With this post, I've almost become: Phil, Blogger of Street Life! Almost. Please hold off on that appellation for a while okay?
Today outside of work, I was enjoying the cakey smell coming out of the food smell factory when three men squinted their way out of 13 Coins. That's a restaurant that can be described in one word: swanky. It's what any mobster would want to own when they rose high enough in the ranks. Swanky. Coins of the world embedded in plasticine tabletops. Swanky.
So these three guys were heavily invested in the power of their toothpicks. You might have thought that they were performing a do-it-yourself gum planing because of their grimaces. It didn't help that they were coming from the dark (of course) interior of the restaurant into the blazing Seattle sun. Yes, I said blazing Seattle sun.
Each of them looked at me with one of those "You lookin at me?" faces which I found reassuring. I would like to have followed them the rest of the day. At least long enough to find out what kind of cars they were driving. In my heart of hearts, I gotta pull for each of them rolling in a Crown Vic. That would have been the best.
You always rub up against people down on their luck when you walk around any downtown, Seattle included. This stark contrast between those in silk suits and those in grime is ever present. I find that an emotional hunk of me goes missing when I wonder too hard about their plight. If I really slip up, I'll start to imagine the events that might have brought them to this thin edge of living. Then I'll start the winless game of calculating how distant that edge is for me.
So no, I don't take heroin to cope. Yesterday, I was out on a sales call in downtown Seattle. Three wounded people- crippled, hollow and brittle -were walking in front of me. I could see them from just about all angles even though I was behind them because their various walking patterns swung their bodies wildly. I heard a lot of their conversation. It was about the pleasures of heroin.
I'm not going to relay the conversation but I was surprised with one snippet I heard. One of their tastings that drew universal acclaim had something to do with black tar heroin. They were as engaged in this conversation as any wine enthusiasts that I've met.
There must have been some thrill for me from eavesdropping. No visceral response, but I still spent time thinking about these men, how they wound up talking about heroin in the late summer sun.
The intrigue here was being present, seeing and hearing something foreign from real people, not a book, movie or NPR. It's the moment that a politican forgets that his microphone is live. It's that time that you catch your doctor smoking outside of a bar. It's when you visit someone and hear loud argument within their house before you enter. You witness and you move on briskly. That edge is somewhere nearby.
Funny day today. Some real disappointment was running through me.
One question ate at me more than others though: what am I doing with my gift of consciousness? I wrote a dear relation a tiny note about this. He's an inspiration who has spent a lifetime pushing to give himself to his world.
There, I just said it plainly enough: how do I give myself to my world?
Okay. I know that to ask such a high-flautin question means I'll arrive at no good conclusion. Something I saw this morning lodged inside me and have been with me all day. It seems related to questions of how I expend my self. During the a.m. portion of my funk, I decided that a decent cup of coffee was in order. There along my route was the ubiquitous leaf-blower man. He was using his leaf blower as the stiff wind surfed off the lake. Senseless.
I'm not making fun of him. I am him.
Autumn is coming in and the sun will exit more quickly each day. The clouds will soon dominate our view. Rain will become our currency. On many days, the falling leaves will need attention. I want to be able to tell the difference between the days and the leaves that have fallen. It doesn't sound tricky when you say it like that.
Ninety posts is a lot of posts. It's official. The website tells me so.
I just learned that my profile has been viewed 93 times.
The other day I picked up my fourth reader (Yea!).
It's a time of milestones that oneone could have anticipated. No one!
There isn't much of a point to the above. My foray into the methodical was to empower the egg-like creative troll-fairy that resides somewhere in my spleen. So far so good except for the sentence above. I have two hand-written letters in a technical pile front of me itching to receive postage and find their way into the world. Writing is everywhere!
For some giddy reason, I'm also going to tell you that I wrote a line or two that a fictional character whispered to me. Reality check: a whisper is not a novel. I don't know what this little appearance is. But it is another log on the fire, another oar dipped into the water, another rebar sunk into the dewy concrete of life.
Perhaps I'm garrulous tonight because I lack confidence, which is true enough. Novels: Big; Words, Phil: small. But the writing stream that I imagined for myself continues to meander forward just as I had imagined. That is bizarre and exhilirating.
