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July 25, 2005
lance - the interview that didn't happen
so, many months ago, i was talking with someone about putting together a sketch comedy show for local consumption. during that time, i saw "dodgeball," which was far better than i expected, and had a great cameo by Mr. Seven, Lance Armstrong.
sadly, the show didn't come about, and neither did this sketch, featuring him (hey, we thought we might have a connection, and we were thinking big), and me as the idiot host. so sad - i mean, it's nice he won that there bicycle race, but after larry king's interviews of bush and cheney, this surely would have been the pinnacle of 21st-century faux-interview comedy so far...
or not...
Host
We've got a special treat tonight, ladies and gentlemen - a local
actor named Lance Armstrong who did a real bang-up job with a walk-on
part in the movie "Dodgeball." Let's take a look.
(Clip from Dodgeball is shown):
Lance Armstrong: Hey, aren't you Peter La Fleur?
Peter La Fleur: Lance Armstrong!
Lance Armstrong: Ya, that's me. But I'm a big fan of yours.
Peter La Fleur: Really?
Lance Armstrong: Ya, I've been watching the dodgeball tournament on the Ocho. ESPN 8. I just can't get enough of it. Good luck in the tournament. I'm really pulling for you against those jerks from Globo Gym. I think you better hurry up or you're gonna be late.
Peter La Fleur: Uh, actually I decided to quit... Lance.
Lance Armstrong: Quit? You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit. So what are you dying of that's keeping you from the finals?
Peter La Fleur: Right now it feels a little bit like... shame.
Lance Armstrong: Well, I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life. Well, good luck to you Peter. I'm sure this decision won't haunt you forever.
(clip ends)
Host
Funny stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, Lance Armstrong.
Host
How ya doin', Lance? Thanks for being here.
Lance
Thanks for having me. And, thanks for wearing one of my bracelets there.
Host (cheer leaves face)
Your bracelet? My mom gave me this, I thought it was cool. Are you accusing me of stealing? Hell, yours is still on your wrist, there, big guy.
Lance
No! No, see, my foundation puts it out, to raise money and awareness.
Host
Your foundation? What are you, Bruce Wayne? You're saying you have a "foundation"? [Looks at camera and laughs] Alrighty. I'll play. What's this "foundation" called?
Lance
Well, it's the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
Host
Creative. Sorry, though, because my bracelet doesn't say "Armstrong", it says "Livestrong". I don't know the guy, but he's making a killing
off these things, they're everywhere. Interesting coincidence, but
don't come on my show and lie to me. You're not Donald Rumsfeld,
you're an actor with a 30 second scene in one movie.
Lance
No, see, I'm a professional cyclist.
Host
Then why'd you come in a car?
Lance
Becau... that doesn't make sense. I really am a professional cyclist.
I've won the Tour de France 6 times - you must have heard about it?
Host
Nnno... no, I don't watch cycling - I don't have cable and I'm too
homophobic to watch a bunch of men in tight shorts. Sorry. Look, let's talk about the acting thing. You're really very impressive, you seem to know what you're doing, you look good up there, even in that cheesy yellow sweater. Do you use anything to, you know, enhance your performance? Because believe it or not, you're gonna get that question a lot when you make it big.
Lance (looking around, bewildered)
Yeah, so I hear...Ahh... No... No. It's all hard work and dedication
and the support of my team. Look, all that's been talked to death,
and-
Host
Good. Keep it real, brother. [Host raises his fist in a black power
salute. Lance looks around and weakly mimics the gesture.] Now, I
understand that getting this kind of visibility as an actor has it's
little perks, huh?
Lance
Like...?
Host
With a certain lady friend who's also getting a start in the
entertainment business? Someone by the name of... [looking at camera slyly] Sherri?
Lance (bashful)
Sheryl.
Host
"Sheryl"? What the hell happened to Sherri? Not "Hollywood" enough for ya?
Lance
No, I mean... there was no Sherri - her name's Sheryl. And, yeah, I'm
lucky to have been able to meet some really interesting people, and
SHERYL was one of them, and we hit it off. But, look, it wasn't really
the acting, you see...
Host
Yeeeah, well it wasn't that skinny ass of yours, either. You should
really get yourself a burger. But that's cool. Hot middle-aged backup
singer wants to roll the dice and hitch her wagon to a possibly rising
actor...
Lance
Um. She used to be a backup singer, but now she's solo.
Host
Solo? Oooh, no gigs. Yeah, the recession's hitting every industry,
man. Well, I saw that picture of her in your wallet before the show
when you were paying for this appearance, and...
Lance
You paid me five bucks to be here.
Host
Whatever. Sharon there is, well, easy on the eyes, and you know, a lot of careers have been jump-started by doing a little, you know,
photography work on the side...
Lance
It's Sheryl. Are you suggesting she pose nude?
Host
Whoa, hey now, buddy this is a family show. I'm talking tasteful
erotic imagery, sometimes with vacuum cleaners. There are
professionals that work in the classier mags, like Playboy, Hustler,
Oui...
Lance
Yeah, I've seen their work. Look, I really want to clear something up
- I'm a professional cyclist. I was playing myself in the movie. It's
called a cameo.
Host
Rrrright. Wow. Too bad they didn't give you something a little more
believable - I mean, the cancer and winning the Tour de France five
times - I prefer my humor to be a little more subtle, a little more
believable.
