Aphorism

Sometimes the thoughts come out of nowhere...

I worked, for a regrettable stretch of time, in the collections business. My mid-20s were a vocationally wayward era for me where I worked in retail, food service, the mental health field and collections. I recall that I was drawn to collections by two things: the freedom from any sort of qualifications other than a willingness to tolerate abuse from complete strangers, and the chance to be an asshole to people on the phone--which, I guess, I saw as a character strength at that time. Considering that I now avoid talking on the phone in all but the most unavoidable of situations, I'd say I've progressed at least marginally in my self-image.

Starting off in general collections, I worked my way through auto loan collections, mortgage collections and classified ad collections. General collections was dull and depressing. Chasing people for the last $17 of an unpaid medical bill and having them argue about it wears on you quite quickly. Mortgage collections was just depressing. I'd gone into it blindly believing that when you're calling people to try to keep them in their homes if possible, they'd be a bit more receptive than Mrs. Jones when you call about the leftover balance on her goiter surgery. Not so. I was met with the belief that the debtor, not the bank, really owned the house. Or that the bank wouldn't really foreclose. In one instance a woman told me that she wasn't going to pay her mortgage because she was behind on her electric bill and "I won't have my children going without electricity." I opted not to ask her how she intended to slave the Nintendo to a utility pole when they were living in a box on the sidewalk. As for classified ads... Well, when you spend your days arguing with a business owner whether or not a typo was the cause for the lack of response to their ad, you learn to give up quickly.

Oh, but auto collections. Auto collections were, in a comparative sense, fun. Because auto collections had the benefit of involving repo guys, and repo guys had the benefit of being able to tell some fantastic stories. Believe me, I could regale you for pages. The lady who had two pit bulls guarding her car--one chained to the front bumper with enough play to let it run completely around the car once in either direction, the other living in the back seat, which the owner had strewn with hay. The repo guy who told a collector he would have gotten to a car if it hadn't been for the 20 dogs in the yard and the fact that "I only had thirteen shots." The repo guy who stalked a debtor who would drive from his garage, from where it's illegal to hoist a vehicle, to his job on a naval base, where the repo guy couldn't go, waiting until that one day when the debtor decided to stop at a bar on the way home. Which he did. And, of course, there was guy who just verbally abused me every time I called, practically dared me to take his car. One Saturday morning in the office, my phone rang. It was him. Called me "Mr. Shanahan" for the first time. "I was wondering," he said. "Did you guys come and repo my car?" I checked the record. No, I told him. No, we hadn't. There was a pause on the line, then: "Oh. Shit." The police report came later. More stories, more guns, more dogs, the occasional baseball bat....it went on.

My territory was the Georgia/Florida area. I worked with one repo joint out of Jacksonville. I can't recall the name. But I do recall, and always will, a guy named Wes. I never met the man, but I had a real rapport with him. We shared a love of the blues, and if I asked Wes how he was doing, he'd say, "Blues Dog"--okay, I had a nickname--"I feel like I'm tied to the whippin' post." From what I understood, Wes was either an NFL prospect or had played a little pro ball. He stood about 6'6" and had a 54" chest. And the man loved his work. Had all the best stories. Like the time a guy kicked open the door to the repo agency, waving a .22, demanding--with an appropriate flare of profanities--that they give him his car back. There were four or five repo guys in the office, Wes said, and each one calmly reached into his belt or boot or jacket and pulled out nothing smaller than a .38 and proceeded to demonstrate the concept of peace through superior firepower. The man put his gun away, apologized, and left.

Stories aside, the thing that's always stuck with me from talking with Wes is a line I still use now and then. Delivered in Wes' slight southern drawl, it was one of the best compliments I've ever heard and it always seemed to have a real ring of honesty. I'd thank Wes for a job well done and he'd say to me, "It's your world, daddy. I'm just livin' in it."

Truck

I was looking at the collection of Hess trucks in the corner of the dining room. I never really knew him as much of a play-with-trucks kind of kid, but every year without fail his grandparents bought him the new one. It's a great tradition. The older ones are faded to a slight ivory now, the color of old scrimshaw. The newer ones still shine in fresh-plastic white. In some the batteries are long dead, not from an excess of play but from a surfeit of time. In others the lights still come on, the noisy bits still shout out engine revs and siren wails. He still loves them. He picked up the race car from just a year or two ago. "Do you know where the one it carries is?" he asked--then proudly popped open the top of the chassis to reveal the hidden, smaller car inside. He showed me the light that comes on in the inside of the hood.

I couldn't stop myself.

"Buddy," I said, "do you have many memories of us playing with your Hess trucks?"

I had a few of my own, dim at best, but I already knew they were too few and far too far between.

Big blue eyes. A twitch at the corner of his mouth.

"Not really," he said.

I hugged him and apologized.

Exactly.

"...don't waste your time writing stories that aren't vitally important to you. And by 'important,' I don't mean that you should set out to write great literature, because that's the one guarantee that whatever you do produce won't be it. That's the kind of thing that's decided by others, it's out of your hands. 'Important' means entertaining stories that you're dying to tell."--Comic book author/artist Bill Willingham, in an interview with Cyriaque Lamar at io9.com.

Etched

We all got to talking about photographs and family. I mentioned that there are almost no photographs of my father and me. There's no grim reason for it, no dysfunction or avoidance, just an oversight of opportunity, just us not being there when the camera was, too.

There is one.

It is me, my father and my mother at my first rehearsal dinner. We are at a restaurant in Cambridge that closed not long after we were there. We are smiling and nicely dressed, the translucent tubes snaking over my father's shoulders and below his nostrils the only subtle hint that something isn't quite right.

We are smiling because we believe I am just a few days from being happy. We are smiling because although we know he isn't well, and hasn't been for some time, we don't know that he is just three months away from death.

Aisling

In the dream we tried to speak across the span of three decades and found, to no one's surprise, that we had nothing to say, the lack of conversation filling the line with lengthy white-sound pauses.

I rarely dream of people.

