And so Thunk comes quietly to an end.
I've decided to re-challenge myself, to go back to the days when I used to write columns. So, yes, a new blog.
New course heading.
If you've enjoyed reading Thunk, I invite you to come try another side of me. (Boy, that sounds odd.)
Come read Hash 'n' Eggs. New columns every Sunday morning.
And thanks for reading.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
....
You are, of course, everywhere here. No one else sees the intersection in the center of town like I do. It was one of your favorite stories. I see the shadow of buildings gone or changed, outlined in memory and meaning. Strawberry frappes after basketball games. The pizza place we always got from but never went into--it just wasn't that sort of place. A parking lot haunted by a storm-blue Chevy Nova, you and I taking slow laps around it. It's how I know when to lay off the gas. Every day is a tribute and every day is a heartache and every day I could tell a story and the sad part is, I should have 19 more years' worth to tell.
I will take what stories I have. I will see those faded moments flicker past. And I will see your smile everywhere I look except here, next to me now, where I most wish it was.
I love you, dad.
I will take what stories I have. I will see those faded moments flicker past. And I will see your smile everywhere I look except here, next to me now, where I most wish it was.
I love you, dad.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Walk, With Ghosts Intact
[There will be no explanations.]
Starting from the place where we went in the summer to get truck tubes and glossy black and whites of Rico, Yaz, and the Conigliaros. Across the street, the house on the corner and the second floor windows marking the narrow room where interesting things happened. Years later, the other one said, "I swear to God, if you say a word..." I never did. Down past the ballfields I was never good enough to play on although I thought I was, past the tarmac basketball court where I and my fallaway jumper would shine on sweat-humid summer nights. They'd set up a rack of bleachers and we'd play for our parents in a mist of gnats and everybody wanted to be Hondo. I watched you come down on the back of your head, stopping the moment hard and cold, leaving a slight spatter that stayed there for years. Along the cemetery wall where, me being so cool and you so young, I said I could call you at any time. I didn't count on you showing up again, reminding me of it since I'd forgotten, mythology and damage inciting me to irreparably complicate things. Turn right at the pond where I heard they found you, the water washing away a nightmare of deeply layered issues. I knew the family but not you so much. You were just a kid then and the street between all of us got wider every year until we couldn't hold a decent game of kick the can anymore for the gaps we'd created in our heres and theres, and at the very least we couldn't keep making Davey "it." He caught on. Along the Boulevard, the "don't you go there" Boulevard where everybody went, the acrid vulcanized smoke of brakestands coiling in the night air, now overgrown and narrow. We were there. We were supposed to be cool. You were making out with the girl who hadn't quite accepted being a lesbian yet and the tire went flat and you had no spare. I walked in the snow because I lived closest, the cool kid going to get his dad. A guy pulls up to the van to lean out the window and ask "You wanna buy some purple microdot?" and dad, stoic and casual, turns to look over his shoulder and says, "No, thank you." Behind the building where we shot the sketch where you ate out of a paper bag hidden in the dumpster. I wanted your girlfriend because in my mind she deserved better. I sunburned the tops of my feet for her. Jammed the brakes the night she was making out with another guy in the back of my car. Kissed her once and thought it was perfect. Someone pointed me to your commercial. It was great to see you, but it made me wonder where she is now. Past the store where one day we said sooner or later we'd take each other seriously, leading to you in gossamer and the both of us dreaming. Around the corner where you and I would head for school with "Truckin'" by Bread cranked up on the stereo, thinking we were cool despite the fact that there's no way Bread could be considered "cool." I was cool because you had the van. Shotgun in a captain's chair worked for me. Up to the house I must have passed a thousand times going place to place and thought to thought, never really seeing it, holding no hint that I would end up there with a girl who convinced me otherwise in a camp chair one night, me searching for quiet while we spend our days creating new ghosts that we have yet to name.
