A Brobdingnagian Splotch

Jupiter, brobdingnagian gasbag of the solar system, has a gargantuan red spot. And when I say gargantuan, I mean titanic. A few planets, including Earth, could spin within its roiling vortex, which, to me, looks irate. Yes, Zeus is livid, who knows why, but he confines his fury to a single splotch, a hurricane of ire, gigantic to us but a pinwheel to him, while clouds of happier thoughts glide by in serene bands. If only we could all have our own red spot, a mental whirligig to confine our churning agitation to, while peace reigns in the rest of our sphere.

Connecting the Dots: Trumpisms

Donald Trump keeps saying "I will tell you this" before he tells us something. I take it as an admonition to engage my skepticism. But maybe I should preface my own portentous utterances with a similar throat-clearing mini prologue, in case I say something stupid -- a fair warning. Something like "Let me say this about that" (another unpopular president's favorite preamble) or just "now hear this!"

Much Ado about NOTHING

All of 34 degrees (1.111 C) right now. Summer seems a long way off in these frigid days. Here's something I wrote a few years ago and came across again recently. It helped me to remember what warm weather is like.

~~~

Last night: It was hot, the windows were open and my next-door neighbor was playing his tabla, a percussion instrument used in classical Indian music. (He's not Indian, by the way.) I didn't mind. It made me think of my college days, when I used to listen, occasionally, to Ravi Shankar albums, which made me feel sultry and international—never mind any subzero temperatures outside. This despite the fact that I had (and have) no real understanding of this type of music. It was just a sound to me, useful for changing the mood of a room or a situation. Perhaps this was a form of passive imperialism, an exploitation of another culture's musical heritage to create a faux-sophisticated aural wallpaper. (Although I'm sure Shankar appreciates his Western album sales, however clueless his fans are about what they're listening to.) Last night it was too hot to bother with such qualms. My mind was empty--a blank, a tabula rasa. Or a tabla rasa.

Random Sequence

I began to notice something peculiar about the other drivers. Some were getting out of their cars and talking to each other as if they were friends. And most of them didn't look like rural upstaters but instead like hippies -- long-haired, tie-dyed, multi-generational hippies -- a class of people I thought had pretty much vanished decades ago. This was beginning to feel like a bizarre dream.

"What the hell is going on?" I thought. I rolled down the window, intending to ask one of the passing "freaks," a guy in sandals wearing a yellow T-shirt that said "Play Dead," if he knew what the holdup was. Before I could say anything, he flashed a grin and asked, "You going to the Dead concert?"

"Uhh, no," I said, feeling confused. The Dead? The Grateful Dead? Weren't they...dead?
--from "A Long, Strange Trip" (by me), originally published in Hudson Current

Random Sequence

The cats and squirrels still come and go as they please, but that isn't a problem -- except that they keep tripping our backyard motion sensors after dark.

The sensors were installed by the previous owners, who were a bit paranoid. At odd times, the floodlights will click on, and the yard will suddenly light up like a miniature nighttime soccer field. I still haven't figured out where the motion sensors are or how to turn them off -- or whether I should. Who knows how many burglars scuttle away like scared roaches every time those lights snap on?
--from "My Backyard" (by me), originally published by Hudson Current

Much Ado about NOTHING

Free Money

I looked down and there it was: a small, folded piece of green and gray paper on the sidewalk, with the number 20 printed on one corner. The Victorian font made it look like a twenty-dollar bill, but I doubted it. Probably a coupon or an advertisement for some 900-number phone-sex scam, I thought, picking it up (just in case). I unfolded it, and there he was: Andrew Jackson with his shock of wind-swept hair, looking more like a mad scientist than a 19th-century president. A real twenty -- or was it? I held it up to the sun, half expecting it to be counterfeit. The ghostly little hologram of Jackson's face appeared. Genuine. What luck! Right away, as I stuffed it into my pocket, I began to feel guilty. Who had dropped it? Probably some cash-strapped single mom with a squalling baby to feed. I thought about spending it, saving it, donating it to charity, or even dropping it. Surely someone more deserving than middle-class me would find it, someone who regularly stooped to pick up all the lost pennies I was too lazy to retrieve from the sidewalk. Before I could decide, I arrived back home from my walk. Ambivalence, my old enemy, had triumphed again. Only this time I was $20 richer in defeat. For now, the improbable bill resides in my wallet, in my back pocket. I'm sitting on it, warming it, thinking about it, but I'll probably forget about it sooner or later. And it will disappear, like all the others, into some merchant's cash register. Easy go.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Do real men wear "lounge pants"?

In a clothing store I frequent, I see "lounge pants" on sale for men. These are plaid pants made of thin cotton fabric with draw-string waists. They look like pajama bottoms. Do any guys reading this actually wear these? My "lounge pants" are usually sweat pants (or "sweat" shorts in hot weather). That's what I wear to bed and for any lounging I do when I get up in the morning or am near bedtime. I don't really have a lot of leisure time, and don't feel the need to be specially attired for it when I do have it. And I've always thought that draw-string waists look very silly on men, unless they are yoga instructors or something.

But perhaps I'll buy some lounge pants. They're quite cheap, and maybe they'll inspire me to carve out more leisure time, somehow, from my 12-hour work days. I'll stop and smell the roses, wearing lounge pants.

Much Ado about NOTHING

I'm not sure why, at this point, people still want to go to Mars. The environment there makes Antarctica seem like the Garden of Eden. In all the pictures the rovers send back, there isn't a single plant visible, not even the tiniest cactus. The atmosphere contains very little methane, which would be present in significant quantities if life was present, even if underground. (So forget about sand worms.)

