who wants pudding?: August 2006 Archives

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August 30, 2006

tested

i was still reeling, staggering a little mentally, physically, emotionally. a barrage of blows had hit in the last week, surprising in their ferocity and variety.

i had worried about how to cover all the unusual items that needed to get paid for this month. then i got sick last wednesday, and much as i tried to see the workday through, i had to go home, which put me further in the hole, since i get paid by the hour. it also put me further behind in my running, continuing a two-week period of missing workouts and not doing my solo runs.

i was beginning to feel lost again, in general, like my efforts weren't really changing my life. hope plummeted, despair skyrocketed. at one point, sitting at my desk, thinking back to the things coach janie had said, and of what she's doing with her life, in malawi now, an ocean away, i found myself even a little choked-up, thinking about my own other lives i'd neglected or otherwise failed - that i neglect, and am failing.

friday saw a massive display of bureaucratic arrogance, ignorance, and indifference by the texas state bar dealt another economic blow, and another loss i felt helpless to fight.

then saturday. saturday. i missed an important long run. i eventually woke and rose and went to the computer and found something to top it all - an angry email from someone, letting me know that i had, however unintentionally, seriously hurt them.

i called, then emailed, though apology was worthless and probably meaningless, and though there was no way i could make things any better.

i don't recover well from mistakes, as it is, particularly ones that can't be fixed. it was bad enough that someone was hurt, but selfishly, i also hated that i had done the hurting.

i make mistakes. things happen. luck ebbs and flows. i deal with circumstances with varying degrees of evenness and self-recrimination. but the one thing i have always been able to rely on is the fact that if nothing else, i can control the kind of person i am. the idea was one of a handful that saved my life, in a way, back during a dark period during law school, almost 15 years ago.

i was just learning a love of basketball, and in a book about michael jordan by journalist bob greene, jordan says, with a sense of despair, that all he wanted to do was be a decent person. the greatest player ever, one of the most recognizeable figures in the world, and he just wanted to be a decent person. i wasn't so starry-eyed to believe he was a success at that simple task, that he was some sort of saint, or maybe even a really great person, but the idea impacted me, gave me a sense of something simple and fundamental, but tremendously important that i could control about my life that did say something about who i am.

i fail at it, over and over. but i never let the losses go, and i try, because i do care, and because i need it, i need that to be who i am.

sometimes, though, i've patted myself on the back too much, thinking i'm a good guy, better than most just for making the effort. and to some extent, i really do believe that, and the incredible, loyal, and enduring friends i have and continue to make testify to that.

but here was failure, one of my greatest. something i did to someone, without malice or ill will or even real carelessness, but still - in my mind, good faith and intent and the weight of being a decent person when i have been, seemed suddenly swept away by this one event. i was suddenly a bad person, just like that, and nothing else i had ever done or ever tried to be mattered.

by tuesday, i was moving, in stops and starts, because there is no choice, because stopping and falling down is not a choice. a couple of people i talked to about it had been true friends - they didn't pull their punches, they didn't sugarcoat what i had done, but they also began to restore some sense of perspective, and convinced me that it wasn't the single defining event of my life, much as it will surely always define me in the eyes of the person i wronged.

so, tuesday night after work, i went to my appointment at a lab in the stadium at the university of texas. rogue, the group i'm about to start coaching beginner half-marathoners for, wants all its coaches to have their VO2 max and lactate threshhold (um... it has to do with endurance) tested, so we know a little more about it.

the lab was in the weird bowels of belmont hall. legend has it that when they wanted to build the upper deck to memorial stadium, they wanted to use funds that had been earmarked for more educational purposes. so, the structure under the deck was made a building, with classrooms and offices, as well as some athletic facilities.

they were running just a bit behind, and a guy that looked liek a serious runner was just finishing up. i changed, chatted with the doctoral student that was preparing the equipment, and then the doctor came in.

we didn't get much past introductions before he told me that losing weight would benefit my running a lot. this was not news, but i again had the feeling that i had not done as much with myself as i had been giving myself credit for.

i was put on a treadmill that had a pvc structure over it that held a pair of clear hoses in place. the hoses joined in the center and fed into a massive green mouthpiece. the other end of the hoses ran into some metal cabinetry in front of the treadmill, with a computer terminal sitting on top of it. they put a heart monitor on me. i warmed up for a few minutes, then the mouthpiece went in, the nose clamp went on, and the testing began.

