I walked away from the boy. We'd found the book his sister wanted so I left him smiling and picking out a book for himself, but I had to get some coffee.
My Barnes and Noble Member card was expired of course, so after paying for another year (as a hapless sucker) and collecting my change and coffee, I see the boy, still smiling, walking up.
-26 bucks for a cup of coffee! Whaduya think of that?- I ask loudly, wadding my money up for safe storage.
He shakes his head so slyly -Well, how big is it?-
Me and the chick laugh. And before we can say anything else, we're shooed away by an Asian girl intent on stealing our spotlight. I saunter over to the cream and sugar counter to finish preparing my coffee. Now I'm an honorary employee I suppose.
An old lady beside me takes a huge handful of Splenda out of the holder. -Takin' some home?- I ask loudly. She ignores me, but not the boy.
-Dad.- he says, more head shaking.
-I'm just glad she left some for me.-
-Hey, I'm thirsty too. Can I get something?- He asks.
-Sure.- I say and we head back over to the chick. She's my buddy cause she broke a hundred for me. -We forgot the boy,- I say to her.
-Can I get you something?- She asks me, but I break her gaze and look at the boy.
-Oh, can I get an Iced tea?-
And before she can ask, I light up, -What kind? Brown, Red, Green, Asian?- in a staccato!
He laughs, -Green.-
-Hot, iced, shaken, stirred?- I keep on.
-Iced,- he says. He looks at the chick. I do too, and I see they have a connection. They have a need for me to stop.
-Unsweetened? Sweetened? Lemoned? Limed?- I fire away.
The boy laughs now, hands jammed into the hoodie pockets, the Northwest Middle School Track Hoodie that he wears on an eighty degree day because he just got it. -Sweet.- he says.
We both laugh, the chick does not. She looks at the boy, -What size?-
-D'oh!- I laugh. -She got us, boy!-
-Medium,- he says, still smiling.
The chick punches some keys, and like a navy officer, turns around and delegates the order in words and jargon that only another iced tea slash coffee server in a book store can understand...which I won't repeat.
I see our name on the back of his hoodie and now poke at him. -Mother's head?! Is that your real name?-
He cuts his eyes at me, or were they rolling? -Shut up, dad.-
We collect the drink, then a straw, and then he asks, -Dad, why are you so stupid?-
-I think it's my dad's fault.-
He starts to head for the check out area, and I say, -Hey, can I get something too?-
The boy stops. -What are you gonna get? Lemme guess.- He rolls his eyes. -Hemingway.-
-Maybe,- I say. I got swindled on the last two Hemingways, so I wasn't too awful keen, but I head to that aisle.
-Dad, if you were gay, you'd marry Hemingway.-
I'm so tired from lack of sleep, and the coffee hasn't kicked in, that I got nothing. -Son,- I say, touching a copy of "The Road", -If I were gay, then the trick would be to get Hemingway to marry me.-
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
All I Want Is More
I said I like it here.
I am not happy being a donor,
A lost strand in my daughter's genome.
I want to eat a steak!
I want to have sex!
I want to blow stuff up,
And smell honeysuckle...
I love it here, I said.
I am not satisfied being a pattern,
A loose affiliation of memories in brain tissue.
I want to yell at my kids!
I want to laugh with them too!
I want to hide their Wii,
And make them play catch...
I'll just stay here, I'm sure.
I don't have a secret Santa,
A martyred teacher to give me hope.
I'll just lean on into it.
I'll grit my teeth and go for it.
I'll smile when it's muddy,
And tell you all about it.
-rbm
I am not happy being a donor,
A lost strand in my daughter's genome.
I want to eat a steak!
I want to have sex!
I want to blow stuff up,
And smell honeysuckle...
I love it here, I said.
I am not satisfied being a pattern,
A loose affiliation of memories in brain tissue.
I want to yell at my kids!
I want to laugh with them too!
I want to hide their Wii,
And make them play catch...
I'll just stay here, I'm sure.
I don't have a secret Santa,
A martyred teacher to give me hope.
I'll just lean on into it.
I'll grit my teeth and go for it.
I'll smile when it's muddy,
And tell you all about it.
-rbm
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Manual Labour Weight Loss Program
It has been pointed out to me that one of the reasons I might be a tad trimmer than most of my fellow forty-somethings is because I work for a living, and of course, that's probably true.
Also, we can thank the DNA donors who made me possible (and the belief back in the 60's that abortion is the killing of unborn people and therefore illegal) who probably weren't the biggest people in the land.
But a big debt goes to me, brett mothershead, for not stuffing my face full of bad stuff. Sure it took until my mid thirties to realize this. Having been blessed with a zealous metabolism and living a rather active lifestyle (some called it hyper back in the day) I never really worried about what I ate, But when my metabolism stopped watching my back, and gut, I had to do something.
So what I did was easy. It's called the Atkins Diet. And before you poo poo it as unhealthy and dangerous, just "hear" me out.
Okay, it IS dangerous probably for the first two weeks. If you're like I was, sucking down sodas and white bread and white rice and french fries like I was back then, and then stop, you'll get shakier than Charlie Sheen in rehab. I mean, for two weeks, you stop all carb consumption and you live life like an Eskimo!
I'd have dreams about Cheerios and milk sludged up with table sugar! I'd be so weak that all I wanted to do was watch TV and eat sticks of butter and eggs... And yes, this part of the effort was the worst, and for some, can trigger metabolic changes that can be detrimental...but if your body can take the rigors, it works.
