Reflection...

Every day for several years now, I’ve passed this Nick Patton print that hangs in my hallway next to a large mirror. They complement and balance each other, framing worlds both present and ethereal. The mirror flips me around, offering a perspective I can only see from outside myself. It shows me the forest while I’m still among the trees.  Conversely, Nick’s painting draws me in and invites me to a different place, somewhere very familiar, just out of memory’s reach. A beam of sunlight warms a wooden chair and my mood. Light slats blaze with floating dust protozoa, undulating, in and out of view like microscopic bumper cars, cilia driving directionless traffic. Children’s voices, muted in dual soliloquy, bounce softly down the stairs. Presents still wrapped in brown paper coats, vie for space on a high shelf inside the narrow closet, chair sentinel guarded, offering an invitation to sit. I pause, quiet in the moment, before my climbing footsteps make my presence known to the eager chaos that awaits me there, more valuable than each breath I take on my way home, just 5 stairs up.

hmh

June Bugs...Start Your Engines!

On humid summer nights in the late 1950’s, my Grandparents house was surrounded by the ominously dark woods of their Virginia land.  Mating screams of a million cicadas pulsed the air like a wild heartbeat, essential to the ebb and flow of those sweaty August evenings, the air heavy with petrichor. Bright porch lights attracted a mob of insects, and many huge, colorful moths to the screen like flies to a picnic lunch. As a budding entomologist, it was a little slice of heaven for me to be able to skirt the outside walls while the adults on the porch socialized with friends and settled many of the great problems in the world, over drinks, ice cubes clattering a kind of reassurance to me that all was well in mine.

 Although there were many larger insects to choose from, I looked for the June bugs, often hearing them before seeing them. Loud, bumbling fliers, insect dirigibles, crash landing and bouncing off the screen harmlessly onto the surrounding bushes, all just SOP for those guys. Selecting the pick of the litter and dropping them into a jar partially filled with leaves and grass, I screwed on the lid after punching plenty of holes in it. I wanted to assure myself that my new champions would get a good night’s sleep, ready for their flying competitions in the morning.  

Ten AM or so was perfect flying time, the sun fully committed to the day. With some of Grandma’s finest thread, I carefully folded the end into a slip knot, a leg noose, and slid it up just under the joint of the largest rear leg of each flier. When I had one ready to go, I launched him into the wind, watching intently as he lifted slowly, gaining both speed and elevation. Ten, twenty feet overhead, circling, diving, looping with the sound of a miniature buzz-saw. June bugs are the work horses of the flying insect world. Whenever I had a friend staying with me in the guest house, we would have races. The fliers could only lift a certain amount of thread, maybe thirty feet or so. Then they would level out, unable to climb any higher. We would clip the thread and let them go on their own, trailing aft down-lines, their elevations maxed out. Running underneath, we could catch them with a minimal jump, sometimes tying two lines together to watch them vie for direction and dominance. All great fun with no casualties. We tired of the game before they did. With delicate precision, the June flyers were cut loose of their bonds, given their emancipation documents, and tossed gently into the wind.  

I’m glad to have grown up before the days of personal electronics. Now, too many kids sit inside on Summer nights staring into the lights of a smart phone or similar device, all somewhat reminiscent of those bugs on a porch screen, staring into the lights. These days the main thing flying with the kids, is their thumbs.

hmh

Your Advice, Please?

As I’ve said many times here on FB, Carla and I have been married almost 40 years and I still love and lust for her as much as when we were young. That’s partially due to the fact that we are polar opposites. I’m a planner and obnoxiously anal about many things. I want everything in the house, and my life, to be just so. She lives a stream of consciousness lifestyle, blowing unpredictably with any wind that catches her fancy. My own rigidity can be irritating, while Carla’s unreliability can be frustrating as well. Somehow in the bigger picture all of that works for us. 

Take this morning for example. Food planning, preparation and presentation are important to me. Carla thinks I’m crazy to devote so much time and effort. She happened to be home from her night job this morning and had an hour or so before she had to head out to her day job. (I know that sounds nuts, but it’s her call. She is a worker and likes money. The day job is to provide in-home elder care to a lady in her mid-nineties who sleeps most of the time so Carla can too.) Anyway, I started to make a breakfast I had planned a day in advance, as I often do with meals. This morning it was fresh Flounder dusted with corn meal and Old Bay, two organic eggs, scrambled with baby leaf spinach and a three-cheese Mexican blend, a toasted English muffin, home ground organic coffee, and a Virgin Bloody Mary. Carla declined it all and ate a piece of cold boiled corn she found still floating in the pan of water that I had cooked it in last night. She gnawed on that, standing up over the sink, as I carefully folded my napkin into a triangle and placed it under my fork, to the right my plate, where it is supposed to go. My Pandora was playing and with the table set for one, I sat down, taking a bite of muffin, while Carla grabbed up all of her Publix bags. She often carries three or four bags of extra stuff…condiments, napkins, plastic ware, clothes and God knows what else. One of the few times I did look inside a bag that tore open, I found metal solder, some party balloons, a stale croissant wrapped in a napkin, and a partially used lipstick tube (She doesn’t use lipstick). Don’t ask me to explain.  Then, with a rush to my side and a quick smack on the cheek, she left for her day job. 

Seven minutes later she called me. I knew it was something, I was guessing that it was gas. “I’m out of gas at the intersection of US1 and 206. I asked some lady to push me but she said that she didn’t know how.” I told her that I would grab my gas can and be there in about eight minutes. I was. I gassed her up and listened to make sure that her sixteen-year-old civic junker would start up again, and with a deep throated cough due to a large hole in the muffler, it did. She was off again, kicking up dust from the swale.

