morning

I'm not quite sure what happened during the twenty minutes while I slept, but I completely missed all of the "wide-eyed wonder". Slipping through the shredded packaging and spent cap gun shells on my path to the coffee maker, I thought I heard someone shout out "Wow! Thanks!" but I can't be sure. By the time I settled in front of our pink tree [to luxuriate in that new 'permanent tree' smell] plans were already being made to have this returned, that repaired, and the other phone call placed for tech support. Santa brought my two children the Rolls Royce of 'Dust Buster's which is [in real time] being used to clean up a broken mirror. I can't decide if this means Huckabee will be assassinated well into his second term or I'll be graduating from night school with a Masters degree in something useful. Michael is modeling his new underwear for me. As always, underwear models loom prominently in my 'happy place'. With earbuds plugged into his new 'nano', A. (again in real time) is rapping a [somewhat breezy] proof-reading over my shoulder. (The dog is napping- tuckered out from her new chew toy, or her face would be in mine as well). You might never have known my power of concentration would be so tested but, rest assured, this is generally how I 'compose'. As Michael and I both observed last night, the "....happiest time of the year" is- Spring!; the heater gets turned off, the mailman changes into shorts, what bulbs those damned squirrels haven't eaten offer their display, crafty 'black ice' is replaced by honest mud, and at the earliest possible date, we all head off for the beach. It's also the time when most of the things now littering our floor will be knee-deep somewhere in a landfill. I kinda feel bad about that- but can you put a price tag on five animals in one house being happy all at the same time? ( "Just dig them deeper!"). I offer these condolences; elephants de-forest at a higher rate per capita than human beings; despite winning a Nobel Prize, an Oscar, and the popular vote, Al Gore is still irrelevant; and this year at least, I have not [knowingly] killed or financed the killing of a tree. (My last word on that topic, I promise). My greatest hope is that this society will boil down to some delicious mix of asphalt, Kentucky Fried carcasses and pooped-in plastic diapers. Perhaps future societies paying $100. a gallon for this melange will wish we cared less..., who knows. If I still had a tail it would be wagging quicky between my legs like I just found duck innards in my kibble-(real time again) Mom-Mom gave me... what?!, a 'nano' of my very own! I don't know what color to turn! For me, it's a gigantic push in the direction of... well, piracy. I admit while that holds a great allure, I will download with only a clear conscience- songs I've already paid for on vinyl or [that shiny stuff] (I'm one of the last still out there 'browsing' through the bins). I could go off on how "The Man Who Fell To Earth" this device looks, who could resist wanting one no matter what it does. The bad news is that between everyone in the house downloading from i tunes, visiting game cheats, and managing the busy lives of five webkins, I have to fight for my time in this chair. So quickly, my Christmas message is this; You want to be socially conscious, to hope that swapping out light bulbs will make a difference, to hope that we are not all ultimately defined by how much trash we generate. But it all kind of goes out the window this time of year. Consumption becomes more conspicuous, and let no deadly sin go unrealized. To care too much about the shallowness of our desires would bring us all down. I accept my shallowness and I accept it in others. There are too many more days in the year to be harsh in our judgements. There is only one way (that I know of) to attone for our selfishness. That is to earnestly pray for the health and happiness of everyone everywhere. No bequeath, no hour of service, no amount of self-deprivation can accomplish more. Peace.

