Weirdo turned pro.
Saw this hipster setup walking around today (6 miles before work!). A plastic Virgin Mary rests on the leopardskin backseat of a Ford Galaxie 500. Mr. Springsteen, assuming you see this photo and write a song, put your contact info in the comments so my agent can contact you about the royalty check.
‘Cloud Gate’ by Anish Kapoor (also known as The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium ParkOn a plane headed home. Four and a half hours to kill. Groggy. I typically have trouble sleeping the night before traveling. Not with worry, but wondering if I should dash out and do one more thing in a famous place I may never see again. Flush away the minor concerns of sleeping and packing and proper sleep. Grab the supply of the wines of experience to fill my brain and have it swirl around in the hope that between my eyes and the cheat of a camera it will stain the walls or its residue will settle at the base of memory to give an aroma when scratched.
I packed in stages. Made up one last jaunt. Came back to the room and packed some more, then split the difference: stayed in the room and selected photos with their subdued colors (Chicago was overcast, but mild, the whole time) and lack of depth and sound and smell and motion and will and posted them to share. Wrote terse captions while my sense of geography and paths were fresh. Fell asleep after 2:00 a.m.
Woke up at 5:30. Push-ups. Shower. Wimbledon on television. Reviewed the comments on the posted photos and videos. Enjoyed the attention but also the reward of delivering the boon of new visions or evoking memories for some people who are dear, others I’ve not seen in decades, still others I’ve never met or have spoken with for scant seconds or minutes. An exhaling gust at my deeds and my people. I turn on my heel and remove the shaman robes and set them on the rack, or hand them to someone else to don. Can’t recall if the robes are in a closet or another’s possession. I had to pack, and only know the robes did not drop to the floor.
I get to airports at least two hours early. It’s prudent, but also to get through security and take strolls up and down concourses to get some exercise into a day of being launched across states and time zones, but while sitting on my ass.
An actor from a cult t.v. show (Michael Horse – Tommy “Hawk” on ‘Twin Peaks’) popular 20 years past walked by, slightly hunched, into the Men’s Room. Wiry white hair to his shoulders. Blue denim jacket with a patch of a white hand making the peace sign, words “American Indian Activist” over that logo. He looked well, and not visibly anxious about being in public. I let him go pee instead of saying “Hey!”
On the plane as it ably performs its aeronautical miracle of transport, but the cabin air is hot and muggy. The air nodules in the console above offer no cooling, allowing minimal airflow like pointing a body-temperature, sustained, stink-free dilated fart lasting several hours.
Big gourmet headphones (not Bose!) clamped over my head, I am surrounded by rectangles. This journal. Book of poetry on my lap but under the seat tray. When Music player wedged between my legs piping about an hour of The Western Canon audiobook (a chapter about Marcel Proust) before I switch to Québécoise chanteuse Martha Wainwright trills and torches Piaf songs ably and with a full voice she does not commit to her own songs. One bar of organic fair trade chocolate in my belly, another bar of another kind in my bag at my feet. Laptop in that bag. Portfolio holding notes and outlines of a writing project. Kindle. Powered-down smartphone in my bag (pssst… you don’t truly have to shut it down, the crew only needs that for your attention during the tender take off and landing phases – so says science and airline pilot columnists). Girl two seats down jumping from movie to movie on her parents’ laptop. Rows of monitors mounted above us play the CGI cartoon film Rango and I wonder if someone in an airline meeting room raised a hand and suggested they routinely calibrated their monitors. Am guessing that person was shut down by a bean counter or a philistine boss who sees no problem with wildly different hues, washed out or blown out colors that look nothing like what artists and other billion dollar companies intended. The same kind of philistine who thinks the wide screen HD televisions with murky non-HD programs look just fine so long as the stretched image fits the whole screen even with people looking like squat blotchy toads. Usually within minutes in a hotel room I’m trying to circumvent the pokey Fisher Price remote and leaning behind the t.v. searching for buttons or knobs to make the window to the world or to fantasy look normal.
I have a fever. Wish they would hook up the apertured fart vents above us to a frost giant. Can I roll down the window? Frost along the edges show it’s nice and cool outside.
Was in Chicago the last four days. Each day was occupied from morning to early evening. At night, time was my own.