i would run for four minutes at an easy pace, then step off the treadmill, pull the mouthpiece off to swallow the saliva that had pooled in my mouth, and another student took a blood sample from my earlobe. in less than a minute, i was back on, and the pace was increased.

it was just like a scene from a gatorade lab in one of their commercials, only hairier and even sweatier. also, my sweat wasn't flourescent orange or blue or green like in the ads, but simply came off in huge clear sheets, flying and spraying around the room.

at first, i waved off the fan they had placed right in front of the treadmill. at one point, i heard one student tell the other he was getting hit, and the doctor said, "yeah, rob, we're gonna go ahead and turn this on... you're a real efficient sweater..."

run, lather, poke ear, repeat. soon, i was running in minute intervals, and there weren't any more breaks. they'd ask if i wanted to go up a level, and i'd grunt and give a thumbs-up, and they'd crucify my earlobe again and kick the speed up.

it was getting tough. they were encouraging, but i began to struggle. i no longer felt like steve austin, and the occasional low grunt was replacing the bionic leg noises i was making in my head. finally, i finished out a minute interval, but shook my head when they asked if i wanted to go faster. this is known as "volitional exhaustion," though it just felt like giving up.

while the numbers were crunched and printed, i changed, and they set about the massive task of post-flood cleanup. eventually, i sat down with the doctor, and he let one of the students explain the results.

i scored higher than i thought (50.5), but i am not lance armstrong (83). the test projected that if i lost 14 pounds of body fat, i could get to 54, which would make me almost an almost elite female athlete (VO2's of 55.0 and over).

going in, i think i was almost hoping that the testing would reveal an excuse for my running ability. i had fantasies of the doctor running in and saying, "this can't be right! this man shouldn't be able to run that fast, or that far! why, according to this... he should be dead!"

instead, the testing predicted running performance that i haven't even come close to. i should be running 10K's in 47 minutes, not 57, half marathons in 1:52, not 2:10, marathons in 3:48, not the 4:10 i'm beginning to have doubts about running in chicago this october.

as he walked me out of the building, the doctor pointed out that there are plenty of other factors that the predictions don't account for - mechanical efficiency, and all that. and, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "you're just a big guy, rob, and even losing weight, you're still gonna be a big guy. no way around that."

afterwards, i was tired, and the numbers and what they meant swam around my head. i drove to whole foods to get something to eat.

i sat down at the salad bar, pulled out my book, looked up and saw rick barnes, the university of texas men's basketball coach, sitting across from me. this is not important to this story at all, but was interesting at the time.

i pulled the cap off my honest tea (green dragon), and the quote under the cap was gandhi's, saying "There is more to life than increasing its speed." hmm.

i watched coach barnes eat, alone, watching the people around him. a woman came up and asked if the seat next to him at the bar was taken. over the minutes, they began to chat. i never got the sense that she recognized him, and i wonder if that was nice for him.

i stared at the numbers. so much effort, so many hopes, my very potential as a runner distilled to a set of numbers.

all i want to be is a decent runner.

i want to do the best i can with what's in my control. the numbers make me ask about that one factor that can't be measured - how hard do i try? do i let "volitional exhaustion" come too easily? how far do i push myself when the run gets tough?

all i want to be is a decent person.

here, there are no genetic limitations, absent any serious psychiatric disorders. being good is easy, simple. but yet, it's not. we still have to push ourselves, to not let fear or want guide our actions, to do what's right when it's not easy, or doesn't get us what we want.

i've got so much work still to be done, on both fronts. weight and weights to shed, pains to press through, miles to go, battles of will versus fear and selfishness to be fought in my own body, my own mind, my heart, and my soul. i will lose, sometimes. i will never be an elite runner, and never a perfect person. all i can do is try, and hope that the earnestness of that effort will, in the end, make me decent enough.

Posted by Rob at 03:22 PM | Comments (3)

August 25, 2006

the beast

interesting note - fulbright and jaworski, one of the largest law firms in the world, has offices at 666 5th avenue, in new york city.

why am i not surprised?

