Display by Label: Chewing

I have to do it. I'm sorry. I've put it off for months. I've told myself I should not write about it. That I should put it out of my mind for good. That the subject has been beaten to death by millions of us blogger types all over the overcrowded and puffed up blogo-verse-osphere. And yet there it is—a shadow of a thought. Lurking like a small furry chipmunk at the edge of its dark little chipmunk hole in my mulched and weeded beds, curious to poke its head out, but at the same time shy and self-conscious and worried I'll chop it's little fucking chipmunk head clean off. Or that Honey will eat him.

I'd like to think that God had the best of intentions when he created chipmunks. But even God has days when he feels a little ornery, and all he feels like doing is kicking back and letting off some steam. So he invites Old Scratch over to his place and they smoke a couple of bowls and play a little XBox. And, over a heated game of Madden 2010 (they get advance copies of software) they think up ways to piss people off, or ruin Jason Lee's career. And the next morning God wakes up refreshed, clear-headed, and alone, and he goes to his window and sees what he's done ... that now there are chipmunks. Or Daschunds. Or people who drive Hummers. Or ... Backstreet Boys. And he just shakes his head and curses Old Scratch and decides he will love these things anyway.

I am on the verge of this kind of mistake.

Do not do it, says my Rational Side.

This will shame you.

You will regret it.

You will feel cheap and dirty.

Oh, Rational Side. You are so clever when you betray me. You and Irrational Side are in cahoots, aren't you? You know that the very arguments you use against my behavior will eventually send me hurdling frantically toward it.

You are a Brutus.

Fucking backstabber.

Geez, man. Come on! What's all this build-up about? Have out with it already, Dave!

Okay, okay. Sorry.

It's Facebook. The big "FB." The cherry-filled donut, moist with gluteny, glazed goodness. The turkish delight, lightly dusted with powdered sugar. The raging shot of Patron, warm and smooth, at 2am. And I hate you, Facebook. With all my heart I hate you. And yet I can't ignore you. I can't stop eyeing your pages. I can't stop myself from checking you once or twice or thrice a day to see if one of the 75 or so friends I sit amongst has posted some morsel about what they are up to so I can pop it back and swallow it without really tasting it. FB, you've turned my friendship with these people into some kind of non-stop tapas meal. Only it's one where most of the time is spent watching other people eat. Because real communication, real meals with substance, rarely occur.

I think Jeff said it best in one of my favorite posts by him when he refers to yoga as "the Facebook of physical activity, an anesthetic for life spent next to people without ever really communicating."

The people I'm friends with on FB are generally people I know—or have known at one point in my life—fairly well. They're people I've shared common interests with. I think with the exception of a few, they are people who I've known "in real life" before I knew them "online." And it's great when I get re-connected with them. But then, like some massive yoga class, there we are, inches from one another, all getting off on our own thing, finding our six chakras, discovering our power animals, and not really talking or even acknowledging each other.

Let me be clear: I'm not pointing any fingers here. I'm just as guilty of this as anybody. (All I usually do on FB is re-post the things I write here.) Nobody's at fault here. FB just works this way. It's kind of what the medium encourages: for us all to become voyeuristic spectators of each-others existence. And who am I to judge that kind of thing? I mean, I keep a very public blog in which I sometimes talk about my very private life. Why? I'm not sure. But here's an attempt to figure it out.

The thing is, I feel like I want something more from Facebook. To me, the value of FB, or any other online social-networking tool, should be to bring us back together in the real world. If a person is not somebody I'd realistically hang out with in a bar or a coffee shop, then I don't see much point to seeing them every day on Facebook. But what about playing games, Dave? You don't have to be best friends to play a game of Scrabulous with somebody. I could see where the games would be sorta fun for people. But I never liked Scrabble when it was something you played on a board, so I definitely do not want it on my computer screen. I do see some value in being able to share book and movie interests. But even with that, it's really not about communication is it? People rarely actually write anything about the movies or books they list. So the recommendations lack context. What they lack is a conversation.

Basically, here's the central irony I've found with FB: Sometimes I wind up feeling less close to people after we've gotten connected on FB then I felt before, even if I hadn't seen that person in years. I mean if the person is somebody you haven't spoken to in a while, then there's this very wide gulf of time between you where all of these things have happened in your lives and you can't just get caught up on that shit by writing a couple of sentences on a "wall-to-wall." So instead, you just say nothing. And so then, there they are: in front of you every day, virtually closer than they've been in years. And yet—because you haven't really communicated with them—they're further away than they ever were before. They become almost like a neighbor that you see from over a fence every day and with whom you don't ever really talk about anything meaningful. Instead, you yell one-liners at each other about how it's really freakin' hot today or man, the Yankees are sucking some ass this year, aren't they? And how are you supposed to respond to these things? You can't. So you shrug and you pull up another window with your work in it, the stuff you're supposed to be doing but don't want to, and you go back to your life.

And now your most recent memory of this friend you haven't seen in 15 years is that they just had Cheerios for breakfast. Or that they are power-washing their house today. And you might like to ask them, how did that power-washing thing go? But you don't. Not because you don't care, but because what you really want to ask them is, "how have the last 15 years been?" But that's too much to bite off in a status update. And, oops, an email just came in which you have to answer, so you reckon' you'll ask about that power-washing thing some other time.

But you never do.

Despite the negativity here, and contrary to the title of this post, I don't actually think Facebook is a mistake. It's a really great app, and I've always thought that. I love how it connects you with people. I also love it from a professional standpoint, for the way it encourages open development, and how it's clean and polished. But the thing is this: It's a good app, but it is just an app. It's an app that connects people. That's it. And the trick is to not let it turn your friendships into endless tapas ... or yoga.

Ahh ... so there it is: My Inevitable Facebook Post. Until now, you could search my site and not find one reference to FB, which kind of surprised me when I realized that. But not anymore. I've entered the din of conversation, even though the Internets never asked for it, or cared.