Starting from the place where we went in the summer to get truck tubes and glossy black and whites of Rico, Yaz, and the Conigliaros. Across the street, the house on the corner and the second floor windows marking the narrow room where interesting things happened. Years later, the other one said, "I swear to God, if you say a word..." I never did. Down past the ballfields I was never good enough to play on although I thought I was, past the tarmac basketball court where I and my fallaway jumper would shine on sweat-humid summer nights. They'd set up a rack of bleachers and we'd play for our parents in a mist of gnats and everybody wanted to be Hondo. I watched you come down on the back of your head, stopping the moment hard and cold, leaving a slight spatter that stayed there for years. Along the cemetery wall where, me being so cool and you so young, I said I could call you at any time. I didn't count on you showing up again, reminding me of it since I'd forgotten, mythology and damage inciting me to irreparably complicate things. Turn right at the pond where I heard they found you, the water washing away a nightmare of deeply layered issues. I knew the family but not you so much. You were just a kid then and the street between all of us got wider every year until we couldn't hold a decent game of kick the can anymore for the gaps we'd created in our heres and theres, and at the very least we couldn't keep making Davey "it." He caught on. Along the Boulevard, the "don't you go there" Boulevard where everybody went, the acrid vulcanized smoke of brakestands coiling in the night air, now overgrown and narrow. We were there. We were supposed to be cool. You were making out with the girl who hadn't quite accepted being a lesbian yet and the tire went flat and you had no spare. I walked in the snow because I lived closest, the cool kid going to get his dad. A guy pulls up to the van to lean out the window and ask "You wanna buy some purple microdot?" and dad, stoic and casual, turns to look over his shoulder and says, "No, thank you." Behind the building where we shot the sketch where you ate out of a paper bag hidden in the dumpster. I wanted your girlfriend because in my mind she deserved better. I sunburned the tops of my feet for her. Jammed the brakes the night she was making out with another guy in the back of my car. Kissed her once and thought it was perfect. Someone pointed me to your commercial. It was great to see you, but it made me wonder where she is now. Past the store where one day we said sooner or later we'd take each other seriously, leading to you in gossamer and the both of us dreaming. Around the corner where you and I would head for school with "Truckin'" by Bread cranked up on the stereo, thinking we were cool despite the fact that there's no way Bread could be considered "cool." I was cool because you had the van. Shotgun in a captain's chair worked for me. Up to the house I must have passed a thousand times going place to place and thought to thought, never really seeing it, holding no hint that I would end up there with a girl who convinced me otherwise in a camp chair one night, me searching for quiet while we spend our days creating new ghosts that we have yet to name.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Mantra
"Writing is when you make the words. Editing is when you make the words not shitty."--Chuck Wendig, in his essay, "How Not to Bug the Fuck Out When Writing A Novel."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Hmm
A funny thing happened on the way to the edit.
A friend asked me to take a look at a story he was working on. I'd helped him a few years back, giving some suggestions on tightening his prose. He tends to be wordy, and I have always reveled in the editing/rewriting process. I have called myself a tweaker and a mechanic. A fine-tuner. I love the way moving or reshaping one word in a sentence can make the whole thing gleam. I like doing it with my own work, and I like doing it with others'. So I agreed.
Maybe because of the relationship I have with him, I was able to really dig into the story. I didn't feel bad circling words and writing "cliché!" next to them. (No writer of worth should ever compare blue eyes to the sky. EVER. Find a new way to get your point over.) I hacked off an opening section. I tweaked. Buffed. Scraped. Excised. Razed. All, of course, in a constructive way.
Then we talked about it. Just for 10 minutes or so at the start of the workday, but we talked. I talked. I talked about writing. I talked about the economy of words, of why the opening bit was trite and how it stood in the way of a strong storyline, about paring down his phrasing and creating beats and rhythm and tension to really bring this story to a new level . . .
I talked. And for once I didn't feel like I had nothing to say. I didn't question myself. It's been a while. Maybe it's been since the last time I taught writing. But I came out of the conversation and didn't think I'd babbled or been wrong or came off looking like a wank. I felt like I'd said something of worth, something that helped, something I knew something about. Which was interesting. As in different.
Interesting.
A friend asked me to take a look at a story he was working on. I'd helped him a few years back, giving some suggestions on tightening his prose. He tends to be wordy, and I have always reveled in the editing/rewriting process. I have called myself a tweaker and a mechanic. A fine-tuner. I love the way moving or reshaping one word in a sentence can make the whole thing gleam. I like doing it with my own work, and I like doing it with others'. So I agreed.
Maybe because of the relationship I have with him, I was able to really dig into the story. I didn't feel bad circling words and writing "cliché!" next to them. (No writer of worth should ever compare blue eyes to the sky. EVER. Find a new way to get your point over.) I hacked off an opening section. I tweaked. Buffed. Scraped. Excised. Razed. All, of course, in a constructive way.
Then we talked about it. Just for 10 minutes or so at the start of the workday, but we talked. I talked. I talked about writing. I talked about the economy of words, of why the opening bit was trite and how it stood in the way of a strong storyline, about paring down his phrasing and creating beats and rhythm and tension to really bring this story to a new level . . .
I talked. And for once I didn't feel like I had nothing to say. I didn't question myself. It's been a while. Maybe it's been since the last time I taught writing. But I came out of the conversation and didn't think I'd babbled or been wrong or came off looking like a wank. I felt like I'd said something of worth, something that helped, something I knew something about. Which was interesting. As in different.
Interesting.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Understand?
