Grass Clippings
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 | comments (3)
Cut grass smells different in the east than it does in Texas. You would think the smell of cut grass might be universal. On the other hand, they're different grasses, so I guess it stands to reason that they'd smell different. I guess I can't speak for all of the east, but whenever I smell grass being cut in Maryland, or the greater DC metro area, it reminds me of helping my grandpa mow the lawn as a kid.
I used to love to help my grandpa with fix-it or maintenance projects around the house. It would be hot (it was always during the summer months that I would visit my grandparents) and we would sweat and get dirty - like men. We walked around without our shirts off. Sometimes, we grunted.
My grandpa tackled every project as though he were under a deadline, even in his retirement. He worked hard while he was working, but he also loved to take breaks. "Ready to take five?" he would say. And we would go inside where he would have a couple cups of coffee. He would tell my grandmother that David wanted some cookies and would she get down the box of social teas for David and, well, as long as he was having some, I might as well have a few as well. I can honestly say that his eyes would sparkle when he said it. He dipped his social teas in his coffee. Two dips, then in his mouth. I let mine soak in my milk until they were almost ready to fall apart, then I would carefully bring it to my mouth and let it dissolve there on my tongue. Sometimes I would wait too long and the biscuit would fall off into my milk. Letting this happen was part of the fun, because I would get to scoop out the leftover soppy mess at the bottom of the glass when I was done.
After we fueled up on sugar and caffeine, we were at it again. My grandpa was particular about the right way of doing things. He taught me not to cut corners. One summer we painted a fence together. It was important to apply the paint in just the right way, and to do a good job sanding before the paint was applied. As he got older, I think he became a little less patient and probably cut a few corners here and there, but who could fault him? When you're over 75 you have that right. Nobody could deny that deep down he was a man of principle, not only in the way he handled work, but in the way he handled his relationships with others. I don't think it's a stretch to say that everybody liked my grandfather. If you met him, you liked him.
When I was very young, I called him Pop-pop. His smile meant everything to me. I was lucky to be beside him when he died, lucky to be able to hold his hand, lucky to say goodbye.
There are loads of other stories I can, and someday will, tell about him. He was a role model to me as a boy, and I still look up to him today. Sometimes when I get angry or frustrated by certain circumstances in my life, it helps to remember him and think about what he might have done in the situation.
And sometimes I just think about him when somebody is mowing the lawn.
link to this | comments (3) | File: Family
I used to love to help my grandpa with fix-it or maintenance projects around the house. It would be hot (it was always during the summer months that I would visit my grandparents) and we would sweat and get dirty - like men. We walked around without our shirts off. Sometimes, we grunted.
After we fueled up on sugar and caffeine, we were at it again. My grandpa was particular about the right way of doing things. He taught me not to cut corners. One summer we painted a fence together. It was important to apply the paint in just the right way, and to do a good job sanding before the paint was applied. As he got older, I think he became a little less patient and probably cut a few corners here and there, but who could fault him? When you're over 75 you have that right. Nobody could deny that deep down he was a man of principle, not only in the way he handled work, but in the way he handled his relationships with others. I don't think it's a stretch to say that everybody liked my grandfather. If you met him, you liked him.
When I was very young, I called him Pop-pop. His smile meant everything to me. I was lucky to be beside him when he died, lucky to be able to hold his hand, lucky to say goodbye.
There are loads of other stories I can, and someday will, tell about him. He was a role model to me as a boy, and I still look up to him today. Sometimes when I get angry or frustrated by certain circumstances in my life, it helps to remember him and think about what he might have done in the situation.
And sometimes I just think about him when somebody is mowing the lawn.
link to this | comments (3) | File: Family
ARTFL
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 | comments (0)
Haiku of Spilled Paint
Monday, July 25, 2005 | comments (2)
A painter spilled white paint on 19th street NW just south of Columbia and north of Florida and for some reason did not pick it up. It left a puddle of white paint in the road; a puddle which my poor red VW GTI discovered at approximately 3:00 this afternoon while looking for a parking spot. I felt the car slide and wondered what the hell it was. Then I saw the trail of white left behind by my passenger-side wheels. Then I smelled it. There was loads of empirical evidence before me, and still my brain could not register what had happened. So I pulled over and looked at the right side of my car. That made a believer out of me. Paint. White paint. Splattered against the side of my car like mud. I took my car to the Mr. Wash on 13th street, which was of no help whatsoever. The paint was oil based and resisted the water with a shrug and a laugh. This would call for some elbow grease. With no paint remover handy, I used my finger nail and soapy water to get most of it off. Then this evening C and I got the rest off of the plastic lower paneling using fingernail polish remover and cotton balls. My tires, as well as the plastic liners that house the wheel and keep pebbles and debris from hitting components of the car, are completely white.