Lance
But I -
Host
Don't interrupt. But, you know, it's OK, because it's that kind of
immersion that makes for a great actor. They say DeNiro studied tapes of dialects from all over Italy to find the right accent for "Godfather 2". Granted you'll never be DeNiro. OK, well, there was "Analyze That..." So, anyway, what's your real name, and when did you decide to change it?
Lance
What?
Host
Well, "Lance Armstrong." Come on. I mean... Like, I don't call myself,
uhh... "Hunter Legspowerful" or, I don't know, "Striker Asstight" or
"Wolf Blitzer". But that's OK, a lot of people take stage names.
Lance
No that's my real name.
Host
No it's not.
Lance
Yes it is.
Host
Can't be.
Lance
It is. You can ask my mother.
Host
I did ask your mother, last night.
Lance (incredulous)
Wha- what?
Host
Nothing, never mind.
Lance
You said something about my mother!
Host
Yes, yes I did, but most importantly, your name is not "Lance
Armstrong." That would be silly.
Lance
This is ridiculous - I can show you my birth certific-
Host
Yeah, two things you can get in Matamoros for under $5 - fake Texas
birth certificates and donkey shows. You know, why are you coming on my show and trying to argue with me? You get lucky and get one
freakin' walk-on part in a movie that only grossed $30 million it's
first weekend...
Lance
It's doing well in video.
Janet(off camera)
It's not "your" show, Rob!
Host (ignoring Janet)
Yeah, so's "Clifford's Really Big Movie." Childrens and morons. And
here you come on my show like you're hot shi-
(Janet emerges onto the set, wearing headphones)
Janet
Wait a minute That's the second time you've called it your show. It's
my goddamn show, too.
Host
Well, then would it kill you to wear something nice?
Janet
What's wrong with what I'm wearing?
Lance
Hey, this is my interview.
Janet
Shut up, "bike boy". Go shave your legs or something.
(Argument erupts. Host looks at camera and smiles.)
Host
Join us next week when we'll interview one-time black actor O.J.
Simpson. What, can I not get a first name, here?
Posted by Rob at 03:05 PM | Comments (1)
July 18, 2005
scratch
sometimes, i feel like we're so close.
granted, i tend to feel this late at night, with some drink in me, with foolish hope dashed and reality sharp in my ears and burning in my stomach.
but i see it, I do, soberly, and I remember it clearly when I wake in the morning. i move, I remember moving, down the streets, and I may sway, slightly, but i see the vectors, the forces and the inertias and momentums in the world around me, not just in its bodies, but in the hearts and minds, as well.
sometimes, i see it in a game of pool, especially with just that bit of drink calming my mind so it can let loose a bit. i watch shots lined up, balls colliding, missing, the sequences of causality two, three, four or more collisions removed from original intent.
the game begins with our intentions, how accurately they're delivered on impact with the cue ball, how smoothly we follow through, how far past the break we see.
every time we hit the ball, there's the one true path, the right spin, the right english, the right amount of force in the right vector. but there are so many variables, so many flaws in our humanity. our muscles aren't perfectly responsive, our skeletons aren't perfectly geometrical. and more importantly, our wills aren't perfect. i want to show off. i want her to see something of my own will and strength in the way i sink this shot. i want this shot to be as good as the last. i want this shot to be better than the last.
some people can hit the ball almost perfectly, can subjugate all those emotions and character flaws to the precision of biomechanics.
but then, the universe itself isn’t the perfect table. it’s not so smooth. there is a nap to its surface, that affects the way the balls roll; debris, imposed by random chance, disposed of by history, that changes the roll, negates intention and will just slightly enough for the shot to go awry.
and for as well as you might hit the ball initially, for as much as you might overcome the vagaries of the table, there's where you leave the ball. you hit a shot perfectly, but where have you left yourself for the next stroke?
anne sexton writes of playing poker with god, and how he cheats. god doesn't have to cheat at pool, because he's smarter. he knows the insecurities and doubts and flaws that pull at our shots, cause us to see angles incorrectly, cause us to miss shots out of arrogance, put too much faith in our intellect, too much faith in our instinct. he knows the nap of the table. he knows, after it all, maybe not exactly where the balls will and won’t fall, but simply when we will, and that we will, miss.
sometimes we hit the shot well, we run a few balls, to a shot we can't or don't make. then, it's god's turn. few of us think to play good defense against god. and it's pointless, anyway, because he can make all the trick shots, all the time.
we so overcomplicate and oversimplify god and love, our lives. it’s all there before us, on the table. simple in design, complex in its unpredictability, in its reliance on all the pulls on our hearts. we can control much less than we believe. we can control much more than we believe.
some nights, I play in the zone. i seem to see so clearly. the ball sinks, and I move smoothly around the table, with confidence, and more fall home. but everyone, eventually, misses. and on this night, as on so many nights, hardly any fell at all.
I feel the pain in every miss. it makes me a sore loser. the losing is bad enough. but every time I miss, I know that once again, I’ve just failed to grasp the obvious, to capture a moment, to reveal my best, to find, in control and the luck of a shot made on a poor table, hope.
Posted by Rob at 12:01 AM | Comments (2)
July 17, 2005
her voice was ever soft
ok, almost ever...
talking to gary o' shakespeare, he walks away, and suddenly, i'm back, many blocks from here, many years and many doubts from here, long ago.