I just realized that, basically, this is what I do for a living:
We need you to sing a song.
"Iiiii....want to rock and roll all niiiiiiiight...."
No, we meant a slower song. Something slower.
"It's a little bit funny.....this feeling insiiiiiiide..."
No, a show tune.
"When you're living in A-mer-i-ca at the end of the millen---"
From the 70s.
"When the moooon is in the seventh house....."
You know what? We're not sure we should sing after all. We're not getting a good reaction to singing, and the songs aren't working well. We're changing it to whistling. Whistle for us.
Etc.
We need you to sing a song.
"Iiiii....want to rock and roll all niiiiiiiight...."
No, we meant a slower song. Something slower.
"It's a little bit funny.....this feeling insiiiiiiide..."
No, a show tune.
"When you're living in A-mer-i-ca at the end of the millen---"
From the 70s.
"When the moooon is in the seventh house....."
You know what? We're not sure we should sing after all. We're not getting a good reaction to singing, and the songs aren't working well. We're changing it to whistling. Whistle for us.
Etc.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wreck
From my office window I can just about see the spot where the car hit the pole. My son and I had just pulled out of the driveway on a mission of ice-creamy emergency. We were no more than 50 yards down the street when I half-saw it happen. It was one of those moments when a cluster of images that aren't quite right rush together before understanding comes. Smoke. My head registering something being where it shouldn't. A car in front of me swerves. Another, facing this way but not facing this way as it pivots around the spot where its front end squarely hits the pole, lifted, thrown, slamming down into the middle of the street, angled oddly, the nose now a broken scream of metal, a tire attached but horizontal. I pulled over and got out, dialing 911.
Do you need police, fire or....
What city or town....
One moment please.
Busy signal.
A kid's face in the passenger side window. Twenties. Conscious, lucid. Can't get the door open. People on their cell phones on both sides of the street. Glass everywhere. Someone says, "Are you okay?" and someone in the twisted, irreparably folded car screams back, "No we're not fuckin' okay!" A black Rothko swath of oil painted from pole to engine, hood wrenched open. There's a lady trying to pull the back door open but it's been wedged against the front door, the two of them meeting in a way they weren't designed to. I tell her I'll get it and step in. The kid wants out. I want him out. American steel bends pretty easily when you're determined. He climbs out. I get him to the sidewalk. Sit down, I tell him. He wants to stand. The driver's in the car. Someone's hunched over him, holding his head still. Blue lights coming up the street. Red lights. I look at the pole. There's a good six-inch hole where the force of impact shoved it backwards. The thick wood is splintered and angled.
Later my wife will ask me, "How did he lose control of the car?" It occurs to me that this is a question even he may not be able to answer. But it's a question that sits in the center of what is and will be a defining moment--for the driver, who had to be helicoptered away and given "advanced life-saving techniques," to quote the paper, as well as the passenger who was able to nimbly climb over the back seat. Because everything changed in that moment. No one's the same. The driver will never be quite the same physically. Probably won't drive the same, if he drives at all. Won't look at life the same, having been that close to death. The friendship between him and the passenger won't be the same. Closer, maybe, for having survived. More distant, maybe, if one was responsible for them having nearly not survived. I'm not the same. I've never wrangled a car door to help someone before. Never been the one who stopped to see if everyone was all right. I did what occurred to me in the moment.
Moment.
Everything, always, unavoidably, comes down to a moment.
The point of difference. Left versus right. Attention versus distraction. This versus that. Control versus lack of control. And in that moment, change.
Do you need police, fire or....
What city or town....
One moment please.
Busy signal.
A kid's face in the passenger side window. Twenties. Conscious, lucid. Can't get the door open. People on their cell phones on both sides of the street. Glass everywhere. Someone says, "Are you okay?" and someone in the twisted, irreparably folded car screams back, "No we're not fuckin' okay!" A black Rothko swath of oil painted from pole to engine, hood wrenched open. There's a lady trying to pull the back door open but it's been wedged against the front door, the two of them meeting in a way they weren't designed to. I tell her I'll get it and step in. The kid wants out. I want him out. American steel bends pretty easily when you're determined. He climbs out. I get him to the sidewalk. Sit down, I tell him. He wants to stand. The driver's in the car. Someone's hunched over him, holding his head still. Blue lights coming up the street. Red lights. I look at the pole. There's a good six-inch hole where the force of impact shoved it backwards. The thick wood is splintered and angled.