Drink your liquids, take your multi vitamin, and you start to shrink. Why? You're fooling your body into thinking it's winter, and the fields have browned up, and all you have to eat is the meat you dried in the summer, and the game you're going to kill tomorrow. Your machinery is forced to recall those stored up carbs that had been converted to fat just to make ends meet. It's exactly what we were designed to do.
To a dumbass carpenter like me, it makes perfect sense.
So you lose the excess weight, and while you're doing so, you add back carbohydrates. But you do so wisely. You add real food. You add food you already know is good for you because you've been told it was since you were a little kid. You eat spinach, and broccoli, and romaine lettuce, and squash and okra and any fruit used as a vegetable.
BUT! You avoid human engineered crap like seedless grapes, apples, oranges, and bananas, etc. And, sadly, you avoid the obvious: enriched wheat flour, corn meal, potatoes, polished rice, and sugar, and the ultimate crime against humanity: High Fructose Corn Syrup.
I call it The Whole Food Diet because folks seem to get that knee-jerk reaction against Atkins. I'd say read the book. I read just the one before he, Dr. Atkins, bonked his head and died, and haven't seen any updates since then. So I MAY not be an authority, but even I know the crap in boxes in the grocery store are going to make you fatter. And I don't care how "low fat" or "all natural" it is.
Now as far as manual labour goes, yes, I work my ass off, literally. As a man of action, I chose a path out of doors and made me a leader of men, and before the collapse of the western economy in august 2008, was making a damn good living at it. But I digress...
So what can you, the I.T. guy or gal that's stuck inside an office or cubicle do besides eat the right foods and drink the right drinks and create the illusion that you're working your ass off? The answer, which you already know, is get off your ass.
1. Walk. Park your car as far away as possible from the building. Hell, park at the next building and walk from there. Park across the street at the Texaco, get you a big (diet) orange and leave your car over there all day. When you get to the building, forget the elevator. By god, yes your knees'll hurt, but that's because you're fat and you haven't used your knees in a coon's age.
2.Raise your desk up 14 to 16 inches and work standing up all day. I mean it. Burn your chair or chunk it down the hall. Stay on your feet for four hours, then sit down for your egg-salad-wrapped-in-big-sheets-of-Romaine-lettuce lunch for thirty minutes, then get back on your feet! If you need to call someone two cubicles down, don't, walk down there and scare the shit out of them. Answer phones all day? Stand up!
3.Get a tool belt for all your most used desk/office items. Your three-hole hole puncher, your red stapler, and your cell phone will fit easily. Add some heavier stuff as needed. The weight of the tool belt will make you work harder! And it'll simulate how much weight you're gonna lose and how that will feel when you take it off at the end of the day.
Well, for the office bound, that's all I got that I haven't already heard on Oprah.
All I can add is, being hungry isn't lethal, nor dangerous. Just because you're hungry (or think you are) doesn't mean you have to eat something. Know what? If you wait an hour or so, the pangs'll fade. On the weekends, or when (thanks to the aforementioned economy) we ain't working, sometimes I only eat once a day.
Your body is a machine for replicating and spreading around DNA that knows how to store glucose, as fat, for a cold and rainy winter. That's the alimentary system's biggest job--that and getting the materials to repair the damage done to our bodies during the course of a normal day. You stuff it with quick and easy carbs/sugars and it thinks it's mardi gras! It doesn't know that after you're finished with this box of Nip-Chees, you're going to wash them down with a 20 oz. Mountain Dew, followed by a bowl of ice cream and tater tots! All it knows is, "Wow! I got it made here, better pack it away!"
Lastly of course is portion control, duh. Eat more and you'll weigh more. I won't say much about that because it's common sense.
In addition, if you stay on your feet all day, you might just see improvement in other areas of your fitness as well, like a good night's sleep. Most of time I just nod and smile empathetically when people tell me how they can't sleep at night because I know, and they know, that all day, they don't really DO anything to make themselves tired. And on top of that, they have two drinks when they get home or they had caffeine after lunch...when I was in college I used to have to get out of bed and pace the dorm in the middle of the night because I had what they call now, restless leg, arm, neck syndrome. I just wasn't tired because I sat on my ass all day and read books and wrote other peoples' papers and I'd have to climb them stairs to stop that weird itch to move!
All right, I'm done.
Also, we can thank the DNA donors who made me possible (and the belief back in the 60's that abortion is the killing of unborn people and therefore illegal) who probably weren't the biggest people in the land.
But a big debt goes to me, brett mothershead, for not stuffing my face full of bad stuff. Sure it took until my mid thirties to realize this. Having been blessed with a zealous metabolism and living a rather active lifestyle (some called it hyper back in the day) I never really worried about what I ate, But when my metabolism stopped watching my back, and gut, I had to do something.
So what I did was easy. It's called the Atkins Diet. And before you poo poo it as unhealthy and dangerous, just "hear" me out.
Okay, it IS dangerous probably for the first two weeks. If you're like I was, sucking down sodas and white bread and white rice and french fries like I was back then, and then stop, you'll get shakier than Charlie Sheen in rehab. I mean, for two weeks, you stop all carb consumption and you live life like an Eskimo!