16 years? 17?
a bench outside the capitol. i sat, she lay in my lap, we shared a blanket from my car, we read shakespeare aloud. it may have been king lear, or one of the histories, maybe one of the henry or richard plays. it was dark, cold, we had a blanket, the dome rose up behind us, pink granite uplit from below. we had finally taken the class we had missed, the class that wasn't, where we met.
a couple of kids, a couple of actors, doing voices, taking characters, all of whom seemed to be in love with each other, whether the lines themselves spoke of love, or of war, or of the ravings of poor fool tom.
we sat forever, in one night, speaking almost solely in words hundreds of years old, in the voices of others. it bleeds into tonight. i know the difference between the now and then. still, here, in july, on a hot and rainy night, i can close my eyes and i'm back there, in the cold, under the blanket, saying, in my false accent, "an angel is like you, kate."
Posted by Rob at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
drenched
this will be the night i go more completely deaf. there's a jazz combo playing in the coffeeshop, and they're not bad, and i know the guitarist from somewhere, but it's not getting me where i need to be. i'm battling good music with more useful and appropriate music. i'm having to turn the mix of arvo part, radiohead, zero 7, all up pretty damned loud.
i came here with words building in my head like storm clouds. they've gathered for days, the latest in the evolutionary cycle of rain, drought, storm, calm, evaporation, and back again, and still, the swingy sounds are getting through.
each time, thoughts gather and fall, puddle, run off, sometimes flood, but over time, with the heat of distraction and experience, it all evaporates again. but even then, it's not perfectly distilled - like history, there is the faintest residue of memory - it takes something of the process with it. the water is not of the same composition in which it fell.
but i'm getting ahead of myself, as usual.
there really is something beautiful in rain. who doesn't know this?but tonight, i left home to come to the coffeehouse, my heart as heavy as it's been, immersed in a bitterness and despair. driving out of the parking garage, i emerged from semi-darkness into grey, into the downpour, and the rain was what my heart felt, and what i felt was the rain, and it was all, in some way, beautiful.
and i couldn't help but wonder if it was right or if it was wrong, if this was the symptom, the consequence of the failure of my brain's chemistry, if there was something wrong with me, to see beauty where i saw pain.
but i also wondered, as i sat watching the rain on the windshield, if there wasn't something almost completely right about it.
as one of a handful of necessary constants in nature, in our existence, and very survival, rain itself is now steeped in mythology, as one of our most powerful archetypes. it has become laden with meaning and metaphor. renewal and rejuvenation. even when its excess brings death and suffering, many of us watch the video with conflict in our hearts, the palpable disconnect between the beauty and its consequence.
but rain is also a metaphor for sorrow, gloom, despair, solitude. we haven't had to work hard at all to romanticize it in our collective consciousness. our folklore, our art, our music, our films, are all redolent of rain's imagery. blue eyes crying in the rain... when it's raining icepicks on your steel shores... audrey hepburn looking forlorn in the rain...
and there's beauty in that, too, isn't there? how conscious are we of our desire to embrace the rain, to embrace sorrow, even emptiness? if we, if i, embrace it too much, then it's pathological, it's a problem. it is, indeed, just a symptom, just a false signal from the short-circuiting of neural pathways.
but we don't just praise those who bring messages of redemption, of hope, of humor. we praise those just as much, if not more, that can touch, and not just touch, but truly, deeply, even harshly reveal, deliver, remind us of the impact of that other side of our hearts and emotions.
me - i'm here again, in the rain. it's raining in my heart, and i can't seem to get away from it. there are measurable factors, chemical, situational, cognitive. but once again, i have to wonder, how much of this is illness, and how much being alive, how much just truly being me? how much of this is something i've been given - the lack of a psychological filter, of a natural biochemical defense - meant to give me the raw material for what i'm here to do?
that same lack of a filter sometimes makes me funny, sometimes makes me sharp and insightful. sometimes, though, i just want to flood the world with words, with the precipitation, with the tears of my heart. i want you to see the rain, and not simply drive through it, or think it's pretty. i want it to break your heart, and i want you to see that awful beauty, as well.
we can't live without this cycle. we have to know it all, feel it all. i take shelter, at times, where i can, when i can, in distractions and medications. i run from the storm, at times, trying to outpace it, trying to find and track the eye's falsehood. but sometimes, it catches me, and i stand and face into the wind and feel the rain, and watch it come down, trying to see and taste what is different in it from the last time. and with these words, i try my best to get you to stand there with me.
Posted by Rob at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
just another
low red moon,
how can you just
sleep like a baby?
sleep like a baby?
but you shine so different on another.
- belly, "low red moon"
just... turn.
no?
her back is to me, headphones on, working on her powerbook.
i've seen her so many times in the coffeehouse. almost everyone tells me that they haven't really talked to her, that she smiles, is nice, but that she just won't say much.
i'm sorry, and i don't entirely understand what drives me, what moves me. it could be something psychic, it could be psychosis. it's nothing so simple as colors and measurement and proportion, and i'm glad for that. maybe it says something for me, or maybe i've just lucked into not being more of an asshole.
but she is beautiful. maybe she reminds me of a dream i once had. maybe she reminds me...
fairy godmother, are you out there? i know you are, and somehow, that makes sense, makes me feel like it'll all get figured out. funny, though, how maybe you're least able of anyone to tell me what it was, to tell me why it was you.
but no, it's not déjà vu all over again. brown hair, again, but blue eyes, this time. so much of it, still, is in the smile, though it's not the same smile. in some women, it would be flirtatious. for some, it might come from some slight unease. in yet others, it would say, "you're silly, and you amuse me."
