Have you felt a change in the blogosphere in the last six months or so? For one thing, I don't think anyone says blogosphere any more. But more significantly, blogging seems to have passed its peak as a medium, or at least the phase of rapid growth and rabid press that typifies popular new things. There seem to be fewer new blogs, fewer new readers, and fewer posts. The mantle of all things to all people seems to have passed to Facebook and Twitter. This was confirmed for me in a recent NY Times article.
It's like when you're surfing*, and you ride the swells, waiting for the right wave, and eventually you see it coming and you start to paddle. Sometimes you start too late, and never really catch the break. Sometimes you go too early and it crashes over you. When it's perfect, you ride and cut and sometimes you even get tubed. But no matter what happens, eventually the wave passes and you're left behind, watching it go (if you're lucky), and you have to paddle back to catch the next one.**
Life is a little like that. Sooner or later, you notice that you're not thinking as much about changing the world as finding a way to enjoy the time you have left in it. You see the younger generation raising their kids, worrying about their careers, and making all the same mistakes you did, and realize that the peak has passed. At least, you do if you're paying attention. And whether you kicked ass or never really got started, there will be no paddling back for another.
It can be a jarring realization, and depressing or frightening for many people, but I find it strangely comforting. In blogging and in life, the pressure is off. Sort of. At least, I know what I've got to work with, more or less how I'm going to handle it, and I feel more comfortable working to my own purposes. Sensing a decline in something is realizing that nothing lasts forever, including screw-ups.
It doesn't mean we have to retire to the porch and blog about knitting. I'm starting a brand new career, for crying out loud. But I am doing it with a different attitude than most of the twenty-somethings who comprise my competition. No matter how far I go, or where I end up, I will try very hard to treasure the experience.
Who knows, I may even take up surfing.
* I have never surfed, but I liked the Beach Boys okay. If I ever did hang ten, I would definitely call myself "Moondoggie."
** Yes, I know sometimes you can surf right to the beach, and chicks will run up to you as you pick up your board and toss the water from your hair, and you will all run up the beach to the bonfire and play guitar and do the twist, but I'm trying to build a metaphor here.
Showing posts with label things that sound dirty but unfortunately are not.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label things that sound dirty but unfortunately are not.. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Oh, sweet mystery of life
Anyone who has been paying even a little attention knows that my life has been sweet beyond imagining. From the beginning, I have enjoyed good love, good fortune, and good health. Practically every dream I've had has come true, with opportunities to find new ones and fulfill them. What challenges and misadventures I have had were generally the type that befall most of us. And while I didn't enjoy the 80's as much as the rest, my days now are more enjoyable and fulfilling than I think they have ever been.
So why then do I seem to feel the need to find one disappointing aspect of my life and dwell on it, sometimes to the point of letting my dissatisfaction obstruct my enjoyment of all that I have? It's one of the grand mysteries of the universe. And by universe I mean the one with me at the center. To make matters worse, it is often the same issue recurring, which assures me that the fault is my own.
It's a small albatross, as such things go. A tiny pendant, really. At a time when the level of suffering that others endure is so plain before me, I am ashamed to even consider it. On good days I assume that the restlessness and mostly benign ambition that drives me to be a serial dreamer also keeps me from ever being totally contented. In less charitable moods I feel like a sort of defective, self-created Tantalus, full and surrounded by sustenance, but never satiated.
If you're getting tired of listening to an obviously over-priveliged white guy wax morose about his self-imposed misfortune, you're not alone. It was the same reaction that prompted me to write this post. But it will get better. It always does.
So why then do I seem to feel the need to find one disappointing aspect of my life and dwell on it, sometimes to the point of letting my dissatisfaction obstruct my enjoyment of all that I have? It's one of the grand mysteries of the universe. And by universe I mean the one with me at the center. To make matters worse, it is often the same issue recurring, which assures me that the fault is my own.