Posted by Rob at 11:45 AM | Comments (1)

August 24, 2006

so... now what?

ok, so yesterday, the fatigue i've been feeling came to a head, and i got pretty sick and finally had to go home from work. the thing is, i just don't really get sick, so it was a bit bizarre, and at first, i wasn't sure what was happening. by the time i got to the bus stop to get back to my car, i was clearly ill - sweating, but shivering, the whole bit.

as i sat doubled-over on the bus, trying not to catch whiffs of the mumbling guy behind me, i realized again that i needed a job where i wasn't going to just lose money if i needed to miss a day or two.

a few days earlier, stumbling around slightly after my one and probably only attempt at a duathlon (5K run, 30K bike and, oh, hey, let's run 5K again!?), it occurred to me that i couldn't pass out, because i don't have insurance. even with insurance, the Great Round Rock Dehydration Debacle of 2006 resulted in two collection agencies trying to recover almsot $1,000 from me that wasn't covered by the crapsurance that Blue Cross Blue Shield has apparently become.

because i didn't curse, mention drug use, or badmouth my parents in it, i emailed the previous post to my stepfather this morning. he thought it was good, but wondered if i was really that bored at my job.

well, sort of. the thing is, i'm no more bored than i was at my previous grown-up lawyer jobs, and i'm not as angered or appalled on a constant basis, either. but it is particularly meaningless, and doesn't really add anything to my life or who i am as a person, except for a paycheck.

so... what the hell do i do now? there's an opening (again) at the agency i left in march. i can't help but wonder if i could grovel my way back in, on the condition that i wouldn't ever have to do administrative hearings. i think there are people there that would want me back, but i'm not so sure my old boss would be one of them.

it also feels like it would be selling out, giving up. people have seemed genuinely impressed and move by my deciding to leave the law, and following through on it. my life has certainly changed over the last few months, but more important have been the changes in me. my life may not be great or ideal, but i have more of a sense of it being mine. i know what my limitations are, but i better appreciate my strengths, too, and my confidence in who i am and what i have to offer is far greater than it's ever been.

but there's still that future thing. some people, my mother, some friends, try to make me realize that i am an attorney, and that's what i'm going to have to stick to, that i have to do it because i have the degree and i'm good at it.

at the same time, the past few months have proven to me, with surprising ferocity at times, just how burned-out i am. i had an opportunity to help a friend recently, and i feel good about how i dealt with the opposing counsel, possibly one of the most unethical, lying, and competence-impaired lawyers i've had to deal with. but as much as i felt competitive and wanted to beat her, the conflict, and the responsibility i was holding for my friend's well-being tore at me. i can't live like that.

at least in my old job, i was on the side of the state, and it was almost always clearly the right side to be on. i was usually in a position to negotiate and encourage reasonable resolution. when something did bother me, perhaps i had become too personally invested. i enjoyed owning the rulewriting and i even enjoyed the political aspect, to an extent.

the big thing is that i still don't know what else i can do, without going back to school or taking far less money and giving up all hope of financial stability.

there's not a point here. sorry.

i'm open to suggestions...

Posted by Rob at 03:12 PM | Comments (3)

August 22, 2006

the view from above

people ask me what i'm doing these days, and i tell them. invariably, most of them have to ask me again every time they talk to me, because my new station in life is so wonderfully non-descript.

what i do is this: i work as a temporary contract employee for a public relations firm that is doing not only PR work, but litigation support for, a law firm engaged in a certain major lawsuit. no, i can't tell you what. if i told you, then i'd have to... get fired, most likely.

this description, of course, really explains nothing.

there are thousands and thousands of scanned documents managed by a piece of popular litigation document management software. i say "popular" in the same way i would use the word to describe a heavily-used brand of commercial-grade weevil poison, acoustic ceiling tile, or urinal cakes.

i read each document, and check one of four boxes: irrelevant, relevant, privilege irrelevant, or privilege relevant.

that's pretty much it. well, i do other things.

i look out the huge window i sit in front of. it's like sitting in the nose of an old bomber, with the world panoramic around me. it looks south down congress avenue.

i watch clouds move behind the big chocolate-brown building across from me, and i sometimes wonder how tall the giant, unnecessarily-generic-looking white numbers on the top are. i've been guessing 12 to 15 feet.

