Stemware

Yesterday I kept thinking about the mechanics of T.O.'s real or created suicide plight. I knew that one of the simple reasons why we care is because he is familiar. Anything can become familiar and take on an emotional dimension that is hard to explain but very real.

My sweet neighbor Richard moved back home to Utah today. He's a good guy and I'll miss him in a neighborly way. I'd often help him smoke his cigarette second-hand on our building's stoop. Not friends exactly, but warmly familiar.

Last night, he, his friends and I had a few tumblers of wine. I enjoyed spending some time with them and it was heartwarming to see these old friends know that they'd be together again. Since everything was packed and in the UHaul, he asked me to grab one of my own glasses to bring to his place. I found out that I didn't own wine glasses. Forgot to replace them. That's okay. I quickly reached back to the way that I first learned to drink wine, the 8 oz drinking glass. Well, the 12 oz glass last night.

Thinking about the familiar reminded me of my father's father, a tough old bird who I loved. He spent his last years living with us, draining away. He and dad coexisted in our living room kingdom from dual La-z-boy thrones. I'd like to know the precise word count that passed between them during those many years. Not a lot. Grandpa was never a talker and he and Dad had their opinion about the other and there was no give. So stalemate is what really reigned.

After Grandpa died, I once talkied with Dad about Gramps. I and I think Dad was surprised when he said that he missed him. His explanation: "Well, I sat next to him for all those years." It's possible that demilitarized proximity yielded more empathy than talking would ever have.

Mere interaction has been interpreted as weakness in my family. Not unusual for relatives to have years-long spats about who was more stubborn. The argument was so self-evident that it didn't have to be made. Silence was a perfect medium in this showdown of character. This was a pure expression of familiarity personifying contempt.

I'm not as hot-headed as the best of my relatives. It's more normal for me to be with, be near someone and have a full heart and not tip my hand. It's normal to hold onto memories so when I see someone, it is like they have never been far from my sight. My curse is more that I am silent when my instinct says that I need to shape the silence into something that can break past the familiar. That might not make much sense, but, the thing is that I can't let some things sit.

I've got the gift and the curse of the familiar and I often can't tell them apart.

T.O.

Why do we care when Terrell Owens tries to kill himself?

It's a sincere question. I am not asking because I'm mean or because I don't like Terrell. I am curious about why his scandal is so emotionally engaging. Is it the same impulse that slows drivers down to rubberneck a collision? Does this kind of distant action function as a kind of preparatory training run for our own coming trainwreck? I really don't want to cast my vote for schadenfreude.

T.O's spent his past decade delivering drama for us and he didn't disappoint today. He provided today's version which we couldn't stop talking about at work. First, allergic reaction and broken fingers caused and commiseration and pain to Fantasy coaches. Second, the reports of a suicide attempt threw the place into a tizzy. Finally, as a media misunderstanding. Yeah. Sure, Terrell, the pills just jumped into your mouth. He might be another in the tiring line of self-branding performance artists. But he does deliver.

Why would we care one way or another? Maybe a better question is "how is it possible to pay attention to what is important to us?" Either answer "So much more is important to us than we're ready to admit" or " Every human thing, even a wretched human thing, is important" is a good response. At least that allows me to back away from this question with some grace as I turn and run for the door.

Jacob Marley

Not that I saw his ghost.

Today at five I walked out of my workplace with an associate who has a specific visual style. He's young but he's got the shaved head thing going on and his head has character. That's not code for anything. His head isn't smooth. You can imagine his mental processes by the map of his cranial exterior.

He normally wears a ballcap outdoors, khakis and simple shirt, blue.

I wished him a good evening, headed in the opposite direction and started toward my bus (which I caught in perfect time today!). As I scanned for the bus, I looked up in front of me and saw him in profile, waiting on the corner where he shouldn't have been.

His appearance was a bit strange. When you see someone in a different setting, you notice different things. Wow, I never saw all that extra weight. He also looked a bit more beaten up at a distance. As I got closer, I noticed that his ear was far more cauliflowered than I remembered. All of these differences were scary in the glowing light of this extraordinary Seattle day.