I'd have dreams about Cheerios and milk sludged up with table sugar! I'd be so weak that all I wanted to do was watch TV and eat sticks of butter and eggs... And yes, this part of the effort was the worst, and for some, can trigger metabolic changes that can be detrimental...but if your body can take the rigors, it works.
Drink your liquids, take your multi vitamin, and you start to shrink. Why? You're fooling your body into thinking it's winter, and the fields have browned up, and all you have to eat is the meat you dried in the summer, and the game you're going to kill tomorrow. Your machinery is forced to recall those stored up carbs that had been converted to fat just to make ends meet. It's exactly what we were designed to do.
To a dumbass carpenter like me, it makes perfect sense.
So you lose the excess weight, and while you're doing so, you add back carbohydrates. But you do so wisely. You add real food. You add food you already know is good for you because you've been told it was since you were a little kid. You eat spinach, and broccoli, and romaine lettuce, and squash and okra and any fruit used as a vegetable.
BUT! You avoid human engineered crap like seedless grapes, apples, oranges, and bananas, etc. And, sadly, you avoid the obvious: enriched wheat flour, corn meal, potatoes, polished rice, and sugar, and the ultimate crime against humanity: High Fructose Corn Syrup.
I call it The Whole Food Diet because folks seem to get that knee-jerk reaction against Atkins. I'd say read the book. I read just the one before he, Dr. Atkins, bonked his head and died, and haven't seen any updates since then. So I MAY not be an authority, but even I know the crap in boxes in the grocery store are going to make you fatter. And I don't care how "low fat" or "all natural" it is.
Now as far as manual labour goes, yes, I work my ass off, literally. As a man of action, I chose a path out of doors and made me a leader of men, and before the collapse of the western economy in august 2008, was making a damn good living at it. But I digress...
So what can you, the I.T. guy or gal that's stuck inside an office or cubicle do besides eat the right foods and drink the right drinks and create the illusion that you're working your ass off? The answer, which you already know, is get off your ass.
1. Walk. Park your car as far away as possible from the building. Hell, park at the next building and walk from there. Park across the street at the Texaco, get you a big (diet) orange and leave your car over there all day. When you get to the building, forget the elevator. By god, yes your knees'll hurt, but that's because you're fat and you haven't used your knees in a coon's age.
2.Raise your desk up 14 to 16 inches and work standing up all day. I mean it. Burn your chair or chunk it down the hall. Stay on your feet for four hours, then sit down for your egg-salad-wrapped-in-big-sheets-of-Romaine-lettuce lunch for thirty minutes, then get back on your feet! If you need to call someone two cubicles down, don't, walk down there and scare the shit out of them. Answer phones all day? Stand up!
3.Get a tool belt for all your most used desk/office items. Your three-hole hole puncher, your red stapler, and your cell phone will fit easily. Add some heavier stuff as needed. The weight of the tool belt will make you work harder! And it'll simulate how much weight you're gonna lose and how that will feel when you take it off at the end of the day.
Well, for the office bound, that's all I got that I haven't already heard on Oprah.
All I can add is, being hungry isn't lethal, nor dangerous. Just because you're hungry (or think you are) doesn't mean you have to eat something. Know what? If you wait an hour or so, the pangs'll fade. On the weekends, or when (thanks to the aforementioned economy) we ain't working, sometimes I only eat once a day.
Your body is a machine for replicating and spreading around DNA that knows how to store glucose, as fat, for a cold and rainy winter. That's the alimentary system's biggest job--that and getting the materials to repair the damage done to our bodies during the course of a normal day. You stuff it with quick and easy carbs/sugars and it thinks it's mardi gras! It doesn't know that after you're finished with this box of Nip-Chees, you're going to wash them down with a 20 oz. Mountain Dew, followed by a bowl of ice cream and tater tots! All it knows is, "Wow! I got it made here, better pack it away!"
Lastly of course is portion control, duh. Eat more and you'll weigh more. I won't say much about that because it's common sense.
In addition, if you stay on your feet all day, you might just see improvement in other areas of your fitness as well, like a good night's sleep. Most of time I just nod and smile empathetically when people tell me how they can't sleep at night because I know, and they know, that all day, they don't really DO anything to make themselves tired. And on top of that, they have two drinks when they get home or they had caffeine after lunch...when I was in college I used to have to get out of bed and pace the dorm in the middle of the night because I had what they call now, restless leg, arm, neck syndrome. I just wasn't tired because I sat on my ass all day and read books and wrote other peoples' papers and I'd have to climb them stairs to stop that weird itch to move!
All right, I'm done.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Why Arizona Can Kiss My Light Brown Ass
Their Gov'ner down there signed an outrageous law that actually sickens me more than anti-gun bullshit that makes it way down to us little people every other federal administration.
"The latest bill would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not have an alien registration document. It also would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally."
Well, what would make a police officer (PO) suspect a person is in the country illegally? Well, probably the same thing that made me stand out in a crowd (besides my big mouth) when I was growing up: Brown skin, black hair, and short (yet proportional) body stature.
I'm not even going to call it what it is, but IT is targeted at my peeps, my indigenous peoples, and anyone else who is decidedly "not quite white." And before you tell me different (like them dumb-ass racist plomeros in VA last week) you need to remember that many of these people coming up looking for work are indeed Native Americans and Native South Americans.