To voice my frustration, I thought a haiku was appropriate.
Disclaimer: I'm certain this haiku violates several rules of a 'proper' haiku, so before you say anything please consider for a moment that I do not care.
link to this | comments (2) | File: Carmen Ho_Hum
To voice my frustration, I thought a haiku was appropriate.
Sliding, as upon sweat;
White paint blotches against red -
temper flares like the sun.
White paint blotches against red -
temper flares like the sun.
Disclaimer: I'm certain this haiku violates several rules of a 'proper' haiku, so before you say anything please consider for a moment that I do not care.
link to this | comments (2) | File: Carmen Ho_Hum
Summertime on The Mall, and the living is easy
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 | comments (1)
This evening I went down to The Mall with a guy I used to work with in Dallas. He was in town to conduct some trainings. He wanted to take some sunset shots of the Capitol and the Washington Monument so I went with him. It made me realize something: The Mall in the evening, after sunset, is quite nice and I should make a point of venturing down there more often. I mean, what if, instead of watching the latest episode of Blow Out, which fascinates me for no good reason at all, I just went down to The Mall each Tuesday evening and absorbed the architecture, the lights. It sounds cheesy, but it really can be breathtaking, if you're in the right mood.
There are several good reasons to go The Mall at night rather than during the day in the summertime.
link to this | comments (1) | File: DC
There are several good reasons to go The Mall at night rather than during the day in the summertime.
- First and foremost, you can actually stand outside without being soaked in your own sweat from the awful DC humidity. Who decided to build our Nation's capital in a freakin' swamp? The only saving grace is that Washington has a few months of humidity but then it's over, unlike the place where I grew up, which is sticky and muggy about 9 months out of the year. In DC, eventually summer gives way to an actual fall, which gives way to winter, then to spring. And there is even a part of the summer that isn't plagued by humidity. So in all, it's about 60 days of wetness. This I can take. In fact, it's just enough variety to keep things interesting.
- You will avoid the summer tourists. Come to The Mall between 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM on any given summer day in DC and you will see what I mean. It kind of takes the beauty out of the place to have that many kid-toting, shorts and baseball cap-wearing families walking around. I'm not really as annoyed as I sound. I know people want to come here and summer is the season when American families tend to travel. So it is. I'm fine with it. I think it's good. All our big cities have this same issue - Boston, New York, San Francisco. It's just that, most days, I would rather not partake, thank you.
- There are plenty of parking spaces. You can drive down and park along The Mall in the evening without any problem whatsoever. Just don't stay past 1:00 am.
- The lights. Taking in the monuments has a different feeling at night. When they're lit up they maintain a certain ghostly quality. It's haunting.
- Screen on the Green. If you go to The Mall on Monday evenings, you can catch an old film for free! They've got a good line-up over the next couple of weeks, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Suspicion, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and The Big Sleep.
link to this | comments (1) | File: DC
The Amnesiac Magician
Friday, July 15, 2005 | comments (1)
Many people spend their lives trying to become who they are.
Lately, I've been spending most of my time trying to become who I once was.
Somewhere along the line I lost something, a part of myself, and I'm just beginning to find it again.
Perhaps I lost it to my job. Perhaps I lost it to the endless barrage of media and commercials. Perhaps I lost it to American culture. Perhaps I lost it to conservatives. Perhaps I lost it to liberals. Perhaps I lost it to alcohol. Perhaps I lost it to sex. Perhaps I lost it to condo associations and crazy fucking people.
All I know is this: I've been moving further away from myself. I've been forgetting that which is most familiar to me: me.
I open new doors and find the same rooms I once occupied. Everything inside is old and familiar, and yet somehow I don't remember any of it and it makes no sense. I fumble for the light switch, but ultimately give up and sit in the dark.
