In Twenty-Five Words...

My FB friend, Carol, is a wonderful writer and author. She posted a memory of her first stab at writing, a young girl whispering secrets to her diary.

Writers write, that’s what she does for a living, I just doodle.

Aside from school assignments and letters home during summers away, the first real writing I remember doing was in a journal that I kept in the summer of 1966 while touring England with my church choir. Considered to be the best choirs of men and boys at that time on our side of the pond, singing in the English tradition. We wanted to be Kings College, Cambridge good, and had the joy of singing with them that summer. But I had just turned 18, England was swinging, Carnaby Street, Mods and Rockers, Trafalgar Square a familiar street show, much  like Washington Square in the Village back home. The Beatles had released “Rubber Soul” the year prior.

Pubs welcomed us with open arms, “You’re Yanks!” locals would shout with great cheer, beer breath and alcohol reddened faces almost too close, insisting on buying us endless pints, pulling us into their overwhelming camaraderie. We always vowed to leave in time to make curfew but rarely did. Drunken punting on the Thames and a run in with the aforementioned rockers.

They surrounded the four of us, flashing shiny switchblades, demanding to know why we thought we could walk unmolested through their turf. I managed to stammer out our collective ignorance of their territorial boundaries and had just started in on a profuse apology when the blade wielding eviscerators yelled in unison “You’re Yanks!”

More hours of undeniable hospitality followed, free beer flowed, we felt totally at home in a pub that was ground zero for those leather clad, cycle riding outlaws who were just scared kids our own age back then.

A visit to Westminster Abby was contrasted by a strip show in Soho where the same girl changed outfits and characters every hour, but always featured her ability to pop syphilitic Ping Pong balls out into the crowd from her fully loaded chamber. Local derelicts sat in the front row, very drunk, show after show, trying to catch her slimy high balls in their open mouths. Quite an education for me.

But it was the boredom of college in rural North Alabama that got me writing on a regular basis. The campus an oasis surrounded by a cultural purity that had been untainted by segregation or social upheaval, until the arrival of Northern hippies who had been recruited to help pay for the new dorms. Entry requirements were stringent, you had to be able to fog a mirror. They were interesting times, I wrote about them, reflecting on the ever changing social skirmish lines. Nothing meaningful, just snippets and snapshots. Many LSD fueled nights spent grinding my teeth, clutching an indelible ink pen, writing quick offerings on tie-dyed bed sheets, my first pre-desktop background. Near my head a cynical take on religion that has only grown, based on a challenge to consumers often found on the back of cereal boxes back in the day:

In Twenty-Five Words…

Let me tell you about God,

All the hungry, hollow structures,

Razed to praise his name,

The endless wars, unctuous whores,

In twenty-five words…

No less.

I still write in snippets, many hundreds of them, my own attention span similar to that of most of our society, no longer than my own manhood and often equally embarrassing.

hmh

She Hates Jews?

I woke up around 2am, hearing Carla scurrying around in the kitchen. As soon as I walked in, standing by the refrigerator getting a glass of water, she started spouting highlights of the Facebook cruising she had just pulled in from, while both of us lingered there in the rest area.

 “My friend Jenna thinks there may be a connection between Harambe the ape they had to shoot and that little boy. Maybe the child was there to free him. Jenna hates zoos.”

These days, my hearing is only about 80%. Carla gets exasperated with me when I ask her to repeat stuff or I don’t understand what she said. She thinks I’m just being difficult. It had sounded to me like Carla had said that Jenna hates Jews, not zoos. Knowing how absurd that was and that obviously I wasn’t hearing it correctly, I started giggling and said: “Jenna hates Jews? That figures. She’s like that.”

Carla started to do a slow boil. So I taunted her some more.

“Why do you even listen to that racist woman? What does she have against Jews?”

“ZOOS, YOU IDIOT! SHE HATES ZOOS!”

“Boy, she really had me fooled. I thought she was smart and open minded. Now she shows her true self. Hates Jews. Amazing what comes out when people open up.”

‘ZOOS! ZOOS! ZOOS! SHE HATES FUCKING ZOOS!”

“Well, Honey. I’m going back to bed. I don’t like all this racist talk.”

I walked quickly back toward the bedroom just in case Carla was about to launch something at the back of my head, chuckling as I slid back into my spot in the bed so warm and inviting.

hmh

Gadget Lust...

Often, my love and lust for gadgets pushes me to conjure a justification. Why do I need that again? As a kid, trapped for too many hours in a house where I didn’t make the rules, escape was vital. Don’t get me wrong, I had great parents, supportive, loving, all that, but my big dream when growing up was to be... grown up! On my own. My life, my rules. So you do what you have to while you’re in the Gulag, until that freedom time shows up. Along with my friend, David, we strung an insulated wire out from my bedroom window, making a long dip to the top of the roof on the detached garage, then lowering slightly out to the big Oak in his back yard, and down into a window at his ground floor den. That’s where he had a telegraph key that matched mine. We both learned Morse code and spent many stay-at-home school nights tapping away the blues. Deep conversations. “fuck you!” “fuck you back!”. That was an excellent gadget.