And I guess I don't feel as dirty as I thought I would. Which is kind of disappointing.

In the end, this wasn't nearly as bad as, say, ... chipmunks. Or Daschunds. Oh well. Maybe next time.

First, I've got to find somebody with an XBox. And a couple of bowls in need of smoking.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  Facebook  Chewing  Blog 

I'm back. Some work was done, but not all. Dents were made, though. And that's good, I suppose. Oh, and there have been bruises. Nothing serious. But lots of little things. Like the one I got while my dad was here. He stopped in for a visit a couple of weeks ago and bought me several garden tools as housewarming gifts. Three or four mighty persuasive branch-trimming blades, a saw, and this curved blade on a pole that operates via a pulley and can slice through branches a good 10 feet above your graying head of hair. Straight through. Like nothing.

But not all the things he bought me were sharp and able to slice through bone. He also got me my first 25-ft ladder, which was the same housewarming gift his father bought him about thirty years ago. We brought that sucker home, and extended it's aluminum frame out to full length. And I shimmied up it's cool staircase to get to a broken branch in the big tree in our front yard. And with him holding the base of the ladder, and me trying to pretend I wasn't freaking out, I sawed through that dead branch with a curved saw that had teeth like a shark. And as I did it, I thought it would probably be tragic for my dad to watch me fall to my death while using the housewarming gifts he bought me. And it would have been. Tragic. But it didn't happen that way.

That's not how I got bruised.

I got bruised with both feet firmly planted on earth. I got bruised because that pulley tool really cuts through the branches, brother. I mean, it really slices through that shit. It makes me think of when I make eggs, and I lift the glass top off the butter dish and I take a dull mini butter knife from the drawer and slice me off a dab of the true stuff and put it in the no-stick All-Clad egg-making pan. When I do that, when I put that little knife through the butter, it goes through easy, like nothing. Because metal through room-temperature butter offers no resistance. And so it was with the pulley device. I lifted that thing up above my head and wrapped it's sharp metal claw around the base of the low-hanging branch whose leaves had, for weeks, been rubbing against my head every time I took Honey for a piss. And I didn't expect it to be like that, like dull metal through room-temperature butter. Like nothing. And so I really put some muscle into it. And the blade sliced through the wood like it wasn't there. And it threw me off balance. So I put my leg back to keep myself upright. But my calf found a low, brick wall in its way, and the halted momentum of my leg against that wall propelled me backward toward the ground. But I don't go down that easily. It's the ninja instincts, see? They're hard to stop. And so there was a bit of gymnastics as I twirled around so that I wouldn't fall flat on my back. And as I did that, the front of my leg dragged against the sharp corner of the brick. And brick corners are very good at a great many things, and one of them is removing human flesh from shins, from ankle to knee. And as I lay there on the ground cursing gravity and sharp sharp blades, my dad said "Are you alright?" And I looked down at my leg and the first thing that came to my mind was, I wonder where the hair went? And I stood up and walked over to the brick wall and inspected it and there it was—a patch of leg hair.

The bleeding took a minute, but it came. The red filled in the long strip of removed flesh nicely.

"You think I should put alcohol on it?" I asked my dad.

"Only if you want to dance," he said. I laughed.

Instead I decided to use hydrogen peroxide from the bottle I had just acquired about two weeks earlier when Honey ate some mushrooms and I called my vet in a panic after reading about Amanitas and how they sometimes grow under conifers. And there are a great many of those types of trees in my back yard. So could those shrooms have been akin to a Death Cap? My vet said it's not likely and it'll probably be okay, but in the same breath she calmly advised me to induce vomiting. Right, I said. How does one do that, again? Evidently, the "easiest" way is to make them swallow a teaspoon full of the hydrogen peroxide. And if this is the "easy" way, then I'm not sure I want to know the "hard" way. Because that shit didn't work on Honey. I gave her a good and plenty serving of a hydrogen peroxide cocktail. Then another. But she never vomited. She shook her head a lot and made gagging noises and probably thought why oh why is my daddy trying to kill me? — but she never tossed up those shrooms. Luckily, the shrooms she ate weren't Death Caps, and she's still alive with no noticeable gastrointestinal issues, aside from the rotten, angry flatulence, which she quietly manufactures late at night while chewing on rawhide in front of the TV.

So I used the peroxide on the scrape instead of the alcohol, and I can attest to the fact that while it may not be reliable at inducing a puppy with an iron stomach to vomit, the peroxide did a good job cleaning that scrape. And it also made me dance a little, though probably not as much as the alcohol would have.

Since the scrape, there has been a steady, consistent trickle of bruises registered on my body, from the black knot on my ankle where I dropped the flashlight, to the little blue ball on the back of my right hand where I wrapped it against the corner of my truck door, to the hole in my big toe where I inexplicably found a tiny glass shard Saturday morning after taking off my blood-stained ankle-sock. Then there are the innumerable bites and scrapes from Honey's playful, four-month-old teeth and nails. Loose-leash training requires constant encouragement in the form of yummy treats, which get inserted into puppy mouths at regular intervals like some serrated pez dispenser. It's exacting and hazardous work, training puppies, and it tends to leave your fingers dry and leathery.

But I don't mind. I really don't. Bruises have always been strangely comforting to me. Bruises and sore muscles. There's something about a body damaged and beginning the process of healing. It's vindicating—proof that you have lived hard enough to hurt yourself, which is the only living worth doing, really, isn't it? And the hurt is a reminder of that having lived. And it feels good and full and sweet, like something earned. And I can hear it now. All of you who minored in Psychology are thinking ... hmmm, he really is a masochist, isn't he? Tsk, Tsk. Whatever. That's not interesting. I mean, who isn't one of those? But you know, here's the thing ... here's what's got me worried: real bruises don't happen to me anymore. Sure, there are all these superficial bumps and scrapes. But the substantive bruises? The ones with consequence? The ones that make you stand up and take notice of your life? I don't get bruised like that anymore. Because for the most part, things are comfortable. Room temperature. And that's what we work for, isn't it? Comfort? So we can feel ... what? Insufferably numb? Pleasantly bored? Nothing? It doesn't matter which turn I take, I always end up here. In a place where there are fleeting moments of feeling that come less and less frequently. And for shorter periods of time.

