The Story of a Girl (Title rethinking in Progress): PART III

           What is the difference between self-consciousness and self-awareness?  Can we entwine the two strands into a double helical structure that make the positive and negative connotations less discernible?  How can we say that the former can’t induce the latter through a trickling prickle of fear titrated slowly enough that the side effects don’t overwhelm the subject?

            It isn’t that he doubted the presence of self-consciousness but he wondered whether he had just as well attained the state craved by all women where a man totters the edge of awareness.  If he wasn’t in that state he wondered what it was and how he could get there; almost as though he had a driver occupying the back seat of his mind repeatedly asking the question, “are we there yet?”  But how do you know when you've arrived when there are no road signs welcoming you? 

            ‘Now entering awareness.’

            ‘Safe travels.  Hope you enjoyed consciousness.’

            If he had attained this woo woo state, the girl seemed not to notice.  If I may also interject here, it is thought to be true that if one is indeed thinking about awareness the state will elude him; nonetheless, kudos to him who tries:

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Likewise, it is not for the narrator to critique the protagonist.  Although the two are intertwined, they are inseparably parallel: both to be headed in a forward direction, neither to cast his sidewards glance upon the other.

            Although we are unsure as to whether the boy had a positive or negative effect and if that effect swung overwhelmingly, or only moderately, one way or the other, she did respond to his question, "I like art, I like to play soccer.”  It seemed she would continue but possibly upon reflection, considered this enough to divulge to the stranger.  Her voice gradually descended into a silence, like a band that discovers no more creative way to conclude a song than to overzealously repeat the chorus again and again in deluded self-adulation until it slowly fades to an overly anticipated silence.

            As a narrator, I am disturbed by the aggregate popularity of abbreviating sentences.  Whether her particularly shortened sentence came from the erroneous misperception that I -mid sentence- already knew what she meant thereby establishing a connection; or rather, that she had no desire to establish any connection and that an abrupt stop would be the most effective way of conveying this sentiment -nothing on her face reflected a flicker of thought that signaled an upcoming conclusion.  Another example of how our hero maintained his stance despite the gusty winds that tried to knock him off balance.

            But his public speaking class had prepared him for moments just like these and provided him with the necessary toolbox to hammer on, despite the lackluster material he was given; the class he took first semester of sophomore year taught him that he already had all of the Jenga blocks necessary to construct a conversation.  He found art, or at least the intellectual idea of it, fairly interesting and he decided, as the alpha male, that the intercourse would take this conceptual fork.  It coincidentally coincided with his proximity to his head, which left him in a favorable place from which to conduct this academic conversation.

The Story of a Girl (Potential for Title to be Changed to More Creative Name): Part II

"What interests you?"  He asked.  In all honesty, the boy can't actually recall his exact words; it is an educated approximation.

A little alarmed that the person sitting next to her hands-on-admirer had broken from his stupor of silence and entered into her auditory ingress of awareness, not through a staggering presence but rather because the fluctuations of his sound, which had been up until that point closemouthed, triggered the hammer to hit the anvil, creating subtle waves of frequency within the cochlea where the reverberations trickled to the auditory lobe and ferried via action potentials and ion channels where her brain processed his verbal gesticulations. 

A similar concept is how one person, it is almost always the one with the croakiest, tone deaf voice combined with a profound self-consciousness, decides to postpone his entrance into happy birthday until the coming of the second line because he erroneously believes that his delayed crooning will thus go unregistered –yet, if only he had thought it through he would’ve realized that our brains work not by a process of selection (we can’t choose what we hear) but by a process of differentiation: which allows the person living in LA to acclimate to the sounds of sirens and the Vermonter to acclimate to the sounds of silence.  It is the reason why we can walk down a familiar road and rarely recall the colors of the buildings, the reason why you probably would be hard pressed to name the president on the face of a Nickel, and unfortunately, why the murmurs of a man trying to mask his voice become even more noticeable.  If only he had thought through this, he could’ve concealed his epiglottal yelps and the ensuing embarrassment. 

What is even sadder is that most sixth graders in symphonic band know the unnecessity of a delayed entree: lack of skill can be adequately eclipsed by the bellows of the other instruments.

Although one could suggest that given her supporting role as a waitress her ear would’ve been even more attuned to these subtle changes of frequency, we can only postulate that the reason for her rotation –the degree to which she rotated is known with certainty (20 degrees) –is the same reason that a deer cuffs its ear in the woods.  It is also known with certainty that as she concluded her rotation the word "what?" simultaneously flowed from her mouth (to be exact it also flowed with assistance from her nasal cavity). 

She assumed he was talking to her and she was correct in her assumption but her full, undivided attention, which he had not factored into his causal analysis, gave him no ballast to steady his keel and threw him off balance.  It was this anchor of attention that made him even more self-conscious as he was forced to repeat the question.  Although some may think it advantageous that he already knew the question (because he had rehearsed it seconds ago), he saw himself as disadvantaged because he would much rather escape into thought about how to break the silence with other filler questions.  The words, through no great virtue or accomplishment of his own, eventually stammered their way out (a larger percentage of airflow than preferred dripped from his naval cavity).  The only thought that evaded autopilot was that it would be cloddish to reiterate the same exact sentence so he rephrased it. 