Maybe it came from driving through the center of your old hometown, passing the school where I spent a summer spinning vinyl under a pseudonym, past the place where you got me my first job, the one I lost because I didn't know steamers were still alive and I couldn't bring myself to stick my hands in the bucket while they hissed because I was certain, somehow, that they would attack en masse and attach themselves to me.

The boss said, "I don't think you're right for this."

It wouldn't be the last time I heard that.

I worry when I dream of people. Because I usually don't. So this is to say, be well.

Twinge

Just a quick thought here:
There's no way to feel confident when you're backing out of the parking lot at the auto repair place, having just picked up your car after a fix, and your mechanic waves and says, "Good luck!"

Drive

It's just a matter of going a different way today. Left instead of right. West rather than east. The roads are unfamiliar but the destination's the same. You always get there. Hands on the wheel, music playing, sun's out and the windows are down. So drive. Get there.

Break

On the afternoon I learned that my path would be changing, that a fresh opportunity had been set in front of me, I came home to find that a gust of wind had thrown back a loose casement window, slamming it against the house and blowing out two panes of glass, the remnants of which rained down to litter the garden and the walk and which took quite some time to pick up, shard by shard.

It's called balance.

Parent

You are standing in the back room of a costume shop on Mass Ave in Boston because your 12-year-old son wanted to go in.

You become aware of the extensive selection of "exotic footwear"--mostly high boots in floppy, shiny vinyl.

You realize you are standing next to a rack of various body stockings, mostly fishnet-style.

You take two steps to the left to subtly place yourself between your son and the body stocking package that has the photo of the woman with her back to the camera, looking over her shoulder, because you notice that this particular body stocking is cut out at the ass.

And you let your son continue to look at the cool Uzi squirt gun and the funny caveman clubs until he's had his fill because he's happy.

You are parenting.

Equinox

Inside me is a child who still stares in wonder at a moon rising full and orange-veiled out of the first sunset of autumn to crest above the treeline. Who runs to the window at the first flash of lightning and finds excitement in a shout of thunder that rattles the windows. Who hears music in nightsounds, from the falsetto chitter of treefrogs and crickets to the trumpet and tympani of the last train through town after midnight. Who waits for the rain when its smell is in the air, content to listen to it whisper against the grass when it comes. Who refuses to not be amazed every now and then at things that are, simply, very simple.

9-22-10

Reduction

There was a period of about a year after we bought our house that we had neither TV nor internet. We bought our house in May and spent the summer and into early fall getting it ready. Rugs yanked up, paint replaced. In one room I had to spend literally hours peeling off a vinyl wallcovering that had been painted. It was like someone had pasted balloon skin to the wall. It came off in long, stretchy strips or tiny slivers. No in between. The fixing-up period was a nightmare, but worth it in the long run.

When we moved in at last, somehow it didn't seem to matter that we had neither TV nor internet. The baby was content to watch the same DVD and Stacey and I had internet at work. Our nights were still pretty well filled with new-house stuff, so it all sort of floated by.

But then came the day when we decided it was time to get it back. In the TV-free stretch I had been reading more, occasionally writing since the computers were set up, they just weren't connected to the outside world. And you know, I didn't mind.

When TV came back to our house it brought with it a horrible truth: put me in front of the glowing box and I will watch just about anything. Dumb things. Things on Spike and G4 and sports that I'm not really interested in. I will fall prey to TMZ and Dog the Bounty Hunter and, may God have mercy on my soul, poker on TV. I become dumber. Dumberer, really.

Let it be known that I do watch some decent stuff. Modern Family is one of the smartest-written shows on TV and I think anyone interested in scriptwriting of any sort should study it. It's character-focused and oozes honesty. Structurally, it's stunning, episode to episode. I unrepentantly watch Glee. I get my fill of non-sensationalistic Discovery Channel shows and am a long-time Deadliest Catch addict.

Still, TV took over. I would sooner flick endlessly through content-empty channels than channel my energy to the page, or even just kick back to read with some music on.

The problem, as it turns out, was that we got a sweet deal for like $25/month when we hooked up with Direct TV. That sweet deal ended recently. As the price shot upwards, it pulled our eyes open, too. We were looking at paying too much for something that gave back too little--and, metaphysically speaking, cost too much. So we have recently slashed our services. Goodbye, Syfy. Au revoir, BBC America. IFC, I F'in hate to C you go, but go you must. We kept some kid channels for the kids. Boomerang stayed, so I can continue their classical education in the animated arts through Wacky Racers, Top Cat and The Flintstones. Food Network survived, which makes up for losing whatever channel carried my beloved Man Vs. Food. (Come to Boston, Adam Richman, and I'll take you to Boston Speed's for the best damn hot dog you'll ever eat. Call me.)

Tonight I watched Big Bang Theory, which, every time I remember to watch it, reminds me why I should remember to watch it. Then I flipped a bit. But with fewer channels, the lack of anything interesting was even more pronounced. Upstairs I have a wonderful book, The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer, waiting for me. Right now, in the living room, the only sounds are the clack and thump of the dryer turning in the mud room, the too-loud snap of the second hand on the schoolhouse clock on the wall and the tap of the keys as I write. Ella the kitten is curled up in a ball next to me, asleep with her head tucked into her hind legs. There is quiet. There is no white noise backdrop, no eye-tiring flicker. There is space to think and time to write. There's a touch of clarity. There is the fine art of winding down slowly and reflectively at the end of the day. And there is remembering what made those first evenings in the house three years ago so nice. In a word, simplicity.

Now if you'll pardon me, it's time for a glass of water and a book in bed. Quietly.

I could get used to this.

Again.

Short/Start

 This beginning of a short story has been sitting in my list of posts for several months now. I haven't written short fiction in years. I honestly couldn't tell you the year I last published prose. It would easily be at least a decade at this stage. At that, it was genre fiction. Fantasy, horror, dark. I was never much for contemporary fiction. It never seemed to come out honest when I tried. Which is a bit funny considering that I've done fairly well writing plays that possess a lot of honesty.

Anyway, I've been poking at this, and I know where it's going. I don't know when I'll get there but on this quiet Sunday morning I opened it again and looked and tweaked it a tiny bit and I felt like sharing what I've laid down. (I was also inspired by some very nice writing on a friend's blog about the end of summer, so thank you for that!)