And so I think I need to fall down some more. Get bruised up a bit. Because I'm working on changing things, brother. One bruise at a time.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Chewing 

I never met my mom's dad. He died the year before I was born, in 1972. And you might assume, therefore, that he died young. But he didn't. He did, however, marry late, at the age of 34, the age I am now. And maybe that's not late by today's standards, but it seems kind of late for 1932. Now, add to that late marriage the fact that my mom was born last of three children and that she had me late—in her mid thirties—and you can begin to see how it was that I never met this man, my mom's dad, despite the fact that he lived to be 74.

My mom's mom died shortly after my mom's dad, when I was five or six. So I don't remember much about her either. But I do have some dim recollections of a woman that I knew of as "Grandma B" and I can remember the heavy blue nightgown she wore on a Christmas morning in Maryland once. And I remember she was soft-spoken. But with my mom's dad, it's always been different. He's always remained something of a mystery to me. I have no physical recollections of him. And yet, he's always played an active role in my mind, in my imagination, largely through the fuzzy, black-and-white photos my mom has of him.

I don't have a name for my mom's dad. It's weird calling him "Grandpa." Because "Grandpa" is my dad's dad. The "Grandpa" I know was only 51 when I was born. And I knew that "Grandpa" for almost 29 years. And shouldn't "Grandpa" be somebody whose lap you've sat in? Shouldn't "Grandpa" be somebody whose laugh still echoes in your ears? Shouldn't you have a personal memory of somebody in order to call him "Grandpa?" So I'll stick with "Mom's Dad." Or Clarence. Because that was his name.

I've put off writing this post for months. Because I kept wanting to be able to point and say, Look, here is this man—my mom's dad. And here is who he was. Because it felt like I should be able to do that. And I wanted my description of him to somehow shed light on me, too. Because sometimes it feels like I'm really close to him, like a part of me is him. And, through my mom's descriptions of him, and through these photos, I can begin to peel back these layers of a mystery, not only about who he was, but who I am. And I keep thinking that maybe one day I'll peel back that one final layer and I'll be able to see clearly and say with some authority that this, this is Clarence.

But instead of shedding light, the process only ends up casting more shadows. My mom will offer spoonfuls of information, things she remembers about him. And I'll eat them up. But the whole thing only makes me more hungry. And I get discouraged. Because the bottom line is I will never know this man. I will die and he will remain a mystery to me.

And I know what the problem is: the things I want to know aren't the kinds of things you can be told. They're not the kinds of things you can just receive, filtered through someone else's perspective. Because I want to hear Clarence speak. I want to listen to him tell a story. I want to know how he put words together, how he constructed a sentence. I want to watch him get up from a chair and see him walk. I want to know for sure he had the same back condition I have. I want to see exactly how he smoked an Old Gold ... or the way he held a beer. I want to feel what it was like to hear him laugh or play the fiddle or stomp and dance at family gatherings at a lake house somewhere in Michigan. I want to shake his hand. I want to hug him. I want to hang out with him. And when I think about how I can't internalize these things—how these perceptual memories won't ever exist for me—it brings tears to my eyes. Because there's a hole there. And all I have to fill it are the words spoken by my mom and a handful of fuzzy snapshots.

And then it occurs to me that, for me, my mom's dad is, and always will be, her experience of him. And that's kind of a great thing to have, as well. I may not be able to know Clarence first hand and develop my own impressions about him, but I can experience first-hand the person my mom knew and the way she felt about him. And what it meant to her when he'd come home each week from his job inspecting ties for the Chesapeake of Ohio Railroad Company. The excitement she'd feel when he returned after a week away. How he called my mom's mom "Wifey," and how it really was a term of endearment for him. And the way he looked at Grandma B and the way he loved her and would hug her in the kitchen when he got home. How he used to tell my mom she "ran like a deer" because my mom had long, skinny legs. How he rarely went to the doctor, despite his various aches and pains, and how he had a cerebral hemorrhage in his fifties and still lived another twenty years, but was never quite the same. And how one day, when she was a little girl, she waited hours and hours for him at a train station in Battle Creek, Michigan. Because he was supposed to stop there and pick her up to take her to where the rest of the family had gone for vacation. But he had forgotten, or he hadn't realized that this is what he was supposed to do. And when he got to the final destination without my mom, he felt terrible at his mistake.

Neuroscientists believe that memories aren't things that are stored in a brain and "retrieved" like a file in a file cabinet. Instead, they think a memory is constructed from scratch each time it is "remembered." And a memory is never remembered exactly as it happened. Details get added or dropped. And the more you remember something sometimes the less accurate it becomes. And I notice this with my mom. I notice that she'll tell me a story about Clarence one time and then the next time it will be slightly different. And I'll say, I thought you said such-and-such. And she will say, Oh yes, that's right. You're right. And it sort of makes me frustrated. Because how can I be right? She's the one who needs to be right. Because I want the unfiltered facts. I want the truth. Because I feel like somehow knowing the true facts will bring me closer to knowing the true Clarence.