"What do you like to do?"

Had he not taken public speaking in high school, we are unsure if he would've acquired the impromptu skills to think on his feet.

The Story of a Girl (Potential for Title to be Changed to More Creative Name)

Part I

 

This is a not really fictional piece of my crush on a particular girl who coincidentally and inconveniently has a boyfriend. FYI, I am, for the most part, the he/him/his (rarely does it actually work to conceal one's identity through fiction) but I am unsure who the narrator is.

Why is it that the chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, "The Grand Inquisitor", a chapter addressing the innate evil of human kind, is robbed of its context, the umbilical cord severed from its origins and published by itself while the chapter on Father Zosima, the benevolent monk that believes in the innate goodness of humans is, if it hasn't already been ripped from its binding, torn from the manuscript only to be heaved into the garbage –not even recycled. My point is that we choose evil over good –that we secretly enjoy watching people fail. Take a deep breath. My story, although its denouement is not yet known, is one that will most likely end in your enjoyment; my defeat. Does this makes me a martyr?

If the girl could remember that she had told him last Saturday that she would be working at Washington Ave Bistro, that she would have to work at seven O'clock that night - two hours after she finished her other job at the gallery –maybe she would've found it creepy that one week later he, donning his finest finery, would be sitting down with his father and friend to dine at this very same place.

She would not be his waitress but the smile she gave him as she looked up from the table she was bussing, would suggest otherwise. Isn't it possible that she told him where she worked because she wanted him to visit? Yet, could it not also be plausible that she would’ve been warier but was skeptical that such information would be assimilated and employed at a later time. But alas, the astute bird gets the worm; it’s that simple.

That’s why he visited the gallery; she was working at a bar, the Franklin - sometimes referred to as the Frankie, and she had suggested that he come visit between ten and three thirty. It was the first time he had seen her and like most girls who worked at the Frankie –and coincidentally, at most of the galleries –she was gorgeous. A friend of his, who knew her from playing in a soccer league, stood up from his stool and placed his hands on her hips and smiled longingly into her eyes. Perhaps he looked too long because one by one she removed each of his fingers. This little piggy went...The friend sat back down. Unshaken, still smiling. The boy, who will also be referred to as the astute bird, decided to take a different approach.

Sun Valley City Council Candidate’s Master Debate

Of the five contestants only three have high enough IQs to even be considered.  The first candidate, David Baravetto, a former architect ran on the platform of minimal expansion while making Sun Valley more accessible to tourists.  Milt Adams, sitting to the right of Baravetto, made the point that he himself was a “great analytical thinker but also was a creative thinker.”  The moderator, who wasn’t running, sat next to the loquaciously outspoken, unfortunately inarticulate Adams.  To the right of the moderator was Steven Poindexter.  As a worker of the graveyard shift for the Sun Valley Resort, he ran on the non-sensical platform that businesses in Sun Valley need to be open later, ‘at least until ten.’

  

It was uncertain if Poindexter chose his platform because he was fatigued with late night guests continually asking him what there is to do at night, or if there were other motives for his impractical platform.  If you have ever been to Sun Valley (distinctly separate from Ketchum, which is one mile down the road) what is most comical about his proposal is that besides Sun Valley Ski Resort, Sun Valley has very few businesses and it seems quite plausible for the company just to keep its own bars and restaurants open later without it becoming the main reason of someone’s candidacy.  The illogical part of his platform is that stores have cut back on their hours because there isn’t enough business; keeping stores open later would only add an unnecessary burden on the weight of their shoulders, plunging them to the basement through already rotting floorboards. 

  

The two most intelligent candidates congregated at the right.  Ironically, it would seem that the candidates were seated according to their political affiliation –just an astute observation on my part.  Baravetto seemed the most left, Milt couldn’t really articulate what exactly he was, and the Ribi/Youngman ticket both ran on platforms of economic growth.

  

The floor was opened to the audience after the reporters asked their questions.  When I was called on, I attempted to jumble three questions into one: concerning the environmental implications of building a new airport in Sun Valley, how one would deal with Sun Valley Ski Resort, the biggest provider of tourists and jobs but also its biggest provider in pollution and destruction: in a study conducted on seventy-seven western ski resorts by an environmental firm based out of Colorado, the company was shown to be among the worst ski resorts with respect to the environment.  The moderator realized my gasps for articulation and upon finishing my lengthy question she aided me in condensing and clarifying it and then asked me, ‘if that is what I meant?’  I told her ‘yes, but’ and then decided to tack on another question impugning the seeming implausibility of keeping businesses open later when they were already floundering to keep afloat.