I’ve never been to New York City. I’ve been to Los(t) Angeles multiple times but vague on what “Los Angeles” is. I was thrilled to be in Chicago for the first time. Daunting history both known and unknowable. Tall, dense architecture. Great weather. Walked around about 25 miles in three days. Weather was cloudy, colors in photos subdued, but the air was mild and ideal for strolling.
Took an L train line to the projects in South Side. Foolish to wear an expensive(ish) camera slung around my neck? Blocks of concrete grounds and grass overgrown in the cracks. Citgo gas stations with people hanging out all around the grounds. Sitting and leaning against their cars, some on their car hoods. Loud music. Conversations and boasts and teasing and conferral about errands and later plans. Growing up in Oregon, it is just about impossible to find any city block without white people. For about a mile from the Garfield station to the University of Chicago no other white people, no Latinos, either. I trotted across streets, but kept a normal pace otherwise. Didn’t have time to go through Hyde Park or Washington Park (it was 8:00 p.m. when I got there) but wished I could.
I wanted to museum the brains out of Chicago real, real hard. Museums closed at 5 p.m. Closest I got was walking into the Chicago Cultural Center where I snapped the above photo (and about 80 more). Small galleries, beautiful domed roofs.
It’s fun to spend that much time in completely new geography, open to whim, deep in your own self-reliant mind but also distracted from drawing too inward by the excitement of the sounds and sights.
But, to be honest, I missed having someone else to turn to and get their thoughts and cast light from different angles on all of these new things. It would have meant traveling more slowly, touring decisions by committee, but the conversations, moments of standing in place and taking things in would have been deeper, more informed, richer.
I want to come back to Chicago.
It was a mad and gloomy walk, though less than Abraham and Isaac’s.
I had to get back to that patch of dirt, now mud, in the thunderstorm.
Crackling random nearness of the lightning bolts. Warm, demanding, saturating rain.
In cars growing up I would ride with a friend and we would chase down thunderstorms, what a cool way to die, we’d laugh, but we meant it.
Had a lightning bolt struck the car, BARROOMMMED next to us, us teens, we’d have been as blissed as panicked. Up hillsides we’d be close to eye level with the storms and sidle up to the churning forces. Hey.
Harrumphing now, as a man, in my mad and gloomy walk through the deluge I knew I would prevail on the way there, I would get there like a salmon to its ground unless nature escalated. I reached the patch of mud, once dirt, and knew it would be dirt again. I stood on my place. Mine. I would likely never return to it after looking around this last time. Over my shoulder, with a nod bequeathing it to all others in existence by my grace. The gusts and the light and the drama and bursts of rattling noise and the blanketing rain and the ripe damp saturation of everything made my mind quiet. Nothing left to keep dry. My thoughts and wants and memories and wishes no longer had to crackle and rumble and whisper and whoosh – the world was that all around me. Thoughts were a stone on the surface of the water, above the ripples.
Clothes including the boastful, now hubristic waterproof Gore-Tex jacket were soaked and so pointless the only thing keeping them on was modesty.
I still like walking in inclement weather. Boastworthy in a “How’s the weather?” chitchat the day of the walk. But mostly a leaning forward into hard circumstance. Make things wild and harsh, dear Nature (within endurable measure), and grant an interval of peace within.
While Autumn is my favorite season, June is my favorite month. Even though half of it is lost to the school year, that pivot point in the middle of June is part of its charm. June means the freedom of the summer starting before the tedium of too much unstructured freedom sets in. Winter and spring are spent looking eagerly to June.
The weather gives the promise of solid warm sunny days ahead, but not so many or so hot that bitching about the heat is the first thing people say to each other.
In June, July and August are still ahead and you can think “Two months of awesome freedom ahead! What can I DO in this incipient bounty of self-determined time and leisure?”
The days are longest. People look their best. We collectivly brim with optimism. The world is brightest in June.
Ended up watching/listening to this whole thing. ‘Twas nice, but for the umpteenth time when viewing/reading/listening to an object kept pondering: “Would I be giving this so much attention if the person were not beautiful?” More than Eros at play — a hope that when someone has both beauty and talent, an aspiration that our species is capable of advancement. A little thrill at yielding to such people/moments obsequiously. Interested in your thoughts.
I love the cello. It’s the classical instrument I’d most like to play.