Despite looking deceptively like parts of Arizona, it's not a place where anyone could walk around without a spacesuit. Whatever running water was present disappeared billions of years ago, along with most of the atmosphere. So, it's a dead world -- even if we do discover a bacterium or two there someday. It would be incredibly dangerous for humans to travel there, something that would require months with current technology. If anything went wrong, there would be no chance of rescue -- which was true of the moon landings too, but the moon is only three days away by rocket ship, so there was much less time for something to break.

Just keep sending robots, I say, until we discover something like a warp drive or anti-gravity propulsion, and can get there and back in a few hours. Then we can collect all the precious Martian rocks we want.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Legalities

I spent some time at my lawyer's office today, so I could sign my "Last Will and Testament" -- yes, the document really is called that. Just like on TV and in the movies, it stated, among many other things, that I was of "sound mind", which is mostly true, I guess. Anyway, I signed, and even learned a new word: stirpes, which has to do with the method of dividing an estate if the beneficiary of the will dies... uhh, you don't want to know.

The semiotics of the legal office's conference room were interesting. I had plenty of time to study them while waiting for the official document to be presented and witnessed. On one wall was a painting of a group of posh-looking people in riding gear and on horseback, during a fox hunt. On the opposite wall was a black-and-white photograph of a group of construction workers eating lunch while seated on a girder high above Manhattan. I suppose the message was that the lawyers serve both upper-crust and working-stiff clients in need of legal representation. I must be somewhere in between or outside of those classes, because I didn't identify with either portrait.

On top of an imposing bookcase full of legal tomes there was also a small photo of a kids' baseball team, apparently one the office sponsors. I felt more like one of them: smiling on the outside, but worried about strike three.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Magnetic Field

We must have had a windy winter. When I ventured out into my backyard for the first time in (what seems like) months last weekend, I found that it had been invaded by unidentified flying objects. By that, I mean -- not aliens or psy projections or whatever UFOs are -- but mysterious slabs of Styrofoam, anomalous aluminum beams, and large cardboard constructions of indeterminate purpose. It all has to do with the extensive remodeling job going on in the building next door, I assume. But our house is something of a magnet for flotsam and jetsam anyway. On the public sidewalk out front, I regularly find (and trash or recycle) things like other people's bank statements, children's apparel, expired lottery cards, postcards advertising salsa concerts, tiny "airline" liquor bottles, various sorts of food wrappers, and even, recently, a battered old analog TV set. Yes, I live in a city.

Much Ado about NOTHING

The Scab

I had an itch, and I scratched it. It bled. And there's a small scab on my forehead.

A couple of people have asked me "what happened? Did you walk into a door?" I said I was in a fight. I was jesting, but someone actually believed me. So I said "not really!" Somebody else said, "The'fight' story is so much better."

So, maybe I'll keep telling people I was in a brawl. If they ask for the details, I'll say, "I don't want to talk about it" in a pained voice. If they ask me if I won, I'll say "Of course! But I really don't want to talk about it" in an even more pained voice. And if they insist on knowing what the blowup was about, I'll just say, "Let me put it this way. I had an itch, and I scratched it" -- and let them assume what they will.

But I'll probably chicken out and say "not really!" I'd be terrible in a fight.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Zero Dark Oz

The only movies I've seen lately are Oz the Great and Powerful (in 3D) and Zero Dark Thirty. Quite a combination! One is Disney's overproduced, cash-in prequel to a classic film, and the other is a gritty, often horrific docudrama about the hunt for a terrorist, complete with grisly torture scenes. Simply as a mental exercise, I've been trying to think if these movies, which seem so utterly different on the surface, have anything in common. And guess what, they do!

1. Female characters (witches, a CIA agent) obsessed with an elusive and confounding male figure (a "wizard", Osama bin Laden).
2. Unusual settings: Islamabad and Oz, both of which seem like bad dreams -- for very different reasons.
3. People flying -- in bubbles and helicopters.
4. Explosions; they figure prominently in both stories.
5. Scenes with monkeys!

Yes, these films are actually quite similar when you think about it. It's as if the directors got together and compared notes. Even the titles mirror each other, if you use a cracked mirror: Oz, ZerO.

I'll wager I'm the only genius on the entire Internet to point out these curious similarities.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Snow today. We've had two snowstorms here already since early November, and it's not even officially winter yet.

I like winter -- but only when it's 95 degrees outside.

I said that today in a public forum, and a friend responded with "You're a man of subtle complexity". I guess that can be my epitaph. It's an interesting combo: subtlety and complexity. They're concepts you don't usually think of together -- like "sophisticated simplicity" or "quiet riot". They seem like contradictions on first hearing, but if you think about them, they're not.

But back to the weather. I also like summer when it's below freezing outside. I like fall in the spring and spring in the fall -- although those more subtle seasons don't often make me wish for the Earth to tilt a different way. Call me contrary. Call me perverse. Call me complex.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Well, I'm losing it; this has been a loooong day. Who says working from home is such a pleasure?

Instructions for a Bad Day

(1.) If the sun screen you erect in a tortured garden radiates a whorl of shadows, teardrop audits are in order. If balls of despair explode, a glass beaker will measure the outflow. Each milliliter equals one (personal) catastrophe.

(2.) You must sit far away from anyone who produces irritation fields, as these may induce sobbing and/or violent reactions. The mind should not be allowed to wander, due to its high sensitivity.

(3.) Place your thoughts at a distance from present surroundings, except in the following places: on steep hills, in dark tunnels, underground, or near sources of well-meaning interference.
Damp cellars must be avoided.

(4.) You will not experience ideal results under conditions of excessive antagonism, disgust, psychic vibration or emotional impact.