It's a small albatross, as such things go. A tiny pendant, really. At a time when the level of suffering that others endure is so plain before me, I am ashamed to even consider it. On good days I assume that the restlessness and mostly benign ambition that drives me to be a serial dreamer also keeps me from ever being totally contented. In less charitable moods I feel like a sort of defective, self-created Tantalus, full and surrounded by sustenance, but never satiated.
If you're getting tired of listening to an obviously over-priveliged white guy wax morose about his self-imposed misfortune, you're not alone. It was the same reaction that prompted me to write this post. But it will get better. It always does.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Pressed ham and vanilla wafers
Every so often, normally when I'm getting tired of listening to people blame all of society's ills on the poor, I remember the summer after my first last semester in college, when I worked on a CETA-funded program to provide summer jobs for disadvantaged youth. This particular program entailed loading a couple of hundred high school kids on school buses and taking them out to clean up illegal dumpsites, or pick up trash from the side of the highway.
The day-to-day administration of this little band included myself, my older brother, his future ex-wife, a friend who would later become a preacher only to leave the ministry to work as an over-the-road trucker, and various liberal do-gooders, most of whom did not last the summer. We were called counselors, as if this were some especially shitty summer camp. We had three or four senior* counselors who drove the buses and provided on-site supervision, and another who floated from site to site, making supply runs and relaying messages to and from the program's administrators when upper-level decisions were required.
Upper level decisions included things like what to do about the six foot wasp nest, or giant snake pit, or dead horse we occasionally ran across at the dumpsites. (That's right. Dead horse. Swear to Baby Jesus.) While we waited for decisions, supplies, or backup,** work would stop at the site and the kids would chase each other around, or braid each other's hair, or find especially disgusting bits of trash to throw at each other. You know, regular teenager stuff. I was possibly the first white boy in Arkansas to have cornrows. Fortunately, they looked really good on me.
It was obvious that some of the kids didn't really have a chance to amount to much. Those kids generally didn't last long. An eighteen year old (not in the program) walked onto a bus and shot one of our fifteen year old boys while we waited to leave one morning. Other kids would just fail to show up one day, and we wouldn't see them again. But mostly these were good kids. Just like your kids, but not as spoiled. They depended on each other, and took care of each other. You could tell that many of them were fending for themselves, or that the money they were making was feeding their family.
They even took care of me. I was really poor at this point, among other things, and rarely had any food for lunch. As far as I was concerned, there were better things for me to do with the pittance I made at that job than feed myself. A group of my kids stopped at their neighborhood grocery every morning and bought pressed ham*** and a bag of vanilla wafers to share for lunch. These weren't Nilla brand wafers. In fact, they probably weren't even vanilla. Just some sort of illa wafers.
Anyway, I digress. About a week after they noticed that I was starving to death, the kids started feeding me. What you do is, you tear a piece of meat in half, fold it once, place it between two illa wafers and eat it like some sort of Soviet-era Oreo from Hell. They're disgusting, but they are great if you are hungry enough, and it was all these kids could afford.
It was incredibly touching that these children, who had been crapped on by life from birth, and had no reason to expect any different in the future, would share with me what might be their only meal that day. I have never forgotten their unassuming kindness, and while I know that the experience that summer affected some of them in a positive way, I don't see how they could have gotten more from it than I did. My attitudes about work, and poverty, and facing adversity with grace, were changed forever by a handful of kids from the ghetto and a few scraps of food.
I know that most of those kids have faced an uphill battle since that summer, and too many are probably dead, or in jail, or in some other desperate strait. But I'm sure that many have met whatever situations they faced with as much faith, kindness, and humor as they could muster. Every couple of years, I will put a piece or two of Black Forest ham between Nilla wafers and remember. And hope, and be thankful.
* "Senior" in this case meant more or less 25, and able to buy beer.
** This is what life was like before cell phones. People sat around waiting a lot. And without the Internet, we had no choice but to learn things about each other. It was horrible.
*** Pressed ham is lunch meat that is sort of like SPAM, but not as snooty. And it's conveniently shaped for Wonder bread and sliced about as thick as a Hallmark card.