Then I saw. It wasn't him. It was an uncanny rendering of him 40 rugged years in the future. Thankfully, the guy didn't see me gaping at him. But I had to confirm that there wasn't any kind of Dorian Gray action going on. Nope. Just a guy, very similar. Same ballcap, pants, shirt, baldness, height, etc.

I was glad that my friend wasn't with me. It was a bit unnerving. My hesitation here is about my own fear rather than his delicate state of being. These kinds of ghosts, my slippery selves, visit me often enough and I am unnerved.

A while back, a relative who lived at a distance visited my family in Ohio. He was an Uncle of my dreams since I can't recall ever meeting him. His life in the extravaganza known as California was tantalizing during my isolated Ohio boyhood. A simple comment after his visit got under my skin. It was a natural one to make, probably reassuring to most.

The observation was that this Uncle was a time-lapsed version of me in some decades forward. As much as I had always held him as a symbol of a good life, I was truly disturbed at the idea of meeting him, seeing him. Foolish, disappointing cowardly behavior on my part. A loss.

But honestly I didn't want to see me with the fast forward button pressed. Maybe I was upset because I didn't have visual memories of my father, Peter, aging. Maybe because my Grandmother cried as I became a young adult because I looked just like Pete. Maybe I'd wake up the next day and I'd be suddenly old. That's already how many describe the process of aging. I don't know if there is a good reason for this jagged evasion.

Ha!

NPR just advertised The Picture of Dorian Gray from Barnes and Noble. What that coincidence means is opaque to me, but it seems like a bit of a cosmic joke on me. Unbelievable. I do know that Jacob Marley and his chains frighten me more than Dorian's portrait. Just like Scrooge, I want more time.

inane question

One my favorite early internet time wasters came courtsey of Jeeves. They were very proud of their dapper fellow's ability to field searches in the form of a question. The question format was a good alternative for anyone who thought that a Boolean operator was a character from the first episodes of Star Trek. Maybe we all want a servant, no matter how humble.

I rarely used Jeeves as a search engine. However the site had a great, great feature which I loved. You could click into some pantry and watch the questions scroll by that people were asking Jeeves. "What does purple mean?" "How do you teach a child to tie a shoe?" "European or African Swallow?" "Where is Burkina Faso?" I liked that a lot.

I was reminded of this watching the list of new blog posts that scroll along on the Blogger homepage. Just not the same. Blog rolls names are aggressive by design. Questions have a built-in poignance and invitation. Maybe that's why I've been finding them interesting for the first time in a long time. Have I gotten to the point where questions are a kind of comfort? If I think so, I'm probably asking the wrong question.

Thinky Guy

One of the treats of reading is stumbling on someone who can 'splain things.

Geoff Dyer wrote a book on photography last year called the ongoing moment. It's one of my favorite books of all time already. Let me try to tell you why I'm so enamoured with him and this book.

First, I love photography but it often makes little sense to me. Who doesn't like illuminated manuscripts? Who takes the time to read the suckers and make some sense of how the images amplify the text? Not me, pictures too shiny! I have a similar problem with photography. Shiny becomes the meaning. Dreaming becomes the meaning. That might be enough.

There's also my problem with history. I'm foolish enough to think that I should be able to look at a picture and determine why it's a significant image. It does not work that way. Even for someone with solid visual pitch.

Dyer is a curious, smart fellow who wonders why hats figure so prominently in so many important photographs. Yes, there's a section on that. Why is that Steiglitz dude so important? Yes, he nailed O'Keeffe, but there's got to be something more. He's at the root of influence and he wanted to be the dominant source in American photography. Dyer spends a lot of time jamming pieces of his intellectual jigsaw together. Most of the pieces fit smoothly and his puzzle is a delightful one. You can trace influence and discourse in pictures clearly. He makes his analysis look precise as well. Can you explain to me how someone can talk about hats as symbols precisely?

It's not just that he lays the theme of influence out with such style. He also loves reading for the code behind objects featured again and again throughout the history of photography. His method of reading is so slick that I found myself just nodding. I've reread as much as I've read.

He's helping me see what happens in these shiny pictures, unfreezing them. His playful approach encourages me to pick up a piece of the puzzle and see if I can figure out where it goes. As any puzzle addict can tell you, it's as much about touching and examining each piece as it is finding where it goes.