This piece is untitled.

= = =
The diner was good for two things: an honest plate of eggs with toast, and people watching. Gerald always sat toward the back, facing away from the door, waiting on breakfast and watching the other diners through the two clear inches at the bottom of an old milk-company promotional mirror on the wall on front of him. It was easier that way. He could pretend he didn't see the disgusted looks and they could pretend not to notice the dirty old guy who bicycled around town.

He watched them to figure out their stories. A few he already knew start to finish, pieced together through overheard conversations or what he observed on repeat visits. People who came back were like chapters. Gerald picked up on how they sat closer or further away one week to the next, or whether they talked to each other more or less or how much or how little they touched each other during breakfast. From that he created their stories. A lot of it was guesswork. He knew that. After so many years of keeping at it, though, Gerald figured he had it down pretty well.

Trina whisked by his table, headed for the kitchen. "More?" she said, one finger flicking vaguely in the direction of his coffee cup. His "yes, please" caught in his throat a bit, came up as more of a croak. It didn't matter. She'd refill it on her way back as long as he sat there, shooting him a quick grin meant to pass for courtesy. He understood. A couple of the older waitresses, the lonelier ones--he made their stories, too--would spare him a word or two here and there, recognizing his place as a regular and a fixture in town. But the young girls wanted as little to do with him as possible.

He knew Trina's story because he'd seen it before. Smarter than she thought she was, thinking maybe she should have gone to junior college and how she just might anyway. Hating her job but stuck with it because the work wasn't hard and the tips were pretty good. Wondering why she wasn't married like some of her friends even though she was not, if Gerald had to guess, a day over twenty-two. Late nights doing nothing worthwhile. Mornings with an armload of plates and a pasted-on smile.

Sure, he knew her. He'd always wanted a girl. Never sure why. The missus had  found it funny.

Podspective

Inspiration wasn't hurrying itself along. In fact, it was late and hadn't bothered to call.

"Put your headphones on," a co-worker said. "Listen to your music."

I winced. "Sometimes I get a little self-conscious about being the guy who's almost 50, always walking around the office with his earbuds in."

"Don't be," she said. "Just tell yourself that somewhere there's a guy who's almost 50 who wishes he had a job where he could wear headphones all day."

I got back to work. With my headphones on.

Metaphor

Saturday morning I put my 12-year-old boy on a plane. With him went two teddy bears, an iPod filled with heavy metal music, several comic books, his summer reading and a box of Swedish fish. He cried a little when it was time to go, excitement turning to a touch of worry, his last hugs before boarding the tightest ever. Later he would tell me that he calmed himself down by tricking himself into thinking that his mother and I were just a few rows ahead on the plane.

The jet pulled away from the walkway and my heart jerked. The plane taxied slowly, took a right and disappeared behind the terminal. My heart pounded. The black jet with the Atlanta Falcons logo raced into view on a far runway, nose up and wheels leaving the ground, and my heart cracked. I watched the plane jump and arc out over Boston Harbor, southbound and climbing, receding to a speck, taking my baby boy with it--and also carrying away the last hint of the illusion that I have a baby boy anymore at all.

Coronary

There were going to be pictures with this food-based entry but, tell you the truth, I got a little embarrassed. But not enough to not at least write about it.

I was having a guy night with myself. The girls were gone for the evening. I had rented Kick-Ass. And all day, for some reason, I had this food thought in my head. In the morning I had taken out two small pieces of steak--little sirloins, very tender and tasty. I became hooked on the idea of piling them on top of french fries and attempting to kill both foods by smothering them under a blanket of cheese.

Can you feel your arteries clogging already?

The steak was rubbed with Adobo seasoning, which has come to be my go-to seasoning base for just about everything. When you get right down to it, it's just a seasoned salt. But it's tasty. The steaks went on the grill. Into the oven went not just french fries, but sweet potato fries which, as we should all rightly know, are a blessing from God. How there was life before sweet potato fries I may never know.

Of course, that wasn't enough. It all needed some heat. So on went the better part of a small can of diced green chiles.  Now I had a tiny mountain of green, brown and orange. Then I cheesed the living bajeezus out of it and shoved it under the broiler for five minutes. This because melty cheese, as we should all rightly know, is a blessing from God.

So many blessings, so little time, right?

There, then, was my manly food creation--something akin to a big plate of spicy cheese fries, but with the meaty gift of steak hiding below. And with a cold barley-pop after a hot day at a local fair--along with the nothin'-but-testosterone fanboy geekness of Kick-Ass--I was all set to be a Guy Alone.

Okay...just one photo. One:

Bon appetit!

Book

So there it is. I've had it for a couple of weeks now. On my second foray into a Borders, I found it. Like before, there was some choosiness involved. I handled it, ran my fingers across the faux alligator-skin texture. It felt ... acceptable. It wasn't blandly smooth like the others, but it was still reasonably plain. I am a fairly plain person. Dark colors, no patterns if I can help it.

I held it in my hand like a textbook, spine in my palm, fingers curled up the face. I walked around the store with it tucked there, judging the way it came along with me as I looked at books I wasn't planning to buy. (I love books, but I hate owning them. If I read a book once, the chance that I'll go back and read it again is slim since I already know what's going to happen, so the expense seems a little pointless--especially since I can go to the library and get the same experience for free.) I wandered. I liked the way the book felt in my grip. I could see myself taking it along to a park or the beach or on a car ride, pen tucked between its pages, ready for inspiration to strike. It wouldn't weigh me down. It would barely draw attention with its unassuming blackness. Sure, that textured cover might draw the eye, but it wouldn't shout, Look! Look at me! I'm an AUTHOR and I'm WRITING!

Which would be bad. No shouting, please.

Convinced that I had found The One, I bought it and headed out. I was pleased. I had taken that step, admittedly small, toward getting my writer back. But John, you ask, and rightly so, did you then use it?

O, you astute reader.