This little party celebrates me keeping methodical. Left foot, Right foot. Rise and Shine. Rinse and Repeat. Divide and Conquer. Remember the Alamo! Okay, maybe Method broke down a bit there. But I wanted you faithful readers to share my bewilderment and joy at my mundane and snazzy (dare I say) learning curve.
It's a cliche and it is true. But tell me who gets it exactly right? Above is a picture of the scenic overlook that I've been painting lately. Because my tiny digital camera has only so many capabilities (as does its owner), the foreground green dominates. The world of complexity in the mountain layers is flat, distant, lost.
You can't see this week's painting directly but the photo of the painting is pretty good. The camera warps the perspective a bit and messes with the color register. I am fully willing to share the responsibility for this inability to capture what I see with my camera.
You'll note the lack of civilization in my picture. Well, civilization requires skill sets that I don't possess. You know what I mean: painting-wise!
A friend with little (no?) painting experience painted right along with me. I enjoyed having her there trying to catalog the thousand bugs that dropped on us under the rhododendron. It was similar to the giant bug scene in Kong. If I keel over dead tomorrow, I can assure you that it was one of the spiders.
She did a lovely version of the outlook which I hope pleased her. She's got a great eye for composition so I figured that she'd probably surprise herself. After all, it's just throwing paint onto paper. It can take us back to the times of working the crayons without lines or we can sweat some silly expectation about Art. Guess which side I'm on here.
I've been thinking about a number of things today. The topics boil down to Boundries, Snakes on a Plane and Expectations.
Many of you (okay, all of you three readers) expect me to try to weave these together so that there's some commonality between them. You are right! They are exactly the same thing. I'll stop writing now.
Okay, not really. I have to continue! Plus, I'm removing Snakes on a Plane. Just because I've been thinking about the head-scratching that's going on about its poor box office performance, doesn't mean that you want to hear it. So that leaves me with Boundries and Expectations. Oh my. I really can't bear writing about that. Just how serious can I be at this time of night? Let me sum: Boundries, mostly good. Expectations, mostly good too! If you don't agree, well okay. I give. It's the other way around.
Perhaps I'm tired because the work life has involved too much negotiation for my liking the past few days. Negotiating I've always found to be like filing: tedium enlived by the shiver of a paper cut. Huzzah for the diplomat and mediator, the psychologist, all those who specialize in wandering into the muddle. I could use any of their help right now; but I'll try eight hours of sleep before I start to dial the phone.
Tonight you're getting a agave-powered, personal blog. It's an entry that isn't sober but it has been with me for days and is flowing and I've wanted to write this tiny imagining everytime since first I smelled the the basil plants.
Trader Joes, fading flower of capitalism, has had huge, rude basil plants ($2.99!) most of the summer. These are giant, grasping things that you'd normally find bolting at the end of the growing season but miraculously are solid plants, not leggy.
I very much wanted Mary Jo and Grandma to visit among those basils, those smells, this summer. What would it have meant to them to come upon this bright green gift together- like holding hands? I can see Gram's eyes excited by the promise of elegant survival. Did she ever use basil for anything but canning? For Mary Jo, the distinctive smell would rush her into ancestral connections. I bet she can remember when they had that great tomato harvest in 1813 and they didn't have enough boards to sun dry all of them.
Somewhere together, Mary Jo and Gram live such a beautiful connection that most people are desparate to possess. It's a long call to belonging and a short walk to the garden of where we make sense of things. We think that the power to connect is so deep that the lucky ones have some sly understanding about how it works that the rest of us don't have. About this you can bet that MJ and Gram would say something like "You are so full of crap"
The truth is that each of us has something that looks back and springs forward and invites connection. Such a thing, an authority, is like carrying an extra weight. Nothing at first is as difficult or later becomes as easy as the thing that is native to you. Over time, you bear up, and you can heft those things that once weighed strangely.