When looking at the cosmic membrane that gets pressed in one place, to rise in another, it looks like the Mormon Church bankrolling the shitty, hateful Proposition 8 in California is responsible for the revenge of The Book of Mormon musical triumphing on Broadway.
Studying Mormonism was a hobby back in the early 90s, and The Book of Mormon hits on a LOT of the absurdities of Mormon cosmology. Men get their own planets in heaven, the Mormon President speaks to god, Joseph Smith transcribed the contents from golden plates he never allowed anyone to see. But there’s simply too much idiocy – leading to authentic human misery – for even one musical to cover. The song “I Believe” performed on The Tony Awards packs a bunch of ’em in, though. In the plot Elder Price is one of two missionaries assigned to Uganda for his mission and he has to deal with violent warlords and an AIDS-ridden culture in which many people with AIDS feel if they have sex with a virgin their AIDS will go away.
Among the things left out of the musical? Satan and Jesus as brothers. Joseph Smith was a convicted con man before his “revelation”. Bigamy. Constant divine revelations about purely bureaucratic matters – though the musical does have instances of people making up doctrine and revelations right on the spot.
A single line in “I Believe” touches on the generations of doctrinal racism “I believe that in 1978 god changed his mind about black people.” The whole book is horribly written (yes, I read it once) in the style of a mock King James Bible. Did Jesus come to the Americas? Check. Was a lost tribe of Israel running around the Americas? Sure, why not!
All embarrassments to humanity now. What’s additionally unforgiveable is the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints Bachman-Turner Overdrive is their bankrolling the forces that passed Prop 8 in California. Is there any issue in our country MORE OBVIOUSLY DOOMED TO HATEFUL OBSCURITY than banning homosexuals from full legal rights, including marriage? The arguments are exactly the same as those who stood against mixed-race marriages. Those bigots ALSO cited holy writ (which is always POORLY writ and never, ever holy) to make their case. “Based on my book of made-up nonsensical rules from a barely literate dolt…”
The Book of Mormon musical on Broadway is the artistic community dragging the silly Mormons into the light for ridicule. Long overdue. Hopefully the light will exercise Mormonism from otherwise considerate, compassionate people who will realize they don’t need generations of compounded flimflammery to be nice people. They are already nice people.
Saw ‘X-Men First Class’ with the family tonight after a dinner of noodles. Movie was fine. James MacAvoy used the phrase “groovy mutation” TWICE in the movie, which is pretty boss. Not a Marvel kid growing up, more DC, but I could recognize most of the characters.
I cannot read your thoughts with mittens on.
But, ugh, two black characters and one of them turns to the bad guys (Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz’ daughter – her celeb pedigree very obvious) and the other dies in service to the other characters. Ugh.
Exiting the theater, we had driven in separate cars. Which kid would ride with whom? I mimicked the movie and said to the kids they could choose the side of cooperation, hope, and peace and follow me, Charles Xavier or their mom, militant and forging a new path like Magneto. Son chose me, daughter my spouse (the usual arrangement) but spouse said that if ANYONE was Magneto, it was me. Family agreed. In the movie lobby, I pulled my shirt over my head so only my face poked out from the neckhole I said: “Stop trying to READ my MIND!” Son came up next to me and did the same. The telepaths thus foiled, they headed to the car on the other side of the mall.
Strolling with my son through the mall, I looked down at his 11 year-old self and saw he was already acquiring an adolescent shuffle and slight slump, hands in pocket, a running stream of verbally summarizing everything. I realized I would not be looking down at him much longer. In the parking lot again, as he was talking about the Wilderness Survival-themed daycamp he was at today, he glanced up at me and I got a glimpse of the teenager to come, but also over that the man he would be someday. I beamed proudly at him. He smiled back and continued with his story. Got in the car, I let him sit in the front seat on the ride home (still a thrill for him).
Okay, January Jones. Betty Draper was a MARVELOUS character the first two seasons of ‘Mad Men’ and she has not had as much to chew on the last two seasons. But, she was a SEXPOT character in ‘X-Men’ with lots of skin and heaving bosom. Is there any actress so beautiful and yet so astonishingly unsexy? Not repellent, but the constant effect of looking at her is: admiration, then feeling I should feel stirred, and yet Eros sits on the floor eating a sandwich. A phenomenon bordering on the medical.