  

The question was first tackled by Poindexter who remarked in exasperation, “Wow,” and then explained how Sun Valley needed an airport for access but as a front desk worker of the graveyard shift he sometimes had to ‘make decisions on the spot’ and that the “town of Sun Valley really needs to be considerate and consider the needs of its guests.”  Ribi pointed out, among other things that we need to think about the economy.  Bob Youngman uneventfully agreed with Ribi and said nothing more. Baravetto mentioned the reality of the environmental implications but ‘what we need to focus on now is accessibility’.

  

When the time came for Milt to respond he crossed his arms and said, “I’m going to pass on that question because it’s not understandable.”  If I was more witty I would’ve told Milt that if he couldn’t hold two co-existing thoughts in his head he shouldn’t be running for city council but instead I simplified the question by shortening it to the environmental implications of building an airport.  Still ruffled Milt reluctantly responded, “well when the time comes, I am a creative thinker but then I also can do analytical thinking and I will be able to deal effectively with the issue.  If it is an issue an all.”  That’s reassuring.

  

When the time came for candidates to pose questions to the others, Ribi asked the candidates to divulge their greatest strength and what would be their greatest challenge as a member of the City Coucil.  Baravetto wittily responded with, “weakness?”  People laughed and then he described how as an architect he learned to work well with others but sometimes he is too impulsive and doesn’t think through all of the options. 

  

Milt tried to follow Baravetto’s act by using his material -any comedian could tell you that this is a sure fire way to crash and burn.  Milt did not have such foresight.  Because of the lack of creativity, it seemingly questioned the first part of his answer when he spoke of his strengths as an analytical thinker and in creative thinking; the unoriginality combined with horrendous timing left the crowd quiet after Milt said weakness?  Silence ensued for at least five seconds and it made me wonder if Milt wasn’t joking at all but was serious.  But then he continued, “weaknesses, if I have any weakness, would probably be that” and then he did one of those things where he listed another strength as if it could be a weakness (i.e. I work too hard).  It was too bad that he chose this route because the translucency of at least two obvious weaknesses –humility and being stupid (it would seem that as creative and analytical are on opposite sides of the brain, you couldn’t be strongest in both –besides the fact that Ribi was looking for a strength not strengths) his unwillingness to admit these areas of improvement also left him with one more weakness: disillusionment.

  

Poindexter reiterated that as a worker of the graveyard shift he sometimes had to make quick decisions (I can only imagine what they would be –whether he should allocate an additional towel to a guest, what to do if there are people in the hot tub after eleven (although maybe he would extend this curfew as well), and what he could say to placate a rampant guest shaking an empting vending at 2 o’clock in the morning.

  

Pizza was provided.  You remember when you were young and your parents used to excitedly (and buffoonly) point out to you as you wearily staggered through the door from your job as a dishwasher that “now you know what you don’t want to be when you grow up!”  If I gained nothing else, with the exception of a few thousand more calories from the pizza heavily clad in cheese, I realized at least one person I didn’t want to be when I grow up.

  

Rock the Vote,

  

Jimmy

A Treatise on Hygiene (Reporting from the Boulder Library)

Part II (from Lulling Philosophical Nonsense)

My laptop has been in a deep, slumbered sleep and unplugged for the past four days; I remain dependent on an electrical source and am not allowed the full liberation of movement only a freedom of choice -to place the computer on my lap or the table. The layout of the upstairs library “tree fort” provides a number of options: squeeze in between two people located at the tables mushed together in the center or take up a seat at the smaller tables spaced intermittently on the perimeter of the room. Given the recent outbreak of Swine Flu and that the kumbaya conglomeration of tables in the middle of the room would put me within arms reach of ten people all possibly harboring the disease, I opt for the outskirts. In defense of my paranoia, I will provide a metaphor: eating the fish lowest on the food chain has the least chance of Mercury poisoning. Why? 

Biological magnification. At each level of the food chain there is a tremendous amount of energy loss and thus, a predator must eat a large amount of prey in order to meet its daily energy quota. Because fat soluble substances cannot be diluted, broken down, or excreted in urine they accumulate in the fatty tissue of an organism and this fat accumulates in the gut of the predator. Mercury is efficiently absorbed but slowly excreted by organisms and is thus stored in the adipose tissue. Algae absorb Mercury, Zooplankton eat the algae, larger fish eat the Zooplankton; by the time salmon are ready to feast, its prey has already accumulated 10^ of the its place on the food chain. It explains why herring contain mercury at approximately 0.01 ppm and shark contain mercury at greater than 1 ppm (EPA 1997).

A person sits down at a table full of early risers (all more likely to have Swine Flu for their lack of sleep). After much deliberation, these people decide to take a study break and five other people sit down. By the time this person decides to have lunch he has now made contact with at least ten other people and if one of them is infected, he will then transfer it to everyone else who sits down.