i watch bike messengers pedal down the middle of congress, talking to each other before peeling off down side streets. i recognize some of them - ben, temporarily on his classic bianchi road bike (in "celeste" green, of course), because his single-speed bike has been out of commission. i see the one guy with the nice unlabeled red track bike. from here, it looks like they move below in complete smoothness and silence, like birds gliding in a slight breeze.

i talk to my three officemates. at times, we have group activities. for example, last week, tricia discovered my middle name was earl, and the others decided that we all needed trailer-park names. jolene, lurlene, and i couldn't come up with one for lee, so lurlene got on the department of corrections website to look at the names of women on death row. we didn't find a good, really unique name, but it kept us occupied for a while.

the documents we review are entirely emails produced by a high-tech company. they're a mix of dull and arcane babbling about hardware and code and cost centers, commingled with forwarded inspirational crapmail, urban legends, tasteless jokes, and pornography.

we have every email generated, sent, and received by this company, over a terabyte of information. reading it all sometimes goes beyond a mere voyeurism. a person only shares so much with another, maybe just this piece of information, but there will be someone else that gets another piece. i see the entire web of communication, business and personal, and i know far more than any one of the emailers does. it's sort of like being omniscient, looking down on this little universe as a god would.

the thing is, as a god, i would never create a world like this, unless i was doing it merely to have something to test plagues and floods and massive meteor strikes on.

it's largely a world of nonsense, a complete sham.

the first thing i noticed was the persistent and frequent use and abuse of the word "leverage." i've always thought the word itself is nothing more than a bit of MBA-generated gibberish. but, if it's to be used at all, it should convey the idea of using one thing in such a way that gaining an advantage is an indirect consequence. for example, i could say that i am going to leverage my friend's relationship with the bartender to get myself a free lone star.

at this company, however, "leverage" has simply supplanted the word "use." i've actually seen emails where someone suggests they leverage an assistant to bring in some lunch. again, if the suggestion is that making a sacrifice of an assistant might please the lunch god in such a way to make tacos appear, then i'd give them a pass. but this is not what they mean, not at all.

unfortunately, the word appears to be the hot buzzword of this early millennium, much like "monotheistic" was in the previous one. i've seen it leve... used as many as four to five times in a single paragraph.

it's not alone, either.

nouns are transformed alchemically into verbs, continuing a trend that started innocuously enough with words like "access". now people do "costing," and other vile nouns to each other.

it doesn't seem to matter that a perfectly good, often shorter word already exists in the english language. it is apparently more important to exhibit proactive wordification than to leverage existing language, so the perfectly good words are discarded in favor of stupid new ones, much to the chagrin of observers - no, i'm sorry, "observants" - like myself.

people are no longer hired, but rather they're "onboarded," clearly intended to convey a much more Love Boat-ey Big Happy Family vibe, at least until someone comes in with a gun and lots of ammunition.

this sort of spin must be fooling someone, if only the people doing the spinning, because it's obviously the only way these people can communicate. there's an awful lot of nurturing and advancing, enhancing and empowering. i have to assume stuff wouldn't seem like such nonsense if i had a marketing degree:

"from an expectation perspective, it is not realistic that i will have it to you by monday..."

"the key is what is under the hood and gaining traction with significant partners that can fully leverage your professional services resources so your software model can quickly scale."

"I am not suggesting plagiarism, only creative, thought-provoking use."

yet, for all of this hideous linguistic creativity, many of these people are clearly incapable of forming complete sentences. the words "their" and "there" follow some sort of strangely relativistic laws. meanwhile, apostrophes are a matter of quantum mechanics, governed by heisenberg's uncertainty principle - they're always popping in and out of time and space without any real predictability, rhyme, or reason. you can only believe that there is a universe where they're all properly situated.

corporate america is a demon universe that is constantly creating itself in its own image. the serfs in this particular corporate city-state are apparently encouraged to identify themselves by the role they play in the company, "messaging" cryptic, if not nonsensical, taglines (all typos are copyright of the original authors):

"i integrate promotional strategies to generate awareness for our product."

"i passionately communicate the value of our enterprise to empower our clients to revolutionize their customers experience."

"I apply technology to our solutions because your Customers Really Matter."

"I apply the verve that helps my clients and colleagues visualize our enterprise's empowerment solutions."

"I enable a transparent and responsive structure of communication between my clients and their projects."

"I help my clients realize [our company's] full potential in helping them to compete in their market space by delivering World Class Professional Service."