The day-to-day administration of this little band included myself, my older brother, his future ex-wife, a friend who would later become a preacher only to leave the ministry to work as an over-the-road trucker, and various liberal do-gooders, most of whom did not last the summer. We were called counselors, as if this were some especially shitty summer camp. We had three or four senior* counselors who drove the buses and provided on-site supervision, and another who floated from site to site, making supply runs and relaying messages to and from the program's administrators when upper-level decisions were required.
Upper level decisions included things like what to do about the six foot wasp nest, or giant snake pit, or dead horse we occasionally ran across at the dumpsites. (That's right. Dead horse. Swear to Baby Jesus.) While we waited for decisions, supplies, or backup,** work would stop at the site and the kids would chase each other around, or braid each other's hair, or find especially disgusting bits of trash to throw at each other. You know, regular teenager stuff. I was possibly the first white boy in Arkansas to have cornrows. Fortunately, they looked really good on me.
It was obvious that some of the kids didn't really have a chance to amount to much. Those kids generally didn't last long. An eighteen year old (not in the program) walked onto a bus and shot one of our fifteen year old boys while we waited to leave one morning. Other kids would just fail to show up one day, and we wouldn't see them again. But mostly these were good kids. Just like your kids, but not as spoiled. They depended on each other, and took care of each other. You could tell that many of them were fending for themselves, or that the money they were making was feeding their family.
They even took care of me. I was really poor at this point, among other things, and rarely had any food for lunch. As far as I was concerned, there were better things for me to do with the pittance I made at that job than feed myself. A group of my kids stopped at their neighborhood grocery every morning and bought pressed ham*** and a bag of vanilla wafers to share for lunch. These weren't Nilla brand wafers. In fact, they probably weren't even vanilla. Just some sort of illa wafers.
Anyway, I digress. About a week after they noticed that I was starving to death, the kids started feeding me. What you do is, you tear a piece of meat in half, fold it once, place it between two illa wafers and eat it like some sort of Soviet-era Oreo from Hell. They're disgusting, but they are great if you are hungry enough, and it was all these kids could afford.
It was incredibly touching that these children, who had been crapped on by life from birth, and had no reason to expect any different in the future, would share with me what might be their only meal that day. I have never forgotten their unassuming kindness, and while I know that the experience that summer affected some of them in a positive way, I don't see how they could have gotten more from it than I did. My attitudes about work, and poverty, and facing adversity with grace, were changed forever by a handful of kids from the ghetto and a few scraps of food.
I know that most of those kids have faced an uphill battle since that summer, and too many are probably dead, or in jail, or in some other desperate strait. But I'm sure that many have met whatever situations they faced with as much faith, kindness, and humor as they could muster. Every couple of years, I will put a piece or two of Black Forest ham between Nilla wafers and remember. And hope, and be thankful.
* "Senior" in this case meant more or less 25, and able to buy beer.
** This is what life was like before cell phones. People sat around waiting a lot. And without the Internet, we had no choice but to learn things about each other. It was horrible.
*** Pressed ham is lunch meat that is sort of like SPAM, but not as snooty. And it's conveniently shaped for Wonder bread and sliced about as thick as a Hallmark card.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Hey baby, how about a little dependency injection?
I think my science computer goober credentials have been pretty well established by now, but occasionally I run across something that reminds me that I am really not like most other people. Today's example is this comic strip, which I thought was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.
It's only a matter of time before I start showing up at work in my pajamas.
It's only a matter of time before I start showing up at work in my pajamas.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Cat Tree
While Amy at I Wonder Wye was making all the cat owners jealous of the pussy playground in her bedroom, she practically dared me to post a picture of our cat tree. And I can't pass up a practical dare. Except when I feel like it. But I also have to tell the story, because that's how I roll.