And then there is always the tumult and distraction of crowded tables

My healthy choice thumbs me to a new page of adventure: sit next to a male student at the left table, sit next to a female at the middle table, or sit next to the homeless man to the right table. Each have their costs and benefits but carefully weighing each, I find the middle table just right.

She looks up, smiles, and returns to her screen. The ruminations of whether I have agitated her by occupying the additional space and empty seat are quelled when she grabs the folds under her chair and politely jiggles it to the right. It is a gesture that scientifically leaves the chair in exactly the same location but warmly suggests that there is adequate room for both of us. My failed foresight manifests itself when I realize that this table provides no electrical outlet and I am forced to grovel to my number two and ask him if I can plug into the socket under his table. His charming acquiescence conceals any grudge he might be holding against me and I am impressed by his resiliency.

I sense my table mate’s amiable disturbance by the wiggling of her screen that might be loosely connected to my typing but is more attributable to the lousily constructed tables; it is reassuring to know that the man at the table adjacent to mine holds no obvious hostility. Tangentially, through my recently honed skill of telekinesis, I am aware of something that disturbs her even more than the subtle wobbles of her screen.

It is that she so amicably receives my invitation to plop down next to her, putting the two-person table at its maximum seating capacity, and I have transported –like the burrs of a burdock flower that stick to one’s clothing –the putrid smell attached to me, into our communal space; she has no problem distinguishing the this fetor emanates from my half of the table. I can tell that this smell only adds to the bleak realism of the rainy still life framed by the flimsy, new-age, polished aluminum that she looks at every time she takes a break from the oppression of the harsh light and tiny characters that pervade her screen. On a relevant side note, the smell from my socks conveniently overpowers the smell extending from the crotch region of my green corduroy pants (I still have control of my bowels but this smell is a naturally occurring process to all pants which haven't been washed for prolonged periods of time).

The socks are not mine but my friend’s. I have been using them for two and a half days and I would’ve used the socks reluctantly given to me the day before by her boyfriend, but it was snowing when we went to watch the elk bugle in Estes National Park and I had gotten them wet trying to rile these massive creatures (P.S. Don’t rile them, how would you like to be challenged when you are with your harem). I bit the bullet –or more appropriately, plugged the bullet up my nose –and with reluctant compliance slipped into these socks that poorly aromatized with age.

The ebb and flow of her computer screen continues and I kindly take my Mac from the table and put it on my lap (another friend of mine once forwarded me a New York Times article confirming an argument I didn’t believe of her’s –that using a computer in one’s lap would decrease one’s sperm count; this further ennobles my action). My neighbor makes no acknowledgment of my expiatory sacrifice.

Her ingratitude combined with my swelling concern for the hazardous effects of my magnanimous effort leave me with the obvious option of quickest relief; I put my computer back on the table where I seek a novel gratification in the back and forth synchronicity of the wobbling of her screen with the rhythmic typing of my fingers. It isn’t my fault that the designers of her flimsy computer didn’t forebode the downward pressures of finger pecking onto an equally flimsy table (Steve Jobs paid me to say that).

Amidst the wheezing, I realize that if she is a recovering or current hypochondriac (depending on the ratifications of the new DSM manual, I might be one myself), it is my frequent sniffling, intermittent cough, and occasional hacking fit finaleed (spelling?...Even a word?) by the hock of a loogie that bothers her most and displaces the scent of my crotch and my causal causation of the wiggling of her screen to second and third, respectively: sticks and stones may break your bones but smells will never hurt you. 

But Swine Flu can hurt you and if she erroneously assumes that I have this pig born illness, she is probably harboring a good deal of unnecessary anxiety.

Her anxiety dwindles upon our moment of reconciliated rapport when I receive a tweet in the lower left corner of my browser and it makes an absurd noise (I don’t know how to disable this) –the noise resembles something between a high-pitched squeak and an uncoordinated, sick person attempting to gargle salt water.

She laughs but it is not for the right reason: it is a release of tension and not because she finds it genuinely funny –like the mismatch when a person’s cell phone rings in a library and the internal part of you wants to hit them but instead, you give an external chuckle (you settle for leaving a hate note when they get up to go to the bathroom...the pen is mightier). Wanting to avert any resentment, I plea technological ineptitude and explain that I somehow regretfully accepted these tweets but don’t know how to put an end to it. Her smile changes to a genuine look of disinterest and the eyes that roll inside her laugh alert me that she just wants to return to her work.

She puts a wrapper to her mouth. Slides her gum to the tips of her lips and spits it out. I am disgusted –has all sense of decent hygiene been mouth washed away?

Lulling Philosophical Nonsense

I realize that I have made one of the biggest blogosphere faux pas of my seminal career: not writing for a stretch of one week within the first two weeks of launching off my blog.  It is well accepted among the innermost cubicle of elite bloggers that the infrequency of posts within the early stages of birthing a blog is one of the big blunders that one can commit in this intangibly ethereal space in which the blogo-universe exists.  At the beginning of any decent blog on “How to Blog” you will find the words ‘consistency’ and ‘quality’ or any word synonomically akin.  Know that I sacrificed consistency to uphold a seal of quality (particularly a Vermont seal of quality).  This reference to quality alludes to an experience I had yesterday in a Boulder Deli where the saran surrounding a Boar’s Head cheddar cheese was stamped with a “Vermont seal of quality.”  I strained myself to find any relationship between Boar’s Head and Vermont more tenuous than the curdled whey that flagellates to the surface.