"I engage the demands of the market place to deliver an empowered experience that benefits the client through increased profitability and customer delight."

and motivational claptrap is enraging.

"i have failed to execute on my personal objective. i had promised to hold public praise for those who go above and beyond the call. My apologies to everyone, for allowing external factors to affect my commitment to you," from a "client advocate" whose mission in life is to "passionately create and nurture dynamic, scalable technologies that empower our clients to succeed."

it got to the point that i was starting to become really despondent about the state of not only the english language, but of humanity today. then, in a batch of emails from one employee, i found a trend of personal emails mixed in. his wife starting suffering from severe headaches. around christmas a few years ago, she was diagnosed with dual brain tumors.

when i finish a batch of five thousand documents, i'm assigned a new one, and they're not always consecutive. i watched the numbers creep upwards, the end of this batch, and i was hoping that each email would be the one to tell the end of the story, if his wife recovered, if she lived or died.

but at document #140,000, she was still in chemo, though stepping down from a more aggressive phase of it. i was pulled thousands of documents away, thrown backwards several years, to a time when his two kids weren't in college yet, before his mother went into assisted living, and when his wife was healthy, and he was primarily focused on coming up with an inane little motto that would uniquely identify him in his email signature block.

i know his future, in my electronic omniscience. i want to warn that 2002 version of him, as if i could send him an email and reach who he was then, but i don't know what i would say.

i sit, and i see now, the present, constantly becoming the past, stretching out towards the river before me. a flight of motorcycle cops guide a truck with a car on a flatbed trailer down congress - they're filming. i can see the actors in the car, the interior lit by fake sunlight that's brighter than the daylight outside. a couple of bike messengers sit on a bench in the shade. hundreds of lives move up and down the sidewalks. people in the building across from me work, chat, flip through the internet, talk on the phone.

i sit, and i see futures past in black and white, the endings just as unknown to me, but all in there somewhere, and i click, click, click - irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant.

Posted by Rob at 03:28 PM | Comments (3)

August 17, 2006

moveon.org needs to getreal.now

years ago, i was turned on to moveon.org, an extraordinary grassroots effort to inform and mobilize political responsiveness in an apathetic populace. while the organization was undoubtedly liberal, they originally appeared to be more non-partisan, and more concerned with spreading truth and encouraging action.

over the past few years, though, i've watched with disgust as they've become no better than the administration that they've come to base their entire existence on fighting, going beyond spin and straight into gross misrepresentation.

the latest?

an August 15 email titled "We Can Stop The Politics of Terror." the email focuses on comments made by Dick Cheney regarding Joe Lieberman's recent loss in Connecticut. I agree, and even believe it's a matter of fact rather than opinion, that Cheney and the administration are "politicizing" terrorism. this is certainly nothing new, either.

but the facts are not enough for moveon anymore. the first paragraph says, "Dick Cheney even said Connecticut voters were supporting Al Qaeda."

one of the strengths of moveon's emails is that they provide links to their sources, which used to give them credibility. now, they often only reveal the spin or outright disinformation being applied. here, a link is provided to a transcript of Cheney's actual remarks.

Cheney is definitely methodically going about the task of politicizing terrorism, and that must be resisted. he definitely intimates that he thinks Lieberman's defeat evidences the continued fracturing of the Democratic party (uhh... OK, he's right on that one), and that creating that sort of divisiveness is exactly what al Qaeda and terrorist organizations want, which is obviously true.

but he does not say that Connecticut voters were supporting Al Qaeda when they voted Lieberman out. he's not stupid enough to say something damaging like that. he's not donald rumsfeld.

the email also goes on to say that since 9/11, the Republicans have made us less safe, when a look back over the past few years would show that democrats have not exactly done a lot to help - they've jumped on the homeland security porkbandwagon as much as anyone has.

more and more, i talk about "the liberals" as some other group that i want nothing to do with, no matter how liberal my own views are.

a few weeks ago, i met up with a friend of mine and several of her friends for pub quiz at mother egan's. it fills up quickly and early these days, and we were fortunate to get a table out on the covered patio.

the temperature had climbed into the low hundreds the previous couple of days, and then someone was attributing it to... global warming. al gore was mentioned in the tone of the wise village elder who had foreseen the apocalypse, and there was a lot of reverent nodding.