I did. The picture at right was taken during my son's karate class. This was the test I was waiting for. An hour-plus to kill. Would I once again dive into the puzzling depths of the game Zuma on my phone, or would I go to the car, break out the new journal, and whip out some sort of pithy thoughtflow?

Having the picture right there sort of kills the suspense, doesn't it?

That's me writing the "Bounty" entry. I dropped back into that handwriting groove sitting there in the dojo and scrawled my way through three full pages. The pen scraped beautifully across the page as I fired off line after line in my relatively indecipherable handwriting which, I was once told, "looks like an axe murderer's."

Axe murdering is so gauche. Not my style. But I digress.

It was nice. Even the hand cramp that I predicted would come. Even the way the side of my hand raked across the bottom of the page as I moved through that last line, so into the flow of the thing that I didn't want to stop. It was the feeling of writing, the core visceral act of the thing and I was doing it. A few days later I broke it out again to jot down notes for a music review. I wrote, said the writer, in my book.

I admit that the book has stayed in my bag for a couple of weeks. But my bag's always with me, so my book's always with me and there will be no runaway Muses should they happen by. I'll just take out my black fake leather alligator-skin journal, twenty bucks at Borders, flip it open to a clean white page and trap them right there between the thin grey lines.

Said the writer.

Heat

There is just something about the first breath you take in a sauna. Your body's not aware quite yet that the air has changed. Your skin certainly feels it, but nothing else has quite registered. The heat hasn't pervaded you yet. Then you breathe. If you breathe in through your mouth, you feel it immediately in your chest. The air is thicker with the heat. It doesn't ease down into your lungs the right way. It moves slower. If you breathe in through your nose, you feel it, the heat rasping across the membranes in a way that lets you know that the whole mouth-breathing thing is a considerably better idea. Either way, you're aware that something purgative has begun, and all you need to do is let it happen.

I love saunas for just that reason. Physically and metaphysically, 20 minutes in an arid cedar sauna draws out toxins. Sweat beads on your skin and every drop takes something away. Long, slow breaths pull from the inside, every exhalation lightening your soul just a bit. Alone in a sauna, there's nothing to do but think. So I think of the things I need to release, the weights and poisons I let seep into my soul during the day. I breathe them out, let them evaporate in the heat. I take in another hot, cleansing breath and do it again. I watch the sweat fall to the boards, every drop a moment I can do without. They hit, burst, fade. I pour more water on the stones to increase the heat to hurry the cleansing along.

The first time I took a sauna was at a friend's uncle's house on Lake Boone in Hudson, MA. The sauna was built on a concrete slab above a dock. It was wood-fired and it got plenty hot. The joy of it was that you'd sit and schivtz in the sauna for 20, then run like hell out the door, down the steps, onto the dock and dive into the lake. If you turned and came up quickly enough you could see the steam rising from where you went in. You'd climb out and back for another round. After two or three runs, you'd lather up with soap, maybe some shampoo in your hair, and take one more dive. I don't think I've ever slept as well as I did after that first sauna, and I'm pretty sure my skin squeaked, I was so clean.

Now I take my heat once a week or so at the local Y. We only recently joined and I'm trying to get my money's worth. I work out a bit first--far less than I should--but I know I'm really just there for my time in the heat. I'm there for the sweat-meditation, for time to reach into myself, time to let the dark stuff out. The last time there I could feel my breathing change. I could feel it clearing a space within, opening, all save for one tight, solid ball in the center of my chest. And since you can't fire off a good soul-clearing primal scream in a YMCA sauna without raising a bit of alarm, I recognized it for what it was, named it and accepted it. I know it's just a matter of time before the heat melts it away.

That's what saunas are for.

Random

For the sake of saying anything:

No one told me watching your kids grow up is hard. A little heads-up would have been good.

Fried sage leaves. Try them. Make a chiffonade, sautee them in butter and don't let them burn. Tonight they went into a relish of farm-fresh tomato, grilled onion, and dill. Planning to try it with angel hair pasta, pancetta and parmesan.

You should be listening to my podcast. Yes, the music's odd, but some of it is quite beautiful.

"Bob's Date" continues to get bookings, and they continue to thrill me. Meanwhile, someone finally licensed plays (That Thing and First Time for Anything) out of the Smith & Kraus anthologies. I was starting to worry that getting them published was like pulling a "Cask of Amontillado" on them. (For the love of God, Montressor!)

I should get back to work on a play. Then again, I'm quite enjoying the podcasts and reviews.

Weather's getting cooler. Soon I'll spend nights sitting on the deck in a sweatshirt and shorts, saying nothing and listening deeply. Or, at least, I hope I will.

I have deleted at least three lines/paragraphs in this post already. Wouldn't you love to know what they were, now that I've mentioned it?

Tired now. Thanks for indulging. The next one might even have meaning.

Day.

Sunday started the way I wanted it to. The girls still asleep and me on the deck, barefoot in shorts with a cup of my best attempt at making decent coffee. Sitting in a dew-slicked plastic Adirondack chair with a towel draped over it, facing east to watch the sun ease over the treetops. Breathing in the fading stillness, listening to a jay squawk his dominance over smaller birds. Bees behind me snacking on nectar, sometimes circling me to announce that I was inside their perimeter and they weren't all that pleased. Patiently listening to the world waking around me, a slow increase in traffic out on the street, a plane cutting a razorline across the sky, a voice indecipherable in the distance. A hawk winged past, just above the gable of the house. I could see the mottled detail on her feathers.

Me, coffee, the cool air, and for a little while, a shot at some inner stillness.

Sunday.

Bounty.

I dream of basil.

More to the point, I dream of a wall of rich, lush basil leaves growing happily in the summer sun, giving me an endless supply of pesto. I dream, to be very specific, of the trellis that used to grow outside my friend Ruthellen's house where leaves half the size of my hand flourished. Any time I visited I could pick freely from it, load a baggie and giggle my way back to my kitchen knowing I was having pasta that night.

I had pasta last night, and as you may guess, basil was involved. We have tried to plant and grow basil in the past. The folks who owned our house before us built a small garden in one corner of the deck. It used to have a "pool" as part of it--which is to say they dropped a plastic bucket into a hole, packed the edges with dirt, lined it with bricks and filled it with water. In this manner, they created a delightful little oasis where mosquitos could find all the stagnant water they needed to potentially breed with unchecked fecundity and take over the world.