So now one can be stopped, questioned and harassed "if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally." What's it going to be? Is going to be the black hair? the brown skin, the use of Spanish language? the 1994 Chevy Malibu? It's as if the police are going to use race as some sort of profile with which to check and guard against immigration status or lack thereof...
As if the only illegals here, stealing jobs and burdening the health care system (we got one of those don't we? I wasn't sure. Was it reformed? Who the hell knows) are from south of the border.
I challenge you to go to your local China Palace or Hong Kong House and ask for some Resident Alien Cards. I didn't see ANY Asians protesting May 1st with the Latinos four years ago. And If there were any illegal Canadians in the crowd, I think I could have spotted them then, but not on the street now...they are masters of disguise and easily look like white bread Americans when need be.
I've a mind to go to Arizona after the law goes into practice, and flaunt my 1990 Volvo, and my black hair, and my brown (summer time only) skin and pray a jar-headed, racist asshole cop stops me and asks for ID.
"Que?" I'll say, and take my beating for the real Americans...then get paid.
So what is to be done? Well, it seems pretty simple to a dumbass carpenter like myself.
They're here, they're queer, they won't disappear--wait, that's a different rally cry. What I mean is, they're here to stay. They aren't going anywhere. If the crash of 2008 proved anything, it was that even the lack of skilled labour jobs wasn't enough to prod the people homeward.
1. Make sure they know they can stay. Call it whatever you like, amnesty, grandfathered in from the colonial times (don't get me started, whitey) or whatever it takes to shut your mouth, but very quickly, we need to make available dual citizenship with a goal, perhaps, of permanent citizenship. (they may not want to stay after our putrid, unfair and failing tax system gets done with them)
2. Find them, and make sure they get a U.S. ID with their name, their real name, all four of them, on a plastic document that any jar-head high school graduate with a GTCC degree in "Criminal Justice" can read. And with their U.S. ID comes their U.S. Tax Payer Identification Number. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for them.
(A word on taxes--they do pay taxes--sales tax, property tax, unemployment tax, and fuel taxes, so don't think they're getting a free ride. The wages they earn are in line with tax-paying "Americans" because shady employers pay them less, so take home pay is about the same.)
3.With their U.S. ID and TPIN, they can now get a driver's license and auto insurance commensurate with legal licensed drivers' rates. The rates they pay now are exorbitant because they do not hold legal U.S. Drivers' Licenses. So insurance companies make more off their backs.
4.Open the border.
5. Enforcement...that's a toughy, because we're back to profiling if we're not careful. But the system we have now, which often fails us legal residents as well, fails them too. Right now, in NC, it's catch and release, just like it is for Residents here.
So find them, document them, tax them, and welcome them. Learn some of their language. It wouldn't hurt us fat, lazy Americans to learn something new besides Nascar and Tiger Woods.
brett
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/arizona-immigration-law-s_n_544864.html
p.s.
"Other provisions allow citizen lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and make it illegal for people to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them."
I'm not sure about this one.
"The latest bill would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not have an alien registration document. It also would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally."
Well, what would make a police officer (PO) suspect a person is in the country illegally? Well, probably the same thing that made me stand out in a crowd (besides my big mouth) when I was growing up: Brown skin, black hair, and short (yet proportional) body stature.
I'm not even going to call it what it is, but IT is targeted at my peeps, my indigenous peoples, and anyone else who is decidedly "not quite white." And before you tell me different (like them dumb-ass racist plomeros in VA last week) you need to remember that many of these people coming up looking for work are indeed Native Americans and Native South Americans.
So now one can be stopped, questioned and harassed "if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally." What's it going to be? Is going to be the black hair? the brown skin, the use of Spanish language? the 1994 Chevy Malibu? It's as if the police are going to use race as some sort of profile with which to check and guard against immigration status or lack thereof...
As if the only illegals here, stealing jobs and burdening the health care system (we got one of those don't we? I wasn't sure. Was it reformed? Who the hell knows) are from south of the border.
I challenge you to go to your local China Palace or Hong Kong House and ask for some Resident Alien Cards. I didn't see ANY Asians protesting May 1st with the Latinos four years ago. And If there were any illegal Canadians in the crowd, I think I could have spotted them then, but not on the street now...they are masters of disguise and easily look like white bread Americans when need be.
I've a mind to go to Arizona after the law goes into practice, and flaunt my 1990 Volvo, and my black hair, and my brown (summer time only) skin and pray a jar-headed, racist asshole cop stops me and asks for ID.
"Que?" I'll say, and take my beating for the real Americans...then get paid.
So what is to be done? Well, it seems pretty simple to a dumbass carpenter like myself.
They're here, they're queer, they won't disappear--wait, that's a different rally cry. What I mean is, they're here to stay. They aren't going anywhere. If the crash of 2008 proved anything, it was that even the lack of skilled labour jobs wasn't enough to prod the people homeward.
1. Make sure they know they can stay. Call it whatever you like, amnesty, grandfathered in from the colonial times (don't get me started, whitey) or whatever it takes to shut your mouth, but very quickly, we need to make available dual citizenship with a goal, perhaps, of permanent citizenship. (they may not want to stay after our putrid, unfair and failing tax system gets done with them)
2. Find them, and make sure they get a U.S. ID with their name, their real name, all four of them, on a plastic document that any jar-head high school graduate with a GTCC degree in "Criminal Justice" can read. And with their U.S. ID comes their U.S. Tax Payer Identification Number. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for them.