i've been to parties with these people before, and got to where i felt apprehensive around them, so i knew better than to open my mouth. these people are all warm and wonderful folks, but some (many) of these are also people who seem to like their lifestyle firmly established by the dictates of kgsr and emails from moveon.org. talking to them is the liberal equivalent of discussing politics with my rush limbaugh-lovin' stepdad, complete with the bullying tactics and anger.

i just can't seem to shut the hell up, sometimes. i spoke up and said that while global warming is an inarguable reality, and the process is well underway, that one can't point to one, two, or a handful of hot summers and make the correlation to global warming.

the immediate and primary counter to this was not some argument about statistics or the scientific method, but the fact that i had not yet seen "an inconvenient truth." i was told repeatedly that i needed to see it, that it would change my mind and eliminate my resistance to the fact of global warming.

it was sort of like being in an old star trek episode, where i had beamed down to a planet of kindly, but brainwashed people - "come, you must speak to Landru! he will show you the light!"

i turned to one of the women there and tried to explain that my problem is that the facts are there, the truth is bad enough, and people need to address it intelligently, not just jumping to whatever conclusion is politically expedient and consistent. she was completely unmoved by that argument, saying that it's just the way people were, and there was no changing it. she then said that the conservatives do it, too - that all these movies coming out about 9/11 were just propaganda to support the war.

wow. how can you argue with that? something, perhaps the start of the trivia quiz, thankfully interrupted my dumbfoundedness at this point, and it was dropped. i still felt like a couple of people didn't trust me, probably because i'm clearly a bush administration propagandist or spy. i felt bad for my friend - i think it was the fastest possible alienation of a group of people without mentioning a passion for eight year-old boys. since i have no passion for eight year-old boys, nature has instead given me an inability to unquestioningly toe the democratic party line.

once again, we come back to the problem that people seem to only find comfort and security occupying the extremes on many issues. we feel that anything less than absolute adherence to dogma weakens our point, and our ability to be self-righteous. and so, it seems that it is not a desire for truth, but rather cowardice and ego that motivate discourse in this country, whether political or social. we're the home crowd booing every call that goes against our team, no matter how clearly correct and egregious it is.

for the republicans, for moveon, for faux news, for pro-life and pro-choice organizations, for religions, for rush limbaugh or michael moore (two sides of the same coin, with even equal mass to keep the universe balanced in every way), it's all a calculated exercise to exploit this weakness. mischaracterization, misinformation, disinformation, are all valuable tools for leadership. the organization in question just has to decide how much loss of integrity and credibility is worth winning the unquestioning hearts and minds of their target markets.

i suffer the same weaknesses, i feel those same pulls, i think we all do. my beliefs are strong, and they are liberal. but i want the side i'm on to be better. i'm not willing to win playing by the same dirty tactics employed by the other side.

this pains me more than almost anything else about us as humans - when are we going to ditch all that and really demand truth, and shape our beliefs and actions on truth, rather than try to create truth to match our beliefs and actions? when will we get that it is, at the end of the day, about exercise the compassion and intellect and integrity that we accuse our opposition of lacking?

until we do, we will not see real change, just sharp and jarring swings of a pendulum that will continue to lay waste to any humanity caught in its path. and the said thing is, we will deserve what we get.

Posted by Rob at 09:15 AM | Comments (5)

August 16, 2006

stand by

ok, ok, look - i've been busy. been tryin' to be disciplined about the running. been helping folks with their own business. been dealing with people.

right now, i feel like i'm well centered, but like everyone around me has lost their damned minds. like, finally, i'm at the barycenter of this system of friends, who are all spinning and flailing wackily around me.

so, tomorrow, i'll get something put up, here. i'll tell you why i now hate moveon.org as much as fox news. soon, i'll tell you why marketing people piss me off. i might talk about the fact that pretty much everything i say or write to someone seems to piss them off, which is never my intent.

but right fucking now, i'm going to read my douglas coupland book, which is already one of my favorites, and then going to sleep.