a warm and fuzzy feeling

Over twenty years ago Michael and I lived in an unheated storefront on South St. in Philadelphia. He waited tables moonlighting as a rock star, and I was a sign painter moonlighting as the follow spot operator for nightly performances of an idiotic but once popular musical called "Let My People Come" ( which featured live and playfully presented nude scenes {"Oh! Calcutta" for the cabaret crowd}). Here for a short time we ran a gallery/theater called 'plague', living in the back room and hosting weekend performances [limping] the gamut from really[!] loud music to un-metered (often pornographic in it's presentation) poetry. We subsisted on beer and jello, and the occasional deli platter which we provided for the [cough] talent. The street facade had been sculpted to resemble a cave entrance. The place was unwittingly a 'camera obscura'; with the door to our living space closed (and through the hole where a doorknob used to be) the inverted image of people passing by (some stopping to peer in) the front window would appear on the back wall. This was [redundantly] our only views to the outdoors. We slept till two or three in the afternoon (on a bear trap of a sofa bed), so it was perfect for that. At Christmastime we made the unpleasant discovery of soiled bathroom tissue and, well, soil coming up through our shower drain. Okay, it wasn't so much a shower as it was a bit of crude plumbing above an open sewage line for a toilet. Unpleasant?- oh yes, but a complete surprise?- er, no. We began taking our showers at the apartment of the kindly G. girls, sisters who waitressed (moonlighting as fine artists) and were enviably outfitted with designated rooms for cooking, bathing, and sleeping. We were all a bit challenged for cash and would pool our resources to share a hot meal [and cold beer]. They were able to afford a live Christmas tree- with not enough left over to buy ornaments. We were able to contribute a few logs which masked a red light bulb- but no fireplace. Together we filled a few home-spun evenings cutting things out of paper, wiring together broken glass from the street, tying on found objects, and managed to create a breath-takingly beautiful 'outsider' tree. On Christmas Eve the G. girls went off to be with their family in CT. Michael's sister came into the city to bring us home to the suburbs with her for the holiday, arriving in a full length white fur coat and matching fur hat, with a Lhasa Apsa tucked under one arm. That's the picture- a light snow falling on her, standing out on the cracked pavement in high heels in front of a cave, waiting for us to retrieve anything we really cared about from our squalid, everything-for-art, stench-filled, inverter of images.

trees

Several of my postings may have erroneously created the impression of me as a 'tree hugger'. This is not completely accurate. (I have on recent occasion spent thousands of dollars to empty our lot of them). Those trees that rain down some new brand of crap every season. Those which would reek havoc on one's carefully planned brick patio or undermine one's effort to sell off real property- all the time hogging up the sun for themselves. I've even heard stories of skiers being killed by them! Who would defend trees? 'Produces oxygen' is just so smug. I produce a great many things- could I rest my laurels on ' produces laundry'? It's time for trees to come down off their high horse and own up to what they're really good for; They go a long way in fleshing out a national park. They might aspire to become anything from parking tickets to Nora Roberts' latest tome. They create charming vistas, ripe for capture in Adamsian photos. They are home and pantry to any number of species (with an equally limited appeal {don't get me started on squirrels}). Their contribution to cans of mixed nuts should not be overlooked, though usually over fifty percent of that praise belongs to the ground-hugging peanut. And I certainly won't argue that in the hands of a craftsman, they can be transformed into objects of compelling beauty. These are all rather passive attributes. Producing a nut might require a bit of effort, but there ends their responsibility as a parent. In almost every case, from clearing the path for new construction, to putting out wild fires, to refolding road maps, trees rarely do other than tax our patience. Yet still, the sentiment I have confessed is that I'd rather not see them (or us in the process) humiliated. Now, this has only a little bit to do with the pre-lit, pink, fake ones being on sale this week at Boscov's, but the irony of tasteful Christmas trees has gnawed at me for some time. I believe that from the minute we drag a just-dead tree into our home and tangle a few hundred feet of string lights into it, we have made the commitment to considerably increasing our 'tacky per-cubic-foot' ratio. You may see "...ornaments hand-crafted for us in a darling little glass studio in Denmark" but I only see " Oh my God!, you have a f*&in tree in your house!" I am purely an aesthetic snob. I hate houses with shutters that couldn't be closed, mansions you can see from the street, streets named after real estate developers' daughters, 'semi-detached' paint schemes, and now; sharing one's home with a dying tree (that's what house plants are for). We've always had 'live' trees, I can't be exact in describing what makes this year different except that I am primed to revisit our traditions- the present political and economical climate has undermined the security of returning to that comfortable illusion of an old-fashioned anything. Few who have ever actually tried to string popcorn and cranberries could disagree; this activity raises blood pressure instead of lowering it (I'm almost sure that Martha Stewart 'pre-drills'), as does baking with children and shopping in the 'under $10.' price range. Retailers would have us running for anything that promises to remove just an ounce of the pressure of recreating that occasion pictured in Coke ads of the past. It's not that I lack sentiment entirely. The use of Christmas cards is absolutely perfect for maintaining updated address books and the friendship of those people [however] far removed from the importance they'd once held in our lives. And of course it's always nice to stumble upon that minute or hour out of a generally bleak month to recapture our own heightened sense of expectation. Happiness comes from that unconscious resolve not to be disappointed. Children [sometimes thankfully] don't seem to notice the difference between a morning you've gone heavily into debt for and the one where you have broken up the bag of tube socks to wrap individually. But when the year-end bonuses disappear, so does much of my sense of a 'holiday'. ("This year's present to the family is...two more car payments and another month of uninterrupted trash collection!") I'll put it on for the kids, but my heart is in mourning for the unrealized earning potential. (Don't sweat it, Michael will buy him the 'Nano' whatsit!) A story- the first year we started attending a Quaker meeting they offered us a live tree from the property as well as an invitation to a holiday evening gathering of hymns and cookies. We were not resolved to accept either, and spent that evening shopping around for a tree. Our fruitless search ended at Home Depot where we were just heading out the door empty-handed and cranky when I made a few last minute purchases; a saw and a flashlight. In the dark of night we led our three-year-old son (a student of the preschool there) out into the little grove of trees along side of the meeting house. To the dampened sound of carols emanating from therein, I had him hold the flashlight as I unjoined our tree from the earth. (I think we may have been giggling). It was A.'s first Christmas with us. We cautioned him to stay quiet. The consequence of being discovered would necessitate our sitting through a good chunk of the book of Luke, as haltingly performed by seven or eight children swagged in upholstery remnants. That night, forecasting the charge I knew was to be his to answer to for at least the next fifteen years, I wanted him to have an early understanding of how things are not always done. (We've rewritten that script a hundred times over). And now, ten years later, he is completely on-board with the idea of a seven-foot high, pink toilet brush dominating our living room on Christmas morning although, as would be with most other kids, this is likely based on the hope that any given evening will end with a tangible major purchase. (I'm holding out for the tallest pink tree I can find- the on-line search begins tonight!). Well there we have it. A tirade against a green planet, some holiday humbuggery, and a humiliating tale about parenting a fir poacher. Where George Fox and Britney Spears may forgive me, Joyce Kilmer might never.

