Now.
Where was I?
A lot of time has passed between my last post and this one. I don’t know for sure, since I’m typing away in my Word program and not on the blog site. A lot I know.
I’m suddenly thinking of a book called “Blood Relatives”, a detective story that hinges around a diary that’s had its lock cut open. The detective wonders why anyone would keep a diary, except to have someone read it someday. And here I am in a sort of similar situation, writing out my thoughts to … no one really. Just to me, really except that I’ll publish them to the web and maybe
somebody will see them. Maybe.
This post was inspired by a vanity plate.
Between my last post and this, a number of significant events have occurred in my life. One of them was the firewall at work was adjusted so that anything with the word “blogspot” in the URL got blocked. So I don’t read Ken Levine much anymore and I tend not to make postings to my own site. It was just so much easier to do from work than from home.
Tonight no one I know is online and the snowstorm outside has begun in earnest on this the first day of winter and none of this has anything to do with what I wanted to write about.
Significant events. I started running again. I didn’t like how round I was looking. I got round after going on anti-depressants. I wonder if I’d written about that anywhere in previous posts. Yes? No? Maybe? I probably did because I vaguely recall lamenting that one cool side effect that was a hidden super-power. Too hidden. I’m fond of telling people about two other side effects, not the super-power one. Appetite and apathy, I say. So I ate and I stopped running. I put on weight. I got round. I got unhappy with the way I looked and I started running again, two years later.
I got separated.
I’m still friends with my son’s mom (which sounds so much better than “ex”). Still friends with her family (I think). I vividly recall a conversation with her sister when she asked me if I was looking forward to getting out there and meeting new people. NO! I replied vehemently. I had enough trouble finding dates when I was
young and single.
Now I’m old and single. And it’s turning out to be every bit the problem I thought it might be. Well, it’s only been a few months, after all. But I’ve started noticing things. I signed up to a couple of dating sites and saw the same patterns at both places; a mini-rush of interest in “the new guy” and then nothing. I started off looking for company and then for a while became more determined to try to get an actual date. That didn’t work at all (a bad failing for a dating site). I removed my profiles.
I’m still only partially getting to what I really wanted to write about which is empty promises. These have been coming from both the on-line world and in real life. From women and men, acquaintances, colleagues, golfing buddies, prospective paramours. I’ll invite you over some time. You’ll have to come and join us for poker. I’ll be sure to come and see you. Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away.
As I spend another evening by myself, maybe here at the computer or running or in the other room watching TV or playing a game, or maybe even sitting alone at the movies, I’m beginning to grow ever thickening layers of bitterness and suspicion. Suspicion toward remarks of bonhommerie and bitterness steeped from being alone.
I don’t mind being alone unless I’m lonely. Another really good coping phrase.
The vanity plate read: TRSTNO1.
My “opening line” on the dating sites was “Hope is the thing with feathers”. I hope things will get better, but hope has only gotten me bashed over the head so far.
There still are a few promises outstanding. We’ll see how it goes.
Discouraging Abhorrent Behaviour
It’s baseball season again!
But I don’t really give a rat’s ass, not since my team went the way of the Washington Senators and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Nowadays, baseball on TV just reminds me of terrorism somehow. I’m a bit cynical and jaundiced about most professional sports (and amateur too, I guess in the wake of what’s come out lately about the Thorpedo – look for the pun; it’s there – and the Tour de France).
Baseball gets more fans its playing fields than any other sport in North America.
I was one. It was a very special moment, my three-year-old son and I playing catch down the left field line at Olympic Stadium on fan appreciation day, lo those many years ago. But that was allowed. That was, like I said, a special day.
Not like the other father and son who got all liquored up and attacked that first base coach in Kansas City. But it was special nonetheless since hoodlums almost never get TV time during a baseball game – or any other sporting event for that matter. The announcers will tell you that something’s happened, but they keep the perpetrators mostly anonymous. The TV policy is that they don’t want to show that stuff since it may serve to encourage others to repeat that kind of undesirable behaviour. Show some drunk ruffian streaking naked onto the playing field and before you know it, you’ll have naked ruffians everywhere trying to get their “Look Ma!” moment on the boob tube.
So the TV stations don’t show it. Don’t encourage them.
But crash a plane into a building….
Man, we’ll show that forever.
There's Never A, um, Phone Booth Around When You Need One.
Last year, I had a bad summer. My grandmother died (I found her dead in her apartment) and it took me to a very low place. My mom pointed this out to my wife who in turn pointed it out to me - including the fact (yes, fact) that I hadn't really been happy even before my grandmother died (before I found her dead). So I went to see the doctor.