Posted by Rob at 11:34 PM | Comments (1)

August 10, 2006

just

why did i even ask the questions, about this, about anything?

is it too much?
what will it say?
what if it's wrong?
will my parents raise hell?
what will they think?

did adam or eric or wade or phil (panther) ask those questions? no. but that's why they're them, and not me, and why in so many ways, because of the biggest and the most mundane decisions they've made, they seem so far ahead.

they just do. they have their fears, too, but theirs don't seem set so far back, so primitive, so stunting. they are people, with lives they created, with personalities actualizing by the day.

they do. and it's all i've ever wanted - to be me, to act out the choices generated by who i am, who i want to be, and who i can be.

the voices have been there all my life, but i've always asked the questions, and let the fears rule. but, the voices persisted:

get up and sing.

tell them what's wrong with you.

let the voices out.

get in the car and drive.

ask her for her number.

pick up the shaver - it'll grow back.

run, just run.

tell her you love her.

tell her you don't.

don't quit.

quit.

say "no more."

say, "this is not who i am."

say, "look, this is me."

find a new job.

handle the ball.

take the shot.

live.

this is yours.

this is mine.

tonight, i got home, full of courage not only from the alcohol at the happy hour, but from the undeniable force of recent events, of all the voices in my past that tried to encourage me to listen to and obey my own voices, of new voices in my life that have found me and buoyed me in these past few months.

tonight, i got home, showered the salt off of my skin from the run. i want to see some of my old football coaches. they wouldn't recognize me. i play and coach basketball. i run marathons. i'm not fast, but i can push myself harder and faster than i ever could. soon, i'll coach others to do the same, to listen to their own voices, the ones that tell them to run, to believe in what they want to accomplish, to believe in what their bodies and minds and hearts can do, to not accept what they've been told, what they see in the mirror, what they believe they can do.

tonight, i got home, showered, ran my fingers through my still-wet hair, got out, turned up radiohead playing in the other room, pulled down the small black bag, and in minutes, all my doubt lay dark and lifeless in the sink. it was all shed with a sort of anger, it all fell away with a sense of relief and release.

it's only hair.

but this - this is my life.

it's all i have.

Posted by Rob at 01:40 AM | Comments (9)

August 09, 2006

frog and drum

i bought this birthday card for a friend. i'm not entirely sure why. for one thing, i suppose, i hate buying cards for people. i rarely want someone else speaking for me. they often say too much, in which case i just wish they would shut the hell up. so i often default to something incredibly stupid, like "Hey, There Buddy! You're Seven! Spongebob Says Have SPONGY Birthday!"

when i saw this card, i picked it up only so i could be disgusted with whatever inanity i was sure to find inscribed in it. yet, inside, it said only "Have A Great Day!"

i thought at least there would be a joke, albeit a horribly painful one, to pull the whole thing together. i mean, it's a frog with a drum. why? why, god, why? i do understand that the frog is clearly playing the drum to pay some sort of rhythmic tribute to the celebration of the anniversary of the cardee's birth.

that much i get.

but we're still left wondering, why this frog? or perhaps better yet, why a frog at all? and why would a frog play a drum?

"Have a great day!" clears nothing up. i was hoping for something like, "Hey! you're a tad(p)older!", thought even that would fail to explain the frog's choice of a percussion instrument. OK, more correctly, the artist's choice of a percussion instrument.

unless, of course, the artist really did see a frog playing a drum, and merely rendered an accurate depiction of the event, in which case the artist was most likely hallucinating.

a hallucination would explain a lot, including the artist's choice to mate said image of drum-playing frog with a birthday greeting.

but then one can't help but ask, why would a greeting card company go along with such a strange theme? surely they would ask question, sit back and ponder the card, maybe run it past their spouses, parents, and/or gerbils for some sort of approval. at least they might have changed the message to something that would, as i said, pull it all together - perhaps, "I toad you I'd drum up a birthday party!"

do you see? was that so hard?

of course, this all begs the question of why i would choose to look at, buy, and deliver this card to someone, thus continuing a chain of questionable decision-making that began with an imaginary hallucinatory amphibian picking up a drum, which an artist then painted, and chose to portray in a birthday card, which some company decided to market, and some store decided to stock because someone would buy it regardless of how little sense it makes.

clearly, i am just one in a chain of patsies in a scheme with no immediately clear aim, which frightens me all the more...