So this is the seal.http://www.vermontagriculture.com/buylocal/images/AG.jpg  Know that anything of mine with this seal I stand behind and anything not bearing this seal, I do not endorse and moreover, protect my identity as a writer with a thick wax encasing that separates me from the cheese I cut from my inky ass.

I find my way through the Boulder Library.  A friend of mine, who majored in Psychology, did her thesis on the differences of spatial awareness between men and women.  Surprise, surprise she found that men were spatially superior.  Moreover, her findings included that video games played 1-8 hours each week could enhance this component of awareness.  Although it has been months since I have jostled the joystick of an N64 or aimlessly whacked the air with a Wei wand, with fairness to both the arguments of Nature and of Nurture, I probably rank a seven or eight on the scale of spatial awareness.  I digress so that you can understand how I so flawlessly located the single person study rooms that were already occupied, which ultimately lead me to an open area that my Boulderian friend erroneously described to me in her abstractly artistic and aesthetically airy way as “being in a tree house”. 

Rather, it is much like being on the second floor of a building and looking out of a window.  The fact that I look onto trees is hedonistically satisfying but in no way suggests any similarity to being propped up by three branches protruding from the same trunk, enjoying the open air whistling through the bowed two by four pines stacked non congruously on top of each other while remaining wary of nestling into any nails popping through.

It was in these corridors that I decided to rest my legs and wrest my brain for fabric fine enough for posting.  The content of my post will follow soon.

Death.

My Grandma died today.  I don't feel anything.

My dad's Grandma lived in England so we rarely saw her, she died five years ago.  My mom died when I was six and her mom, Grandma Dorris, lives in Michigan.  My stepmom's mom is the one that died.  The irony was that my grandma Dorris was always worried she would "overstay her welcome" and she would end up staying for a couple of days while Lorraine, the Grandma that died, would prolong her stay by a couple of weeks and we all wished she would only stay for a couple of days.  Hemingway once said on writing, “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck."  I don't have to write out the syllogism: you can see its relevance. 

I feel like Marceaux in The Stranger.  I don't remember the book that well but I do remember that his mother dies and he kills a man; the two have no correlation.  When he goes on trial, what troubles society most, what decides his guilt, is not the evidence that he kills a man but his seeming lackluster sentiment for the death of his mother.  We are troubled by the different ways in how people deal with situations, particularly those pertinent to death. 

Right now I'm sitting in the Salt Lake City airport.  Across from me sits a man obese enough that I wouldn't want to sit next to him on the airplane.  He crosses his right leg over his left as his left leg taps aimlessly against the ground.  He eats ice cream from a cone with a spoon.  What I find most troubling is that I have to investigate that he's not actually talking to himself but talking to a little device hooked up to his ear.  He says goodbye and starts talking to someone else.  When he returns from throwing out the paper that surrounded his waffle cone, he is finished with his conversation but leaves the black piece in his ear, prepared for his next call. 

Behind me sits three boys, I assume to be brothers.  The one to the left holds a portable PS2 in one hand and with the other hand, talks on his cellphone.  Madness.

Jimmy

To go to the Library or the Park: that is the question.

At the moment, I am unemployed.  I used to lifeguard, which worked well when I pursued a career on an Olympic Development Team as a cross-country skier, but now that I have decided to stop skiing competitively, I have also decided to put behind me the unbearably bland days of watching the water (I can think of no better euphemism).

I applied as a substitute teacher and hopefully, I get enough work to subsist [If not, the money I make from adsense will have to do (I made two dollars yesterday and before that I had a running total of one cent) Indeed, I was psyched –nay amazed –to see that I had made two dollars].  But in everything there is comedy and I couldn’t help from laughing when I was reading an article in The New Yorker yesterday called “The Death of Kings: Notes from a Meltdown” and I made it three quarters of the way through the article, when I came to a paragraph that branded shame into my complacency.  It was exactly the same as the one transcribed below:

“Economists like to draw lessons from Japan’s lost decade –to see in its example of zombie banks, futile half-measures, mass denial, and a moribund Nikkei a primer in how denial doesn’t pay.  But human nature holds sway, down even at the level of the neighborhood.  In Japan, during the long stagnation, men who had lost their jobs but couldn’t face the shame of telling their neighbors would dress up for work and then spend the day in the library or the park.” 