dear santa,

I’ve composed my wish list for this year and hope that what you can’t make good on will be passed along to someone who can- baby Jesus; Rupert Murdoch, I know you’re connected. I have been generally nice, even on the occasions when I have slipped into light naughtiness. But who makes those calls anyway, "Judge not, lest ye be judged", I always say.
So here goes:
1- Gospel-specific Nativity scenes.
2- Viable late entries to the field of Democratic candidates.
3- An immediate recall of food items which follow this pattern; Pop’ems, Grab’ems, Snack’ems, Chew’ems...
4- A sound-proof booth wherein to spin this glistening web of profundity.
5- Global amnesia on the topic of Brittany Spears.
6- The chemical marriage of ibuprofen and caffeine.
7- Wider literacy.
8- AA batteries, enough of them to power the other half of our household too.

We’re thinking of going with an artificial, pre-lit tree this year, so don’t be alarmed. (I now believe I can hear the freshly cut versions crying for justice). One more thing- my son wants an ‘I Pod Nano’(?). I have no idea what it is and suspect I can’t afford it (actually, Christmas came early for us this year. I just paid off last winter’s heating bill), but if you could just tell him it was making your elves sick and you stopped making them, I could save a bit of face. Thanks. The bourbon and cookies will await you, as usual.

Yours With Breathlessly High Expectations, Smack Dab

a place at the little table

Two back-to-back turkey dinners with both my family and Michael's has reminded me again of the special relationship of cousins. To a stranger they couldn't look like a more impossible group of friends, cast together by an indiscriminate net. However unalike, they mix in defiance of the rules of the playground. With their parents yards away [laughably] attempting to bicker with each other under the radar, the cousins are treated to a sense of invisibility rare to be found in any other social setting. Free to tackle and wrestle one another, to slink off unquestioned to remote corners, and to spill their family's secrets to one another. Unchecked giddiness; the sweetest childhood plum. Sequestered from the grown-up table, they egg each other on to display the very best of their worst table manners. And as the conversation among adults becomes more adult or less so, anything each young cousin might have ever seen or heard can be poised for debate unnoticed. At our 'first in a very long time' family reunion this summer I re-met many of my cousins and their [in many cases, adult] offspring. It was exhilarating to collect a new generation of cousins, outnumbering the batch I had at my Grandmothers funeral twenty-seven years ago many times over. And by the end of the day my kids were up relatives by about seventy. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a novel called "Slapstick" which prophesied a nation with a decimated infrastructure, a far-flung caste society, and few if any resources for recreating the benevolent society it had once aspired to. Winning on a "Lonesome No More" platform, the new President installed a system of artificial extended family by issuing everyone a new middle name ( Chipmunk, Uranium, Daffodil, etc.). This entitled the bearer to one hundred and ninety thousand cousins across the country. Like many of Mr. Vonnegut's wistful notions, this one is explored to points most ludicrous. But few would label his work 'science-fiction'. We seem to be working closer to this age, not away from it. We revel in this familial blending, searching for those who would make us blow milk out of our noses, sometimes unsuccessfully in religious and political affiliations where similarities are celebrated higher than differences. At work I have taken to calling my [union] co-workers this way; Cousin Randy, Uncle Carmen. Freelancers all, we meet up every two, five, ten years from the last time, each time assembling a few more people we will bear our true natures to. And again we are respected and appreciated for the experience each of us bring to the [little] table. It reminds us of how it is still possible to feel broad and connected, to live outside the playground categories of age, sex, and...whatever- reminded that our connections are all the richer for placing the least importance on how we might read on paper, and the most on the uncensored comradery and commiseration we can share. These might be the sweetest plums of adulthood. Can't we all just be cousins?