i can't figure this one, and that's maybe part of the attraction. maybe it was with her, with you.
she's twenty feet away, in a small triad of notebook computers, working. she's here almost every day. i'm at the bar.
i finally talked to her when i worked sunday. it was clumsy. "so, um. you're working, huh?"
yesterday, i talked to her when i stopped in. walked up to her table boldly. then, more clumsiness - "so, um, you just, like, work here everyday, huh?"
shortly after i came in tonight and set up my own notebook computer, she walked up beside me to get some water from the cooler. more clumsiness - "so, like, you work here a lot, huh?"
again, though, the smile - was it trying to encourage me, if only for my own sake? finally, i actually introduced myself.
i've been typing and watching. she hasn't turned around at all.
it's always been someone. some focus. some of the enfatuations were realized. i assume "requited" is a word if "unrequited" is. i can't say that those relationships were any more substantial for coming true. i can't say the others were more powerful for not coming true.
but real or not, powerful or not, lasting or not, there's always someone.
it's become a joke between me and my friends, so much that hopefully it's not even more of a joke when i'm not there. girl of the week, known only by greek-like epithets - "gym girl," "girl with ferret," coffeeshop girl #1," "coffeeshop girl #2" coffeeshop girl #5."
what is real anymore? how do i know? what have i felt before, and been wrong about? how much was ever real, how much just a function of time and place and wanting?
as i wrote this, leora came up with today's horoscope. mine reads:
Regarding the perfect relationship - there isn't one. There's a wonderful ideal in your head. But sometimes, you hold out for everything, you walk away with nothing. Today, find something to love about the one who loves you.
pretty damned pointed for a horoscope. it takes dischord in the reader's relationship as a given. maybe the dischord in my own heart.
what is it? what will it be? what if this is what i'm like this time next year, or five, ten, twenty years from now?
chasing ghosts, chasing ideas. less and less able to distinguish what's real, where to draw the line between belief and knowledge, between want and have.
i keep fearing, keep writing about the fear, that this is getting old. i fear it growing weary not just for the reader, but for myself. this has been the tale of much of my life, but it's grown, acquired momentum with the added force of experience and knowledge and thought. it is more and more becoming the reality i see and have to work through. i fear i hurt people in the process. and i, too, hurt in the process.
so, there is this, and this will either be the chronicle of resolution, or of dissolution. i'm trying to be open-minded, trying to write my own ending, but on nights like these, i just don't know.
and still, she won't turn around.
Posted by Rob at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)
a gift of stones
i keep thinking it was "six million dollar man."
no, wait - it was "the hardy boy mysteries."
the front windows in the living room looked out to the highway, a good 150 yards away. the wall behind where i was sitting on the floor, watching t.v. and playing with legos, was mostly sliding glass patio door, looking out to the backyard, past the structure of what used to be a small water tower, the small red pump house next to it, beyond that the woods that grew so dark at night.
at some point, i looked up, and saw the small man hunkered before the water hydrant that stuck up out of the back yard next to the pump house.
i watched quietly for a while, watched him drink, methodically wash and rinse his bandana and wipe his face. from fifty feet away, you could sense weariness, the lack of any threat.
i looked down the hallway. my dad was in the bedroom. it'd be a matter of time before he saw him. i finally called softly down the hall, told him somebody was out back.
living on 52 acres, with the closest house being old judge phillips' about a mile away, anyone that came off the busy highway, through the locked gate, and up to the house was immediately a bit suspect.
dad looked out of the window, frowned, returned to the bedroom. i heard the drawer open, with the same ominous rumble and clunk as the drawer where he kept the wide leather belts i had become so well acquainted with.
he reemerged, a leather shoulder holster strapped across his white t-shirt with a large, glistening .44 magnum making its presence as obvious as it could without it being pointed at your head. the reddish-brown holster complemented his curly, poofy reddish-brown hair and charlie daniels-like beard.
he may or may not have also been wearing a large hat.
you may watch king of the hill, but if you haven't lived it, you just don't know.
he went outside, and mom came out of the kitchen to watch with me through the window. the man's body language was deferential; he stood slowly and nodded deeply as my dad approached, visibly as much out of the acknowledgement that he was trespassing as out of respect for the imposing redneck with dirty harry's gun.
they talked a while, and quickly, i saw my dad's posture relax just a bit, his hands at ease and not so ready to reach for the his pistol, now only the slightest mutual wariness shading the sight of two grown men talking to each other.
eventually, i saw nothing interesting was going to happen. i'd never seen my dad in a fight, but he was still a beefy guy, and i wondered just how much damage he could do. i turned back to my legos and the television.
my dad came back in eventually, and i heard him in the kitchen talking to my mother, then i heard keys jingling, and the door closing again.
when mom walked through the living room, almost undoubtedly to go clean something, i asked what had happened, and where they had gone.