The cat liked it pretty well, and she napped in the little bed frequently. That is until we got the second cat about a year later. He loves it. He tears around on it a couple of times a day. His favorite new thing is to jump from the bed at the top to the chair below. He tends to chase her up and strand her on the extremities, so she doesn't spend much time up there any more.
*We called it the "cat-tree-na" for a little while, but that turned out to be too dorky, even for us.
My parents used to warn me that my smart mouth would get me in trouble one day. This is the sort of thing they were talking about. It started with Hurricane Katrina. While Katrina apparently caused quite a ruckus south and east of here, it was more of a "typical" hurricane experience for us. We live well inland, so there is never really any danger of tidal surge or serious flooding, but the storm was definitely too long and violent to be any fun. It's sort of like a near miss from a tornado, but several hours long. We were without power for about a week, and we lost several small trees, including one at the end of the driveway that I had never liked.
You know those big carpeted pillars they make for cats to climb around on? Apparently they are called cat trees, and the wife had been talking about wanting one for our new kitten to play on. The tree at the end of the driveway reminded me of a little peach tree far away that a former cat of mine had loved to climb around in, so when I saw it laying across the driveway I said, "There's your cat tree."*
I knew I was in trouble before the words finished leaving my mouth. I had the chain saw out before I knew what was happening, and a couple of weeks later we were trying to wrestle a tree through our front door. It turns out that trees are made largely of wood, which makes them really heavy. We only bashed the wall in a couple of places, and other than one set of little insects who hatched in the bark a few months later, it hasn't really been much trouble. Its has become part of the indoor landscape, so to speak. I forget it's unusual until I see someone staring at it.
Man, it's great to be the only cat in the house.
The cat liked it pretty well, and she napped in the little bed frequently. That is until we got the second cat about a year later. He loves it. He tears around on it a couple of times a day. His favorite new thing is to jump from the bed at the top to the chair below. He tends to chase her up and strand her on the extremities, so she doesn't spend much time up there any more.
As you can imagine, we get a fair number of comments. The funny thing to me is how many people don't say anything. It's not the sort of thing one fails to notice. The good news? It occupies a space that otherwise would probably contain a baby grand piano, even though neither of us play.
The things we do for love.
The things we do for love.
*We called it the "cat-tree-na" for a little while, but that turned out to be too dorky, even for us.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Gotta be the Dick
Some of you know I've been reading Moby Dick.
Still reading that, you ask?
Why, yes, I respond.
Why so long?*
Because the shit is boring, thanks for asking.
Seriously, unless you're looking for a do-it-yourself whaling manual, I can't think of a single reason why anyone would want to read this thing. Except for one spectacularly good chapter that doesn't even really fit in the story, it's about like reading a precocious thirteen year old's diary of the year they spent studying for the National Spelling Bee. Or listening to a really old person who doesn't know how to tell stories tell a story. You know the ones I mean. Each digression becomes more detailed and tedious than the one before, until everyone forgets why they are even in the same room. I can usually manage about ten pages before blessed sleep rescues me from this hundred and fifty year old heart-warming tale of a xenophobic know-it-all who wants to make sure I know every frakking thing he had for breakfast one morning in eighteen-fifty-kill-me.
I guess I understand the appeal when the book was written, back in the days when most people had only read two books or less, all they knew was hunting and farming, and South America might as well have been Jupiter. A whale was like a dinosaur to them, so I guess Moby Dick is sort of like Jurassic Park of the nineteenth century. You know what? Jurassic Park sucked, too.
So anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I think it's affecting my writing. In the same way that we are what we eat,** I think we write what we read. And since Melville is an undisciplined rambler with a sharp eye for irrelevant detail, this is not a good thing for me. I think this post serves as an excellent example of this effect.
I'm what I like to euphemistically refer to as a non-linear thinker in the best of times, and my story-telling is in constant danger of being derailed by runaway digressions creating a chain reaction and destroying my train of thought. Being exposed to this kind of meandering crap for this amount of time cannot be good for me.