A microscope took me into the world of microbiology. I made a soup of boiled straw and added a cup of critter water from a pond nearby. Populations of single cell organisms exploded, almost overnight. A single drop on a slide revealed hundreds, thousands, ciliated hairs flapping in busy traffic, bumper cars with no monitored direction, Times Square on New Year’s eve. Gadget escapism for me. I loved that microscope, almost like a first car, it took me joyfully down so many new roads, into worlds I hadn’t even known existed.

One Christmas, Grandpa gave me a working steam engine. About the size of a shoebox, that thing could build steam to the point where you thought it may explode, releasing frantic energy in controlled bursts of its loud whistle, flywheel spinning crazy fast, like a stationary locomotive on speed. When I went off to college, Mom sold it in a yard sale as she and dad moved into a smaller home. She just didn’t understand how much that steam engine meant to me. I wasn’t happy that she sold my two Timber Wolf pelts (no I would never own them now), my arrowhead collection, the seashells or those two bowling pins either. One of those striped pins had fallen off the top shelf when I messed with something on the bottom, and knocked me out cold. I was the only one home at the time and apparently took quite a junket into la-la land that afternoon. The goose-egg on my head being the only reminder of my journey. But, when I learned that my stuff was gone, it was beyond upsetting. I still lament not having those things with me today.

Then there was my Accutron watch that I had lobbied my parents for so irritatingly. The tuning fork forever humming an F sharp, giving me time that was accurate to within 1 or 2 seconds a day. That was cutting edge stuff then. I put it to my ear and loudly hummed that F sharp for the choirmaster when we sang at Westminster Abbey. He had forgotten his pitch pipe and needed a starting point. Of course I didn’t need that precision, especially at age 15 when I mostly just blew with the wind, but I backed into the need through rationalization. It was important that I be on time, like I had said I would be. Actually, I’ve always been that way and will normally arrive for an appointment ten minutes early, even if it means I sit in my car for just a bit. But the point here, is the gadget. That watch was the coolest cat in town. My Grandfather was so jealous of it, he ran right out and bought one too.

Maybe I got the love of gadgets from him. He was the king of cool cameras and cutting edge technology when it came in small machines to read the weather or his heart rate. Maybe a special patterned, waterproof, cylindrical pill holder. He didn’t really need that either. Of course he always carried a stainless steel pocket knife, very thin, two blades, a small flat-head screwdriver, bottle top opener, nail file and scissors that still cut more precisely to this day than any others I’ve owned. J. A. Henckels, Germany. Now that was a gadget! Grandpa bought it at a specialty shop in New York City that sold such things, well known then, but I don’t remember the name of the place anymore. He took me once. I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. Glass cases gleamed, calling my name, filled with the best German knives, watches, and cameras, When I grew up and became a millionaire, I assumed that I would probably just buy the whole store.

Grandpa died in his late 80’s, all worn out after having an exceptional run, wheeled from his top floor condo by the EMTs, lying flat with his Wall Street journal neatly folded between his hands, covering his chest. He died quietly the next morning. That afternoon I walked around in his condo, feeling him there, with me, everywhere I looked. When I got to his dresser and saw his Henckels pocket knife sitting alone on the polished wood surface, the finality of his life hit me. He would never knowingly leave home without it. I doubt that he overlooked it when he left with the EMTs, he simply accepted the fact that he would never need it again. Almost guiltily, I picked it up and slid it into my pocket, knowing that I was the only human on earth that could give it the home and respect it deserved. That was 36 years ago. That knife is shining on the table next to me as I write this, accompanied by another cool gadget, a magnifying glass that swivels out of a black leather case, the only way for me to read the Henckels logo. I don’t carry that knife though, having evolved my knife lust over the years into a sizable collection of tactical folders, automatics, neck knives, full tang blades, opening assisted blades…all the best custom made and high end manufactured. Those things are beautiful. For daily carry, I use a single blade automatic, a Benchmade. They make good knives for everyday use without breaking the bank like many of the custom collectibles do. Cool gadgets all.

Handguns too. So well machined and finished. Revolvers with cylinders like clock works, bullets so perfectly encased, semi-autos to break down and reassemble blindfolded, Marine boot camp style. I get excited over the precision and fit of such things.

A more recent gadget is this fitbit. It tracks my heart rate and activity, synced with my iPhone that graphs it all, telling me how many calories I burned by walking the dogs or on the elliptical machine in the gym. I don’t “need” any of it, but I do think the watch is cool as hell, especially when I just shake my wrist at night and this thing lights up and tells me what time it is, and then wakes me in the morning with a vibration on my wrist. I can hardly wait for the next version, more features to amaze. Certainly then my life will be complete, for a few minutes anyway. I’ll set the timer on my fitbit and see how long it takes for me to be shamefully awash with renewed lust for another gadget. I’m sure that whatever it is, it will complete me, certainly that will be all I need.

hmh