But then I take a step back. And I remember that what I'm coming to understand isn't my mom's dad. It's my mom's perception of him. And for me, this is knowing Clarence.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Family  Chewing 

One thing you learn when you're self-employed and working from home is that it is entirely possible to wear the same brown, zip-in-the-front sweater every day for two weeks straight and not offend anybody. Not even yourself. Oh, you still change the t-shirt underneath, of course. On a daily basis. Because you're no animal, after all. But the sweater? The jeans? The footwear? Why change them? Who are you trying to impress? The mail carrier? Who is she to judge? She wears the same thing everyday, too. The bottom line is nobody knows. Because all of your "face-to-face" conversations take place via the phone, and while you have a very real appearance to yourself in the mirror, your appearance to the five people conferencing with you on a Friday morning at 8 am from different parts of the US is completely imaginary. To these people, your state is forever fixed in their consciousness, and you are always, at any given time, sitting in front of your computer, beneath an array of florescent lighting, wearing business casual, and sipping from a coffee mug that says, I hate Mondays or You want it when?! They don't know that only seconds ago you were putting the garbage out and that currently you're lying on your back doing some stretches on the berber carpet in your spare room while they go on about whether or not the icon looks better on the right or left, or if a certain word or phrase requires quotation marks around it. And you probably should care about these things. But you don't. And now you're throwing a squishy ball at the ceiling. Or watching the Obama speech in Philly (muted of course). Or applying some apricot jam to a gluten-free biscuit which you made earlier that morning. And suddenly you come to your senses and realize that—god-dammit—all this time you've been on this call, and your coffee cup has been empty. So you place it in your palm and weigh it there and regard its cold, vacant interior with sadness, and then you shuffle into the kitchen to make another cappuccino while the voices continue through your earpiece. And in the kitchen, you mute the phone, and you use this time you have to yourself to reflect upon your life and contemplate the finer details of this existence you've chosen. And, in that moment, it occurs to you that perhaps you've grown unhealthily attached to your blue, paint-speckled crocs. Because you actually noticed this morning that you felt uneasy and scared at the thought of putting on real shoes. And your reluctance to take off those crocs to do the normal things people do—like shower, or sleep—could be an indication that things are getting a little out of control. And, okay, you do take them off for those activities. But you have a suspicion it's only because your wife is there. And you don't want to alarm her.

And while the espresso machine pushes the silky brown stuff into your cup and your phone is on mute and the people on the other end are continuing to talk and talk, you gaze outside. And you realize that it's quickly becoming spring out there. And pretty soon you're going to need to get that lawn thing figured out. Because where you come from, men take their lawns seriously. And there's this whole business of laying down mulch and, well, when exactly should that happen? And then there's the lawnmower you need to purchase. And the trimmer. And probably a leaf-blower would be useful—even now, even in spring—to get rid of the leftovers from last year that are under your deck. And come to think of it, you should really get a rake. And some fertilizer and a fertilizer application device. And you'll store all of this in the empty shed out back. Or rather, the shed you hope is empty. Because you've yet to look inside of it. And that's probably something you should have done by now. But every time you've thought to do it, there's been a river of ice or water between your house and it. And so you've figured it's not going anywhere, and you'll take a look inside when the time comes. And maybe now that time has come. Because you do live in Soprano country. And sheds are great places to store a great many things, not just lawn equipment. And the more you think about it, the more daunting it seems. And maybe it's best to just keep it closed up. And to not deal with it. And maybe somehow spring won't actually come this year. And the lawn won't grow. And you can just keep the shed empty—in your mind.

And just then a question comes your way from over the phone line, interrupting your quiet lawn musings. It seems your opinion is requested. So you de-mute. And you tell the phone—and hopefully the people on the other end of it—what you think. And there's no response, and you realize that people aren't picking up what you're laying down. And it's not even that what you said was all that technical. It's just that you're the "technical guy," and people's eyes tend to glaze over and their ears go all deaf when you start uttering phrases. Because even though it's these people's jobs to deal with things like Web sites, and to sit on committees to help populate them with content, they refuse to learn the language necessary to talk about them in any meaningful way. And so you find yourself using words and speaking in tongues that you haven't used since 2001. And that whole plea of "I'm not that tech savvy, so you'll need to explain this to me in laymen's terms" is one you've heard uttered hundreds of times, but this particular time, you want to reach through the phone and shake them and say, "All I'm talking about here is an email form and when you click "submit" it emails the information you entered to another person! I'm not asking you to program the thing, just to imagine it on the site!" And you consider asking this person if not knowing how to bake bread from scratch or slaughter a pig means they don't know how to talk about a ham sandwich. But then you think better of it and you patiently repeat what you said in a different way. And there's a silent pause and then somebody suggests that we get Bob on the phone. Because Bob is technical. And he'll understand. He'll understand the concept of ... an email form. But you don't get upset, because you've had this conversation before, a million times actually, and chances are, at the rate you're going, you'll have it again. And so you take a sip of your coffee beverage and you eye the Dewars and wonder if 8:30 in the morning is too early for "Happy Hour."

If you look closely at the backyard of your soul, you'll find a shed. And it's something you've gazed at a million times before and it's always remained closed and mysterious. And surrounded by ice. Familiar, but strange. Holding so much promise, but surrounded by challenge and danger. You think you may have a key to it somewhere, but you're not really sure where it is, and even if you found it, you're not sure you want to know what's inside. Because it could be something you're not ready to find, and then you'll have to deal with whatever it is that's in there. And if there's nothing? If it's empty? An entirely different problem. The potential to do the wrong thing, or worse, to do the right thing poorly. And so even though the ice is melting and the opportunity is ripe to go out and see what you can do in this new place, the temptation is to stay in these other rooms you've occupied, and walk in your crocs in the well-worn paths that connect one room to the other. Until you wake up one morning and realize that safe is another word for dead. And pretty soon there'll be a lawn growing around you whether you want it to or not.

Rebirth. Renewal. It's happening, brother. And you're missing it. And another couple years of this and you'll be in the weeds. And you won't even be able to see the shed. And the other paths will be that much more worn. And it's only going to get harder to tread someplace new.