I can't explain it yet but that's never stopped me before. It looks like boredom but it's more about the absence of stimulus, high or low. Not calm, which I am quite often, but impartial like a good judge. Weigh the evidence against the standards and make a ruling. (Dang you metaphors! Why don't you come to my assistance!?) Most of me thinks that this stall is part of the process of learning about myself. It's learning non-reaction to events that induce jitters. For example, fires would pop up in my business life, as they do. Occasionally, a supernaturally detached gray-hair, with his mop burning brightly, would react by saying, "So, let's discuss our next step." Mine was to stop, drop and roll on his ashy head. I didn't appreciate that it was a metaphor! His head wasn't burning! Nor does mine.
So maybe by "boredom," I'm saying that I no longer think that lighting my head on fire is being alive. It makes some sense then that I'd have to come up with a name for the absense of daily drama.
Boredom is a fit term but not neutral enough. "Detachment" is to zenny for me.
It's more like I'm in the middle of a large lake. There's little wind, few waves, my boat doesn't need anchor. That sounds pretty peaceful but it still seems more like a pause to me.
Like many (no excuse), I was visciously positive that one of the Ramseys killed their poor little girl. Their behavior was suspect. What had they twisted her into? They were suspect as humans and frankly, I judged them ugly in many ways. Jon-Benet was killed a long time ago and I was different then. The killer -it was an accident!- has been arrested. When I heard he confessed, I was kinda sick at my insistance that it had to be one (both?) of the parents. As they say on the cop shows, "I liked the mom for it."
Today, I shared my unease with a colleague who admitted that he had come to the same conclusion and was feeling just as bad as me. Two grown men, embarrassed at their hard judgement over what was really gossip in our world. That discomfort and sheepishness seemed like a fitting consequence. It would have been a great time for a giant adult (some parental who was 12 feet tall and 140 years old) to come by and flick our ears and say something like "That'll teach ya!"
Del Boca Vista, Potter-style, is in Phase II. Phase I is what you're reading right now. This blog has been a way to get me in training. Get me to the point so that I could stack a bunch of words on top of each other, day after day. Then when became routine, I'd arbitrarily increase the size of the stack, difficulty points and style factors.
The tactic is very similar to training for a marathon (at least in my fertile imagination). You run a bunch of smaller miles, then you can do the occasional large, ridiculous number of miles. Well, I'm already tired of this comparison.
Writing shares some qualities with running a marathon. Lots of lonely, daily work that's pointed toward an event that is over so quickly. But I think that it's more like taking a very slow walk each day while someone pokes you with a stick. If you do this day after day, you get to the point where you say: "Nothing special. Not getting anywhere at this rate of speed. The guy's not poking too hard today. Good times...." But each day you walk, you get a special magical token. Nah. I give up. I'm too tired to construct a decent metaphor. Anybody, please help me out here.
Let me try for simple: I listen to myself while I write this blog. That's it really. Attend and see what happens. Build the habit of words. Become a writer.
Now I feel like I've reached a certain level of fitness. Now I want to lace up some ideas and see where I go. Now I want to increase my pace a bit. This feels like my next phase. If the sequence is: sit, weeble, crawl, walk, run, run like hell, I'm probably between crawl and walk, or walk and run. Each phase gets differently demanding. This means no book length things yet. That's still in the future, somewhere between run and run like hell and ultramarathon.
I've got enough wind to just take off for a brief sprint. Remember how it feels when you're going so fast, you hear the wind in your ears? Well, with my plus-sized ears, it's probably easier for me to do that than you. But I'm waiting on that day when the blood will be pulsing in my head and I'm going full tilt. I will be a blur.
I am often amused. Maybe that is a stand in for disgust (as noted by Mr. Costello) or anger, but it's often just amusement to me. Strategic repetition, as any kids know, is a powerful device. Certain types of repetition for me transform what should be massively irritating into, you guessed it, an amusing diversion.
Here's a great example. Once every week or two, I receive a voice mail from an automated being who has some urgent business with...me? That's the hook. I know that the first name will be "Phil." Will the second ever be "Potter?" "Urgent business with 'Phil -pause- Shavers.'" (Dang, not me again!) If this is "Phil...Shavers" please call...." That's how it goes every time. Some anonymous, non-me Phil that someone desperately needs to speak to.