I can’t say that I get up in the morning and don my red shorts and shirt that bears the word GUARD –made more prominent by the fact that I decided to drop down to a size small once my sinewy ski muscles atrophied accordingly, but by the time I finish the above article on our financial predicament, I will have already finished the article in a park, half a mile from where I began it in the library.  The librarians, perhaps out of pity, give me the old New Yorkers so that I don’t have to bore myself by spending all of my day in one place.

What is it about these two locations that evade the percolations of that rudely awakening existential question that totters over the edge of any café counter or coffee kiosk as we culpably ask for a short, still maintaining some length, black, yet rarely done, latté grandée, a lifestyle that given the circumstances, is currently unsustainable.  And we think that the frothiness, of which we request double, will bury the question.  But the question is everywhere: in the cents we spend on it, in the scents that emanate from it, and in the sense, of which there is none because this question will steam its way to the surface of any espresso, will separate anything we attempt to stir into it, will burn through any enjoyment we try to sip from it.  Fortunately, for me, I have never liked coffee.

Perhaps the park is too windy and too bright for the aroma of such dark flavors and my skimming façade of studiousness in the library is sufficient to suppress any intellectual uncertainties.  Or perhaps, it is just because the visitation of each of these places is free; where as if I even tried to squat at a coffee shop, the empty cup left at my table would be laden with the residue of guilty grinds.

In my worst days, I visit two parks.

But sometimes it is in our own dregs of disgust that the ego flicks the switch of its survival mechanism, which involves putting the attention not on you but on others; a light bulb lit in my head that suggested I could use my time in the park to sit and judge others.  I already know all the aphorisms: that when I point a finger, three point back at myself or before I judge someone else walk a mile in their shoes and you should remember this when you think to judge me.  Got to go.

Body Building

 

I sit in the library, at the computers, two seats down from a man in a collared shirt with a more pinkish than beige hue. Cuffs are rolled to just below his elbows revealing a Casio watch with a calculator accessory. His tennis shoes are all black and possibly Velcro.  He tucks them beneath the plastic chair. He is mostly bald but the hair that remains is long and slicked back to the nape of his neck. He is only a little overweight but it doesn't manifest on his face. He doesn't wear glasses but would look more sophisticated if he did. Next to his keyboard sits a piece of paper that once belonged to a pad but has been ripped away. On it is a cheap tie dye plastic pen.

The only reason I notice a man in such detail is because he notices me.  Or rather, I think he objectifies me as a conscious being that might be able to empathize as a fellow sufferer of the slow internet.

"Its like dial-up"

"What's that," I say.  There is a girl at the last seat on the other side of the computers but it is obvious that he talks to me.

"The internet, its like dial-up," he pauses for a couple of seconds as if he is a lawyer in a courtroom and he has just bequeathed his opening statement.  He continues with the evidence, "I am trying to load a picture here and it’s coming up in inches at a time."

Dial-up is a term he remembers much better than I do.  Dial-up petered out in my fledgling years of elementary school.  I do not need the speed of the internet; he has not found sympathy.  I look over at him and disinterestedly acquiesce, "yeah."

But even that's not enough.  He has broken the ice and from there he slips into conversation.

"I'm looking at this body builder.  It says here she weighs two hundred pounds and they call that skinny."

I hesitate to respond.  They say that silence can at times be one of the more potent forms of speech.  Maybe he takes it as a sign of active listening.  Or maybe he isn't even aware of my disinterest, doesn't even care.  His case with the internet is closed; now that he has found someone to talk to he is content to wait for the loading of the picture.

"This one here is six foot eight."  He looks over at me.

I respond, "and that's a girl."

He corrects me.  "A female.  I like to look at female bodybuilders."  He considers it an important distinction.  As if I was accusing him of pedafiliac acts.  He vindicates himself and continues, "I used to be really into body building –much more amateurs than pros.  The pros get too big for me.  I try to keep following it but if your not down in LA," he takes his left hand and throws it up in the air as if this body language serves as adequate punctuation to end a sentence, or at least that is how I translate the ambiguous gesture.  "Most of it goes on down there, I still try to follow it but," he repeats the same motion suggesting that he has completed the paragraph.

For the next ten minutes, except for the obnoxious scraping on the sides of the library in preparation to paint, silence ensues.  In that time he is avidly focused on the computer screen.   So much so that the strain on his eyes is too much and he picks up his sunglasses, which up to this point have lay aft of his pen, and places the stems around his temples.  They are large and circular but not quite aviators and have plastic rims.  They are much too large for his face.  Eminem's "Eight Mile" starts to stream through the headphones at his computer cubicle.  He dons them over his sunglasses onto his ears as if he will not be able to take in the full experience of the web page without the added element of sound.  His expression remains unchanged.  His lips are apart: not like a man drooling but like a man deeply entrenched with concentration and a lack of self-awareness.  Every now and then he picks up his pen, scratches his forehead, and jots something down.  He suggests his departure by picking up his pen, rotating it so that the clip faces away from him and fits it over the ledge of his left breast pocket.  He then folds his piece of paper and places it in the same pocket.