adolescent relationship number one

It’s been a while, I know. I seem always to be waiting for the threads of a story to wrap up neatly so I can get on with the business of writing it. That sort of thing has not been happening. I'm between stops. For instance, in October, the waitress in a Greek restaurant we popped into, for whom I didn’t hold a glimmer of recognition, turned out to be my ‘high school sweetheart’. The application of this term to what we actually were to one another is a gross abbreviation considering she had a boyfriend. My insinuation into her life was both quixotic and disruptive. But our story takes place thirtysomething years ago, which is all it really takes to turn it into a tale of romance. In the present, we’ve only managed twenty minutes of conversation divided between two meetings in public and a couple of phone calls- our schedules are at complete odds. We concur on it seeming that what we know about one another happened to different people or in another lifetime yet nothing that has happened in the interim (which neither of us knows yet about the other) has dimmed the immediacy of it. [That's her in the trailer, arguing with me over the construction of PBJs... Oh and again, thrift shopping on the Main Line]. The last time I saw her was in 1979- I had then not seen her in a couple of years- Michael and I, led by a group of friends to the mall where she worked had lunch together in a Woolworth’s 'Grille'. Michael was freshly the new love of my life and quite a jealous boy. As we did a bit of reminiscing I could see him stealthily inching his glass of ice water closer and closer toward her lap until I, as casually, intervened. She says now that she never noticed. I suspect that her twenty six year old son will be reading these words before I have had the pleasure of meeting him (Hi J., I’m Smack Dab...), but even still, this wasn’t to be a kiss and tell piece- except perhaps to say to him that when I was sixteen I had every expectation that I would have been his father (speaking poetically- and a fatherhood not commencing until some long time after the age of sixteen). She, way before I, knew why I wouldn’t. But he should be ever the more thankful that her actual boyfriend back then wouldn’t be either. J.’d have spent his childhood crawling around an unheated loft while his Mom made pancakes on a hot plate for a bunch of unshaven musicians. (The musicians in my unheated loft would have spent their girlfriends' last dollar on a disposable razor to keep their sideburns looking sharp). I suspect that when we finally get to talk she will confide some of her regrets. These two things will not be among them. D. and I used to visit a cemetery near her family’s apartment, in particular a child’s grave whose wee headstone eerily bore just the first name and dates which made him only a couple of months old. It was strangely special to us for no other discernible reason than for being so terse and so wee. Probably a week or two before I met up with D. again I came across a photograph of that headstone and noticed for the first time that I had given my own son that same name. In telling her this story I may have freaked her out further by suggesting that she had named her own son after the main character in a TV show [maybe a little farther than] back then- the show that I postulate is responsible for providing adolescent girls of the time with three of 'GenX’s most popular boy’s names (each beginning with J). These characters were played by David Soul ( the blond), Bobby Sherman ( short, dark-haired, and dimpled), and the big one- many people's curly-haired idea of Hercules. This is really just the very long way around explaining why I haven’t posted in a while. I’m working on a movie set of a 1970s shopping mall, a fair replica of the one where D. and I were ‘rat’s. Somebody’s XM radio has for days on end been boring holes in my brain with bad 1970s music ("Rock and Roll never forgets..." {especially if you are forced to listen to the same song every day for thirty years}); the soundtrack to my own teen angst. And I’m even revisiting acne. I apologize for my reluctance to zero in on anything with clarity- the ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ of my life has been shaken so many times that a blurry ghost of the old lines confuse the new pattern. But even if I never manage to make sense of it, I’ll still continue to pace through it with you. If you don’t already know it; You’re my therapist.