"he's a wetback. he doesn't speak much english, and he just got here. your dad took him to rosie's tamale house to see if he could find him a job."
i know what hit you first. wetback. ironically, said in the broken english of a korean immigrant. it bugs more me now, but at the time, it was just one element of the racial morass i found myself in as a kid. as the chubby asian kid, i occasionally got called a "chink." then, of course, there was the single, recurring, wonderful lyrical taunt:
chinese, japanese,
dirty knees,
look at these (here, one pulls their shirt out to simulate breasts)
i have no idea what this means. just now, writing this, three decades later, it occurs to me that the only sensible explanation would be as a reference to asian prostitution.
you know how the whities like their asian hookers.
it didn't get worse until sixth grade, when i not only matriculated into the peculiar intensity of pubescent cruelty, but into a school district in which i constituted approximately half of the asian student body. but, even in elementary school, there were the days i came home and asked, "why?" i reported the words i heard, and how the others seemed to not be so keen on the shape of my eyes and the slight yellowish tint of my skin, tempered though it was by cross-breeding.
the response was always that "they" were wrong to treat me that way, to treat me any differently. well, that, and dad suggested that i kick their asses.
but the rhetoric would fall off sharply for other races, for the n*ggers, the sp*cs, and the camel jockeys. my apologies to the middle eastern contingent, but i just couldn't figure out which vowel to "*". it was a crisis of juvenile logic to be told that it was wrong to call me a chink when the slow driver in front of our pickup truck was a black son of a bitch. i was told "they" were wrong, but sometimes, my dad was clearly "they."
but for a long time, i was little better. i thought i was compassionate, progressive, but my ignorance was stronger. as a teenager, i told jokes that today would make me want to beat someone. i had weirdly lamarckian theories about evolution that could only make sense to cleverly ignorant 10 year-old logic. my parents applauded that cleverness, but it was a cleverness that, out of their love for me, helped validate their racism.
over time, and increasingly in just the past five or six years, my father has softened with experience and exposure and wisdom, and maybe with less testosterone clouding his compassion. mom says he even teared up watching some bio on greg louganis.
but at the time, on that sunday night in the seventies, the compassion was another unexpected curve ball. given a trespasser, a man who was not only a sp*c but a wetback, at that, and, my father had:
1. not shot him and dragged his body into the woods;
2. not called the sheriff;
3. not even chased him back to the front gate in the truck.
he took him to get a job?
i was overwhelmed. some part of me, i don't now know how much, knew the contradictions i was surrounded with, but i definitely saw that this was the greatest contradiction of all, borne not of the need to comfort me, but simply, and genuinely, out of compassion, humanity.
i thought. i abandoned the television and the legos, and went out to the backyard, collected small rocks that appealed to me: pea-sized bits of flint and quartz. notebook paper and colored pens, a pair of scissors.
when he came home, i gave him the cheapest gift ever, the one i'm proudest of, a gift he's never deserved more, a paper ribbon bordered in stones, and blocky letters proclaiming him "The Best Dad Ever."
Posted by Rob at 06:35 PM | Comments (1)
July 11, 2005
positive thoughts for today...
sherry told me to "think positive."
hmm.
- maybe tom and katie are really in love.
- maybe the president just plays dumb to make third world countries feel smarter.
- by supersizing my waffle fries at lunch today, i freed the souls of a dozen or more potatoes to continue their journey to heaven.
- botox might help thom yorke. but we like him the way he is.
- a book i co-author with a 3rd grader will make oprah's book club someday.
- the $300+ i just dropped on glasses will sufficiently hide my secret identity, keeping my friends and family safe from the fiendish plans of Dr. Glorp.
- douglas adams is not really dead, but is on an island writing some really funny shit with biggie and tupac.
- i can pretend i spent more than 6 minutes on this list and pass it off as a blog entry.
anyone? any positive thoughts for today?
Posted by Rob at 01:55 PM | Comments (1)
the more i change, the more i stay...
i looked up at the wall, the ceiling behind the bar at red fez, music pumping, vision swirling, and again, like so many times, i think, here i am again. i think of the ubiquitous einstein quote, about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. but me, i do it over and over again, how many nights like this, expecting maybe the same result, but thinking each time that there's something i'll get right this time, that maybe i can just watch closely, that i'll see my tell, the dead giveaway to the weak hand my heart is holding.
shannon wanted to go home. i closed the tab, ran out to meet her - she was going to walk home, maybe a good mile or so. i told her that wouldn't do, that i'd drive her. we talked a lot. shannon doesn't have it all right - i don't honestly know anyone, not a single person, who does. but she's sharp. she's sharp enough to see me in ways i don't like to admit or acknowledge, but that i know are stark reality. she's also blunt enough to tell me about it, and compassionate enough to understand.
it's still there, hanging about me, the look of looking, the want, the need. i hate it, hate myself for it, and they see that, too.
it's me, it's my problem. but i hate the world and the system for it, too. where's my confidence, my sense of self that is so much more attractive, that will draw people closer, just enough that they can know what i'm worth?
i didn't have, wasn't allowed, the luxury of adolescent arrogance. i wasn't one of the beautiful ones, the athletic ones, the stationed ones, the confident ones. i wasn't among the ones who knew at such an early age just what to do, and who to be around, what to wear, or who would be so easily forgiven for the inevitable mistakes and missteps on the walk of coolness and social acceptance. and no, looking back, i wouldn't want it to have been that simple, and the people i love,who love me, and the ones i want to love me aren't into that.
but still, i lack the same damned ingredient - that confidence, that sense of self-possession, that most people learn in their youth, from their parent's approval, from not being the favorite kid to pick on in school, from not losing all the fights that other people started, from having girls like them, from not being the fat and naive sixth grader wearing a fucking boy scout uniform to school instead of an izod or a polo.
i've worked since those days, done it all, played football, changed myself, stopped using big words beginning on one day in sixth grade, learned to play dumb, to ask questions i knew the answer to so i wouldn't stick out, and still, still, still, i don't fit in with most guys, and i don't appeal to most girls. a lifetime devoted to change, to moving down a path, and if i'm not all the way there, i might as well be nowhere.
yeah, i've had things to drink. yes, it's late. yes, i hate that in five hours, i have to get up to fill in for people at the coffeeshop. it doesn't matter. it's just another day: seventh grade, high school, senior year in college, monday at any job, it's just another day, because just as emerson said "they take ruins to ruins," i take myself to every day, despite my best, most honest efforts. i wake up every morning, and the blank ceiling is as a mirror, and there i still am.