(A word on taxes--they do pay taxes--sales tax, property tax, unemployment tax, and fuel taxes, so don't think they're getting a free ride. The wages they earn are in line with tax-paying "Americans" because shady employers pay them less, so take home pay is about the same.)
3.With their U.S. ID and TPIN, they can now get a driver's license and auto insurance commensurate with legal licensed drivers' rates. The rates they pay now are exorbitant because they do not hold legal U.S. Drivers' Licenses. So insurance companies make more off their backs.
4.Open the border.
5. Enforcement...that's a toughy, because we're back to profiling if we're not careful. But the system we have now, which often fails us legal residents as well, fails them too. Right now, in NC, it's catch and release, just like it is for Residents here.
So find them, document them, tax them, and welcome them. Learn some of their language. It wouldn't hurt us fat, lazy Americans to learn something new besides Nascar and Tiger Woods.
brett
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/arizona-immigration-law-s_n_544864.html
p.s.
"Other provisions allow citizen lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and make it illegal for people to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them."
I'm not sure about this one.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
40 somethings
Remember the first time you heard "Telegraph Road" by Dire Straits? Remember that feeling of a cresting, coming wave? And Marc, Marc is whispering it to you, mush mouthing it to you and you wait for every word, every beat and you want to kiss the session piano player (Benmont Tench?) on the mouth for playing so well, so hidden in the background?
And Marc, picking like a pro. If you've never heard it on paper woofers and plastic record, you're only getting 60% of it.
How about the first time you heard "The End" without Martin Sheen losing his mind on film, without his narrative of "Charlie squatting in the bush." The first time you heard it with just you, two speakers, and your girlfriend under you in college and you made it until the end of the song, both of you, together.
What you remember most about "The Wall", so shamefully taken out of context on FM radio, was the kids, just like you, standing up (you imagined) on their desks and shouting, "Hey! Teacher!" like you wanted to yet never did*. You felt, knew that you could be in THAT chorus of sixth graders.
Remember when you thought it was called "Teenage Wasteland?" instead of its proper name, and you wanted to own that too, but you couldn't hit the high notes unless you were drunk on Little Kings beer without knowing the truth was that you sounded horrible...
And you sang in the basement with your now dead friend, whom you always thought you'd see again.
I hated "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the first time I heard it. I thought it was stupid. "A mosquito, my Libido" My, what else rhymes? And I thought that for a long time. Maybe until I found the record in the used bin at The Record Exchange (Home of the $12.95 CD) and really heard it. It wasn't really until the second album I got that they had their hooks in me. And seeing the little good-looking drummer kid in the background banging his head as a good drummer should, flipping out and getting the rest of the band to "follow me." Of course that kid rose from the ashes, as he should've. He never looked back I think, and it has paid off.
Lastly, you bought the record for "Been Caught Stealin'" but at the end, in the grand tradition, you heard "Three Days" and were resurrected, like the song said, and blown away. A long mantra indeed that should have had your eyes closed and your foot tapping in the old traditions. Long hair was made for swinging to this song! It was a long good-bye and so worth it. Green Day smiled and thanked FM radio ten years later for playing their opus on the free airwaves, but it was the boy and his dog that had put it all down before, way back at the end/beginning.
I don't know why I got hooked on these songs when at the same time, there were so many more that tweeked the loins so to speak. I can only say (yeah, right) that they'll always be held high.I've left out so many. I could go on for hours about U2 alone...so commercial? yet so deserving, I think, in the early years....and even some later years. I reckon we could stop at the album with "The Fly" on it: Achtung Baby! After that...
And Marc, picking like a pro. If you've never heard it on paper woofers and plastic record, you're only getting 60% of it.
How about the first time you heard "The End" without Martin Sheen losing his mind on film, without his narrative of "Charlie squatting in the bush." The first time you heard it with just you, two speakers, and your girlfriend under you in college and you made it until the end of the song, both of you, together.
What you remember most about "The Wall", so shamefully taken out of context on FM radio, was the kids, just like you, standing up (you imagined) on their desks and shouting, "Hey! Teacher!" like you wanted to yet never did*. You felt, knew that you could be in THAT chorus of sixth graders.
Remember when you thought it was called "Teenage Wasteland?" instead of its proper name, and you wanted to own that too, but you couldn't hit the high notes unless you were drunk on Little Kings beer without knowing the truth was that you sounded horrible...
And you sang in the basement with your now dead friend, whom you always thought you'd see again.
I hated "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the first time I heard it. I thought it was stupid. "A mosquito, my Libido" My, what else rhymes? And I thought that for a long time. Maybe until I found the record in the used bin at The Record Exchange (Home of the $12.95 CD) and really heard it. It wasn't really until the second album I got that they had their hooks in me. And seeing the little good-looking drummer kid in the background banging his head as a good drummer should, flipping out and getting the rest of the band to "follow me." Of course that kid rose from the ashes, as he should've. He never looked back I think, and it has paid off.
Lastly, you bought the record for "Been Caught Stealin'" but at the end, in the grand tradition, you heard "Three Days" and were resurrected, like the song said, and blown away. A long mantra indeed that should have had your eyes closed and your foot tapping in the old traditions. Long hair was made for swinging to this song! It was a long good-bye and so worth it. Green Day smiled and thanked FM radio ten years later for playing their opus on the free airwaves, but it was the boy and his dog that had put it all down before, way back at the end/beginning.
