. He runs laughing from one goal to another. He does not yet know how to throw with any accuracy so to score he runs and touches the ball to the back of the net. At halftime he sits for supper. He scores constantly, recording shut-outs by margins of 150 or more. He is much coveted by Boca and River Plate. There is the potential he could play for both. The ball is an expanding world that he runs with, laughing, held tight, almost off balance. Goal! Goal! Goal! (goal, goal, goal, goal).
Upstairs we brush our teeth and go to sleep in single file. And dream, he of a bowl of butter three feet wide and five feet deep, eaten fastidiously with a large plastic spoon. We of multiple disasters that we dream, so as to avoid living them.
We've knocked out the walls of the ground level of our house and turned it into an indoor soccer field. Our young son is Ronaldinho or Diego Maradona or better yet Zidane, running up and down the field with the ball in his hands. He's impossible to catch. He runs laughing from one goal to another. He does not yet know how to throw with any accuracy so to score he runs and touches the ball to the back of the net. At halftime he sits for supper. He scores constantly, recording shut-outs by margins of 150 or more. He is much coveted by Boca and River Plate. There is the potential he could play for both. The ball is an expanding world that he runs with, laughing, held tight, almost off balance. Goal! Goal! Goal! (goal, goal, goal, goal).
Upstairs we brush our teeth and go to sleep in single file. And dream, he of a bowl of butter three feet wide and five feet deep, eaten fastidiously with a large plastic spoon. We of multiple disasters that we dream, so as to avoid living them.
3.16.2010
crystal crucifix
A crystal crucifix with diamonds for rosary beads that play in the light finger by meditative finger. She tried to go to church this morning but it was like God didn't want people around today the trees had been ripped out of the ground taking the sidewalk with them to form a natural barrier blocking both doors the priest didn't know what to do at all. Like God had decided her house wasn't fit for company today, the sidewalk ripped of its moorings and transmogrified into a crooked staircase of roots and straggler worms and unknowable divine intention.
A crystal crucifix with diamonds for beads that play in the light prayer by prayer and could you hold this world together on the strength of your wish that it be so with your wish that nothing fade or fall away.
She tries to get to church best she can but doesn't make it and seeks no alternative (thus a sin) by alternative she thinks they could have gone in I guess through the windows but the priest was sitting on the ground paunchy in his inconsolable cassock, soiled and sorry with his nose kind of red in a tacit and spontaneous confession of how he'd held his own life together draught by draught up to this point. Those veteran trees still standing shudder together and in the smell of rain she senses or feels predetermined a collective flash or vision of the end of the world on those renewed drops the rippling back echo of the explosion thus ending all and no on and no forth.
Which is why help me Jesus/Mary she holds in her hands a crystal crucifix to bind the world together prayer by prayer. People killed in stupid fashion each day on their way to church by earthquakes or in head-on collisions or by random bullets hearts give out etc, when that happens do you note that they died fulfilling their chosen purpose or in the cheap and non-helpful irony that that supposed protector never had their backs in any fashion.
A crystal crucifix, prayer by the glinting of the light as a form maybe even of time travel to protect the ones she's lost. Maybe it's just the prayers of people that help other people she thought, maybe it's the prayers of people that bind our intentions and hearts to wish each other well and in collective wishing could there be some binding glue to hold the world together such that nothing fade or fall away.
She doesn't recall how it came into her possession only that when she prays in a rhythm when she is in the rhythm of her prayer she can feel those around her safe in a kind of holy halo. It is the days where distracted or otherwise preoccupied she neglects to pray or God forbid to give these prayers her true intentions that unforeseen misfortune befalls her friends or family or at least those sad people in today's paper now missing one or more of their number through unforeseeable calamity.
Out at the edge of town she's driving crystal crucifix in her fingers gone to wrinkle the beadstrings strung partial curved like a wilted infinity across the driving wheel. The light no longer feels to show her or save her the light is a dim threat of extinction dim fear of last moments and wasted lives a revealing of last days kind of brought too soon. Lately she doesn't believe in God or care much for her if she does exist she thinks and goes on These prayers of mine are prayers to link only with those of other people, prayers to make a net for each other's prayers and for those who don't pray too to be caught in on the way down. And the cross is where our bodies touched in love or compassion and the beads are justice lost and held together point by point and though we pray to no one or no one who cares we pray together.