-----
ok, so i pounded this out when i got home saturday morning, at 1:45am. the next morning (five hours later), i woke up, feeling rough, thinking about what i had felt, what i had wrote. not the first time for the second-guessing. but this time in particular, i knew there was still something to what i had written.
still, it was, perhaps, a little angrier than it really needed to be. i pulled it down. tonight, other than correcting a few drunken typos, all i needed to do was edit out the f-bombs. some degree of anger is ok, even deserved - i think it's right and alright for me to feel a little angry, at things i missed, at things that were maybe taken from me, that made me a little more likely to have failed and ended up where i have, to have the flaws that i have. but i also know they are ultimately my own failures and flaws.
i'm 36, and still trying, still trying to change it all just as much as a i was in sixth grade. hopefully, i understand it all a little better, have better support, a clearer idea of what i want and what i can have.
Posted by Rob at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2005
somebody else's love story
it's been a long time since i've been in touch with the great blog mentor to the north. due to some disorder, some deficit of attention, definitely some self-absorption, maybe a little jealousy, a little envy, even.
my attention first turned towards virtual british columbia last september or so, when my friend nikki sent me the link, telling me that she thought its author seemed like the perfect girl for me.
how could i not look?
i was enraptured by the honesty of expression, the familiarity with what she expressed. she wrote of the conflicts in her mind that she could not control, and she wrote about love and where it might be, what it might look like if and when it reappeared in her life.
i was in awe of her photography, with what she sees in the world, and her ability to capture it.
i was thrilled to correspond with her some. her recent trip and ties to thailand, and the images she returned before she or anyone else could foresee what would soon unfold there, made that tragedy, when it came, all the more real for me.
julie's blog is about her journey through life and what she saw in it, and she has drawn a community around her. in those terms, her journey became part of the template for my own, and her blog became a model for mine that hasn't quite been realized. it's significant because her journey is unique, and it's familiar, and because she puts it out there, inviting the sharing of the experience.
at times, late at night, with a bit of drink, i'd write to her, not in the mode of someone enamored with her, but simply in response to her ability to listen and empathize, sometimes just because she was out there, so accessible, yet so far away, where it was safe to send my thoughts and the things that emerged unbidden from my heart at times.
things in my life and in my mind have turned, sometimes doubled completely back on themselves, and things and people got lost in the process. julie got lost no less than my friends who i've known longer, have actually seen and touched.
in recent months, julie reached a waypoint in her life, found the star in the night sky that had eluded her,that she so deserved, but that i don't believed we're all destined or guaranteed to find - she has found love. from all she writes, from the pictures she takes of him, and of them together, i just know it's right, as right and as true as the relationships i've seen a few of my friends in.
a friend commented recently that she'd been reading julie's blog, and unprompted, she told me she believed that someday soon, i'd be writing the same story that julie has been.
i can think of few kinder wishes for anyone to wish for me.
for the longest time, i've wanted to write you, julie, to congratulate you, to encourage you (though you don't need it), and to thank you for showing at least one way our paths, insofar as they're similar, might lead. and despite the doubts and fears i chronicle here, i want you and my friends to know that part of me still believes...
oh, and someday, i'd like a hug.
Posted by Rob at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2005
when the rain comes
i'm here at halcyon, carefully transcribing what i wrote a few nights ago. moderate lone star consumption. it's a tool, for now.
i've taken to leaving the lights off in my office all daylong, now, not trying to impress or reinforce gloom, but because the flourescent lights seem like just another lie, one of the ones i can defeat with the flip of a switch. no one else seems to mind, and there's been plenty of light available through the windows in this forty days of rainless, brutal heat.
god said he wouldn't flood the earth like that again. he made no such covenenats about droughts and heat.
this afternoon, though, the skies grayed. it didn't seem possible, after so long, for the skies to darken and release again.
plans for the evening fell through, so beer and pool with leora at lavaca street after work. i played brilliantly, seeing shots instinctively and putting them in. and leora would get her turns, and finish the table to win, and i was just as happy with that.
she had to work at the coffeehouse, and i have this newly, perhaps foolishly-bought (but relatively, surprisingly, inexpensive) notebook computer, so i set up at the bar, and began the setup of my computer.
i remember years ago going, with mary and a couple of our other friends, to see douglas adams, one of my favorite authors of all time, speak on campus. he authored the altogether amazing five books of the hitchiker's guide trilogy (yes, i know, but that's the joke), as well as a few other books. so much of anything good about my writing style i learned, absorbed, didn't steal, from him.
i remember him talking about the most time-consuming and agonizing part of his writing method and process being the research, purchase, installation, troubleshooting, purchase of new hardware that was more capable to run, reinstallation, retroubleshooting, and eventual cursing and resignation to the semi-functionality of, new word processing software.
i miss douglas adams, who passed away too soon, but i am thankful that for once, everything on my new computer and software worked on the first go.
so, i sat, transcribing. shannon called, existing happily under the misapprehension that today was wednesday, proposing an evening of karaoke. a correction on the date, and we decided to put it off to saturday.