Later my wife will ask me, "How did he lose control of the car?" It occurs to me that this is a question even he may not be able to answer. But it's a question that sits in the center of what is and will be a defining moment--for the driver, who had to be helicoptered away and given "advanced life-saving techniques," to quote the paper, as well as the passenger who was able to nimbly climb over the back seat. Because everything changed in that moment. No one's the same. The driver will never be quite the same physically. Probably won't drive the same, if he drives at all. Won't look at life the same, having been that close to death. The friendship between him and the passenger won't be the same. Closer, maybe, for having survived. More distant, maybe, if one was responsible for them having nearly not survived. I'm not the same. I've never wrangled a car door to help someone before. Never been the one who stopped to see if everyone was all right. I did what occurred to me in the moment.
Moment.
Everything, always, unavoidably, comes down to a moment.
The point of difference. Left versus right. Attention versus distraction. This versus that. Control versus lack of control. And in that moment, change.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Wholly
The pitchline goes like this: John decides to change, or at least think more about changing, the way he eats.
The process is sort of underway. The backstory is that at 48 years of age, I tend to eat like a teenager. I have never forsaken my love of steak & cheese subs, preferably with Canadian bacon when the opportunity presents itself, and my divorced dad routine has put me in a secondary routine--okay, bad habit--that involves me rolling through any fast-food drive-thru in my path as I drive from house B to house A to assail the questionable offerings of the dollar menu. Lord help me, that Buck Double at BK is an amazing temptress. Especially with just mayo and onion.
Just thinking about it, my hunger gets a hard-on.
But it's really time to stop. Not entirely, of course. There are still occasions that simply cry out for a steak and cheese sub--like days that have vowels in their name, or that cool part of the day when both hands are on the twelve.
You see? I am a sick, sick man.
But let us get semi-serious for a moment.
There came a moment a few weeks ago when the simplicity of how I ought to be eating came into my head with unfamiliar clarity. It began as the statement, if it isn't grown or killed, don't eat it. Which, I admit, is still pretty crude. But the idea felt right, moreso when it began to more fully form into the concept of eating more-or-less whole foods.
Let me say now that I'm not looking for a big debate on what a "whole" food is, or to bandy back and forth with anyone about how animals aren't actually "whole" foods. I'm an omnivore. I need my muscle tissue protein.
As the idea started to settle in, I attempted to do a little research on the internet about "eating whole." There are, of course, a boatload and a half of variations on the theme. My endpoint does a little one from Column A, one from Column B finagling. There were two concepts I quite took to. One is the "three's a crowd" concept. I can't recall exactly where I found it, but the person who put it forth basically tries not to eat anything with more than three ingredients, not including water. And those ingredients need to be unprocessed. For example, this evening I made a Trader Joe's brown rice pilaf. Ingredients on the label: brown rice, black barely, daikon radish seeds. Ding! It passes.
The other idea is to try to avoid anything that is more than three steps from its original form. This more or less leaves meat on the menu but nixes things like bread and pasta. Dairy. Cheese. Sugar.
All in all, my intent is to eat with a little more thought and a lot less processing. I know it's not hard if a little forethought goes into it. While I haven't fully pulled the trigger on this concept, a few recent meals stand out as examples of how I can eat relatively whole foods--and eat well.
Again, the idea is to keep things as close to their source form as possible. So tonight, along with that rice pilaf, I made a version of chicken piccata. Let us not stop to argue over the "wholeness" of the wine I used as a base for the sauce. A piccata is a sauce typically made with butter, wine, lemon and capers. Plus, the chicken (or veal, or what have you) is often floured before sauteeing. In my version, I dispensed with the flour and simply seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper. Sauteed it in a small amount of olive oil (whole). When it came time to sauce, I poured in a bit of chardonnay (it was open...normally I'd prefer a sauvignon blanc), the juice of half a lemon, and a small handful of capers. Heat up, reduce sauce, it was delicious. And everything was within my definition of "whole." There was also sauteed asparagus, although I admit to adding less than a quarter tablespoon of butter to the pan.
Or the other night--pork sirloin chops, very simply seasoned and served with a relish made from sauteed onion, fennel and apple. No butter in this one, just olive oil, low heat and time. Side dish was quinoa, a whole grain that's currently one of the darlings of the food world for its supergrain status--it's high in protein, has crazy amounts of vitamins and, if I'm not mistaken, once lifted a car off a toddler. Plus, it cooks in under 15 minutes, which makes me love it more. The whole meal, whole.
In the fridge right now there's a batch of homemade red pepper hummus: chickpeas, roasted red pepper (I'll get back to that), lemon juice, tahini, sea salt. Whole, whole, whole. The tahini is less than three steps removed from its original form and contains nothing but sesame. The red peppers were, I admit, from a jar, but going forward I'd roast my own. It's easy. (Plus, my ex-wife has a killer recipe for roasted red peppers with garlic that you serve on bread that's just to die for.)