I don't know why I got hooked on these songs when at the same time, there were so many more that tweeked the loins so to speak. I can only say (yeah, right) that they'll always be held high.I've left out so many. I could go on for hours about U2 alone...so commercial? yet so deserving, I think, in the early years....and even some later years. I reckon we could stop at the album with "The Fly" on it: Achtung Baby! After that...
Monday, April 5, 2010
Not My God
The painting was of a doorway, an ornately carved wooden valance surrounding a wooden door, almost in black and white like a photograph. The door and casing were set into a plaster wall that had been depicted as flaking and rust-streaked from old nails driven into the stucco. In all, the effort was very nice.
The artist had painted his name proudly, legibly, in the lower corner as most artists do, but I could actually read it.
Centered over the door were Arabic words that were carved into the wood as well all the flourishes and hallmarks of Arabic, African...Muslim art. At first the sight of these words raised an eyebrow as I was with family waiting in the lobby of a huge Christian church to go in for my annual appearance on Easter. (Not true, I go all the time to ogle women.)
What I mean is, it didn't bother me of course, I can't read Arabic, but we were in NC, the "No you cannot hunt on Sunday" bible belt state!
Well a tad later, I was introduced to a man in black, and when I heard his name, I recognized it as the painter's name.
"You're the artist," I said.
"Yes. I saw the door doing Mission work in Africa, tiny island off the coast. blah blah blah..." Of course I asked him what the words over the door said.
"I am the Door," He said. Quickly he explained that he meant Jesus was the door. That he wanted people to see that on Easter (without a translation) because it was relevant, or so he thought.
I blabbed about the "Knock and the door will be opened," part of a verse I read long ago...he smiled.
He remarked how the image reminded him of Passover and the offering up of blood from a sheep to save the first born of the believers.
"I changed the door from what it originally said," he offered up.
"What did it say?" I asked, almost throwing out, "Kill whitey?" but biting my tongue.
"In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful," he said as I smiled on blithely.
"Why'd you change it?"
"Because it's from the Koran."
I blinked at him, and before I could ask, so? He said, "He's not my God."
Inside I shuddered, wanted to laugh and yell the obvious*, but I didn't...not the place or the time I reckoned.
And I thought, that's why I'm never at these places, these multi-million dollar expansive, invasive, and sometimes obscene monuments to religion. A friend once told me on facebook about a cathedral in Canada and how awesome it was (in the classical sense of the word--not how to describe a pizza--but awe inspiring) and i felt the same way about that, though I never even saw it in person.
I sat and thunk, they probably bulldozed a million trees or Indian burial grounds just to build it so people could convert the heathens of the land...or give them smallpox, whatever was easiest.
It's so cliche to say now, but my god doesn't need any of that...that gaudy display of wealth that some mistake for piety. For some, it was easy to put into words, and don't roll you eyes, but Robert Ruark, in The Horn of the Hunter, put down in a few words what he thought about his God:
"There was nobody around but me and a million animals and a thousand noises and the bright sun and the cool breeze and the shade from the big trees that made it cathedral--cool but a lot less musty and damp and full of century-old fear and trembling. I got to thinking that maybe this was what God had in mind when He invented religion, instead of all the don't and must-nots and sins and confessions of sins. I got to thinking about all the big churches I had been, including those in Rome, and how none of them could possibly compare with this place, with its brilliant birds and its soothing sounds of intense life all around and the feeling of ineffable peace and good will, so that not even man would be capable of behaving very badly in such a place. I thought that this was maybe the kind of place the Lord would come to sit in and get His strength back after a hard day's work trying to straighten out mankind. Certainly He wouldn't go inside a church. If the Lord was tired He would be uneasy in a church."
And if you saw, I talked about my god, in an awkward little note sometime back:
"Living things. Eternal combinations of a magic molecule sit high in my list.
Not just us, but all of “us.”
The same twisted ribbon makes a carrot, makes a cat, and makes a Mozart.
It, everlasting indeed, will make me a “ghost” and immortal.
I do worship life. I have seen how fragile, yet how unrelenting it is.
How? I can’t describe the collective feeling I have with our family.
To see a sunrise, and be there when colour comes back to the world.
To see life all around you, even in your home. And know, unseen, life is buzzing; marching, crawling, replicating…it blows my mind.
I hear it, I feel it. I am just here like the ant, the deer, the dog, the tree, the vine. I can’t explain. There is no ritual, only of being thrown in the pot with everything else. And everything dies. And everything eats. And there is no life without destroying life, and I am humbled by that, but not to tears."
So I think back on "Not my God," and wish maybe we could be happy not editing carvings in paintings, not bull-dozing trees and wiping off the green for the kingdom of heaven and not forsaking green soccer fields for a Jesus, or a Mohammad, or a Torah...
The artist had painted his name proudly, legibly, in the lower corner as most artists do, but I could actually read it.
Centered over the door were Arabic words that were carved into the wood as well all the flourishes and hallmarks of Arabic, African...Muslim art. At first the sight of these words raised an eyebrow as I was with family waiting in the lobby of a huge Christian church to go in for my annual appearance on Easter. (Not true, I go all the time to ogle women.)
What I mean is, it didn't bother me of course, I can't read Arabic, but we were in NC, the "No you cannot hunt on Sunday" bible belt state!
Well a tad later, I was introduced to a man in black, and when I heard his name, I recognized it as the painter's name.