One of the things I learned in college is what it means to be happy. College wasn’t a happy time for me, but in my second year philosophy class, I learned what “happy” meant in the strictest sense of the word. You could argue (because arguing is what philosophy is about) that the opposite of happiness is … passion.
Last summer I was feeling neither passionate nor happy and I went to see the doctor who gave me a split diagnosis: it was either depression or dysthymia. The reason my mom wanted me to see the doctor was that there is a history of depression in our family that results from bad brain chemistry – low serotonin levels. This can be treated with medicine. The prescription for dysthymia is sessions with a psychologist. The doc and I took the lazy route and I’ve been on pills ever since.
And feeling better.
An interesting thing about these pills:
There are several side effects. Most of them occur as you start taking the pills and then diminish as you get accustomed to them. Weird dreams was one. A heightened sense of anxiety was another. Raging appetite. Diarrhea. For the first month and a half, the cure was worst than the sickness. But then things settled down.
There are also sexual side effects. The one that would be most alarming for the red-blooded male would be impotence. Fortunately, that was one I missed. But there are other types of dysfunction, and the one I experience is described alternately as “anorgasmia” or “ejaculation disorder” or “you can’t cum, no matter how much romance/and or porn is involved”. Achieving my little death takes a lot of work.
So.
That's right.
I can go all night, baby.
Now, I’m a 43-year-old man at the time of this writing and elsewhere on this blog I’ve written about what kinds of panic set in at this age for men. (So is it any wonder that I’m on pills? Hmmm….) The flame of youthful romance is gone between you and your partner and all you have is reminders of how sweet that flame was. These reminders often take the form of beautiful young women who wouldn’t give you the time of day, you sick old fuck, you. Looking at women like that, twenty years younger than you, why you could be their father.
Yeah, but ....
But now I’m on the pills and if anyone was interested why, I could go all night.
It’s like a secret identity, but a with a wasted super power. Like if Peter Parker never for the rest of his life turned into Spiderman.
Like Superman always taking the bus.
Hey, it's a good thing (Martha) that I’m on the pills or it would be fucking depressing.
Truth in Advertising
I'm back from my holiday in the sunny south. There something about a sun holiday that makes you think of sex.
(But what doesn't make me think of sex? )
So I'll share with you my condom ad.
You never know what the muse is going to fire up for you and one day, long ago I had a very clear picture of a billboard ad. The billboard is white with a single box of condoms on the left side. On the right is the "copy", two words in a plain, bold-face Arial font that say:
"Come Prepared".
Economies of Scale (Freight & Taxes Extra)
There's not a whole lot that I like about coming to work. Given the choice and the financial freedom to make it, I'd probably be doing something else. Carving out my niche as a film maker or following some amateur golf tour or maybe just following the sun through tropical climes.
One good thing about work though is my window.
There was a time when this spot in the cubicle farm was highly coveted by rival workers. Back then I was more than content just to stay in my spot in the middle of the floor - it had my own personal internet connection. This was when our workstations played the intranet but not the world wide web, you see. Anyway, it was I who presided over and conducted the fateful coin flip to see which of the two finalists would win this window space. After a couple of years the winner moved on and the space again came free. Again I decline to contest it.
But I was not to deny it a third time, when once more the incumbent moved to a different branch on the career path. First refusal was offered to me and I didn't.
It was still no great shakes until I moved. For the first time became truly appreciative of the view it offers. I am now deeply possessive of my space.
MY space. My view.
From six floors up (the top of our modest building) I look down the throat of the harbour, past the ship yards and the power plant to one of the bridges that span the twin community. The blue of sky is reflected in the water. Sea birds whirl and float under puffy clouds drifting overhead. Occasionally helicopters drone by (one passes even as I write this) and distant planes reflect the sun as they make their final approach to the city's airport. Ships, boats, submarines and watercraft of all sizes run up and down the harbour in their traffic lanes.
Container ships arrive and depart daily.
These are big ships.
They easily catch my eye. I pause from what I'm doing to swivel in my chair and take a moment to watch them pass. They seem so close I could touch them. I know from experience that as large as the seem from my 6th floor window, they look behemoth from the waterline. On these ships are thousands of containers. They will be taken to the docks and the containers will be loaded onto trains and 18-wheel freight trucks to take the next step in their journey. We're mostly an interim port of call for the goods that come in.
I think about all those containers and the ship that carries them. Millions of dollars to build a cargo ship. How much to crew it, I wonder. How much to sail it up the seaboard or even from across the ocean. How much for the tugboats that pilot it through the Narrows and the stevedores to unload it at the dock where a line of a great many trains and trucks wait to piggyback her cargo the rest of the way down the rail and road.