Heartbreaking

My friend, Tall Michael, always counseled to let a person have his tragedies, no matter how small or tenuous. I'm thinking about whether the same applies to heartbreak.

My stroll tonight through Trader Joes, that tragic shopping platform, helped me select a few of my food-based heartbreaks. I bet Proust would have wept when he saw their nicely packaged madelines. But listing my own private idahos -food or non-food- now seems to me to be going too far. Plus, the list by itself teeters on parody.

For instance: feathers. For god's sake, why feathers? That's nuts if I do say so myself. But I know why. Lancome? Did someone in my family get hit by a Lancome truck? Nice smelling industrial accident? I know why. No, not the preferred grooming products of an ex. Stop guessing.

I apologize for being a tease. But I also am impelled to talk about this here, no matter how abortive the attempt. I don't think that my reluctance to reveal is due to shyness, discretion, fear or kindness. Self-aggrandizement? I don't think so. Curiosity about what others endure? Maybe. But how would I feel once I found out that I had 37% more heartbreak than the average person but that they had 63% more tragedy that I do?

Those numbers are not real. I made them up. I repeat: I make things up.

fiction

As I contemplate (that's a fancy word for "doing nothing") writing in longer forms (that's code for the ever-frightening "book"), I (that's me) get a little freaked out.

This isn't an unusual pattern for anyone contemplating doing something large. Wrestling a large thing into a bunch of smaller things- chunking -is good for any large task. But I'm not looking for an organizational solution, but an emotional balm. I turn to Tiger Woods.

Tiger and his pro golfing buddies deal with the mental game of jumping out of the moment with a special kind of method: their routine. Routine is a refuge and comfort during times of extraordinary stress. When a golfer starts thinking about the outcome, "I've nearly won the Masters" rather than the mechanics of his swing, he's doomed. In the game of fine, precise motor adjustments that is golf, pumping yourself full of adrenline: bad idea.

Sure, golfers get excited and they deal with it by immersing themselve into their routine. Routine: good. The muscle memory that any athlete builds carries him methodically down the stretch. The routine is a focusing device that helps the body recover all those years of successful, grinding repetition.

Grinding repetition. That's one facet of becoming a writer. But just one and not the primary one for me anymore! This simple blog has helped immensely. When I sit down here, I have a bit of faith that somehow, something happens. Ah, routine. For my next trick, I hope to stretch routine into some stories. Since I've whispered the W word to myself, I've had a few ideas. Some are so wacky that you know that they are truly mine. For instance, there's one about Robert Siegel of NRP fame that is bent. That's probably where I'll start. You will probably never see that one.

I'm building a new routine now. My plan is to continue the blog, write more each day with a bit more focus, write on the weekends. Don't quite know what the routine will be yet but I will have one.

Thankfully, there aren't 10,000 of you watching over my shoulder as I type. How do golfers get anything done with the gallery's exuberence pressing on them during their final moment? Wait, I know this answer to this one.

Under the Weather

Where does the phrase "under the weather" come from? It's probably nautical, like so many expressions: "cut and run," "passing with flying colors," "devil to pay," "flake out," "cup of joe." Tons of them.

A few different possibilities: when a salt was sick, he'd go below deck and so he'd be under the weather. Another, help me out here old salts, comes from "under the weather bow." That's apparently not the best place to be below deck during a storm. The third, the nearer a seasick passenger is to the keel, the less the sway. So you in theory feel better below deck.

Which explanation reigns? Have to go with "under the weather bow." I have a hard time thinking that an old-time sailor had the luxury of exercising his health plan by going below. In the old days, the idea of a deductible was having one or your limbs sawed off. Would a real nautical term ever refer to the plight of landlubbers? Don't think so. So I have to vote for those poor bastards heaving in the salty wind, no land in sight.

Me, I've been just slightly under the weather. I've been careful to sit on the keel of the metro bus, keeping arms and head inside. Very little sway, very little salt spray.

Fortune

Back to a chill day with tumbles of clouds and a handful of wind. The best kind of day to lay back, sip some wine, stroll around your estate in the mountains.

Thankfully, I don't have such overhead. I instead was able to peek out of the windows at work, watch crows conspire for food, the Vespa riders try not to die, and be amazed that so many wealthy people exist in one smallish place.