Needless to say, the little garden no longer has a pool.

As I was saying, we've tried to plant and grow basil, among other herbs. We have, in fact, successfully planted it. That part, we've got locked. Growing it--beyond what growth is going to occur naturally for a few days because we bought a fairly healthy plant--has proven somewhat more elusive. Unless, of course, I've misunderstood the point of it all and what you're supposed to end up with are withered stalks covered in a stylish black blight. Then we're perfect at it.

I think the problem has been that we condemned our basil to a life without shade. Our understanding had been that basil requires full sun. That's what the little stickers on the several plants we've killed have said. This year, however, we added some trellis work to our deck, rising over the little garden. And, lo and behold, the basil has (so far) prospered. It's not as if we've installed some sort of retractable garden roof that closes according to the needs of the basil. It appears to just offer the plants a little respite. In thanks, they are producing big, full leaves--and plenty of them.

While I'm not pretending I've mastered the art of basil growing to Ruthellen-like proportions, I admit that I've let the idea of training it to rise up the trellis enter my head. Until then, I'm content to just be able to step out my door and pick the stuff. Certainly a benefit on nights like the one that inspired this post.

(Cue flashback music.)

I was tired. My back had been flaring up. I really didn't want to cook, and my wallet explained that I didn't feel like buying anything, either. But this is why the universe gave us the wonder that is pasta.

The initial idea was to make a simple pasta with basil. I'd looked at the plants that morning and knew I had to pinch off some leaves to keep them growing. So that, with a bit of garlic, olive oil and butter, would make for a classically simple and summer-light dinner. (With wheat pasta, of course.) Then I remembered that in a recent bout of indiscriminate shopping I had re-upped my caper supply. And the hits kept on coming--when I got home I discovered that, much to my surprise, the Food Fairy had left me a package of Trader Joe's chicken-garlic sausage. Now I was a bit more inspired. Even if I hadn't been by then, the act of actually pinching off those deep green, two-fingers-wide leaves certainly would have done the trick.

The plan in the long run is to have our little garden teeming with herbs. On one side, rosemary, chives, mint and lavender are already fighting for supremacy in their 1x2 space. I think the mint is winning. The basil has made a foothold in the middle section, squaring off against a sage plant. (And that stuff can grow like mad.) There's room for more. On the other side, a strawberry plant my daugther insisted she had to have (along with some corn) is getting large and leafy but hasn't yet turned out a decent berry. There may or may not be a pepper plant lying dormant in there. There's a wonderful vibrancy to fresh herbs, and growing them well brings a surprising level of satisfaction, even to an old grump like me. I honestly haven't used much of the rosemary or mint, although I have been known to snap off a mint leaf now and then to chew on. But the more of the stuff I grow, the more likely I am to get around to finding ways to use it.

For now...who wants some pesto?

Brilliant.

As I thought about writing this entry, it occurred to me that the story I wanted to tell about the video below actually had some usable relevance to writing. First, just watch the video.




For about a decade in the late 80s and early 90s I was heavily involved in public access cable TV. In the days before God gave us the internet, public access was the medium of choice for show-offs and misfits--the same folks who haunt YouTube now. During my stint in cable I met my friend Ed O'Rourke. That's him playing Vespio. Ed was and is one of the sharpest comic minds I've ever met. No moment is unusuable, no idea is unexplorable, and all that became evident every time you turned a camera on him. I was lucky enough to be able to spend several years playing opposite him. It was one of the most creatively productive and genuinely fulfilling times of my life.

Around 1991, I believe, Ed ran the cable studio in Saugus, MA. This meant that whenever we wanted we had access to thousands of dollars worth of high-end video equipment and pretty much all the time we chose to burn playing with it. Around this time there were a lot of commercials for cheesy albums by artists like "Zamfir, the Master of the Pan Flute." I wanted to do a parody. My first idea was to create a character called Salivar (accent over the "i"),a flute player with a seriously problematic spittle condition. But I couldn't figure a good way to A) get a tube up to the actor's mouth easily and B)ensure a steady flow of liquid. Not to mention the matter of cleanup.

Sitting around the studio, we came up with the name Vespio Aragoya. Ed disappeared into the men's room while I hashed out comedy details with our co-conspirator, the unfairly talented Mr. Ron van Dam, whose show we worked on. Ed came back with the open shirt and the slicked-back hair. We were hysterical. We had our man. We decided he came from Serbo-Croatia. Ed fired up the accent. It kept getting funnier--to us, anyway. But then came the question: what does Vespio play?

Stay with me now. This is where we key in to the analogy, and I'm not going to be explicit about it.

O'Rourke headed into the studio's store room. He was in there for several minutes. Lots of clanging and banging. And he came out holding an 18-inch-or-so-high section of a fake Christmas tree. It had the base on it, and a couple of stray branches.

I said, "What are you going to do with that?"

And O'Rourke raised it to his lips and, risking a burst brain vessel, blew into the thing like a freaking shofar and out came this wonderful, hellacious, absolutely non-musical bellow of sound. Vespio's instrument.

Watch the video again. I want you to see how he invests in and commits to the idea of the instrument. Before he plays, he always whips one branch over to the side. Like it matters. The move becomes integral to his development of the Christmas tree stand as a viable musical instrument. He's consistent about it. He has sold himself on the idea, and he sells you, the viewer. This is not a Christmas tree stand, he says to you a la Magritte. This is the Bogorian Tree Flute. And you buy it.

So here's my writerly koan to you, my pen-poised friends:

Can you find the Christmas tree stand in your closet? Have you looked?

Reminded.

Last night was one of those scramble-for-dinner nights. Crawling toward payday and with nary a spot of food in the larder, I knew it was going to be an improv evening. Which is fine; I've always liked the let's see what we've got here school of cooking. I knew there was a set of chicken breasts waiting at home. The rest remained to be seen.