The question clearly is one of convenience. Why do I hit the dollar drive through? Because it's on the way and it's easy. Why don't I just order one of those dollar side salads? Because only a moron tries to eat a salad while he's driving. Habit, habit, habit and it all requires breaking, breaking, breaking. I love to eat well. I love to cook. I have loved knowing that what I'm putting into my body isn't processed, that it's still rich and whole and that I'm getting a benefit beyond thinking, "Well, that filled the hole."
When I did Atkins a few years back I learned something important. Only your brain thinks you want something specific when you get hungry. Only your noggin craves the Buck Double. Your body just wants something in the hole, something to fill the vacancy. It doesn't matter what goes in, as long as something does. The other night I was at the grocery store, shopping hungry. I forced myself to not go for the pair of Peggy Lawton brownies that I habitually and mindlessly throw into my cart. I grabbed two delicious anjou pears. Got to the car and scarfed them down. My craving for anything faded. I had filled the hole. My brain, which was having a tough time choosing between the brownies or a couple of McChickens, considered the pears and the effect they were having on my receding hungry and said, Yeah, okay, I guess.
Fill the hole. That's all that matters. The trick is to not fill it with shit.
I was going to try to do this for 30 days and blog about it, lay down some recipes, what have you. But two things happened. One was that, as usual, I was struck by the "why would anyone bother to read that?" virus that invades my head all too often. The other was knowing that 30 days of this doesn't matter. It's a step. A step in a proper direction, yes, but just one step. I'm notorious for making good starts on things and then just shrugging and stopping once the glimmer's worn off. But this matters. I could stand to lose weight, and cutting out things like bread and sugar--which this mindset would do--will help that. I need to get off my sedentary ass, accept that I'm closing in on 50 and make my living sitting on my can all day and create the time to exercise a little, because just the eating isn't going to do it alone.
I'm a heck of a cook, by all accounts. I like to eat well. I like flavor. I like fullness and freshness, smells and tastes and vibrancy. And yes, I like steak and cheese with Canadian bacon. But it's time one became the standard and the other became the infrequent treat.
I have pointed myself in what I think is a decent direction. I've taken a step or two. Now it's a matter of committing to the journey as best I can. I'll be sure to check in later and let you know how the trip goes.
The process is sort of underway. The backstory is that at 48 years of age, I tend to eat like a teenager. I have never forsaken my love of steak & cheese subs, preferably with Canadian bacon when the opportunity presents itself, and my divorced dad routine has put me in a secondary routine--okay, bad habit--that involves me rolling through any fast-food drive-thru in my path as I drive from house B to house A to assail the questionable offerings of the dollar menu. Lord help me, that Buck Double at BK is an amazing temptress. Especially with just mayo and onion.
Just thinking about it, my hunger gets a hard-on.
But it's really time to stop. Not entirely, of course. There are still occasions that simply cry out for a steak and cheese sub--like days that have vowels in their name, or that cool part of the day when both hands are on the twelve.
You see? I am a sick, sick man.
But let us get semi-serious for a moment.
There came a moment a few weeks ago when the simplicity of how I ought to be eating came into my head with unfamiliar clarity. It began as the statement, if it isn't grown or killed, don't eat it. Which, I admit, is still pretty crude. But the idea felt right, moreso when it began to more fully form into the concept of eating more-or-less whole foods.
Let me say now that I'm not looking for a big debate on what a "whole" food is, or to bandy back and forth with anyone about how animals aren't actually "whole" foods. I'm an omnivore. I need my muscle tissue protein.
As the idea started to settle in, I attempted to do a little research on the internet about "eating whole." There are, of course, a boatload and a half of variations on the theme. My endpoint does a little one from Column A, one from Column B finagling. There were two concepts I quite took to. One is the "three's a crowd" concept. I can't recall exactly where I found it, but the person who put it forth basically tries not to eat anything with more than three ingredients, not including water. And those ingredients need to be unprocessed. For example, this evening I made a Trader Joe's brown rice pilaf. Ingredients on the label: brown rice, black barely, daikon radish seeds. Ding! It passes.
The other idea is to try to avoid anything that is more than three steps from its original form. This more or less leaves meat on the menu but nixes things like bread and pasta. Dairy. Cheese. Sugar.
All in all, my intent is to eat with a little more thought and a lot less processing. I know it's not hard if a little forethought goes into it. While I haven't fully pulled the trigger on this concept, a few recent meals stand out as examples of how I can eat relatively whole foods--and eat well.