i looked outside, and it was even darker. i needed headphones to immerse myself properly to write, and i walked outside to find drops appearing on the concrete, on the windshields of cars. leora came out the side door, leaned on the rail, and we smiled at the smell of impending rain, took joy in the sight of distant thunder, as if something primal in us appreciated the return of the rains, the end of a toil and struggle just to find game, to grow crops.
i ran across the street, moved my car to the garage. by the time i got upstairs to the corner, the rain was coming down, and again, it was like something new, and for a flash, i felt like early man seeing it all for the first time, feeling the cooling fall from the sky. i ran across the street, a gust of wind blowing me sideways briefly, the back of my shirt immediately soaked through.
and here i sit, drenched in the here and now. i close the notebook, and just spill out this here, this now.
Posted by Rob at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
three songs
at about 3:45, I slipped out of the office, and out into the heat of the day to pick up some photos. something’s not right about this summer. I’ve lived here 36 years, and there’s something particularly unbearable about the heat, even worse than summers a few years ago where I had to wear a suit every day, and still chose to drive with the top down.
the sun was still high, but I surveyed the sidewalks ahead and crossed the streets strategically to stay in the shade.
at congress and sixth, I waited far back from the curb, in the slightly cooler, slender shelter of a lightpost.
to my right, a woman sat on a bench, alone, flanked by bags. she was probably in a rough version of the late fifties. she had a large rolling suitcase in front of her, and both hands rested lightly and delicately on the retractable pull handle. she moved it up, and back down, smoothly and rhythmically, and she smiled with an odd, knowing peacefulness.
the light changed quickly, and I moved on. on the way back, I didn’t think to look back over at her, and I took a different shade-exploiting path back to the office.
after work i changed in the office, rode my bike home, changed shoes, and went for a short run down congress. at sixth street, I again met the light, again sought refuge in the pole’s shadow, and I waited, breathing deeply, hands on my hips.
to my right, the woman still sat there, with her bags, still working the handle, raising and lowering it. maybe she had nothing else to occupy her. maybe she was enthralled, hypnotized by the simplicity of the motion, the smooth, near frictionless sliding of the tubes.
as I ran on, I couldn’t get the image out of my head. I wondered, but I know I missed what was happening.
one
blow up the outside world
(soundgarden)
the device was ready. the case, filled carefully, steadily, involuntarily, over time, over years. it was packed with the volatile mix of loss, sorrow, despair, anger, confusion, madness, the experience of her life turning her away from whatever dreams she may have had as a child, and into an unwitting bombmaker.
the bomb was armed with determination, conviction, faith.
there was no conspiracy. she acted, as she lived - alone.
there was no agenda, no political statement, no bargain to be struck. she only wished to make it all go away, for the price to be paid, to save the world from itself, from seeing and feeling all she had seen, felt. it was her right and duty of vengeance and of pity and of mercy.
she raised the plunger, and felt it slide smoothly back down under pressure.
click.
not yet. somewhere deep in the chaos and stillness of her mind, there was the knowledge, the intellect of instinct, that knew that there was a defect in the detonator. charge flowed, but stopped. it was a matter now of chance, the randomness that god built into the universe that is so often wiser, more profound, more sacred than predestination.
when all the influences in the world and in her own heart, all the space and time and humanity and birth and death and joy and sorrow and war and peace became just slightly more out of balance, when her heart knew and god knew, then, maybe then, the spark, and the detonation, and the end, the universe exploded into the infinitesimally small blocks that god would sit with again, like a child on the floor with his legos, building a new universe, a new garden where hope might thrive.
raise the plunger, press it down.
click.
not now, but soon.
-----
two
of these, hope
(peter gabriel)
she was tired, in a way. how long had she sat here, in this sun?
maybe she always had. she had always sat somewhere, for as long as she could remember. she could, in fact, remember little else. she saw little girls walk by, and knew that at some time she must have been a child, or so it seemed. it seemed like it could have been, but it didn’t seem familiar. but maybe. maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was 100 years ago.
she wondered if she had ever been beautiful, like the women that walked by, their skins kissed by sunlight, smooth with youth and care, almost translucent to the glow of potential and life. she wondered if she was beautiful now.
she wondered about these things, but they didn’t worry her or get her down. she was happy doing her job. she knew what it meant, working the pump, providing the world around her with air and the force of life. she didn’t understand at all how it worked, but she knew that didn’t really matter, and there was wisdom in that, though she didn’t know that, either.
she knew she couldn’t stop. she didn’t know sadness or regret, or understand the absence of meaning and happiness. to her, there was no choice, no wondering, no question, no foil necessary for meaning or happiness. and for this, she wasn’t ignorant, but probably wiser, though she didn’t know it, and the people that walked by probably wouldn’t understand it.
it had been made easy for her, working the pump. she saw people struggle with the machines they used. she saw people speaking into boxes, moving erratically to try to make them work, asking “can you hear me? hello? can you hear me?” to apparently no one in particular.
she saw the men driving noisy things into the street behind the pretty orange cones. the things caught on the street, tore into it, sent force and shivers back up into the men. they stopped from time to time, and rubbed their hands, stretched their backs, making faces all the while.
but the pump was smooth. it took not so much force or pressure to raise and lower it, though it required rhythm and focus and a simple faith and willingness. she had these things, more than the people she helped sustain, though she did not know it.
those traits, and doing the job she did, made people think she was crazy, though she did not realize it, and did not realize just how precisely inaccurate that judgment was.
she looked ahead, and saw what bit of the world passed in front of her.
she raised and lowered the handle.
hope and life and love flowed out. and everyone in the world, though no one ever realized it, breathed it all in.