olio

• First of all, does anyone else notice our [P]resident behaving as if he still has another twenty or so years to craft a legacy. He’s been working backwards from ‘Mission Accomplished’ for most of this term. I couldn’t blame him for being underwhelmed with the idea of a Presidential Library just yet. The Supreme Court who put him there is now a little more firmly casted to keep him there, and with all the bandying about of ‘executive privilege’ and being the ‘decider’, he may well have decided that the result of a general election would show weakness to our enemies. They’ve all been hard at work re-imaging democracy in ways we’re still finding out about daily- don’t take ‘bloodless coup’ off the table just yet.
• To the disgraced Singing Senator from Idaho: If ‘take-backs’or ‘do-overs’ worked in Congress, you’d be at the back of a very long line.
• "Just leave Brittany Spears alone!" I could do that. If only she weren’t such a compelling example of the sanctity of marriage between one out-of-control pop diva and one dancing boy with aspirations of being the next Vanilla Ice.
• Ron Paul: I don’t think anyone realizes you’re not Pat Paulsen yet. A slogan like "I’m already an elected Representitive" might help you break away.
• Mark Wahlberg: Every day I go to work, you’re there. Are you stalking me?
• I’ve been moonlighting, painting a set for a dinner theater production of ‘Hello Dolly’. I’ve overheard the cast to say things like "Hey kids, let’s rehearse the [blah blah] scene!" and "C’mon, kids, we open next week!" The theater is a converted barn. I’m painting a feed store and a hat shop. For four hours a night I am firmly in the middle of Garland-and-Rooney-ness. . Everyone (they all have day jobs too) maintains the level of enthusiasm for dancing and gossiping past eleven at night that I reserve for glasses of bourbon and pillows. Words fail me here, but the expression on my tired face says it all.
• More about traffic. No one likes to wait in a long line. Most people are rightfully piqued when someone butts in ahead of them. But insomuch as some intersections only designate turning lanes on the completely obscured asphalt, place signs for junctions less than fifty feet away from said turn, and not everyone hoping to turn holds as much hope for getting to their destination alive, much less early; could someone please let the guy in the wrong lane who’s holding up two miles of angry commuters in. It may not seem fair at the time, but it just makes the world a better place.
• Litmus test for the Obsessive/Compulsive. Could you ride behind a Teamster four times a day, fixated on the wild hair growing a half an inch straight out of his otherwise carefully attended ear and resist the urge to reach the fourteen inches forward to yank it out. (Teamster, don’t forget to factor that in). And remember, your job is to wait for the camera to notice the unrusted head of a new screw in the hinge of a doorway and to hold up the entire production while you make it disappear-the Teamster's job is to get you there. Not much time left, but my only hope is that it’s twin will grow out of the other ear, providing an excusable symmetry.
• Congratulations to Hung Hyunh, the new ‘Top Chef’. If I hadn’t actually tasted Head Chef Tom Colicchio’s gnocchi appetizer and his scallop entree I might have thought that sixteen ingredients couldn’t push a scant piece of duck any closer to delicious than it should already be. Bravo.
• Finally, my follow-up to ‘goodbye middle class’. I here go on record for being for employing Indians and Mexicans so long as they can join our national interest of not employing Indians and Mexicans. We live in a paradoxical time- (among other things, I might be a humanist). I believe it was Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, who spoke the "...stole his Daddy’s car..." line on a broadcast of ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’. And, I can only imagine why Chinese people might want string lights, except that the demand for diffused lighting will always be there.