Again, the idea is to keep things as close to their source form as possible. So tonight, along with that rice pilaf, I made a version of chicken piccata. Let us not stop to argue over the "wholeness" of the wine I used as a base for the sauce. A piccata is a sauce typically made with butter, wine, lemon and capers. Plus, the chicken (or veal, or what have you) is often floured before sauteeing. In my version, I dispensed with the flour and simply seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper. Sauteed it in a small amount of olive oil (whole). When it came time to sauce, I poured in a bit of chardonnay (it was open...normally I'd prefer a sauvignon blanc), the juice of half a lemon, and a small handful of capers. Heat up, reduce sauce, it was delicious. And everything was within my definition of "whole." There was also sauteed asparagus, although I admit to adding less than a quarter tablespoon of butter to the pan.
Or the other night--pork sirloin chops, very simply seasoned and served with a relish made from sauteed onion, fennel and apple. No butter in this one, just olive oil, low heat and time. Side dish was quinoa, a whole grain that's currently one of the darlings of the food world for its supergrain status--it's high in protein, has crazy amounts of vitamins and, if I'm not mistaken, once lifted a car off a toddler. Plus, it cooks in under 15 minutes, which makes me love it more. The whole meal, whole.
In the fridge right now there's a batch of homemade red pepper hummus: chickpeas, roasted red pepper (I'll get back to that), lemon juice, tahini, sea salt. Whole, whole, whole. The tahini is less than three steps removed from its original form and contains nothing but sesame. The red peppers were, I admit, from a jar, but going forward I'd roast my own. It's easy. (Plus, my ex-wife has a killer recipe for roasted red peppers with garlic that you serve on bread that's just to die for.)
The question clearly is one of convenience. Why do I hit the dollar drive through? Because it's on the way and it's easy. Why don't I just order one of those dollar side salads? Because only a moron tries to eat a salad while he's driving. Habit, habit, habit and it all requires breaking, breaking, breaking. I love to eat well. I love to cook. I have loved knowing that what I'm putting into my body isn't processed, that it's still rich and whole and that I'm getting a benefit beyond thinking, "Well, that filled the hole."
When I did Atkins a few years back I learned something important. Only your brain thinks you want something specific when you get hungry. Only your noggin craves the Buck Double. Your body just wants something in the hole, something to fill the vacancy. It doesn't matter what goes in, as long as something does. The other night I was at the grocery store, shopping hungry. I forced myself to not go for the pair of Peggy Lawton brownies that I habitually and mindlessly throw into my cart. I grabbed two delicious anjou pears. Got to the car and scarfed them down. My craving for anything faded. I had filled the hole. My brain, which was having a tough time choosing between the brownies or a couple of McChickens, considered the pears and the effect they were having on my receding hungry and said, Yeah, okay, I guess.
Fill the hole. That's all that matters. The trick is to not fill it with shit.
I was going to try to do this for 30 days and blog about it, lay down some recipes, what have you. But two things happened. One was that, as usual, I was struck by the "why would anyone bother to read that?" virus that invades my head all too often. The other was knowing that 30 days of this doesn't matter. It's a step. A step in a proper direction, yes, but just one step. I'm notorious for making good starts on things and then just shrugging and stopping once the glimmer's worn off. But this matters. I could stand to lose weight, and cutting out things like bread and sugar--which this mindset would do--will help that. I need to get off my sedentary ass, accept that I'm closing in on 50 and make my living sitting on my can all day and create the time to exercise a little, because just the eating isn't going to do it alone.
I'm a heck of a cook, by all accounts. I like to eat well. I like flavor. I like fullness and freshness, smells and tastes and vibrancy. And yes, I like steak and cheese with Canadian bacon. But it's time one became the standard and the other became the infrequent treat.
I have pointed myself in what I think is a decent direction. I've taken a step or two. Now it's a matter of committing to the journey as best I can. I'll be sure to check in later and let you know how the trip goes.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Noted
SCENE: Front counter, Bruegger's Bagels, Hingham MA
She: Do you have your Bottomless Cup card?
Me: Don't have one.
She: Oh, I thought you did. I mean, you're in here so often.
Annnnnd....scene.
She: Do you have your Bottomless Cup card?
Me: Don't have one.
She: Oh, I thought you did. I mean, you're in here so often.
Annnnnd....scene.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Vie
Winter and spring are going at it tooth-and-nail outside. Warm air pushing its way into winter's stronghold has kicked up a wind that's nudging this old house around and making me worry that something's going to fly off. I've already been outside once, in a charming ensemble of bathrobe and winter boots--tres chic!--to see if I'm missing anything. You know, like shingles, gutters, my dish, or the upstairs.Every gust makes the windows creak. Upstairs in the kid's room the floors actually whistle when the wind rushes through the bones of our 150-year-old house.