This has become a grand contest for me now. Everytime I hear that familiar automated voice, I'm ready to place my bet. If you need to be reassured, I'm not jonesing for a magic spin at the roulette wheel. I don't really need to have desperate words spoken to me. All I probably need to do is hit the "delete" button a bit more quickly.
I've been exhausting myself via metaphor. This must be some writing developmental stage somewhere between the Homeric catalog and the conceit. It's also a thinking stage, I think, that is a bit sexy, somewhat useful, usually deficient. Best left to the pros.
My current Blind Men and the Elephant moment has happened as I try to feel around for a way to describe how flexible I am and what I want to be. Not that my family, friends or employers are hot about this debate. There are thankfully natural limits to the curiosity of those who know you. People who don't have that limit are often called "psychopath," or "novelist."
I decided I'm flexible like a swinging gate. Great in that particular swing path - those are some greasy hinges!- but limited. But I don't want a gate or door, do I? That would reflect openness and acceptance. There are some things I do want to keep out so a door is probably good. Even better: a membrane that allows the right stuff to enter and can keep the wrong stuff out -flex- no matter how hard it's rammed into. So I want something plastic.
So my casita will have a white picket fence with an endoplasmic reticulum door.
See, this is why metaphors need to be worked by the pros. Almost every time I use a metaphor, this is where I end up: logical silliness. I bet that most writers conquered this slippery impulse in their teens. But, don't think I'm being too hard on myself. I do give myself some credit for trying to swing out of my thought path.
There was a tipping point among the recognized today. The result was a breezy participation ranging across the aisles, north and south. Talk about books, fashion and silliness kept the bus rolling. Even the strange and silent among us (I think I number among the silent) bumped out of our normal sway and listened along.
"Bus Buddy" was a term heard a few times during the overstuffed ride, like saying "Hey bro!" Names don't have to be memorized. Sharing them might be against protocol, maybe against Nature. These are strangers ultimately, no matter how winning their smile. I liked the tall thin standing guy who kept reaching out and grabbing people's stuff, looking it over and making funny comments. How did he do that without getting killed? Most everyone seemed amused, so I found myself amused too.
You can't choose your family; you can't choose who you ride the bus with. Just like I do with reunions full of unknown, distant relatives, I try to make the best of my commute. But at my stop, I jump off and make an urgent beeline for home. I find it reassuring to watch the green bus shrink away as my doorstep gets closer.
Two signs that I might need new glasses: I just noticed that Blogger.com is not having a scheduled outrage at 4 o'clock. Also, my confusion about Apple's "break" from feline operating systems (Tiger, Panther) was cleared up yesterday. The OS's name isn't Leopold like I thought.
Uakti (wah-key-chee is how you pronounce their name) is a Brazilian percussion group that I know about because of their recording of Philip Glass pieces. They play engaging, warm mostly handmade instruments. Judging from the album, very little pvc pipe remains for home remodelers where they live. Philip Glass loves these guys too.
I mention Uakti because I have missed them. I passed their cd on recently after supposedly burning a copy. Not quite a perfect job. I messed up and interlaced a blues album with it, which wasn't a bad mix. But it was not what I needed. Thankfully, Aguas has found its way back on my stereo and playing right now.
It's been years since I've yearned for music like this. The last tune I remember getting worked up about was "Losing My Religion." That was me in the corner! Really!
This collection feeds some deep hunger in me right now. The reason is beyond me. I missed them before the water rose. I missed them happy. I missed them sad. Maybe it will help you piece it together if you know what a Uakti is.
According to Amazon legend, Uakti "was a huge creature with holes all over his body, and whenever he ran through the forest, the wind passing through his body made wonderful and intriguing sounds." I can't tell you how sensible this legend is to me. Put a flutey creature in front of me and things come out right. I'm sitting here now with a small driving hope for a wind that will blow rain into me tonight.
What a pleasure seeing my sister and her husband, Gomez, over the weekend. Gomez isn't, by the way, his real name. But he really is in need of a nickname and maybe this one will stick.
The Pacific Center for Hauling $10 Bills Out of Parent's Wallets and Exposing Their Kids to a Gazillion Germs was a great place to spend Sunday afternoon. Don't be fooled by the official name. My digital camera has a microscopic zoom and this is an actual photo enlargement of the germs.