Dear Hollywood —
I would pay money to see a Magneto: Nazi Hunter movie.
After getting breakfast ready for the kiddos I sat down with the morning newspaper and a whole wheat toaster waffle. I slowed down at the obituary section and saw a lengthy entry for S with two photos and an extended tribute to her life and family. Interesting to see the intervening 18 years or so filled by a few paragraphs, but helpful in getting a sense of her complete life as I’ll be attending her memorial on Saturday with long-dormant friends. But an online component was something I’d not engaged with before.
The newspaper obit gave a link to a website, Caringbridge.org, which provides a place for patients and their families to tell their stories.
This morning, the page for S shared about her six-year bout with cancer, its remission, and re-emergence a year ago after it spread to several organs. It described a series of treatments and her courage and photos of her with her three children, husband, and some with her undergoing treatment including a brace on her head for removing a tumor in her brain.
All of the content described her in the present tense, as it was last updated before she died. There was a video consisting mostly of a photo montage of her over the last few years, and ended with a shot within a car driving, trees alongside both sides of the street near her home with orange ribbons on them. “All of this for me?” was the caption. No voice, no faces. Only the line of trees moving by as viewed from behind the windshield.
Tonight that has been scrubbed, with details by her spouse Peter about her death and cremation that happened at 4:00 p.m. today. Also newly posted: info about the funeral Mass for her Saturday, and a party following after the orange ribbons are ceremoniously removed by children associated with S and her family/friends. Not looking forward to the Mass. Organized religion interferes with the very human need to gather and confer and share with its self-serving mumbo jumbo and unprovable delusions that hold our species back. In truth, such moments are deeply meditative for me, as I try to ignore the propitiations the robed figure burbles and instead listen/watch for the genuine humanity that shines through.
In going to the newspaper’s website tonight the obituary section is full of ways for people to express themselves with tributes, signing an online guest book, sharing the obit out, ordering flowers, sending a gift, ordering a copy of a death certificate (weird), and making a donation (though not to the one specified by S and her family – a generic charitable organization lookup).
While the extensive text of the obit and both photos were also online, the effect is really noisy. Yet, it makes sense, with obituaries online, that people would want services and online tools tied into it. With deaths, I’m accustomed to direct interactions and commisseration with others in-person, quiet, perusal of memories, laughter at moments of fond honesty, listening to eulogies or giving them, and not having technology in the hand, lap, or in front of the face. Death and grief and wakes have been strictly real life. Hands, embraces, nods, tears, smiles, laughter, celebration and NOT typing and mouse clicks.
But for people not able/inclined to be at a specific place and time, having something like that online is better than nothing. it would let people contribute or participate preceding or following a service. I wonder how long her family will get notices of people encountering news of her death online weeks, months, years hence.
There have been businesses around that offer a service of managing/deleting your online materials and accounts after death. Again, sensible when pondered from a distance, but inescapably ghoulish.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: Despite the somber tone of these last few entries, life and mind skitter around. All day I’ve had the WiiFit music that accompanies the Basic Step aerobics workout. All day. Kicking again right now.
While sad for extended friends about S who knew her better, I’m not distraught. A dear friend recently got some bad news that is on my mind more. It’s a commonplace to observe as you get older you start turning to the obituaries first. Today was my first step in that territory. Seeing these elements to modern death is slightly interesting, but will also serve as an orientation/scouting trip for when a death occurs that hits closer to home.
This Friday night I’ll be meeting with friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in person in decades. That will be good and am looking forward to it.
Facebook will be a boon in that we have had opportunities to have some slight updates on how our respective lives have been going. We won’t have to start from scratch, and can even have some “What the HECK was going on with that POST?” conversations. They’re all good people. It will be a good time.
The occasion is sad. The death of a mutual friend, S. Some of us hadn’t spoken with her for almost twenty years. Others saw her just a few weeks ago on her birthday. On Saturday, the lot of us will be attending a Catholic memorial service for S. We may be hanging out some more afterward.
Other than the memorial, we will be amusing. We will be somber and reflective. We’ll be assessing our own lives as we get updates and ask questions of each other. My guess is that as our extended circle is now smaller by one person, our remaining connections will grow a bit stronger and deeper. We’ll be the better for it.