I rarely feel wonderment, and when I do, it only lasts a moment. But I remember having it once, and I remember it's touch, it's smell, it's taste. It's like citrus on the tongue, it's like a weightlessness in the chest. I'm constantly looking for ways to produce it, to make it last. But it's fickle and, like anything else, gravitates toward youth.
I woke up the other morning to this realization: I'm different than I used to be and I don't really like it. A part of me is vanishing - more than just my hair - something that was important somehow. And as I lay there in my bed, where I've laid each morning for years, a sinking feeling began to come over me and I thought, maybe this is all there is. Maybe what lies ahead is, simply, more forgetting. And the rest of life is one big magic show, a vanishing act, and I'm an amnesiac magician, my awful talent a mystery even to myself.
I'm not sure how it happened, this disappearance. I don't remember having lost it. And so I wonder to myself if there is any way I can find it again when I don't even know where to look. All I know is it's not here now. And it not being here is suddenly and horribly evident.
So I've set about trying to find this thing that is now lost, and it's working, to a degree. I've recovered bits and pieces, found fragments here and there. But it's different. It's like I'm finding copies, bootlegs, not the real deal. Sure they'll pass, but where is the original? And so a greater fear is beginning to take hold: the question of whether or not this thing ever existed in the first place, or if it was just a dream.
FDR made that famous remark in his 1933 Inaugural Address about having nothing to fear (but fear itself). Well, I guess the thing I fear most is nothing. That is, I fear looking for meaning and finding nothing. But I'm also part of a generation that, as Billy Joe says, 'found [its] place in nowhere.' (Let's all give three cheers for quoting FDR and Green Day in the same paragraph.)
At least I can find solace in this: I seem to gravitate toward paradox. I like contradiction. And I've always had a soft spot for the existential crisis. Maybe it's the pursuit that defines and gives meaning.
link to this | comments (1) | File: Chewing
Lately, I've been spending most of my time trying to become who I once was.
Somewhere along the line I lost something, a part of myself, and I'm just beginning to find it again.
Perhaps I lost it to my job. Perhaps I lost it to the endless barrage of media and commercials. Perhaps I lost it to American culture. Perhaps I lost it to conservatives. Perhaps I lost it to liberals. Perhaps I lost it to alcohol. Perhaps I lost it to sex. Perhaps I lost it to condo associations and crazy fucking people.
All I know is this: I've been moving further away from myself. I've been forgetting that which is most familiar to me: me.
I open new doors and find the same rooms I once occupied. Everything inside is old and familiar, and yet somehow I don't remember any of it and it makes no sense. I fumble for the light switch, but ultimately give up and sit in the dark.
I rarely feel wonderment, and when I do, it only lasts a moment. But I remember having it once, and I remember it's touch, it's smell, it's taste. It's like citrus on the tongue, it's like a weightlessness in the chest. I'm constantly looking for ways to produce it, to make it last. But it's fickle and, like anything else, gravitates toward youth.
I woke up the other morning to this realization: I'm different than I used to be and I don't really like it. A part of me is vanishing - more than just my hair - something that was important somehow. And as I lay there in my bed, where I've laid each morning for years, a sinking feeling began to come over me and I thought, maybe this is all there is. Maybe what lies ahead is, simply, more forgetting. And the rest of life is one big magic show, a vanishing act, and I'm an amnesiac magician, my awful talent a mystery even to myself.
I'm not sure how it happened, this disappearance. I don't remember having lost it. And so I wonder to myself if there is any way I can find it again when I don't even know where to look. All I know is it's not here now. And it not being here is suddenly and horribly evident.
So I've set about trying to find this thing that is now lost, and it's working, to a degree. I've recovered bits and pieces, found fragments here and there. But it's different. It's like I'm finding copies, bootlegs, not the real deal. Sure they'll pass, but where is the original? And so a greater fear is beginning to take hold: the question of whether or not this thing ever existed in the first place, or if it was just a dream.
FDR made that famous remark in his 1933 Inaugural Address about having nothing to fear (but fear itself). Well, I guess the thing I fear most is nothing. That is, I fear looking for meaning and finding nothing. But I'm also part of a generation that, as Billy Joe says, 'found [its] place in nowhere.' (Let's all give three cheers for quoting FDR and Green Day in the same paragraph.)