As I drove, I fixated on the idea of a simple chicken quesadilla. I was pretty sure there were tortillas in the fridge, and we've always got more than enough cheese on hand. (This is largely because every time we make burritos, we convince ourselves that we have no cheese, so we buy some, only to find out we had plenty.) There was an onion left over from a recent gathering, so using it before it totally shriveled would be wise. So there it was: chicken quesadillas.

Skip ahead a bit to this conversation:

"Hey, the tortillas... Uh, the date on the package says May 25."

"Oh."

"Do you think they're okay? There's no color on them. They smell okay."

[Silence, with an I dunno sort of face.]

"Hang on, let me look." [from the kitchen] "There's a flatbread from Trader Joe's. I could make a pizza with it."

"That sounds good."

"Hold on... Oh. The date on this says July 5. What do you think?"

[Silence, with an I dunno sort of face.]

Needless to say, we had neither quesadillas nor pizza. What eventually came along, however, reminded me of one of the first times I got creative with cooking. It was called Bucky's Chicken Shit.

Appetizing, no?

It was the mid-80s. For reasons I cannot remember--other than figuring it would impress women--I started taking an interest in cooking. I was reading cooking magazines and keeping a binder of recipes, I had gotten a recipe-making program for my Commodore 64 that could take one ingredient and offer a slew of possible dishes to make... I was discovering a new land.

Came a night when my girlfriend and I were hungry. I think there was another friend with us. Not that it matters. I went into action. We had egg noodles, which I've always loved. (Mom used to serve them doused with butter and sprinkled with a hint of black pepper.) I had a can of chicken meat. (I was not shopping for myself in those days.) I had an onion. I had tomato sauce.

As you might guess, Bucky's Chicken Shit was not exactly high-concept gourmet. The onions got a quick sauté in butter, the chicken was de-canned and dumped unceremoniously on top of the onions, the noodles got thrown over it all and then I smothered it in sauce. Oh, and lest I forget, there was (of course) cheese. Cheese aplenty, actually.

The girlfriend was suitably impressed. Clearly, it didn't take much. Cooking had the desired effect, and started me down the amateur culinary path I continue to walk today. And last night, out of necessity and scarcity, I revisited that early concoction. Running out of options, along with food that wasn't expired, I turned to the old standby: a half-box of pasta. We have several of them at any given moment. This time around it was wheat elbow macaroni. The chicken had been cooked up for quesadillas and sat waiting. It went into a baking dish with the pasta. A boatload of pasta sauce. A truckful of cheese. Into the oven at 400 degrees and out in five minutes for a simple, nostalgic, delicious delight.

I think the girlfriend was suitably impressed.

Snack.

Intellectually, I knew the brownie was not a good idea. First, because it was a vending machine brownie and second, because I am an increasingly chubby guy with no self-control in the food department. But brownies are my kryptonite and I am a semi-happily suicidal Superman when it comes to them.

I prefer my own, of course, because I make them with orange extract, habanero pepper sauce and cayenne powder. It is impractical, however, to try to whip up a batch of said brownies in the editorial offices of a catalog company. Thus, my addiction costs me $1.35 and a small sliver of pride.

In the vending machine, the brownie is number 20. I slid in my two dollars. I pressed the numbers--3-0.

The realization struck too late and in a flash of regret and terror I watched a 90-cent Fiber One granola bar being shoved off its perch to land with a thunk at the bottom of the vending machine.

The brownie is number 20. Two-zero. I slid in my two dollars. I pressed the numbers.

Another Fiber One bar glided forward. No! I was sure I pressed 2-0! Lying sonofabitchin' machine!

The sugar lull was clearly getting the best of me. I stepped back. Took a breath. What I did not need at the moment was a machine dictating my snack needs and getting snarky about my lack of dietary fiber. I will have you know,I wanted to tell it, that I consider Metamucil to be a recreational drug.

Two. Zero. Simple.

I slid in my first dollar. Then my second.

The machine spit it out.

Okay--bad dollar. It happens. I had another in my pocket. I slid it in.

The machine spit it out.

This is the juncture at which a normal person might think, Hmm...perhaps the universe is telling me something. Could it be I am not choosing wisely due to my hunger? I should take this moment to consider the many healthier options currently available to me, such as trail mix.

I, on the other hand, was thinking, I will drive my forehead through this Lexan window if that's what it takes to get that brownie, and then I will disembowel this heathen machine, kill its family and burn its village to the ground.

Me with low blood sugar has never been a pretty sight. Nor one that involves any kind of rational thought.

The machine sensed it was in danger. It swallowed my dollar. Carefully, watching my finger all the way, I pressed.

Two.

Zero.

Brownie.

I wish I could tell you it was worth it. It was a vending machine brownie and I was a sugar-fix whore. I settled, even when the machine was telling me otherwise.

On the upside, I've got two Fiber One bars for a snack tomorrow.

Quote.

"When you're dead, it robs life of many pleasures."--author Harvey Pekar, on Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations

Voice.

The other night I heard my words for the first time in a few years.

A friend is directing my play, Dinner for Several, in Rhode Island this fall. At his invite I went down and sat in on his auditions. As I prefer, I sat there quietly with no one knowing that (gasp! horror! panic!) the playwright was in the room.

For the record, I have never liked being the playwright. I'm this guy from the 'burbs who happens to have put together a script, and someone in the theater liked it. I try to leave my beret and cigarette holder at home, on the hall table next to my artsy bohemian disregard for ordinary people.

I went not because I wanted any sort of input on the casting process, but because I hadn't heard these particular words since Stacey's superb production at Walpole two years ago and--odd though it may sound--I wanted to know what they sounded like again.


The curiosity derives largely from my current mindset of feeling like I don't have anything to say that warrants an artistic expression. The thing about playwriting is that in the long run you don't just have to convince yourself that you've got something to say. You need a group of people to think you've got something to say, too. Everyone on the playreading committee, a director, a bunch of actors...there are a number of hurdles and/or filters between your deathless craft on the page and its public performance. In 2003, 2004, I obviously believed that I had something that required expression on stage. Now? Not so much. So the questions become: Did I really have anything to say back then? And how is what I had to offer artistically then different than now? It really boils down to: Who was that guy?