The skies are clear, a rich blue. When I went out, nothing froze and fell off. The wind, for all its Clash-of-the-Titans rage, was close to warm. It's been a long winter, all the New England charm of it gone as the accumulation rose up over 30, 40, 50 inches total. Now spring, armor-clad and singing Wagnerian arias, is taking the frost giant to task. It may be too early for her--this is New England after all, when snow in mid-April is greeted with a resigned, "It figures." But right now, spear in hand and packing a Valhalla-or-bust attitude, she's in it for us.
Go, spring. Kick winter's ass.
The skies are clear, a rich blue. When I went out, nothing froze and fell off. The wind, for all its Clash-of-the-Titans rage, was close to warm. It's been a long winter, all the New England charm of it gone as the accumulation rose up over 30, 40, 50 inches total. Now spring, armor-clad and singing Wagnerian arias, is taking the frost giant to task. It may be too early for her--this is New England after all, when snow in mid-April is greeted with a resigned, "It figures." But right now, spear in hand and packing a Valhalla-or-bust attitude, she's in it for us.
Go, spring. Kick winter's ass.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Scent.
The cat completely gets it. She can smell spring from here. Every time I walk through the mudroom she follows, lingering by the door with the most pathetic mew she can muster. I understand. The cellar is no longer the happy hunting ground slash killing floor it used to be. She's done her job down there. There's no more game for her, no more partially eviscerated presents for us. But she's waiting. A few times recently she's made a break for it as I come in or go out, taking advantage of the ice-damaged screen door's slow closing. She rushes out to the deck, senses piqued, huntress blood stirred and waking--only to get about five good kitty-bounds out before she realizes, Sweet mother o'feline, I'm freezing my paws off! At which point she double-times it back into the house.
But oh, the urge is there. She can't wait for that door to open onto a cooling evening, the air ripe with scents, the big lilac bush hiding fresh birds, the unmowed grass promising bunnies. She's ready to race across the deck once the Ice Age glacier that's consumed it has disappeared, vault over the back fence and into the tangle of brambles beyond, gone for days doing who-knows-what, reveling in the release and return to the girl she wants to be--not shut behind doors and napping in a dank basement, but roaming and stalking, sleeping the day away on a sun-warmed deck, being in the world, under the sky, and content.
The cat completely gets it.
But oh, the urge is there. She can't wait for that door to open onto a cooling evening, the air ripe with scents, the big lilac bush hiding fresh birds, the unmowed grass promising bunnies. She's ready to race across the deck once the Ice Age glacier that's consumed it has disappeared, vault over the back fence and into the tangle of brambles beyond, gone for days doing who-knows-what, reveling in the release and return to the girl she wants to be--not shut behind doors and napping in a dank basement, but roaming and stalking, sleeping the day away on a sun-warmed deck, being in the world, under the sky, and content.
The cat completely gets it.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Trove
It was one of those days when the mass of clutter on my small office desk dangerously threatened the faux-Zen sensibility I ostensibly try to wedge into my life. Mail, envelopes from music review submissions, the music review submissions themselves, just all manner of crap and clutter had reduced my (ahem) workspace from two feet down to about two inches. I purged.
And then I cleaned my desk.
ba domp bomp. I'll be here all week.
As the detrital tide receded, I found a couple of 3 1/2" floppies tucked back under the monitor shelf. (If you are under the age of 18, I'll wait a moment while you Google "floppy disc" and catch up with the old timers.) One was marked "Misc." I popped it into my computer--after a moment where I lamented that I currently work on a computer that shows it age by even having a 3 1/2" drive in the first place--and took a look.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a handful of fiction pieces I thought had been lost to the ages. Or at least to moving three times in five and a half years. Here was a horror story that has always been in my head, written right to the point where it kicks into high gear; here were 80-plus pages of a fantasy novel (naturally the first of a trilogy, right?) from the late 90s or very early 00s, I don't recall which; and here, perhaps best of all, were nearly 50 pages of the novel, written in the early 00s, based on the radio soap opera parody I'd written in the late 80s--the novel I have always wanted to get back to and actually began re-writing a few months ago. (Naturally, I haven't gotten far...)
It wasn't just finding the manuscripts that mattered, though. It was that when I read them, I was honestly struck by the language. This is going to come off as egotistical but...there's some good stuff in there. Sharp, descriptive, compelling, funny where it's supposed to be. I expected to read some of it and wince or slap myself with an occasional "Oh, John, what were you thinking?" Even though much of it comes from less than a decade ago, I had convinced myself that one of the reasons I had done so well with plays was that I wasn't all that great with descriptive writing--that dialogue was my forte. I have also long told myself that the odds are that I don't have a novel-length idea in me. Believe me, I've tried. I've tried since I was in my teens. Thirty years of NOT doing something can go a long way toward convincing you that you can't. Reading some of this, however... I daresay there's a slight chance I may have been mistaken.