And it's time, brother—it's time to figure this thing out.

So you hang up from your call and you go upstairs and you put on a different sweater. Because you have to start somewhere. And tomorrow maybe you'll take on the shed.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Weather  Chewing  Work 

I've never been the type of person who joins things. I went to a college where about 80% of the student population was Greek and I still never felt the need to Rush. Of course, that may have had less to do with my reluctance to join things and more to do with a general distaste for Frat culture and a resistance to the idea that I needed to find all my friends within the first month of school.

The thing is, I have this sort of romantic notion that groups should just develop organically, at their own pace. Not through a process which starts by doing a two-week Rush through twenty different houses to prove yourself to people you don't know. Then you put in "bids" to the houses you like and you wait to see if you're accepted by one of them. And then you are, and in what is perhaps your proudest moment on this earth, you become a Sigma Chi, or a Tappa Keg, or whatever and so obviously this means you must subject yourself to some strange homo-erotic initiation ritual where your pledge brother comes in your hair while another dude sticks his dirty underwear in your mouth—oh, I'm sorry, have we been introduced yet?—and then you get drunk and head out into a field to get branded on your ass with a—holy shit, that's a real fucking branding iron isn't it guys? okay, okay. wait a minute fellas, I think there's been some misunderstanding, I mean this can't be safe ... oh, shiiiit!!!!

I don't know. I guess it's just not my cup of tea, is all I'm saying. But some people like that sort of thing. And hey, you've got to give them credit for knowing what they like.

When I was younger, I always thought my propensity not to join things meant I was kind of "anti-social." And the whole not joining a Frat thing served to reinforce that perception about myself. But as I got older I realized this wasn't the case at all. That I was, by nature, a pretty social person. If I had been at a more liberal school, I probably would have joined several groups because I would have probably felt more of a sense that I was already accepted. And maybe in this sense it was sort of good I was at W&L because, at that age, I really needed something to rebel against. And by rebelling against the social scene there, it actually helped me academically, because I spent a lot more time studying. If I had been at a school like Brown or Vassar, I probably would have been just another Birkenstock-and-flannel-wearing neo-hippie waiting around for the next promising three-way. And studying? Who cares about studying?

I guess what I'm saying is if I do join a group—and here's the tricky part—I want to actually feel like I'm part of the group before joining it. I want acceptance into the group to be a pre-condition of ... gracing it with my presence. Dig? That way I'm just loved. Automatically. Without doing anything but showing up. Is that so much to ask, people? I mean, really!

But last week, I stepped out of my comfort zone a bit and joined Thirty-Something Bloggers. See: here's my profile. Given my phobia of groups, this is not something I normally would have done, but having just moved from DC, where there had been a great "community" of bloggers (thanks in large part to dcblogs.com), I wanted to try to find something similar to that. It's nice to have that sense of community when you blog. For one thing, it provides a way for other people to find your blog. But more than that, it helps give you a sense of context and "place" where otherwise you're just this single voice shouting into the ether. What I like so much about DCblogs (who kindly still keeps me in their "blogroll" by the way) is that it really allows you to work into it naturally and with no strings attached. You live in DC? You blog? Fine! You're a DC blogger. It's really that simple. There's no test involved and you don't have to say anything about yourself. You're not obligated to meet anybody or say hello. You just send a link to your blog. Period. Nobody initiates you. At the end of the day, you still might wind up with somebody's underwear in your mouth. But if you do, it's because you totally wanted it to happen.

The Thirty-Something Bloggers group felt a little more risky to me. You have to set up a profile, which, of course, makes you sort of "define" yourself in a very superficial way. And then there is this whole business of having "friends" in the group, which of course is one of those MySpace-like concepts that doesn't really mean anything because it becomes a kind of numbers game. But the bloggers who were in the group did seem like people I related to. And the quality of the blogs on the site was good. And there was actually a DC blogger I recognized who had already joined. So that helped lend some credibility to it. But I was still sort of skeptical, because a group based on age seemed flawed somehow. I mean, being a "Thirty-Something Blogger" is, by necessity, a temporary condition. In the end, one of three things is bound to happen to all of us: 1) We will stop blogging. 2) We will continue blogging, but will eventually turn forty. 3) We will continue to blog and never turn forty. And while that last scenario may seem like a good one, it's actually the least-desirable outcome of the three.

But I decided not to over-think it. Or rather, I did over-think it (as you can see), and then I took a few steps back and joined the group anyway. Because why the hell not? It's all about making connections with people, after all. Isn't it? That, and trying not to take yourself too seriously.

So how do I feel now that I'm a Thirty-Something Blogger? What does it mean? Well, I'm not exactly sure. I haven't figured it out yet. Right now I'm just sort of existing there. My profile pic just floats around on the page and shit, looking dorky and weird. Pretty soon, maybe I'll throw myself into a discussion or two. Or maybe I'll just sort of fade away into the background and never say or do much of anything. I have yet to make friends with too many people. Actually, I've made precisely two, and one is the group creator, and so she has to be my friend ... by law, I think. My other friend—who I've already had a fight with over—of all things—grits, goes by the provocative name of Horny Housewife. And doesn't it seem like I should get extra "friend points" for that or something? I may get my Vassar moment, yet.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  Thirty_Something_Bloggers  Friends  College  Chewing  Blog 

Saturday morning, shoveling snow from our driveway before heading to Newark for a flight. Five hours later, it's all sunshine and t-shirts, sipping margaritas on the patio of the Blue Goose in Plano. A soccer dad with shin-guarded kids beside us. And, on the other side, Harleys rumbling in the parking lot. Tattoos on display. Double D moms with "Don't Be Jealous" t-shirts. Suburban grey-beard banker bikers, bandana'd and leather-vested and flaunting their mid-life crises a month or two early. This strange mix of cultures. This strange mix of seasons. Because it's 70 degrees and sunny in early March in North Dallas. And we're sitting on a patio—the same exact one—where ten years ago I would've been found serving drinks. And not much has changed, except the name on the building. Time travel happens, ya'll.