I hear the printer warm up.  It piques my interest; I assume it is his.  He ruffles in his seat, takes off his sunglasses, looks intently at the screen once more, gets up, and fetches his sheet from the printer in the center of the room.  He retrieves his sheet and peruses it for a few minutes and then as he nears me, lowers the sheet and points, "see, that's the gal that's six eight." 

By now, two more people have sat down at the table of computers.  Nobody seems to notice.  Nobody seems to consider as I would, if he hadn't already informed me of his obsession with bodybuilding, that he could be holding pornography.  I look. Unimpressed, I nod my head, "oh yeah, hmmm."  It is not just the six foot eighter but a collage he has assembled of an amalgam of body builders.  He stands at his computer, logs out, puts his glasses back on his face.  As he walks by he lowers the sheet once again to give me one last look as he leaves, "I can't imagine that a gal could be that tall."

It is a statement; he doesn't expect a response.  As he approaches the front desk, he holds the paper out readying himself to show the librarian, like a child eager to demonstrate his productivity.  He leans on the desk and slides it over to where she stands, behind her computer.  I see his lips move.  The lady who has maintained an expressionless face up until now releases a forced smile probably pondering in the back of her head, with this sheet in front of her, whether this is an appropriate use of the computers and wonders what would be the most effective way of reprimanding this elderly but infantile man.  But before she finishes her thinking, he says one last thing, smiles, and walks out the door.  She goes back to the computer.  And I wonder, has this man discovered his passion?

What it Means to be Jewish in Five Hundred Words or Less (yeah right)?: The Reflections of my Jewish Roots through a Recollection of Past Rosh Hashanah Experiences Spent in Services at the Synagogue.

A lot of times what we don't want to remember, we suppress.  There in lies the problem for most mid-twentied Jewish men (at least those I went to Hebrew School with) –the conflicting predicament in answering the headliner question. How do you remember what you have suppressed?  Should you try to remember what you’ve suppressed? 

I do see the cathartic potential in this exercise but I also question the safety of confronting past emotional traumas in the absence of an experienced therapist.  What if I were to trigger that one memory that opens the dam to a reservoir of memories that up until now, have floated placidly below the surface, unleashing the titans to teeter my ship just enough to cast me overboard to be engulfed by a whale –not the tale of Jonah but of Jimmy.  


Moreover, I don't want to mislead you that my self-hypnotic undertakings will flagellate anything to the surface; it is very possible that my mind, in order to protect me, could shake itself blank of my etch-a-sketch tracings of any unwanted memories.  For those of you who have studied psychology, you are also aware of the number of studies that demonstrate the susceptible nature of the fickle and fragile childhood memories to implantations from others; therefore, I can’t promise the complete veracity of any of my recollections.

Lets start with what I do remember.  I remember being happy that I didn’t have to go to school because it was a Jewish holiday but then being told that we had to go to services at the Synagogue (there was a "temple" closer to our town but this was for the less Jewish people so we traveled to Burlington to the... "Synagogue"). If my dad was feeling extra Jewish, he would announce that we were going to 'Hillel' (Hillel is the Jewish slang for Synagogue: like one would refer to Sean Combs as Puff Daddy, P. Diddy -Diddy for short -Puffy, and/or Sean John).  It was already a barrage of mixed emotions –feelings of deceit and sometimes betrayal for a confused adolescent –while I didn’t have to go to school, I was confronted with a questionably more tedious and monotonous, over all potentially worse, scenario.

I cringe when I hear the word "Hillel"...probably equal to the amount your Grandma would upon hearing Puffy perform Victory with Biggie Smalls.  We all have our trigger words that snap us from our hypnotic trances: this particular word alerts me to the subtle indoctrination of subliminal suggestion that I was being subjected to over the years in hopes that my father would, like a rock wearing away from years of water flowing over it, slowly overtime, insinuate that my mostly atheistic family has Jewish roots more tenacious than we do.  Or rather, not that our Jewish roots hadn’t at one time thrived deep beneath the surface but that upon their uprootal, which possibly began with my generation, you couldn't just take a spade and dig another hole and everything would be fine.

But it’s one reason I love my dad –that although he was brought up in Brooklyn where he suffered through Hebrew school five days a week, each session being longer than my two hours I was forced through twice a week, he didn't try to bequeath to me this hand-me-down generational suffering, which parents are so wont to do these days.  Instead, he realized that our ancestors who escaped from the deserts of Egypt (thanks to god's outstretched hand) had already suffered enough, which was only embittered by the fact that the only food they had time to consume was matzah.  Trail mix (or gorp as some people ridiculously insist on calling it), which would’ve been far preferable, was not invented until years later.