There is hope on the horizon. I've got the new Terry Pratchett waiting, and maybe some Irving after that. Now if I can just kill this whale (or whatever happens) and get through this piece of crap before I die of boredom.
* I'm having a really hard time with this one, trying to choose between the tried and true "That's what she said," and the slightly more esoteric, "That's a bit of a personal question, don't you think?" Opinions?
Still reading that, you ask?
Why, yes, I respond.
Why so long?*
Because the shit is boring, thanks for asking.
Seriously, unless you're looking for a do-it-yourself whaling manual, I can't think of a single reason why anyone would want to read this thing. Except for one spectacularly good chapter that doesn't even really fit in the story, it's about like reading a precocious thirteen year old's diary of the year they spent studying for the National Spelling Bee. Or listening to a really old person who doesn't know how to tell stories tell a story. You know the ones I mean. Each digression becomes more detailed and tedious than the one before, until everyone forgets why they are even in the same room. I can usually manage about ten pages before blessed sleep rescues me from this hundred and fifty year old heart-warming tale of a xenophobic know-it-all who wants to make sure I know every frakking thing he had for breakfast one morning in eighteen-fifty-kill-me.
I guess I understand the appeal when the book was written, back in the days when most people had only read two books or less, all they knew was hunting and farming, and South America might as well have been Jupiter. A whale was like a dinosaur to them, so I guess Moby Dick is sort of like Jurassic Park of the nineteenth century. You know what? Jurassic Park sucked, too.
So anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I think it's affecting my writing. In the same way that we are what we eat,** I think we write what we read. And since Melville is an undisciplined rambler with a sharp eye for irrelevant detail, this is not a good thing for me. I think this post serves as an excellent example of this effect.
I'm what I like to euphemistically refer to as a non-linear thinker in the best of times, and my story-telling is in constant danger of being derailed by runaway digressions creating a chain reaction and destroying my train of thought. Being exposed to this kind of meandering crap for this amount of time cannot be good for me.
There is hope on the horizon. I've got the new Terry Pratchett waiting, and maybe some Irving after that. Now if I can just kill this whale (or whatever happens) and get through this piece of crap before I die of boredom.
* I'm having a really hard time with this one, trying to choose between the tried and true "That's what she said," and the slightly more esoteric, "That's a bit of a personal question, don't you think?" Opinions?
** That way being simultaneously "completely" and "not at all."
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Blow me down -- I may owe Martha Connor an apology
I love to read. I don't read a lot compared to some of my more literary friends, or my wife, but I get the sense that it's a lot for general purpose 21st century America. Between all the Harry Potter and crazy food books and whatever else I stumble across, I try to read a classic every year or two. It helps me feel cultured and refined while I'm scratching my bits and grazing on old M&M's I find in the couch cushions.
I'm not apologizing to Melville. At least not yet. First off, he's dead. Second, the jury is still out on this book. So far we have ten percent brilliant writing balanced against ninety percent fishy-smelling tedium. Sort of like three weeks at a bed and breakfast in an old seaside village, watching someone inventory the whole town's possessions with their new video camera.
The last one I read was The Count of Monte Cristo, which was really cheating, because even though it's like a thousand pages, with about as many characters, it's been one of my favorite books since I saw the Mr. Magoo version on television as a kid. It has perhaps the most skillfully constructed plot of anything I have ever read, making even A Prayer for Owen Meany seem simple by comparison. Plus, if you've ever felt like you wanted revenge on pretty much everyone you know, The Count of Monte Cristo is the book for you. Also, excellent sandwich.
This time I decided to take on the leviathan. That's right, I'm reading Moby Dick. It's not my first attempt at the Great White Novel. I tried it back in high school, but I crashed early against the waves of irrelevant exposition and pointless descriptions of items of furniture, road signs and the buttons on the clothes of transient characters. I don't think I made fifty pages, and like the story's protagonist, it's a result I cannot abide. Many of the classic books simply lost my interest, or weren't my style, but I have always felt defeated by Moby Dick. So I strapped on my peg leg and took another shot.