Then it's light-weight longsleeves on E&K's back porch for pool, and beer on draft, and a broken E string. And man, that sentence would read a lot differently if you just changed a single letter, wouldn't it? Here there's another Harley rumbling, asleep on a lawn chair. Magnolia splayed out like a morning prayer. And us laughing over a shed in Jersey that's never been opened because there's mostly been a river of ice between me and it. And an empty shed is a scary prospect in Soprano country. And wow, jackets and gloves and shovels and boots seem so far away. Three hours northeast.

Sunday, the wind and rain began while we puzzled at Mom's. 2000 pieces. And the pot roast made some smoke, so we opened the windows. And then left them open. Because puzzling can make you hot—all that brainpower spent matching shapes and colors together. And it's nice to do that kind of work with a cross-breeze.

And then the rain got heavier. And the winds got colder. And last night, on the third day of March, North Dallas saw what might be described locally as a "blizzard" of snow, short-lived, but furious and heavy. Leaving a blanket of white on the flat landscape. Jackets and scarves back on. Pushing wet snow off the windshield with our arms. Then, us in our all-seasoned rental, headlights screaming against this horizontal army of flakes. Feeling like Star Wars at warp speed. Passing through another weather wormhole.

Then this morning waking to sunshine and highs in the mid-50s. Dallas will be back to t-shirts and margaritas in no time. And there's a bit of the sadness, because they don't grow Tex-Mex in North Jersey. The patios, chips and salsa, and salted rims. But that's what time travel and weather wormholes are for.

link to this | comments (6) | File:  Weekend  Weather  Travel  Friends  Family  Dallas  Chewing 

There are a million and one reasons not to do something. But they all usually amount to one thing: fear. And let me just say that I've got some of the fear and some of the dread when it comes to this thing I've started, Fiction Fridays. I've gotten used to writing certain types of posts in a certain voice. It's gotten comfortable. I write about particular topics. I poke fun at myself. I try to be humorous, when I can. I've begun to whittle down the focus of things here. And so it's become somewhat safe and easy for me. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I'm never one to ride the wave of "safe and easy" for very long. Safe and easy waves are usually short-lived ones, low and close to the shore. And so last week I decided to throw this Fiction Friday thing in the mix to stir things up and generate some big surf. And, you know, I think I've succeeded because, I have to admit, what I'm looking at here—these waves—they're awfully big, and I'm apt to fall off of these crunchers—and often. It was, in fact, a real challenge to stick to Fiction Friday this week, but not for the reasons I expected. I'll explain ...

I just got through reading Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park. There's some interesting stuff in that book that I want to flesh out in another post, but for now, I just want to cite this one quotation that touches on the heart of what I'm struggling with here. The main character of the book is "Bret Easton Ellis," and this "character self" says early on in the book: "I could never be as honest about myself in a piece of non-fiction as I could in any of my novels."(25)

In the book, there are many levels of irony with that statement, which I love. But what struck me most about the comment is how strangely accurate it is with my writing on this blog. I feel much more vulnerable posting fiction than I do the non-fiction riffs I usually write, even though, as I've written about before, there are definitely elements of fiction in most of my posts, which I call the "exaggeration license." And maybe it's that ability to fictionalize the non-fiction that makes it "safe." Along with the ability to pick and choose what I write about. The stuff that's true, that I don't mind sharing, is just what it claims to be: fact. (At least as much as anything filtered through the psyche—the id, the ego, the super-ego—and written down is "factual.") And the stuff I don't want to share is conveniently left out, glossed over, or otherwise hidden.

But with fiction, the entire thing is open to interpretation. It's not "truth," per se, because none of it actually ever happened, at least not exactly the way it's described. But there is truth in it. And sometimes that truth is more true than anything else I write. Sometimes that truth is the scariest thing to put on paper (or screen) and show to people.

Which brings us back to "the fear." We live in a world of fear. And, I'll tell you, I'm scared. A lot. I'm scared of dying. I'm scared of things like cancer. Of bacteria. Of the crap in our oceans poisoning our bodies. But I'm also scared of living, brother, and I'm sometimes scared of myself. Because with all the standard set of fears that got instilled in me as kid, it really is true that "my mother never warned me about my own destructive appetite" (thanks Jenny).

When it comes to my writing, I'm scared like hell of using cliché, of being trite or boring. But I'm also scared that if I don't indulge in cliché at least a little bit, I won't be understood. And more than anything else, I'm scared that the stuff I'm putting down is just plain bad. That's a big one. I had a short story from college I was going to post this week, but yesterday I got cold feet. Because it's really weird looking back at things you wrote almost 15 years ago, even for me, let alone you guys. It needed a heavy edit.

So, for now, I think what I'm going to do is use Fiction Fridays as a way to post short "writing exercises" that I get from this book called The 3 am Epiphany, which I bought about a year ago, but haven't done much with until now. In my college creative writing classes, my professors always kind of frowned upon writing exercises. Their feeling was just that we should write what we wanted and bring it to class for a very public lashing and embarrassment in front of our peers. Good times. But that approach really leaves things wide open, and tends to fuel a bit of the "writer's block." Because when everything is possible, it's difficult to focus on just one thing. Sometimes the restrictions put on you by an exercise can be oddly "freeing."

For the purposes of my posts, using the exercises will, I think, take some of the pressure off and makes the posts more "casual." I won't have to feel the pressure of "finishing" a story and biting my nails wondering how it's going to be interpreted. Okay maybe, I'll still have some of that, but having the rules of the exercise there (along with a self-imposed length restriction) will put a little more separation between me and it. I also think it'll make for more bite-sized (read: "blog-able") stuff, frankly.