She isn't sure even who she prays for today or who for her out at the edge of town driving with the crystal crucifix dangling down almost to her knee beneath the wheel. Is it going to rain or is the light to break through out at the edge of the dark clouds. Let this darkness take my sight, she thinks, let this full stop come and find me where I huddle under whatever debris praying bead by bead with everyone I've loved held together in my memory. If you mean for this to end then honey you do your worst.
She wonders what will be on TV this afternoon, light just starting to break through clouds being pulled apart tuft by tuft by the brutal wind, what she'll put on for dinner.
A crystal crucifix with diamonds for beads that play in the light prayer by prayer and could you hold this world together on the strength of your wish that it be so with your wish that nothing fade or fall away.
She tries to get to church best she can but doesn't make it and seeks no alternative (thus a sin) by alternative she thinks they could have gone in I guess through the windows but the priest was sitting on the ground paunchy in his inconsolable cassock, soiled and sorry with his nose kind of red in a tacit and spontaneous confession of how he'd held his own life together draught by draught up to this point. Those veteran trees still standing shudder together and in the smell of rain she senses or feels predetermined a collective flash or vision of the end of the world on those renewed drops the rippling back echo of the explosion thus ending all and no on and no forth.
Which is why help me Jesus/Mary she holds in her hands a crystal crucifix to bind the world together prayer by prayer. People killed in stupid fashion each day on their way to church by earthquakes or in head-on collisions or by random bullets hearts give out etc, when that happens do you note that they died fulfilling their chosen purpose or in the cheap and non-helpful irony that that supposed protector never had their backs in any fashion.
A crystal crucifix, prayer by the glinting of the light as a form maybe even of time travel to protect the ones she's lost. Maybe it's just the prayers of people that help other people she thought, maybe it's the prayers of people that bind our intentions and hearts to wish each other well and in collective wishing could there be some binding glue to hold the world together such that nothing fade or fall away.
She doesn't recall how it came into her possession only that when she prays in a rhythm when she is in the rhythm of her prayer she can feel those around her safe in a kind of holy halo. It is the days where distracted or otherwise preoccupied she neglects to pray or God forbid to give these prayers her true intentions that unforeseen misfortune befalls her friends or family or at least those sad people in today's paper now missing one or more of their number through unforeseeable calamity.
Out at the edge of town she's driving crystal crucifix in her fingers gone to wrinkle the beadstrings strung partial curved like a wilted infinity across the driving wheel. The light no longer feels to show her or save her the light is a dim threat of extinction dim fear of last moments and wasted lives a revealing of last days kind of brought too soon. Lately she doesn't believe in God or care much for her if she does exist she thinks and goes on These prayers of mine are prayers to link only with those of other people, prayers to make a net for each other's prayers and for those who don't pray too to be caught in on the way down. And the cross is where our bodies touched in love or compassion and the beads are justice lost and held together point by point and though we pray to no one or no one who cares we pray together.
She isn't sure even who she prays for today or who for her out at the edge of town driving with the crystal crucifix dangling down almost to her knee beneath the wheel. Is it going to rain or is the light to break through out at the edge of the dark clouds. Let this darkness take my sight, she thinks, let this full stop come and find me where I huddle under whatever debris praying bead by bead with everyone I've loved held together in my memory. If you mean for this to end then honey you do your worst.
She wonders what will be on TV this afternoon, light just starting to break through clouds being pulled apart tuft by tuft by the brutal wind, what she'll put on for dinner.
3.15.2010
spirit vs. mechanics
I've been trying to teach myself to read Spanish. I'm doing about 5 pages a week. The best help has been from my friend Meddie, who speaks Spanish from birth and who taught herself English when she moved here by reading the paper. I think she feels sorry for me because I'm trying to learn her native language by reading its obscure literature.