"You're the artist," I said.
"Yes. I saw the door doing Mission work in Africa, tiny island off the coast. blah blah blah..." Of course I asked him what the words over the door said.
"I am the Door," He said. Quickly he explained that he meant Jesus was the door. That he wanted people to see that on Easter (without a translation) because it was relevant, or so he thought.
I blabbed about the "Knock and the door will be opened," part of a verse I read long ago...he smiled.
He remarked how the image reminded him of Passover and the offering up of blood from a sheep to save the first born of the believers.
"I changed the door from what it originally said," he offered up.
"What did it say?" I asked, almost throwing out, "Kill whitey?" but biting my tongue.
"In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful," he said as I smiled on blithely.
"Why'd you change it?"
"Because it's from the Koran."
I blinked at him, and before I could ask, so? He said, "He's not my God."
Inside I shuddered, wanted to laugh and yell the obvious*, but I didn't...not the place or the time I reckoned.
And I thought, that's why I'm never at these places, these multi-million dollar expansive, invasive, and sometimes obscene monuments to religion. A friend once told me on facebook about a cathedral in Canada and how awesome it was (in the classical sense of the word--not how to describe a pizza--but awe inspiring) and i felt the same way about that, though I never even saw it in person.
I sat and thunk, they probably bulldozed a million trees or Indian burial grounds just to build it so people could convert the heathens of the land...or give them smallpox, whatever was easiest.
It's so cliche to say now, but my god doesn't need any of that...that gaudy display of wealth that some mistake for piety. For some, it was easy to put into words, and don't roll you eyes, but Robert Ruark, in The Horn of the Hunter, put down in a few words what he thought about his God:
"There was nobody around but me and a million animals and a thousand noises and the bright sun and the cool breeze and the shade from the big trees that made it cathedral--cool but a lot less musty and damp and full of century-old fear and trembling. I got to thinking that maybe this was what God had in mind when He invented religion, instead of all the don't and must-nots and sins and confessions of sins. I got to thinking about all the big churches I had been, including those in Rome, and how none of them could possibly compare with this place, with its brilliant birds and its soothing sounds of intense life all around and the feeling of ineffable peace and good will, so that not even man would be capable of behaving very badly in such a place. I thought that this was maybe the kind of place the Lord would come to sit in and get His strength back after a hard day's work trying to straighten out mankind. Certainly He wouldn't go inside a church. If the Lord was tired He would be uneasy in a church."
And if you saw, I talked about my god, in an awkward little note sometime back:
"Living things. Eternal combinations of a magic molecule sit high in my list.
Not just us, but all of “us.”
The same twisted ribbon makes a carrot, makes a cat, and makes a Mozart.
It, everlasting indeed, will make me a “ghost” and immortal.
I do worship life. I have seen how fragile, yet how unrelenting it is.
How? I can’t describe the collective feeling I have with our family.
To see a sunrise, and be there when colour comes back to the world.
To see life all around you, even in your home. And know, unseen, life is buzzing; marching, crawling, replicating…it blows my mind.
I hear it, I feel it. I am just here like the ant, the deer, the dog, the tree, the vine. I can’t explain. There is no ritual, only of being thrown in the pot with everything else. And everything dies. And everything eats. And there is no life without destroying life, and I am humbled by that, but not to tears."
So I think back on "Not my God," and wish maybe we could be happy not editing carvings in paintings, not bull-dozing trees and wiping off the green for the kingdom of heaven and not forsaking green soccer fields for a Jesus, or a Mohammad, or a Torah...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Something to Value
Always eager to explore why I hunt, I read, and sometimes (yes, even I) listen to others' explanations and thoughts on their reasons for the "stalk". Naturally, as I've been obsessively reading Robert Ruark's works because he has written about hunting so well and so often, I've taken a minute to chat about it too.
In the book, Horn of the Hunter, he remembers a safari he took in the '50's with Harry Selby. And in fact, Ruark quotes Selby's take on a part of hunting I have only dabbled in because, frankly, when you hunt Lions or Greater Kudus or Elephants or Grants Gazelles in North Carolina, the Asheboro Zoo calls the cops. Well, that part of hunting is called trophy hunting.
"'You are not shooting an elephant,' Selby told me. 'You are shooting the symbol of his tusks. You are not shooting to kill. You are shooting to make immortal the thing you shoot. To kill just about anything is a sin. To kill something that will be dead soon, but is so fine as to give you pleasure for years, is wonderful. Everything dies. You only hasten the process. When you shoot a lion you are actually shooting its mane, something that will make you proud. You are shooting for yourself, not just shooting to kill.'"
And I suppose, to him that makes sense. But, as we like to say around here, "You can't eat antlers," as the only big game animals in these parts are deer. And so I've mentioned that the idea of a "stuffed" deer head on the wall is to me, somewhat distasteful and disrespectful. As if to say, "Look how purty you were before I shot you in the face."
But to look back on the day you collected a deer with a large rack of antler, or your first deer ever, and have something real to hold in your hand rather than a dimming memory is indeed nice. Sometimes, like in the case of Jaime, my son, it's both.
So a part of me broke my promise to respect my game by eating it and never making a trophy out of body parts and did just that. But like every other broken promise I've ever made, I can rationalize it away with a single breath or just a few keystrokes.