~~~

Ambiguous Moment

Does it have to mean something? The truth is, neither I nor
the others can really believe this has arrived: the half-remembered
self, the glance of light on every acute aspect of this
long-forgotten memory. This is our untied knot: the pale,
dying brightness that dilutes the afternoon landscape into a
monochromatic, ambiguous photo. Neither the gray hills nor
the blue sky relieve it, neither the blue nor the gray.

~~~

Blowing in from the West

You say this way is loaded with dangers, and I notice
the word "loaded." However, while they are implicitly
deeper than the result, they cling like black stickers
pasted to the sky. Up to this point, the echo, down
the corridors, passages and domestic interiors, has
been both connected and freely moving, and I'm
surprised by the places that are far from everywhere,
which move automatically to the outside. Can't you see?
Tomorrow is the time. Don't try to start the car or stop the
wrinkling of the sky. Don't try to block the cataract of tears.

Much Ado about NOTHING

The key has been found!

For months, I've been looking all over the house for my car key. It's a bulky little thing, with an electronic gizmo inside that locks and unlocks car doors like magic. Since I don't drive every day, I don't have it in my pocket most of the time. I used to keep it on top of my dresser, which is inside my closet, and one day it just seemed to vanish. I almost tore my closet apart looking for it, thinking that it had fallen down among the old Converses and dust bunnies. No luck. When I did need to drive, I had to use my wyfe's key, while wondering if I had somehow dropped mine in the street and would never see it again.

The other day, my wyfe was retrieving some blankets from an ottoman that doubles as a storage unit. Inside, under some blankets, she found the key. Neither of us knows how it got in there.

I'm beginning to wonder if my house is haunted.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Secondhand Smoke

No one in my household smokes. But when my wyfe's aunt died, we acquired all of her smoking paraphernalia. Included in the inheritance is a collection of mid-20th-century souvenir ashtrays from places like "Reno's Horseshoe Club", the Sahara and Aladdin Hotels in Las Vegas, and the La Sierra Motel in Tijuana. Yes, Aunt Betty lived out West and apparently made some pilgrimages to Sin City. She also left us a collection of matchbooks from the Stockyard Steak House, the Safeway Driving School, a place called Small World in Hollywood that sold both sandwiches and "color coordinated home accessories", and the Hotel Dupont Plaza in Washington, DC. It's not clear what she was doing in Washington, but she did get around. We've displayed most of this smoking impedimenta in our living room, so a casual visitor might think we smoke like chimneys. Not so. We just like to pretend it's 1965 and life is a little simpler sometimes.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Good Deed

There I was, walking down the street, lost in my vagrant thoughts, when out of the crowd came a desperate plea: "George! George!!"

A white-haired woman with thick glasses grabbed my arm and repeated "George!" Since my name isn't George, my first thought was that she was some kind of lunatic, or maybe a pick-pocket. She had quite a strong grip and refused to let me go. "I'm not--" I started to say, thinking that maybe she had mistaken me for someone else. But she interrupted with a lot of whimpering jabber in what sounded like an Eastern European language, and I began to wonder if it was really "George" she was saying, or just something that sounded like it.

Then she pointed across the boulevard, which was full of speeding traffic. I gathered that she wanted help crossing. Now, I was never a boy scout, and it was out of my way, but I've never in my life refused to help someone across the street. Always before, though, it has been someone handicapped or infirm who has asked me.