At my magic cube, I have access to cool demographic information about the area. I'm not only amazed that so many bodies can exist in one place, but that so many of them have dizzying incomes. This week, I found out that there are over 10,000 households in greater Seattle that have an annual income of more than $500,000. Annual Income. According to my math, that's like a zillion dollars worth of citizenry.

How does a person tack an extra zero onto everything in their world? Maybe that's the magic. Start spending $100 when you eat out instead of $10. Buy the suit that costs $2490 instead of $249. At some point, I bet the pump gets primed and money just starts flowing into your life. Cripes, getting rich is just simple math!

I doubt if I'll ever see that kind of money. The most expensive beer that I like is around $10 a four pack. I get one of those every five years. Is there beer that costs more than $20 a six pack anyway? What about pizza? I'd have to clock anyone who would charge that much for a pizza. The formula breaks down for me too quickly. Vast fortune looks out of my reach.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. I can still shoot for A fortune. Vast fortune sounds impressive but out of reach for the moment. Once I define what A fortune is and how to get it, I'll let you know. For now, I'll work on taking a zero off of what I buy every now and then. Maybe I can back into Vast fortune from the opposite direction. Just a thought.

Leaf for a wordless night

Surprise

Where do you stand on surprises? Are pleasant surprises the same as unpleasant ones? Okay, no on that one. The half-life on unpleasant is very long, radioactive. But do both experiences hit you the same? Are you one of those giddy surprise-accepters? Not me, I've been a brick about surprises.

I've worked vigorously to not be taken by surprise. This is a correlation of the steady state thing that I've been droning on about. Anticipation dampens surprise and I attempted to anticipate pretty much any possibility in any interaction. What did I think I was preventing? What did I miss?

Once, I participated in an arts event that was being recorded. The sound tech spent the whole event trying to make the needles on the sound meters stay on one setting. The dynamics of the sound were nearly eliminated. Frustrating. Infurating for the director. The tech, who was obviously new, said that it was exhausting trying to keep everything on the level. Yup.

I'm tired just thinking about the energy that must have taken. Tired thinking about the energy I've used in similar pursuits. Now I have to go to bed.

Staying in Capitol Hill

It was a decision based on what I like and need. Of course, I was pulled in a number of different directions, all worth considering. A bunch of good, little things all added up.

Mainly, I feel that I need to live quiet for a bit. I've found some calm in my year here. A year. Peace is rare in my life and I want to learn how to keep it around. Apartment as talisman? Maybe.

I had hoped for the decision to pivot on some insight, some kind of offering about the trajectory of my life. Too much to ask. I know the direction of my important commutes. I'll take that for now.

9/11

May love and warm wishes find you.

Lessons

Emotions continue to surprise me. All part of my learning curve, move along, nothing to see here! That's really the advice for me as well: move along, nothing to see here. Kinda.

There really isn't anything dangerous to see. When I'm gripping and scared, you'd most often see the happy guy or maybe the frowny guy. I just look like I'm thinking deeply when I'm frowny. That's probably good. I don't want to worry anyone. I do want to have a sharper understanding of some of the bland events that cause me anxiety. I want to have a sharper understanding of how I become vunerable to that state. I think I know the main reason why I get anxious.

I'm not the Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing or the Jittery Guy. I'm the guy who's trying to be awake rather than in retreat while in the world. Pretty much successful at hanging in and I'm happy with how I've been hanging in. What this enables me to do is better feel and evaluate what's happening right in front of me. I don't close my eyes and have to guess later at what I might have been looking at.

The big lesson here is that I have got to kick my own butt everyday, using a gentle kicking motion. I have to propel my manback forward every day. I had been convinced that I could relax for a day after a few days of push. No. Wrong. If I'm not nudging myself forward, I'm going to slide backwards. That is far more extreme than I thought. But that's how it works for me. I have seen this pattern clearly during my hiatus and now that I'm back at work.

What's a backslide? It's the confused place where the fantasy world starts to eclipse what's in front of me. This is the opposite of what happens when I'm building energy and attention. The gentle push that I keep talking about seems to work both ways. That continues to be a surprise.