The difference is that it was a day I want my son to remember with me...his first deer. I too don't ever want to forget the feeling we had when this big(ish) eight pointer stepped out of the brush.
One hundred yards away, and I could see he had a bad eye and eight, nice bony-white points from where we sat. Deer sauntered in front of us, and I told the boy to raise his gun and find him through the scope. Easily done as it wasn't even 4:30 that afternoon but Deer wouldn't turn broadside for Jaime. As He turned away from us and started to walk deeper into the brush, I reached for my rifle, knowing I could make a back of the neck shot and forgetting about the boy for a moment.
But before I could even get my rifle ready, Deer suddenly turned broadside and stopped walking! I said something that very few people get to say to a first time hunter: "Take Him!" I whispered! I watched slack-jawed and nervous as I heard the click of the safety followed by the report. Deer jumped straight up and ran in a circle as deer do when their forelegs are shattered and the blood is supposed to be gushing from their chests. Deer fell in high enough brush that we couldn't see him anymore...he was down!
And so I want to remember the smiles we had! I want to remember the high five and the whispered, "Yes! Yes!" we shared and the fist bump and the clap on the back and the "that makes up for the possum you missed three years ago!" Always we'll want to remember the good...but also the bad...
I'll never forget looking out with the binoculars and finding the rack of a fallen Deer amid the low scrub, and then seeing it move. Deer wasn't quite dead. I told Jaime that Deer was just bleeding out, that He'd be dead by sundown, that we'd wait for me to shoot a deer then get them both on a four wheeler, but the antlers kept moving, atop a head that kept trying to see, maybe even will a way out of the scrub He was in and push His way out of sight on His two good rear legs.
Of course, there was a tree, and a limb blocking a finishing shot from the stand we were in no matter how I tried to play it. There just wasn't a clean shot as He only exposed the top of his head. So, a half hour before sunset, I unloaded the chamber by stuffing the cartridge deep into the internal magazine, closed the bolt on an empty chamber, and climbed down from the stand to do what I had to do. At the bottom of the stand I heard a voice, "Don't leave me," but of course we had no choice.
I pulled the bolt back again and racked it forward, stripping the cartridge off the top of the internal magazine and re-loaded the chamber with it. It is a custom rifle on a Mauser 98 action which means it was designed and not often modified since 1898, and used by our German enemies in two world wars! Even though I have loaded and fired rifles hundreds of times, I have never flipped a bolt shut on a loaded rifle with as much purpose and apprehension as I did that moment, that day.
I stalked to where I had last seen Deer laying in the brush, and He was gone, but I could hear Him ahead of me trying to avoid me in His own struggle. I nearly ran to Him, and knowing He was only ten to fifteen yards away, still could not see Him through the tangle of briars ahead. Out of the boy's sight I nervously followed narrow Deer trails through the brush. I was in no danger of course, but my heart was pounding, my mouth was dry.
So was Jaime's. "Dad?" he called. I had to ignore him. I pushed ahead and suddenly I saw Deer's silhouette a mere seven yards in front of me. I had traveled three hundred yards through the thick brush and was loosing the light. I threw the rifle up and centered the cross hairs on the shadow of Deer! So good is his camouflage that He, a mere 21 feet ahead, was nothing but a dark blur in front of me. Incredible to see, or not see at such a range, and figuring I couldn't miss, I shot. And then He was gone out of sight.
I heard splashing and grunting, muffled grunting, and walked up to Him and finally saw Him, head down, antlers twisted and caught in tall grass, and did, again, what we had come to do, but close enough this time to hear the life leave Him in a shuffled cough, a final cough. We were done. Jaime called again from the stand and I yelled back, "It's okay. He's down." Everyone heard us, and I walked back towards the stand.
A four wheeler trip later--an ordeal for me for the rest of my life since my other adventure on one--I grabbed a picture of Deer where he stopped being Deer and became Jaime's first deer.
I had pulled the antlers free and waited for help and the four wheeler. I was soaking wet from the waist down and growing colder. Jaime's first deer had made it to the back of the Dan River's flood plain and was soaking wet too. After a struggle to load Him single handedly in the dark onto the ATV, we got Him back to the truck for more pictures, though none show the bad eye really well.
And so we took Jaime's first deer and butchered it to hang and age. Jaime's bullet had grazed the brisket right to left and broke a foreleg. My shot at the silhouette had missed but the finisher had done just that, finished the chase. Jaime could see his mistake there, skinless and easy to see, and promised a touch higher in the future. Another lesson to remember as well.
Reading the whole story, maybe it's easier to see why it's important, at least to us, to me, to remember the day forever. And since we had the pictures, we wanted more options. We chose a skull mount for that is the reality of what happened to Deer. Also, the mount doesn't make a mockery of Deer's passing with a phony, lifelike Styrofoam-filled head with Deer's skin stretched taunt over it finished off with big glass eyes. A skull is what Deer is now, what we did to Him. We don't want to forget how beautiful He was, but we don't want to make a caricature of Him either.
Of course, I can admire others' trophies, and often do, but even better are the stories that go with them. I can see how one would want to keep something that fine around the house, and be able to see it as it was when it was taken, killed, without having lost a bit of that image to age and time. But that is not the only reason we hunt. Years from now though, me and the boy, Jaime, as I'll have to start calling him now that he's on the cusp of teenagedom, will have something to see, something of value only to us, and have a memory of his first deer, my son's first deer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)