This woman, despite her age, appeared to be quite healthy enough to cross on her own, and in fact it was more like she was crossing me as we shambled across the boulevard. She pulled on my arm to hurry me up as the DON'T WALK sign began to flash. "OK, OK," I said, walking faster. All the way across she kept whining in a pitiful way, and I decided she must have a phobia about traffic or being hit by a car.

When we reached the opposite curb, I assumed my good deed for the day was done--but no. She pointed to the other side of the cross street and started saying "George!" again. My arm was still a captive, so I let her pull me across that street, too.

Finally, she seemed to be done with me, but before letting me go she murmured "nice man" a few times and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I watched as she toddled down the block to the next cross street, whereupon she grabbed another guy's arm. I wondered how many streets she would cross that day, and how many "Georges" she would find in this crazy city.

Much Ado about Something

Hmm, 10 years since "that day". My wyfe was in Building 7 of the World Trade Center on "that day". I was across the river, watching events unfold from the panoramic skyline views of Riverview Park in Jersey City, which was next to where I was living at the time. I don't feel like saying or writing much about it now, but I did back then, as many people did. Everybody has a story. You can read my nonfiction account, written in October 2001, here at the 9/11 Digital Archive.

Much Ado about NOTHING

The ongoing saga of my denticles.

9:00 AM: I recline once again on the chaise lounge of pain while dental hygienist "Mindy" invades my orality with various torture instruments, including a pick, a vacuum pump, and an electric sander, while shining a thousand-watt interrogation lamp in my eyes. As always, Mindy begins with some polite banter about current atmospheric conditions as she places a plastic pillow behind my head and swabs my gums with "numbing gel" (which never seems to dull my discomfort). We decide we can agree that we don't like cold weather.

Like all dentists and hygienists, she obtains a perverse pleasure out of asking me questions while my mouth is full of various apparatus. Mindy's favorite question is always "Are you alright?", which she will repeat at least a dozen times during the tribulation, to which I can only grunt a reply like some inarticulate caveman. I would prefer to keep my eyes closed while she roots around in my pie hole, but I know that will only elicit more inquiries as to my state of being: she'll think I've fainted.

So I keep my eyes open, trying not to stare at her nerd-girl face but rather to look out the window at midtown skyscrapers and rooftop water tanks. I try to imagine some twisted voyeur looking back at me through binoculars from a midtown office, taking a perverse pleasure in my distress: Let me entertain you. Then I notice that there is a tiny camera lens attached to the Kleig light that is illuminating my kisser. I'm afraid to ask why.

Periodically, Mindy commands me to rinse with a cup of water mixed with blue mouthwash. I swish and then spit the liquid, mixed with bloody smidgens, into the chair's receptacle. I imagine her watching videos this evening of my plaque removal.

10:05 AM: Finally she finishes with me and hands me a warm, microwaved face towel. "Just like being in a spa, right?" she jests.

"Not quite," I say, wiping my lips. She hands me a card commanding me to return for a repeat tormenting in June.

Much Ado about NOTHING

MMXI

Welcome to January. The streets are lined with melting snow mounds, slowly trickling into nonexistence. Pedestrians trudge single-file down narrow sidewalk trails, puddle jumpers resolving to cure millennial hangovers. Cars swish past at half speed, circling for spaces, for niches of nothing. Time's snail creeps its way down the darkening afternoon, groping toward yet another future. The old year's a ghost; the new one's nervous. What's that looming though the twilight? Is this the year? What kind of days are these? Questions accumulate at compound interest.

1/1/11