It has not exactly been smooth sailing. I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the pages and pages of random cetacean-related quotations that open the book, but I persevered*, and before I knew it I was paddling along through a quirky -- if somewhat dull -- story of budding man-love between a grumpy sailor and his heavily inked heathen boy toy. It wasn't exactly a thrilling read, but a bit like canoeing a sluggish river. You wish there were a following current to lessen the effort required, but at least the water is deep enough, and it's more or less downstream.
Then I got to Chapter 9, "The Sermon." This chapter was not only seven pages of some of the best prose I have read**, but if I had ever heard a sermon like this one in person, I might still go to church. Melville manages to gracefully blend the fire and brimstone of old time religion with Age of Reason thinking to make the most compelling case for religion that I can recall hearing. And while a little heavily allegorical in both setting and tone, it's a compelling read. A gem like "The Sermon" will make the effort required to get through rest of the book worth it for me. The chapter seems somewhat fitted into the story, in that it doesn't really advance the plot to any significant degree, and none of our continuing characters speak a word. I suspect it was something Melville knew was too good not to work in somewhere.
So I think I may owe my twelfth grade English teacher an apology, even though she was kind of a bitch to me most of the time. I think she thought she was pushing me to excellence, but she was really just pissing me off. Oops, this is probably not how the best apologies start, but she's not going to read this anyway. Okay, here goes. Miss Connor, I'm sorry you were a bitch I told you that Moby Dick was the most tedious piece of crap I have ever had the misfortune to attempt to read. That honor now reverts to Silas Marner.
I'm not apologizing to Melville. At least not yet. First off, he's dead. Second, the jury is still out on this book. So far we have ten percent brilliant writing balanced against ninety percent fishy-smelling tedium. Sort of like three weeks at a bed and breakfast in an old seaside village, watching someone inventory the whole town's possessions with their new video camera.
So now I'm back to the long search for the next sign of life. Melville just spent almost a page telling us that we can really only feel warm when a part of us is cold, while Ishmael shares pillow talk and wrestles with his new boyfriend***. Hopefully I will be able to endure. Who knows? If I get through Moby Dick, maybe I will take another shot at A Tale of Two Cities.
____________________________
* I skimmed.
** At least old school eighteenth century type prose. I don't know that I would read Melville's blog if he had one.
*** Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Hummer Time!
Sorry to disappoint, but this post concerns ruby throats of the avian variety. Every spring the hummingbirds return to our neighborhood from wherever it is that they spend the winter, and after about a month they disappear again. I'm not sure where they go. My crazy birdwatching friend (come on, you've probably got one, too) says that they go "to the country", whatever that means.
And every year, about this time, they return. From the country, I guess. It starts with one or two, and the population steadily expands until they are ready to make their long flight over the Gulf of Mexico to wherever it is that they spend the winter. By the middle of September we may have a couple of dozen of the impossibly cute and pesky little things fighting over the feeders and buzzing anyone who happens outside. And then one day they are all gone until next year.
Much like the first cool breeze or the ripening of fruit in parts north of here, the hummers returning is a promise of summer's end. We still have at least two months of temperatures in the 90's, and two more before anything resembling cold weather arrives, but the promise is given. The days are growing shorter, the kids are preparing to return to school, and the big clock of the seasons climbs toward another midnight.
Like fall, hummer time inspires melancholy and reflection in me. Autumn is my favorite time of year, but the dark side is part of what gives it the richness that I like so much . Another year is on the downhill slide. The life of summer retreats, and for those with real seasons, falling leaves rattle like bones, the wildlife hunker down or flee to their winter places. It's a time for sweaters, pumpkins, firewood and quiet acknowledgment of winter approaching.
The first hummer came to the window this past weekend, asking to be fed. I had to displace a wasp nest from the goldfinch feeder I never took down last winter*, but after a little drama the little guy and his partner are settled in. I assume his friends will be along shortly.
_________________________________
* Don't judge. I've been busy.
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