I started this as an "intro" to this week's Fiction Friday post, but quickly realized it was going to have to be it's own post because, like most of my posts, it would be too damn long. So there it is. I've got another post ready, but I really don't like to post twice in one day. Other than the weekends, Friday is always the slowest traffic day. It's pretty much universally that way on every Web site I've ever managed. I can't figure it out, because you would think Friday would be a big Web-surfing day. But I suppose it's also a day for "long lunches" and "leaving early" or catching up on the shit that you put off all week. So chances are most people who stop by my blog won't even read any of this until next week, if at all. So that means I sort of copped out of Fiction Friday this week. But not really. Because I had something ready. (Really, I swear!) I just had to say this other thing first. Anyway, if you have any thoughts, speak up. Leave a comment or send me an email. I'd love to hear them.

Now take an early lunch, already! And have a good weekend.

link to this | comments (6) | File:  Writing  Fiction  Chewing  Blog 

Saturday. A father and his little boy. I walk by the two changing in their row of lockers. Dad, buttoning shirt. Boy, balancing on one foot, stepping clumsily into jeans. I find my locker in the next row. Begin changing. And there's this exchange:

"Daddy?" The kid's voice is the only sound in the locker room. And the octave range—I forgot they made voices like that—puts him at about four. He seems to be chewing over something, like he's on the brink of asking one of life's most perplexing questions. You know, something like, Why is the sky blue? or Why do men have wee-wees? Something profoundly important.

"Yeah, son?" Dad seems accustomed to relentless questioning.

The boy sighs. He is searching for the right words to express this worrying thing ... and then, he finds them:

"Do you like my Spiderman shirt?"

I can almost hear the father's grin. Or maybe it was my own grin I heard. After a pause, dad says: "Yes, son. I like your Spiderman shirt very much."

"I do too," says the boy.

And I could tell it satisfied him very much that they both liked his shirt.

And if you want to know the truth, it satisfied me too. Because I miss the days when having a Spiderman shirt on—and having your dad like it—was all you needed to feel good and right in the world.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Overheard  JCC  Chewing 

I've been reading and re-reading Hemingway lately, partly because I'm just enjoying his style, but partly because I'm hoping to learn, through osmosis, the art of writing while pleasantly pissed. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck in this pursuit. I've tried varying the type of alcohol, speeding up or slowing down the pace of consumption . . . but the result is usually the same: crap. So I guess I'm doomed to be a sober writer. And while I suppose that's a noble thing to be, it's definitely not as fun, and makes it all the more necessary to be profoundly intoxicated while not writing.

Anyway, I'm currently involved in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's personal account of his early years in Paris, struggling to make it as a writer. There are a number of passages where he discusses the craft of writing. This one, I think is particularly good:


I think what Hemingway is mainly referring to here is getting past that point where style begins to stand in the way of content. But I also think he's speaking to how discovering the true content can actually give way to style. Good writing—hell, good anything—involves starting with that one true thing. That spark. A feeling, an emotion: bare-skinned and honest. And when you've found that, the rest falls into place. The style, to a certain degree, is secondary. It will unfold around that initial thrust. People are good at recognizing the non-true. People are good at recognizing bullshit. It'll show.

But writing something true—something that rings true—does not necessarily mean writing the truth. One of Hemingway's biographers (and friends) A.E. Hotchner writes in the 1999 preface to Papa Hemingway, "Part of the mystique about Ernest stems from the manner in which he blurred the demarcation between fiction and fact." He adds that Hemingway once remarked that "Fiction is a magnification of reality." And this is particularly interesting in the context of A Moveable Feast since it is something of a memoir.

So I've been thinking lately about these ideas of truth and fiction and how they relate to blogs. To my blog, in particular of course (because it is, after all, all about me, isn't it?) But also to all "personal blogs." Because people kind of have a different standard for these, don't they? They expect them to be . . . the truth. And people tend to get very upset when this does not turn out to be the case. I sat in on a panel at SXSW last March about fictional blogs. The subject was interesting, though the panel itself was way too short. There was one panelist who had maintained a fictional blog for several years and there was a good discussion revolving around how readers of that blog had felt "duped" when they found out the blog was "not real." Because these readers had related to the narrator and had come to see her as a real person. But my take is this: these people were "duped" because they allowed themselves to be duped. It doesn't change the fact that when these people read the blog it spoke to them on some level. And I think it was that "speaking-to," that conversation, that is what was true. Without it, the blog wouldn't have held their attention. And if they had known that the blog was fiction to begin with, would it have struck them in the same way?

Despite the fact that this blog—my blog—is named after a fictional character, I am not a "fictional blogger." That said, I'll be the first to admit that there are elements of fiction in almost everything I write here. I don't see any other way of doing it really. What I'm always trying to arrive at, though, is something honest and unaffected, and hopefully those are things that come across independent of "fact" or "fiction." Either way, you must get to the one true sentence. And that usually involves baring yourself in ways you don't always feel comfortable doing (regardless of the fact that you might be an exhibitionist at heart.) Because sometimes the fear sets in. A fear of offending, maybe. Or a fear of people not understanding or misinterpreting. And the fear tends to be stifling when you allow it free reign. Of course, this isn't necessarily a problem unique to somebody who blogs. It's a problem with any form of public self-expression or art. And, holy crap, I worry constantly that I don't have the courage necessary to be a writer.

I have toyed with the idea of writing out-right fiction on this blog. Because in some ways, fiction would open up some new possibilities. But it has just always seemed out of place here. And so I've been tossing around some ideas for a different blog, something more fictional that I can do alongside this one, and hopefully one of these days it will become a reality. (Oops. No pun intended.) But if it does come about one of these days, I don't want it to necessarily be defined by the fact that it's fiction. Because even if it is fiction, it's going to be based in some sort of truth. Because, to be honest, I'm just not that imaginative . . .