-----
three
but i'm not the girl you once put your faith in,
just someone who looks like me.
(aimee mann)
she sat on the bench, in the sun, in july, but she was there in the airport in rapid city, on the black vinyl seat, in the fluorescent lights, in late december, the buzz of the small, quiet airport early in the morning, the cold just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
in front of her, the one suitcase. further, across the aisle, he sat, his hand curled before his mouth, looking for the words that would make her stay.
sally jesse rafael blathered. donahue had been ok in his time, but lately, there was this explosion of talk shows, with egos named geraldo and maury supposedly trying to open the eyes of their audience. it seemed to her it was just drama, and it seemed to be getting worse.
how long was that? five seconds thinking about talk shows? when she was in the midst of her own drama? what was wrong with her? sometimes she worried that there was something cold about her, that maybe she only felt things because she knew she should. she worried that really, she didn’t. sometimes she wondered if anyone did.
she looked over at him, and she knew that yes, people really did feel things.
she leaned forward, ran her fingers over the retractable handle of her suitcase. just the one bag, but it was all of her life that she decided to take with her.
“just a month or two, baby,” he said quietly. “please, I’ll find something, we both will. we can get by. we can make this work.”
she pursed her lips, tried to listen through the noise in her head. it had gotten worse lately. she had lost bits of time. sometimes, she heard herself talking, but nothing she heard made sense. now, though, she was just listening, searching to see if she felt anything.
she opened her mouth to respond, but she didn’t know what to say. she pushed the button on the handle, pulled it up slightly, lowered it till the button popped back softly against her thumb.
“it’s not you. I just have to go.”
“you don’t even know anyone in texas. I don’t even know why you’re going there. you just started talking about it…”
he hesitated. he had to say it, again, but it hadn’t gone well before, no matter how he had gone about it. “I’m worried about you. you’ve been making more and more kinda weird decisions. you don’t sleep much. I really… think you need to see someone. just stay until you do… I don’t think your mind is healthy right now.”
her head snapped up and she stared at him. there, there was something… anger. and… fear. and sadness. she grasped onto them… they seemed real. she needed real, it’s all she wanted, sometimes. she breathed, softened her gaze.
“john, i-“
feedback blared briefly over the public address system.
“Delta flight 729 to Houston is now boarding. Please presen…”
“I have to go. I’ll call.”
“wait…”
“no.”
she pushed the button on the suitcase handle, pulled it partway up. she was convinced because she thought she was convinced. but still, she searched, dug, clawed at her own heart. do I feel? what do I feel? what is it?
she stood, pulled the handle up with her.
click.
Posted by Rob at 03:07 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2005
bored on the fourth of july
when they light up our town, i just think,
"what a waste of gunpowder and sky."
- aimee mann
my fourth was spent... independently. it began well, dovetailing without sleep into the previous day's night, leora and eric and i in the warm water of the pool at my apartment, drinking cold beer, talking quietly.
they left at four in the morning, and i slept, slept, and slept until about noon. i was still sore from saturday's run, which had taken me far past the red line, past the maximum of six or eight miles i had run in the past several months, all the way to 14.
i made some oatmeal, and watched t.v., into the night. my roommate came and went. i didn't make calls i should have made. didn't go to any of the two or three parties i had been invited to, didn't go to meet amelia and her brother, didn't take up another possible option.
i ate a can of black beans, which was somehow appropriate while watching napoleon dynamite. at about 9:30, i heard muffled thumps from outside. i put on shoes and ipod and wandered out, walking up congress to amy's.
i walked north past families, couples, walked under faces and eyes turned up and to the west, where color erupted over the treetops.
it is hard for me, sometimes, to separate energy from mood, from reality. i didn't want to be alone, but i couldn't seem to generate the motivation and effort to join in, to interact. i felt a sense of loss, missing the color and noise, maybe because some part of me doesn't want the smoke and silence that intervenes between the bursts. maybe i've too often felt the thrill of the party or evening or of love, even, end, leaving regret hanging in the air like the sharp incense of cordite.
i stopped, away from the crowds, and finally turned to watch. the new coldplay album that i still haven't gotten enough of was playing,
and all you ever wanted was love,
but you never looked hard enough.
it's never gonna give itself up.
all you ever wanted to be,
living in perfect symmetry -
nothing is as down or as up.
i stood, and the world was only light and music. i thought of my friends out there, watching, taking joy in the moment, in each explosion of color, globes of purple, sparklers, rockets streaming skyward, exploding in colors that went from gold to red.
part of me missed them, wished i was seeing it with them, but part of me knew i had made a choice - how disconnected am i? how much do i disconnect myself? am i a hypocrite to feel lonely, when sometimes i choose to be alone?
the show hit its climax, and then ended, leaving ghosts floating over the city.
i walked to amy's. the people there make it hard to be antisocial. the crowds hadn't reached that far up the street from the river yet, and i spent a good 15 minutes there, my only real human contact of the day. i bought a new flavor for the first time in over 15 years of going to amy's. the girl slapped a sticker on my shirt.
the crowds began to approach from the south, streaming up the sidewalk, began to line up. i said goodbye, put my headphones back in, and walked home.
Posted by Rob at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)