What's in them all, I wonder. It would be fun to open them up and see.
There are so many of us to consume all this stuff.
Which is a good thing, I guess, because who could afford the price of shipping if the whole ship was full of a single pair of jeans.
FOOD! Glorious Food! (Except not food...)
On the commentary for the movie "As Good As It Gets", Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt talk about the restaurant scene they share late in the movie. For a reaction shot, Helen says, "I asked Jack to say something funny to make me laugh". What did Jack say that broke up Helen?
Jack: I said, "Tits".
I love that word, tits. It's a wonderful, evocative and provocative word. The hard consonant sound that explodes like a shock and then the sibilant that lingers like an ellipsis. I use the word when I can, which is not often enough because, sadly, it's not a word for polite company.
Tits.
Not only a delightful word, but a joy to behold. Again however, polite company frowns upon that kind of enjoyment. Also called "staring".
Also called, "leering".
It's like an eclipse of the sun, advises a certain Mr. Seinfeld, offering an unofficial compromising compromise.
You get a sense of it and then look away.
George and Jerry are like the id and the ego. I'm tugged in different directions (read into that what you will). The id wants the eyes to linger, the soul to sing, to bathe in the calmness and comfort of offered décolletage. Plunging necklines and open collars offer - perhaps encourage - an appreciative glance or glimpse. One's attention is drawn to an aesthetic geometry, a single tangent to two adjoining curves where the eye is drawn to follow the line down to tantalizing shadows.
Ego (or is it the superego?) and polite society advise otherwise.
I was talking across the table to a woman the other day and as I talked, she closed her hand around the top of her neckline. At this point I realize two or three or four things: that she has a somewhat revealing open neck sweater and that she's concerned about me looking down it. I think to myself, Did she think I was looking down her sweater? Was I looking down her sweater? Why did she wear that sweater if she was concerned with people looking down her sweater? Would I have noticed the tops of her tits (which were very pretty, by the way) if she hadn't moved to close the top of her sweater?
What's a poor boy to do? They are both our nature and our nurture, tits.
Now that I'm on the meds I feel less inhibited - which is more dangerous. At the risk of forever following the path down the slippery slope that is "dirty old man" ...
("What am I, waiting to win an Oscar here? This is all I have in my life.")
... I've decided to adopt a friendly arrangement: You show, I'll look.
Some of it has to do with getting old (although not all, as I recall witnessing a small group of teen-aged boys who were taking a break from their ball game to chat with - and grope - the high school sex kitten who had wandered by; gropers were rewarded with an elbow in the guts which elicited only more grins). You reach a point when you approach and then pass forty years old and you become acutely aware that (a) you're definitely going to die and it might not be very fun; and (b) you are still attracted to pretty girls aged 20 and 30 (just like always) but they are never going to find you attractive again. "If they ever did," chimes in a voice from the peanut gallery.
You are likely never again to know the passion of that first kiss. The heady feel of a young body next to yours.
In most circles, the resulting cycle of desperation and denial is known as the "Mid-Life Crisis" and it explains a lot about why men my age do some pretty stupid things.
where ignorance prevails
I had an English and philosophy teacher in my first and second year of university who viewed time as a sphere, each point touching all others. All moments occurred simultaneously and our perception of them sorted them out. Something like that. He was an astonishing man, Dr. Morgan was. My mind was never as sharp as when I was studying under him. He seems now to have passed out of existence; I left that university in 1983. An internet search includes yields only two solid results, one dated 1986. But if time is a sphere, then I am writing this at the same time I am seated in his classroom, marveling at his wit and intellect.
It is tempting for me to write that time is not real, instead only a concept existing in people's heads and on their wrists. There are no clocks in a lion's den. But nature observes cycles and the seasons, so an argument can be made that time is not the sole property of humankind.
Not so, justice.
I have been a poker player for only about a year, but have driven cars for much longer, have been victimized by a break-in and have observed from the sidelines the public chatter about the downfalls and shortcomings of our legal system.
The guy who passes you on the right while you're observing the speed limit makes the light that you stop for. The player who calls you before the flop with only 2 8 suited hits his flush to crack your pocket Kings. Lou Pai makes millions as a CEO in Enron while little old ladies die in the heat of energy-deprived California. The good and the innocent who die young.
I wrote earlier in these pages of how I have an overtly acute sense of justice - how minor and petty injustices provoke disproportionate response feelings of anger and outrage.
My intellectual self splits from my emotional self to advise that justice (perhaps like time) is an artificial concept, created by humans, imposed on the universe and existing absolutely nowhere else in nature.