I read a lot of personal blogs. Some of them are written by people who give their "real" faces and names to the Internets. Some are people who prefer to remain anonymous. Some of them are people I know "in real life" others are people I've never met. Some of them are probably entirely "factual" accounts of "real" life. Others probably contain a good deal of fiction. Either way, it doesn't really matter to me. The way I see it, every "true story" has elements of fiction. And any good fiction is filled with elements of truth. The "true thing" —the one true sentence—is what speaks to people. That's what matters. Without it, there's nothing.

link to this | comments (9) | File:  Writing  Chewing  Blog 

I wish they all could be funny. Or at least heart-warming. That would be nice. But that's just not how it happens these days. Today, I've got nothing. And yesterday. And the day before that. And for weeks and weeks, actually. But nothing isn't really an accurate description. There's a lot. I've got a lot of stuff floating around. It's just . . .

This hole I'm in. How did I get here, anyway? It seems like I just woke up one morning and realized that - wow, man - I'm really down in this thing. Ankle deep in the mud. And I must admit, I'm heavy bored. The cool, sighing earth all around. Even the hole is bored. Bored with me being bored. Bored with me being trapped . . . somewhat. Stuck . . . sort of. Contained enough to make it hard to move. Free enough to still move around like a normal human being. I've got food and water down here, which appear magically at regular intervals. A little cave for shelter. All of this - all of this crap keeps me comfortable.

But what to do about the tread? What to do about these bumps and dents. I can run my hand along the walls down here and I know where each and every last one begins and ends. I can anticipate them. And it's tedious. And it's trite. And it's exhausting. I'm too young for this. Aren't I? And, yet, I'm too old to go on thinking they'll just go away on their own.

And the hard thing isn't the escape. The hard thing is deciding which escape to use. There's this ladder, for instance. Shiny. Never been used. There's the rope over here, with little knots tied off to make it easier to ascend. Somebody even left me a freakin' jet-pack. I mean, come on. There are these little gifts all around me. All of these, these options. And they're all a way out of this thing. They're all a way up there. Which is a place I can't see. An unknown. Even scarier than the damn hole. And maybe I don't want to escape, after all. Because there's just too many choices. For so long, escape has been the idea of that ladder. The idea of that rope. The idea of the jet-pack.

And why should I do anything of any real substance anyway when there are these posts to write? One after the other, in reverse chronology. Ordered so that a reading forwards is actually backwards - revealing a strange reverse progression. Every day there's a new ending, which for newcomers winds up being the beginning. And to put all of this shit down - for what? To make me feel better? To make the Internets more populated with stuff to read? Like it needs it. Like it even wants it. Aren't these posts — these riffs — part of what keeps me stuck here?

And I can't believe I'm about to go off on this tangent, because — holy crap — it's completely off-topic, and I'm warning you, it's not entirely clear where this is going. But if you care to follow, it's actually quite emblematic of the kind of twists and turns my brain makes these days. So here goes: What happened to Gwen Stefani, anyway? Because I'm watching music videos the other day on Yahoo! or YouTube, or one of those online video worlds that are now making up for the void MTV and VH1 used to fill — you know, "multi-tasking," which is a way of saying, "trying to keep from going crazy while working alone in my house all day" — and I see her writhing around in bed with the white silk sheets and the singing about staying up til 4 am, crying about something. And I'm squinting at this through a film of confusion, thinking, when did this happen? When did "Gwen" become this delicate, doe-eyed, mass-produced pop star churning out catchy, but safe, radio-friendly hits? Still hot, mind you. But not in that edgy, tough-girl, ska-punk, outrageous, platform-shoe, plaid-pant, tank-top-slash-athletic-bra wearing, neon-attitude sort of way. Her hotness is now a warm simmer — a classy, polished, fashion-model kind of hot. My god, have I been asleep since 1996? Is this what being married to Gavin Rossdale does to a person? Having a one-year old son — does it lead to this? Surely not for most people. But this is Gwen, after all. And now she's wearing night-gowns and bathrobes and business suits in her videos . . . grown-up clothes. Looking completely her age and shit. Well, almost. And all I can think about is Spiderwebs, and Just a Girl, and Excuse Me, Mister. And maybe she'll pop out of those serious clothes and start acting crazy again, maybe she'll let out one of her trademark trills — that thing she does with her voice where . . . oh, probably not.

And don't get me wrong, this Gwen is still great. The song is catchy, and actually I kind of like it in a guilty way. But it's just not that "No Doubt" sort of sound that sparks a fire. But the sad reality is that the "No-Doubt Gwen" is probably gone. She's been replaced in the market by Lily Allens and Amy Winehouses. Which is not to compare her past sound with either of theirs, and certainly not to compare her image. It's just, these are the fresh, the new, the young tough-sounding female pop singers of 2007. And nobody is apologizing that "Gwen" is no longer one of them, least of all her. Because it's healthy. It's a good thing. For her. And for us. Because the last thing I'd want to do is go on some rant about her "selling out," or "man, she was so much better when" or "she's just not staying true to her sound," as if she - as if anybody - had some sort of obligation to always remain the same. People who make those sorts of complaints are really only crying over their own condition. Of aging. Of loss. Of being stuck.

So I say, good for her. For changing. For evolving her image and her sound. For escaping herself. I don't necessarily want the old Gwen Stefani back. I'm just acknowledging that I sort of miss her. And isn't that strange? To miss somebody you don't really even know? But what I really miss isn't her at all. What I really miss is myself. Because, more than anything, the loss of her is the loss of me. And it's probably time for a little re-invention of my own.

But maybe that was a poor parallel. Because comparing something like this to pop stardom now seems really weird and misplaced. I've got no excuse other than to say, I need an editor.

Or maybe I just need out of this hole. I think it's time I use the jet pack.

link to this | comments (1) | File:  Chewing