The last couple days when I've gotten stuck on the odd sentence, phrase, or full page she's helped me to unpack it. In that, she's showing me how to read for figurative meaning, how to find the the author's spirit and humor behind the narrator's voice.
These human elements and the psychological analysis underlying them are why I'm reading this particular book. But I get so caught up in the mechanics of grammar that if I am to glean deeper meaning it can only be by getting familiar enough with the mechanics to have them become a subconscious process, to free up brain space for interpretation. Or by getting a friend to help.
Sketch of world view: difference is static, commonality the signal. That what we can't understand about each other shouldn't matter in the least.
The last couple days when I've gotten stuck on the odd sentence, phrase, or full page she's helped me to unpack it. In that, she's showing me how to read for figurative meaning, how to find the the author's spirit and humor behind the narrator's voice.
These human elements and the psychological analysis underlying them are why I'm reading this particular book. But I get so caught up in the mechanics of grammar that if I am to glean deeper meaning it can only be by getting familiar enough with the mechanics to have them become a subconscious process, to free up brain space for interpretation. Or by getting a friend to help.
Sketch of world view: difference is static, commonality the signal. That what we can't understand about each other shouldn't matter in the least.
3.14.2010
year and a day
Drunk, blogging while driving. Also reading a book (The Elements of Style) and trying to program my car stereo to spring forward. What I drank was a cocktail sequence I like to call Noah's Ark. What I've discovered is that I can drive with my dick using only scotch tape and a jelly bracelet. Follow my updates on Twitter.
Pee break. Question posed to Burger King rest stop cashier do you love me answer unclear/possible no. Question posed to Starbucks rest stop cashier answer also unclear/possible no. To Exit 7A toll collector answer unclear/possible no, shocked look at steering column.
Question posed to self answer definite no. Twitter grows tiresome. Burning sensation from steering. Revert to by hand. Persistence of burning sensation. Question of three or nine southbound lanes. Re-engagement with Twitter. The important thing about blogging is that you have to keep doing it, you just have to write whether you want to or not. Press on. Re-imagine childhood as lovable kangaroo raised by human family. As baby bear raised by human family. As cuddly alien etc. Re-imagine childhood orphaned at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, etc. Re-imagine childhood as slightly overlong setup to the greatest porno ever made as selected by a panel of 4 feminists and 4 male lizards. Re-imagine childhood as king cobra raised by human family, as swarm of bees etc.
Perfection of steering design (improved knot, sustainable misuse of ED meds). Travel thermos full of 100 Pipers whiskey. Driving for Deepwater, for Carney's Point. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory etc. A twip is a tweet one word in length. A twero is a tweet with no words. Partial loss of vision. Review of past Connect Four losses. No one strategy to win them all. Chirping. Vomiting. Pull car to side of road for purposes of mixing.
Pee break. Question posed to Burger King rest stop cashier do you love me answer unclear/possible no. Question posed to Starbucks rest stop cashier answer also unclear/possible no. To Exit 7A toll collector answer unclear/possible no, shocked look at steering column.
Question posed to self answer definite no. Twitter grows tiresome. Burning sensation from steering. Revert to by hand. Persistence of burning sensation. Question of three or nine southbound lanes. Re-engagement with Twitter. The important thing about blogging is that you have to keep doing it, you just have to write whether you want to or not. Press on. Re-imagine childhood as lovable kangaroo raised by human family. As baby bear raised by human family. As cuddly alien etc. Re-imagine childhood orphaned at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, etc. Re-imagine childhood as slightly overlong setup to the greatest porno ever made as selected by a panel of 4 feminists and 4 male lizards. Re-imagine childhood as king cobra raised by human family, as swarm of bees etc.
Perfection of steering design (improved knot, sustainable misuse of ED meds). Travel thermos full of 100 Pipers whiskey. Driving for Deepwater, for Carney's Point. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory etc. A twip is a tweet one word in length. A twero is a tweet with no words. Partial loss of vision. Review of past Connect Four losses. No one strategy to win them all. Chirping. Vomiting. Pull car to side of road for purposes of mixing.
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