Is it brilliance? Of course not. Everything's been held in stasis in an early, semi-completed/barely started state. If you write and you convince yourself that whatever drips out of the pen on the first pass is stunning, then you'll never get anywhere as a writer. (This applies to the next two, three, six, twelve passes, whatever it takes until you actually get it right.) Is it, on the other hand, a helluva start? Could be, should I choose to use any of it. What I found on this disc is a nudge. I have been locked in a state of I have nothing to say for a few years now. And while I still may not have anything to say--or nothing new, anyway--I have things I can knock around now. Things I believed in for a while, and could believe in again. Or at least use to whack some rust off the writing gates and see what happens when they creak open.
There is an essay in Ray Bradbury's excellent collection, Zen in the Art of Writing, where he talks about keeping a file-card box with index cards in it, each one bearing an idea. Sometimes it's a word, a phrase, a sentence. I recall him pointing out, for example, "the toy box at the top of the stairs." The ideas go into the box when they don't seem to be going anywhere, writing-wise. Then, when Bradbury is stuck, he can open this box, draw a card and maybe find inspiration. And here's the thing: the idea that went in the box is not necessarily the idea that comes out. The kernel, the seed that was planted there has the potential to sprout into something new and entirely unrelated. Or maybe it does reawaken the original idea, but it gets considered with fresh eyes and mind.
So what I found the other day was not a floppy disc, really. It was my 3 1/2" Bradbury box. It was a little box I'd tucked away, layered with possibility.
Let's see where it goes.
js
And then I cleaned my desk.
ba domp bomp. I'll be here all week.
As the detrital tide receded, I found a couple of 3 1/2" floppies tucked back under the monitor shelf. (If you are under the age of 18, I'll wait a moment while you Google "floppy disc" and catch up with the old timers.) One was marked "Misc." I popped it into my computer--after a moment where I lamented that I currently work on a computer that shows it age by even having a 3 1/2" drive in the first place--and took a look.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a handful of fiction pieces I thought had been lost to the ages. Or at least to moving three times in five and a half years. Here was a horror story that has always been in my head, written right to the point where it kicks into high gear; here were 80-plus pages of a fantasy novel (naturally the first of a trilogy, right?) from the late 90s or very early 00s, I don't recall which; and here, perhaps best of all, were nearly 50 pages of the novel, written in the early 00s, based on the radio soap opera parody I'd written in the late 80s--the novel I have always wanted to get back to and actually began re-writing a few months ago. (Naturally, I haven't gotten far...)
It wasn't just finding the manuscripts that mattered, though. It was that when I read them, I was honestly struck by the language. This is going to come off as egotistical but...there's some good stuff in there. Sharp, descriptive, compelling, funny where it's supposed to be. I expected to read some of it and wince or slap myself with an occasional "Oh, John, what were you thinking?" Even though much of it comes from less than a decade ago, I had convinced myself that one of the reasons I had done so well with plays was that I wasn't all that great with descriptive writing--that dialogue was my forte. I have also long told myself that the odds are that I don't have a novel-length idea in me. Believe me, I've tried. I've tried since I was in my teens. Thirty years of NOT doing something can go a long way toward convincing you that you can't. Reading some of this, however... I daresay there's a slight chance I may have been mistaken.
Is it brilliance? Of course not. Everything's been held in stasis in an early, semi-completed/barely started state. If you write and you convince yourself that whatever drips out of the pen on the first pass is stunning, then you'll never get anywhere as a writer. (This applies to the next two, three, six, twelve passes, whatever it takes until you actually get it right.) Is it, on the other hand, a helluva start? Could be, should I choose to use any of it. What I found on this disc is a nudge. I have been locked in a state of I have nothing to say for a few years now. And while I still may not have anything to say--or nothing new, anyway--I have things I can knock around now. Things I believed in for a while, and could believe in again. Or at least use to whack some rust off the writing gates and see what happens when they creak open.
There is an essay in Ray Bradbury's excellent collection, Zen in the Art of Writing, where he talks about keeping a file-card box with index cards in it, each one bearing an idea. Sometimes it's a word, a phrase, a sentence. I recall him pointing out, for example, "the toy box at the top of the stairs." The ideas go into the box when they don't seem to be going anywhere, writing-wise. Then, when Bradbury is stuck, he can open this box, draw a card and maybe find inspiration. And here's the thing: the idea that went in the box is not necessarily the idea that comes out. The kernel, the seed that was planted there has the potential to sprout into something new and entirely unrelated. Or maybe it does reawaken the original idea, but it gets considered with fresh eyes and mind.
So what I found the other day was not a floppy disc, really. It was my 3 1/2" Bradbury box. It was a little box I'd tucked away, layered with possibility.
Let's see where it goes.
js
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