You're actually reading a Philometer as much as a blog. If you don't see at least four posts a week, Phil, in the famous words in our family, is slipping. Don't worry though. I'm finding my way and that will include lessons that take me down the wrong path. It's a trial-by-error way of learning where to go. Even taking the wrong path counts. I just don't want to find myself sitting on the trail, inactive, and wondering where the path might lead.

Moony

Near full moon tonight.

It found the sky's sole cradle of clouds and I could see its topology so clearly. Mt. Marilyn, Blotchy Valley, the Sea of Annoyance. The moon-struck and film goer knows that only one of those names is real. I think. Few of us can articulate that geography. I might have a difficult time identifying all the countries on the Mediterranean but I still dream about their bright waters.

After all these years of gazing, I'm still a slack-jawed cave boy when I see the moon ablaze like tonight. Not long ago, there was only sun, fire, moonlight and the random firefly for illumination. Okay, lava. I forgot lava. Sparks too. But both of those (and fire) must have been experienced with some ambivalence as well as wonder.

Missing tonight for Perfect was a shining rain of fireflies. The moon was silver lovely and I am greedy asking for an encore. But my one great gasp leads me to believe that there might be more beauty, see, just over the rise there.

Poke the blog with a stick

Because I was challenged and curious, I decided to put a meter on FishGotta to see how many visitors I get.

I like to joke about my three (er, now four readers!) which always seems like a good joke to me. If I ever get to the point where millions of people want to read me, I'd probably make the same joke, self-evoke the same laugh. Hey, is there a term for that? Self-amusement isn't strong enough. I-musement? Autorisible? Upchuckle?

But the challenger was right, more than three, more than four people a day visit. Very low double digits, if you're at all curious. I honestly thought I'd win the non-bet but she was right! And NO that number doesn't include my visits.

I'm not going to go all Sally Field on you, don't be concerned. More than anything, I added the meter because I was curious about what it would mean to me.

One pleasure is that people from a number of countries outside of the U.S. have visited. It's a strange, good feeling to put myself out there and know that China is peeking in. Although, if all of China starts to visit regularly, I might rethink my no advertising policy. Or at least animating my head so it bobs up and down.

Part of me wants everyone to comment (yes, even all of China) because I'm just curious about how this modest Coalition of the Philling would respond. Some who know me have said that there's a pretty good corrolation between "Philness" and Fishgottablog. That's cool. I like that many of you can hear me as you read. I'm not fishing for comments, really. Really, I'm not. But if you want to, go head, that's another real pleasure.

The best pleasure is that I'm writing and that I surprise myself. It's a weird thing writing in public. But I slowly want to grow accustomed to an audience, be comfortable with it. Even to say "audience" sounds pretentious and ludicrous. My scientific model here is the frog who's in water that you heat slowly. Wait, that's not right! I don't want to end up poached! It's more like an avalance, a go-kart or a legion of army ants. You can pick the metaphor tonight. Or just poke the blog with a stick. That works too. I am very happy about the idea of "poking the blog with a stick." Go 'head.

Splintered

I want to believe all sorts of foolishness. Especially those hard to believe items. I like the idea of space aliens, demi-gods, and evolution. Just kidding about evolution. That there's a good sciency theory.

Something deep within me doesn't want to say NO to anything. The kind interpretation of this is that I like living in a world of possibilities. More accurate to say that I'm unwilling to say NO. If there were a church of the steady state, the smoke might burn white when they consider me for pope.

That predisposition has invited too many foreign bodies into in my life, so many splinters of belief. By now, I should have removed the more obvious false beliefs that I'd been able to ID. The smaller ones should have worked themselves out. Another belief about how things work. Shoulds! Oughts!

What's the distinction I'm laboring after, you might rightfully ask? Conviction vs. Belief. I'm not saying that belief is always a splinter. Or that conviction is a tweezer. Or that faith is unimportant.

I am surprisingly willing to look into what is me and what is not me. To see if conviction will stand in tandem with belief and whether they strengthen each other. Or will one fall away?

I could yammer on about the examined life but this is smaller than that. This is all about these tiny, jagged details that cause weird, tiny pain. What's left should be smooth, should belong, should feel good. Should.