The tricky part, of course, is trying to answer that question via the struggles of actors cold-reading a script they've never seen. But that's part of the fun for me.

As an actor, I'm that annoying guy at auditions who you'd swear has already read the script. I can cold-read the living bajeezus out of a side. This odd thing happens in my brain--it's like it splits down the middle and while one part's doing the acting, the other part is reading ahead, deciding on how to hit the lines, and sending a message back to its partner. Some folks cold-read well. Others... Well, everybody loves a good train wreck.

Thing is, the words are the words. The jokes are the jokes. Even in a thick-lipped stumble through it, a good line can still come off as a good line. And during the auditions, there were laughs. Funny is funny.

Dinner also has its dramatic moments, and watching those I was struck by the honesty in the dramatic scenes the director had chosen. This play is about the amount of time and energy we burn trying to find love or, often, an overly idealized version of it, and how we alternately reveal and hide ourselves in the pursuit--not just from other people, but from ourselves as well. Heady stuff for a comedy, but I think it's in there. That's what I had to say. Would I say the same thing now if I was writing it? Can't answer that.

Since its debut in 2004 I haven't been able to get anyone to consider staging Dinner unless they knew me. It's been turned down by two publishers, including one who gladly publishes several of my short plays. I've seen the shows, I've listened to the audiences. I sat in a packed 235-seat theater and watched the thing absolutely enchant, night after night. I know how good this play is. I think I went to Rhode Island to remind myself--not just about the play, but maybe about me. Perhaps I knew that even in a stumble-through filled with apologies and stops and starts and odd choices, the core of thing would still shine and maybe I'd feel good about my writerly self.

I think I have always boxed off my life to some degree. The things I remember and the things I don't surprises me. When I try, in my mind's eye, to look back at the guy alone in the 20x20 studio with the keyboard on his lap, writing his first play at 40-plus, the image is fuzzy. The picture jumps, trying to fine-tune the clarity. It never clears. What I come away with is: whoever he was, he wrote a helluva play.

And sometimes I wonder where he went.

Touchpoint.

I've come to one of those odd realizations about my writing, which has led to an equally odd "writerly" moment.

The way that I write now offers me far too many options for excuses. For example: My "office," such as it is, is a space about six feet wide and four feet deep in an oddly walled-off portion of my upstairs, with just one door leading in from the bedroom. I'm sure a real estate agent might call it part of the master suite. In case of fire, I have no option but to dive out a window. The space is encroached upon by a vast array of misplaced clothing. Once a season we break out pitchforks and torches and force it back from the borders of my "office," but sooner or later the piles re-embolden themselves and have another go at annexing what little psuedocreative space I have. (Which amounts to a desk with a computer on it.) In addition: My house was built in 1850. The bedroom and the office are in what was the original house, which was at one point a single story. Thus, this area used to be the attic and it's not exactly packing a refreshing flow of ventilation. Two windows on one wall. Opening them, research has proven, does nothing to encourage the stale, superheated attic air to actually move. I know there's a crawlspace above the room that runs to the "main" part of the house and it's got a gable vent and two roof vents, but apparently it's just a place where hot likes to spend the summer.

Which is why, in summer, the office becomes a superb sauna. While this is very good for my pores and overall complexion, it's not conducive to me spending any time in there writing. (Other than the inspired short poem, Ode to That Rivulet of Sweat Carefully but Surely Making Its Way Down to My Shorts, which won the Murray Feldman Memorial Perspire-A-Poem contest in 2008.)

We have a small netbook that we use for wireless internet downstairs, but its Lilliputian keys don't play nicely with the unique--okay, almost entirely effed up--method of manic, mostly-two-fingered-but-sometimes-up-to-four hunt-and-peck typing technique that I've developed largely due to one finger that bends in an odd direction. (Ask me to make a fist with my right hand sometime.) I can't explain how it works and you'd never be able to follow along because I can't follow along myself, but I still manage to type about 55 wpm this way. Point being, on the netbook things just don't come out right. Programs get launched out of nowhere. The cursor bobs and weaves like Ali and often forgets where it's supposed to be. Like Ali.

Okay. That was mean. I'm riffing. Ride it out with me.

So there are all my excuses. Know what's hard to make excuses about, though? Writing stuff down on paper.

I don't want to ruin the suspense, but in a few moments I will make an excuse about it. In the meantime:

The first realization about my writing is that perhaps it's time to stop believing I need to be seated at the keyboard to write. My history belies the idea anyway. I wrote a lot of my fiction in the 90s in notebooks or journals, standing behind a convenience store counter. One of the best speeches in a pla I ever wrote was scribbled out on a yellow pad while sitting in a stairwell in a convention center in Chicago. I've done the pen-and-paper thing, of course. All writers have. I've just gotten away from it, and I have perhaps forgotten how much I always enjoyed the sheer visceral pleasure of it.

Writing is an act of binging and purging, of building up and tearing down in the name of constant refinement. It is liking and hating, often in the same sentence. And when you don't like it, you rip it out.

On a computer, "ripping it out" is relegated to highlighting and deleting. Or maybe the less-than-decisive CTRL+X...in case you're not sure. It's less definitive than the act of crossing out words and passages. And how you cross out says a lot about how you feel about your work. A single quick hashmark? Maybe you just didn't like that word much. You might like it later. Two or three scratch-outs and you've told that section that you never want to see it again...although maybe you'll call. Then you get down to the ink-based equivalent of a nuclear carpet-bombing where the strokes come so fast, thick and plentiful, the pen landing so violently that no amount of forensic work will ever reveal the crap you wrote in that last paragraph.

Computer deletion also usually removes the chance to go back and reconsider. You can CTRL-X once, but do it twice and the first one's gone. So do you start to keep a page of deleted passages? You could. But the written word, even with a few judgemental strokes through it, is something you can come back to. You could find the value in it that you hadn't seen before. It just waits there for you to decide.

In addition, when you've written something down on paper, in the act of transferring it into a Word doc you give yourself another pass at editing. It's unavoidable. You're considering every word that's lifting up from the page and shooting over to the keys. You will edit as you go. Therefore, you will improve as you go.