At least I can find solace in this: I seem to gravitate toward paradox. I like contradiction. And I've always had a soft spot for the existential crisis. Maybe it's the pursuit that defines and gives meaning.
link to this | comments (1) | File: Chewing
Plot that map
Thursday, July 07, 2005 | comments (0)
A nifty Google hack to plot a course and see the resulting mileage, via Sixfoot6.
link to this | comments (0) | File:
link to this | comments (0) | File:
Lights, Music
Tuesday, July 05, 2005 | comments (0)
Tomorrow is The Jones first live show with Mat playing drums. We're so psyched. We practiced yesterday and the songs sounded really good. I think we're all getting comfortable with the sound. Tomorrow night's gig is at DC9, then we have a follow-up performance at Staccato on Saturday. The music starts for both shows around 9:00 and we'll be closing the evening out at around 11:00. If you're in the area, come on out! If you're not, the U.S. tour is still a ways away, so you'll have to wait a little longer. Until then, you can out any updated tracks we have on our Web site.
And last night Catherine and I went to watch the DC fireworks. Incredible. It doesn't get old. We didn't go all the way to the Mall. Instead we stayed where we could make a fast break back home. We wound up stopping at around 15th and Pennsylvania, right beside the Ellipse of the White House grounds. We watched the fireworks through a clearing in the trees - had a pretty good view, actually. They were so loud and spectacular. It's funny, I remember as a kid seeing fireworks in the soccer fields in Houston near our house and we would watch one and then another go off and we would ooh and ahh and my 7-year-old chest would thump when the big bright ones went off. And then when the finale would come, we would just think man that was so loud and so great.
Well, I got news for Harris County, Houston: the entire DC fireworks display is like one big finale! 25 minutes of heart-pounding finale, and you just keep thinking, man this has to stop sometime, and it just keeps going, until you're dazed by the bright lights and explosions, and still thinking, even at 31, man this is so loud and so great.
I'm a sucker for fireworks.
link to this | comments (0) | File: Music DC
And last night Catherine and I went to watch the DC fireworks. Incredible. It doesn't get old. We didn't go all the way to the Mall. Instead we stayed where we could make a fast break back home. We wound up stopping at around 15th and Pennsylvania, right beside the Ellipse of the White House grounds. We watched the fireworks through a clearing in the trees - had a pretty good view, actually. They were so loud and spectacular. It's funny, I remember as a kid seeing fireworks in the soccer fields in Houston near our house and we would watch one and then another go off and we would ooh and ahh and my 7-year-old chest would thump when the big bright ones went off. And then when the finale would come, we would just think man that was so loud and so great.
Well, I got news for Harris County, Houston: the entire DC fireworks display is like one big finale! 25 minutes of heart-pounding finale, and you just keep thinking, man this has to stop sometime, and it just keeps going, until you're dazed by the bright lights and explosions, and still thinking, even at 31, man this is so loud and so great.
I'm a sucker for fireworks.
link to this | comments (0) | File: Music DC
Peer Pressure
Sunday, July 03, 2005 | comments (3)
I've caved to the peer pressure of having a photo blog. I mean, I just want to be cool, is that so wrong? I know, I know, that's not gonna happen, but it's worth a shot, right?
Anyway, I resisted the urge to do a photo blog for a long time because I kept thinking that the photo gallery area of the site would be enough, but in the end, I realized that sometimes you just want to upload one photo and not have it be part of a gallery each time. So I'm about 3 years late. I'm a slow learner, I guess.
I'm planning on adding some additional functionality to this so people can search by category or date. But for now, this will do the trick nicely.
There may still be bugs, so click carefully . . .
link to this | comments (3) | File: Blog
Anyway, I resisted the urge to do a photo blog for a long time because I kept thinking that the photo gallery area of the site would be enough, but in the end, I realized that sometimes you just want to upload one photo and not have it be part of a gallery each time. So I'm about 3 years late. I'm a slow learner, I guess.
I'm planning on adding some additional functionality to this so people can search by category or date. But for now, this will do the trick nicely.
There may still be bugs, so click carefully . . .
link to this | comments (3) | File: Blog