I was able to find a group with a young child, which coincidently happened to be my niece-in-law. The butterfly room was her favorite. Let me explain. It was a room with butterflies. Hey, did I say I was a biology professor?
The dinosaurium was also a hit. They had these giant papier mache dinos which came in a distant second to the actual hand-cranked dino jaw! You could simulate the chew motion with some effort. For fifty cents, you could put a Republican into the jaws and masticate. Just kidding. It was free.
Today, I ended my first month at the Times. So far, the place has exceeded my expectations. Won't bore you why, it's good for far.
On this special day, I witnessed a special, spooky thing in our lunchroom, which I'll tell you about later. First, my glorious friend, the icemaker. This thing makes long sheets of tiny cubes that drop from its ceiling onto a cube rubble. Most times it doesn't break apart since it's a very short fall. I get to bust these sheets apart with the cool titanium ice scoop that sits in its own bucket on top of the maker. Very satisfying. Okay, it's aluminium.
I gently beat the ice "ting ting ting" into useful cubes, just like my ancestors back when the iceman used to cometh. Then my handiwork goes into my 99 cent plastic beach cup from Walgreen's. (I don't mean to digress, but I bought two of these translucent cups. They're white plastic except for a wide ring of color one the rims: one blue, one magenta. Now, when you put them together, the color is PURPLE! That is so clever. I love color science!)
Back in the lunchroom, requisite vending machines provide: Nourishment, Candies, Coffees, and Beverages. Not an unusual set up. Enough for any documentary filmmaker to exist on for a month or so. I want to tell you about the machine they call, Ducale or, Mocafino Real Espresso.
He's a vendo that drips Italianess, especially with a gaudy strip of copper across his belly. The product is not bad from what people say but I don't care about that.
I've never been a fan of coffee vending machines. It's because of all the separate operations that go into making the coffee. The cup drops. The coffee flavored goodness pours. The special sauce makes an appearance. At some point, you have to chance that the internal barista has finished and make a grab for the cup. With luck, Ducale won't hose you down with any caffieney brownness.
Call it "ablutions," "toilette," what you will, but I caught Ducale cleaning itself today. I paid attention to the watery noises only because no one was around; I thought I might be getting a free espresso. But as I peeked in its little coffee staging area, I saw that it was spurting clear, hot water onto itself. First the right tube (I'm guessing- I didn't get that close), then the left. Then a gust of steam or something. Espresso breath. I swear to God I heard a sound like humming. Sounded kinda like "Louie, Louie."
I continue to question how I interact with the people in my world. This isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing.
One earlier example concerned the language a "professional" salesperson uses. The interviewing techniques (from the social sciences it seems) made me wonder whether I asked enough questions in life, among other things. Was I able to use language to help understand what I'm hearing?
Today, overheared during a public argument, came the following:
Young Man: "You're disparaging me." Young Woman: "I'm not disparaging you."
There was then a bunch of nattering back and forth, nothing so shiny as the disparaging moment.
In my personal lexicon, I am nowhere near using something as fine as "disparaging" to describe anything in my life. Man, my main implements are rock, stick and fire compared to that guy. I'd better snap to. I've got a lot of distinctions to make!
This is my bed stand with some home-grown lavender, a free-range Ikea lamp and sheets that Ralph Lauren hand-loomed.
My favorite thing here is the little vase holding the lavender. I found it so many years ago I can't remember. Had to be before Metrosexuality, before the man purse, way before I thought about such trivial things.
I've come to think of it as a placeholder for my love of flowers. Some genetic bud that I'd discover when I grew up.
In July, the evening sun would blow in and rustle the lavender. The fugitive scent would remind me of the sunny places I hoped to visit and the ones in my washed out memory. In August, the slant of light has changed but I've not forgotten this brief illumination.
Look at anything from a great enough distance, and eventually most everything will seem graceful. Look at anything closely enough, and you'll see the turbulence and rough shove of everyday life.
The fomula is a bit shaky. Sometimes you can take a close look and be stopped by immediate, inescapable grace.