This is how I used to write.

This, I think, is how I should be writing.

A journal nearby to catch the words as they come. A pen at the ready. No booting up. No sweltering in the office. No excuse. Back in the moment, fielding thoughts like butterflies and pinning them down to use later. Writing without excuses.

If writing is life, then why am I choosing to live it so remotely? Thinking about going back to putting pen to paper, handwriting my work first, is like remembering an old friend I haven't thought to call. (People who know me personally will take a moment to savor the irony in that statement.)

And here's the writerly excuse moment.

Yesterday I went over to Barnes & Noble to buy a journal. To get the ball rolling. I had a lot of choices. Journals with printed covers. Leather. Spiral bound. Magnetic closure. Pithy quote on front. Embossed leaf. I picked up this one and that one, flipped them open, priced them out.

Here's the thing: None of them felt like the right one. I walked out without one.

Intellectually, I know it's just paper that I'm buying. Doesn't matter what the cover looks like or what it's made out of, right? Just needs to hold the ink in place for a while without ripping.

But it's more than that. It's this thing that's about to become an integral part of something that's integral to me. It needs to feel right, and I can't describe what that would constitute. I just know it wasn't on the shelves there.

I have a journal holder at home. It's lovely. Leather, embossed with a Celtic knot design and a Celtic-knot-style button that closes with a leather tie. My first wife gave it to me when I was writing sword & sorcery fiction in my 30s. I'm not writing sword & sorcery fiction now and although I know it doesn't really matter, it somehow does. I am not a Celtic knot sort of writer right now. I think I might look a bit odd at 48 hauling that one around. It would do the trick, I know. I know. It just isn't the one yet. But soon. I also have a couple partially filled journals I could use--but, like the holder, they're from before. They were given to a different writer. I need to redefine myself through my medium. I know it sounds hokey and I know it sounds like an excuse, but consider:

What I do, what all writers do, is intensely personal. All art is. From the very beginning of an act of art, it's about you and who you are and what you feel and believe and it's about your need to state that. Everything about that act should pull from that center. At my center, in that space that I feel I've been denying, I hear and see and feel the idea that this is what I need to do. That's truth. Honesty. The core of good art. Start from there and your work falls in line. Art without the artist's integral truth and honesty driving it forward is not art.

My hand already itches. I know it'll cramp up good on me. But it wants to hold a pen and write. It wants to scratch stuff out. It wants to write in the margins and doodle when it's blank. I intend to let it. Just as soon as I find the right book.


js

Weenie.

If you're interested, I've got two new blog posts over at The Hot Dog I Ate. Link is to the right.

Beyond that, still waiting to feel that something's worth writing about.

Trending.

It would probably come as no surprise to anyone who knows me if I suggested I've lived quite a while with a undiagnosed case of adult Attention Deficit Disorder. It would explain a lot, like why I've always written more and better when I wasn't supposed to be writing. On the job when I wasn't writing for a living, for example. Or even when I was. I wrote my play "Owen & George Play Chess" during lulls in a proofreading temp gig. Much of my fiction writing in the 90s was done in windows that got hidden any time a boss strolled by. So, yes...one shiny thing in the corner of my eye and I'm distracted.

Which explains why I consider Yahoo's "Trending Now" sidebar to be a Satanic torture device designed to make me have to read about things I normally would have no interest in. This sidebar basically tracks what phrases are being searched most heavily at any given moment. Celebrity names are always high on the list, but you also get things like "coffee" or "whaling"--neither of which I am making up--with no further explanation. And I, like the simple-minded trout I am, snap at the wiggly lure Yahoo dangles in the water.

This can be problematic, like when the wife and I are sitting on the couch and she asks, "Why were you Googling Miley Cyrus?" Because, as we are all well aware, there are no valid reasons for a 48-year-old man to be Googling the Hannah Montana star. Or at least no reasons that wouldn't make the FBI seize and search your hard drive. But if I may defend my innocence, earlier that evening a talk radio host had been fielding calls about Cyrus, apparently about whether her lyrics were starting to get a little too mature for the kids who love her as she rolls toward young-adulthood, and then I get home and that damned Yahoo box has her name in it! She was top-10 trending! Had I missed something? Was there a Beatles-bigger-than-Jesus-style backlash against her? Clearly, I needed to know--the Trending Now box told me so!

The worst part about owning up to my Trending Now addiction is admitting that when I see a celebrity's name my immediate thought, every time, is: Did they die? As though the only way Sandra Bullock (who is #1 in the box as I'm writing) could trend is if she died. The more obscure the celebrity, the more convinced I become they've shuffled off the mortal coil and I can't keep myself from finding out if I'm right.

Often the result is more mundane and therefore disappointing. Let's look at the top 5 at the moment and what the first big search result is when we click them.

1. Sandra Bullock: Apparently she plays guitar.
2. Whaling: Talks at a whaling moratorium are breaking down.*
3. Linda McMahon: The Senate candidate and wife of WWE head Vince McMahon is being sued by a dead wrestler's wife.
4. Maria Sharapova: Hot and plays tennis. Enough for me.
5. Offshore drilling: The judge who told BarryO he can't stop offshore drilling apparently owns oil company stock.*

* = items with actual news value. Did you know there was a conference on whaling? Ever?

I would like to think I can someday take control of my Trending Now box addiction. Lord knows there are enough pointless distractions on the web. This one, though, sits at the top right of the page, teasing me every time I come to Yahoo with its little sub-nuggets of info.... I know something about cooooofffffeeeee....wanna know?**

And I, weak-minded as I am, plagued by ADD, easily distracted, am unable to say no to the shiny thing in the box.



**Apparently will cut the risk of head and neck cancer for you. Java, anyone? I'm buying.

Unwarranted news commentary

Occurs to me that it would be easier to give Joran van der Sloot a little more benefit of the doubt if he wasn't rocking a look that suggests he knows exactly how many strokes it takes to filet a human body. And how many servings you get out of it. Kid's one forehead X away from winning a Manson lookalike contest.