Robot Love

Special Sunday Lazy Man Edition

Let's say that somewhere, the a.m. went missing. Since that time I've failed at figuring out how to get the water on my head, which is easier on any normal day. Youths spend hours using stiff hair product to produce such a surfeit of chaos as you see atop of my head. My lazy breakfast was well-rounded (think of circles) and I coundn't focus to read the newspaper. Not even the sports page!

I have an itch to write this morning. Well, this afternoon now after my non-existent Sunday morning. I've already become more active - I've sneezed three times! I took my laundry (already folded) from the basket and moved it nearer to its home. I cleared off the dining room table in case dining needs to break out.

About this itch to write. That's what I see as a good sign. Here it is, Sunday, the normal day of blogging rest and I'm thinking about writing and here come the words too! I've started the cheery, highly-praised book about Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. I'm just fifty pages in and I'm already convinced that this is going to be the most important things I've read in years. He tosses off observations like this one about power in Rwandan history:

"Like all of history, it is a record of successive struggles for power, and to a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality- even, as is so often the case, then that story is written in their blood."

The book is a good kind of slippery. He ranges anywhere he sees connection, from Plato to Ralph Ellison. After reading his witness about the stories of the survivors on both sides, I know that I'd want him to tell my story. What better praise can you get than that?

NPR featured Karen Russell's collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories which is getting a lot of attention. After listening to her talk about infusing the everyday with the impossible and making it normal, I'm convinced that she's something special. This might not be the best foundation for a writing career. With any luck, she'll tropes into new territories rather than suffer the fate of the M. Night Shamalans of this world. Sorry M, I'm not much into calling people out here but I do hope that you find a way back from your own self-mythology.

You see, I am spending time with the words of others and my own too. I'll probably spend time painting as well as writing a bit more. Days like this I can imagine a large pile of papers with a large number of words on them, written by me! My imagination about me as a writer is still immature, still a bit magical. My writing imagination is developing along with practice, and that's a brand new thing.

I am growing to like the process of digging in and seeing what happens on the page. It's not quite an itch. But as you know, I'm at war with comparisons and it is a lazy Sunday, so whatever I'm up to, it's just getting called an itch until other symptoms appear.

Geometry

Small pleasures can be had.

Last night, I and my rusty driving skills traveled through the I90 tunnels. Tunnels appeal to me for a number of reasons. The earth-clod-loving child in me has always been a big fan of moving cubic yards of earth. A lot of my wee time was spent in pre-Marine bliss: moving piles of dirt from one place to another, then back. Digging in the dirt (gardners, you know this is true) is fundamental. We must have a dirt gene planted deep within us.

For a time, one friend, when he was young, would rush home from school to continue his study in the promising field of digging to China. His parents didn't mind him destroying the backyard in this quest. Just so you know, he never reached China. He did continue to dig holes anywhere whenever possible and later added obsessive window breaking. He must have recognized windows as earth in another, more transparent form.

Tunnels aren't just about the displaced dirt, which would be a pretty conceptual pleasure. Like ordering a drink for the tiny umbrella. What entrances me is visual. Tunnels turn into a lesson on perspective. The dotted rows of lights stretch into the idea of infinity. I want to jump past the converging lines right into the conceptual nougat. Whether it's a vanishing point or a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I want to be the first to have my picture taken there. Not happening, I know. Racing dogs never catch the mechanical rabbit either.

Space Operas have given us the silly, exciting idea of traveling at speeds greater than the speed of light. Who doesn't want to a) tootle around in outer space and b) watch physics bend to your will? Tunnels provide a slower imagining of the moment your ship begins to stop light and leaves the last marker in the universe behind. I expected that at any moment, I would shift from fifth gear to warp gear. To date, Honda has not yet made this standard equipment.

Tunnels are an opportunity to be encased within a pleasing geometry. Plus, at night within a tunnel, I get to think a favorite movie line to myself. My China-digging friend is the one who introduced me to the film Alphaville. It's a nutty, conceptual b&w sci-fi film set in Paris, the center of its universe. Automobiles on the roads leading out of Paris at night are likened to spaceships. As the film noir protagonist drives, he begins his thoughts with the phrase: "Hurtling through the darkness of interglactic space..." It's a giddy feeling which I think I share with many.