So here’s the advice part. Carla’s gas gage works just fine. Somehow she thinks that she is saving money by stretching out the miles between fill-ups, or only buying a few gallons at a time. I’ve explained to her that if she drives the same number of miles, she uses the same amount of gas regardless of how frequently or infrequently she buys it. But logic doesn’t work and I get the “out of gas” call about three times a year. Am I an enabler? If I refused to rescue her and she had to wait for AAA or walk to a gas station and hope to borrow a gas can, would it stick? If she didn’t have old reliable (me) just a phone call away, would she make sure that she never ran out again?

OK, tell me what to do. Continue to rescue her or put my foot down?

I already know the answer though. It’s not an issue of logic. Certainly I will continue to rescue her because she is the way she is and so am I. I have the gas can filled up and ready to go, sitting in its spot on a shelf in the shed. I’m organized and ready. Carla will grab her Publix bags and go, wherever and whenever she pleases, without a care in the world.

I love that.

hmh

An Average Life/Bio

I̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶b̶o̶r̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶o̶o̶r̶ ̶b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶.̶ ̶ Sorry, that was Steve Martin. We weren't poor. Dad was a successful attorney with his own law practice at 25 Broadway in Manhattan. He was top of his class at Johns Hopkins and at Harvard Law. A very pleasant man, a walking encyclopedia, who didn't care much for kids. He cared very much for Mom though, and kids happened. Four of us. Our house was just like the Beaver's house. Mom wore dresses and pearls. She even looked a bit like June Cleaver. Dad read the paper and smoked Kent cigarettes. All that proper behavior gave me the hives though, so I went over to my buddy, David Callahan's house. Chaos ruled there. A Black Racer escaped from its cage and zipped all over the place and half-way up the walls, trying to bite people at every opportunity. Antique rifles were stacked in most corners. Many were loaded. A babysitter blew a hole through the living room floor and into the basement. We made bombs and blew stuff up. Mrs Callahan stocked the kitchen cabinets with Twinkies, chips, and all the wonderful “junk food” items that my mother never bought. If my house was like a library, David's was like a carnival.

College in North Alabama was an eye opener. I only went there because when my freshman year ended at the University of Georgia, they didn't invite me back. At Athens College, the entry requirements were not so tough. If you could fog a mirror, you were in. After four years of insanity dealing with all the social changes that Robert Zimmerman had been croaking heresies about while I was in a town straight out of the 1930's, I graduated in spite of it all.

But first, I lost a game of Ping-Pong to Howard Rau and was too bored to wait for my next chance to be up. Very stoned, impatient for life to start happening, I slipped around the corner and into a phone booth to call my college girlfriend who had already gone home. I asked her to marry me because I thought that was just what people did when they got out of college and I had at least another ten minutes before it was my turn back at the Ping Pong table anyway. That call set in motion a nightmare of events that included a huge church wedding, which I especially hated, and an old man three piece band that I hated even more. We divorced two years later.

Having drawn a low lottery number and with the Army breathing down my neck, I ran over to the Air Force recruiter and got myself signed up. DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. Four years in the bowels of the Pentagon keeping records on Red Chinese missile sites and Jane Fonda. I witnessed shockingly few examples of any kind of intelligence at all.

Four years of bachelorhood in a huge lakeside townhouse shared with three other bachelors was one big, fantastic party. I was like Snoopy on top of his dog house, dancing feet a blur. So happy not to be married, every morning was Christmas when the fog cleared and the thought of being single came rushing back to embrace me, like waking up a millionaire with Heather Locklear next to me (remember, this was some 35 years ago. She was hot!).

But fate had other plans for my time. Working at The Reston Times newspaper, where I had been for a year or two, Carla started working in the classified department and we hit it off. I fell hard and we eloped within six months of meeting. Now, 36 years later, we have two unique and wonderful daughters.

Ruth is 33, a professional assistant and show nanny for some rich people in Hollywierd. The old, ugly nanny has to stay home when they travel. Ruth's life is all about private jets, personal chefs, trainers, bodyguards, and multiple estates. Tough duty.

Hannah is 28, a gypsy hippie yoga instructor who has been on her own since she was 15. She just didn't come home one day, called me, and told me that she had rented a condo on the beach, was safe and happy and didn't need my support. We've always been close and she's always been her own boss. That determination has taken her all over the world, solo. Dancing on tables in a tapas bar in Spain, surfing the coast of Rio, living in South Africa, Australia, SE Asia...and now in Medellin, Columbia. She's such a breath of fresh air.

Largely, her mom is responsible. Carla home schooled the girls. Threw out the rule book and listened very carefully to the girls needs. No TV, lots of books, field trips, chickens, country living at it's best. I worked in a variety of roles. Rising up through the ranks of a national air courier business in the 1980's, software development and sales in the early 1990's.

That's when we moved to Florida. I launched a magazine: “New Homes and Communities” recognizing the benefit of chasing the new construction market in Florida. That went well and lead me to the proverbial “offer I couldn't refuse”. I went to work as a realtor for a large home-builder that had been a print advertising client. The money got crazy and we bought investment houses. The recession put an end to all that. I'm a genius Realtor, I buy high and sell low.

Now the dust has settled and we're relatively poor again. I still work for a builder, but only part time. We live in what had been our smallest rental, and life is very, very good. Sometimes it's more about what you save than what you earn.

All in all, an average, uneventful life. Like most people, we spent the first half of our lives acquiring two of everything we never really needed, and the second half trying to get rid of that stuff. Life is simpler now, my give-a-shit levels are almost bottomed out. I care a lot more about a very few things, family, friends, and a lot less about most other things. But we've never had to deal with tragedy, lost a child, faced cancer or major illness. We've just had a very long string of warm, wonderful days full of great food and lots of laughter... days that turned into years, a lifetime. Maybe that's not so average after all.

hmh

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