Posted by Rob at 12:47 AM | Comments (5)

August 08, 2006

pee is for "pirate"

when my friend suggested we see the new pirates of the caribbean movie a couple of weeks ago, i was considerably underwhelmed, and once again, i didn't really know why. granted, i have always believed that jerry bruckheimer is the cinematic Anti Christ. on the other hand, i'm a huge johnny depp fan (in a very straight way, of course) and there's absolutely nothing less than wonderful about looking at keira knightely, at least as she was before i broke off our short relationship and she stopped eating.

i have no feelings about orlando bloom.

almost all my friends, without exception, raved about the first pirates of the caribbean movie, and i had no cause to doubt them. i've even had the dvd for almost a year now, left at my apartment by a friend. i've thought about watching it, really i have, but it just never seems to have happened.

i never really thought about it, but i just haven't had much interest in pirate movies. i figured that maybe i just didn't like period pieces - i don't generally watch westerns, either, unless they're, you know, porno westerns. even then, i'd rather watch sci-fi porn.

it could also be that i'm not a great swimmer, and i get anxious about the movie theater sinking. i also imagine ships as very smelly places, and it's hard for me to get excited about characters with poor hygiene.

but, in the spirit of not so much compromise as martyred resignation, i agreed to go see the movie. we went to the alamo drafthouse at the vilalge shopping center, a theater that serves food and drinks while you watch movies.

we ordered a bucket of beer. the movie's opening was very Bruckheimerly overwrought and overstylized, during which i consumed most of my first beer. once things got going, though, i was pleasantly surprised and entertained, and i decided that perhaps bruckheimer may live, if he only does movies that are supposed to be patently absurd, that you expect to be filled with an exhausting chain of progressively more challenging and ludicrous events, and where the laws of physics do not apply. i'm not one of those critics that hitchcock called "the Implausibles," that fail to get that they're watching a fantasy, but people like Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, in their respective roles as producer and director, just go too far.

but i digress.

an hour into the movie, i realized all the iced tea was catching up with me, but i was still entertained enough that i didn't want to miss anything. i waited, and the longer i waited, i felt some ancient and anxious memory began to poke at the back of my brain.

i found a moment that was going to probably be more moot exposition than comedy or action, and made my break for the restroom.

while i stood at the urinal, a couple of kids came in, probably eight to ten years old each. the kid that stepped up to the urinal to my left was a little hyper, and was looking around and probably not paying a lot of attention to what he was doing. i drew my left foot in closer, and completed my own task quickly, flushed and stepped away. i think my caution was well warranted.

and then, it occurred to me, in a rush. i had never repressed the memory, but the only connection i had ever made was to navy blue dress pants, and not to pirate movies. suddenly, it all made sense.

in 1975, when i was six, my parents opened a short-lived little shop in the very same shopping center, selling imported antiques and wares from africa and asia. the village cinema was a four-screen quasi-tudor monstrosity in the shopping center's parking lot.

one summer day, the theater was showing Treasure Island, the old 1950 Disney version. i can't remember much from before or after the movie. i think my mom walked me over and got me in, and came to get me afterwards. i know it was the first movie i saw by myself. and, i remember i was wearing a pair of navy blue probably polyester pants. i think i sat in the front row.

i remember flashes of the movie. i remember johnny hawkins taking up with long john silver and his crew. i remember parrots and lots of old british guys with apparently poor hygiene. i remember the bluish tint of the aging film, particularly during the nighttime scenes.

most importantly, i remember having to go. really bad. i think i was enraptured by the movie. i remember seeing the ship tossed about in the storm. it was quite exciting.

water. lots of water.

some of it warm.

in my pants.

my navy blue probably polyester pants.

like i said, i don't remember the aftermath. i'm pretty sure i saw the rest of the movie. i guess i should ask my mom to fill in the blanks in my memory, but i'm not entirely sure i actually want to, not without a stiff drink in hand.

all my life, i've had an aversion to navy blue, particularly in materials that approximate that sort of wide-weave look of those particular probably polyester pants. i would never own a navy blue suit or pants. i have a pair of navy blue running shorts, and i wish i had gone for black or grey.

and, apparently, on top of factors like characters with poor hygiene, the inability to swim, jerry bruckheimer, russell crowe, etc., i don't like pirate or sea-going movies because i equate them with pee-soaked navy blue probably polyester pants, and all the quiet shame that goes with them.

it all makes me wonder why i don't like westerns, aside from the lack of air conditioning and characters with poor hygiene, but i'm kind of afraid of what i might discover.

who wants pudding?

"everything is music."