But that is the Jewish quagmire for each lost soul half-assedly raised to be purportedly Jewish.  For some reason, parents fail to realize that if they Bar Mitzvah a child (which contrary to what it used to be –a celebration of entering manhood –is now instead, a celebration for no longer having to go to Hebrew school and coincidentally, getting a lot of money) a Jewishness will not be brand into him.  So do I let 5,770 years wash down the drain because I am too lazy, disinterested, or insolent to bear the torch of tradition; it seems like that would leave a stained ring of guilt on the font of my conscience.  But on the other hand, should I really winnow the amount of minnows in the pond because of my dad's lackadaisical insistence that I marry a Jewish woman?  Although, college opens your eyes in many respects –for me it dilated my pupils to the fact that there was no dearth of beautiful Jewish women –it’s only shortly after I passed through the camel's eye of a needle’s ingress into the ‘real world’ that I realized I was duped by that alma mater of mine -that it truly was a microcosm for absolutely nothing.   

But let’s be honest, I live in a place where the number of unoccupied girls are few and far between.  Of the four girls I have had, to revert to the schoolyard term, ‘crushes’ on –none of whom I know to be Jewish, although this isn’t one of my first inquiries–all of them have had boyfriends, all of whom they were ‘in love with’: none of which abided here, all either living in similarly exotic places as San Francisco or off in Alaska valiantly fighting wild fires.  Of the one Jewish woman I did meet, a happenstance encounter out at a nearby hot springs, she would soon be departing to Africa.  It was for this reason that I discovered her religious orientation because she inserted an addendum that ‘therefore, she wouldn’t be fulfilling her mother’s wishes of taking a Jewish doctor’s hand in marriage’.  I told her that although I was not yet a doctor, and didn’t really have any intention of becoming one, I had completed three quarters of my pre-med requirements.  But it was too late, she had made up her mind, she was defecting to Africa.

And it’s not a lack of effort on my part, its not like I’m just sitting back reclining in the hot water of a sulfurous spring waiting for some Jewish princess to bubble up next to me; when I first arrived in Sun Valley, I went to a picnic with the Jewish Community, a minuscule colony at that, hoping to find that one girl who had been suckered into going to the event with her family and sitting down next to her, ideally off and away from her parents, perhaps at the children’s section quarantined from the ridiculous rituals, and being her knight at the round table (they did indeed use round tables), caressing her left hand, while our right hands held the stems of crystal wine glasses, our arms interlinked as our wine glasses clink, the swissssh, swissssh of the Manischewitz oxidizing as we jostle our wrists back and forth, allowing the centrifugal force of our glasses to commandeer the swirling substance around and around as we raise them to our mouths, sniff, and slowly sip. 

And as we bring the glasses down in sync, me lulling her with my deeply resonant but softly soothing voice, “see its not that bad, even if some of them are borderline wackjobs, we still have each other.”  And each of our hands saying shalom as they meet and then pass by, our arms outstretched to the other’s mouth, our fingers gently delivering hummus atop falafel spread onto a bagel adorned with locks. 

But alas, the only people who sat at the children’s table were children, jubilating with their Jewish coloring books too young, too content, too conditioned for my liking and apart from that table I was surrounded with Cougars in their fifties, the contingent I sought in age absent from this gathering.  And there I sat sulking, eating hummus slathered on a crumpled Falafel, which sat on the plate adjacent to a stale bagel sans locks, answering questions concerning where I was from, why I was here, and what I wanted to do with my life and where Judaism fits into it all.  I realized my mistake far too late, having hitched a ride down to the picnic with a Jewish couple I had severely played my cards wrong, and there I would remain for another couple hours before god would outstretch his mighty hand to deliver me to freedom.

My memories must be painful; I can't even talk about them without going off into a deluge of delusional fantasy.  You get the gist.  L’shana Tova.

Foreign Friday. Rosh Hashanah.

I am fortunate that Rosh Hashanah extends over two days and that I won't have to discuss it today.  Although I had forgotten that this apple dipping honey holiday was so rapidly approaching, I am sure that my ancestors would want me to reflect on my roots and my tradition on this New Year of 5,770.  Happy New Year. 

Foreign Friday is something I attempted to start up last week but failed.  Each Friday i will try to make a meal from a foreign country.

My first “Foreign Friday” was a success.  I made Pad Thai using a recipe from Joy of Cooking.  I used the 75^th Anniversary Edition and as there have been so many reprints of this book I am unsure if Irma or her greedy, as I have heard him been called before, grandson Ethan is to blame, but the instructions were at some points unclear.  The shrimp was only supposed to marinate in a tsp. of cream of tartar and a tsp. of sesame oil.  Right under these instructions it said to add to a bowl: and then it listed ¼ cup lemon juice, soy sauce, etc.  I ended up marinating the shrimp in this concoction – which actually worked out quite well, I just added that to the noodles.  There were a couple other adaptations made to this recipe that you might consider.  I didn’t have any peanut oil and I didn’t feel like buying any so I added peanut butter to canola oil; it actually worked quite well.  If you choose to do this, omit the roasted peanuts.  I forgot bean sprouts and basil leaves.  Make sure to cut the shrimp in half, that way you’ll have twice as many.

Recipe:

            1.  Put six ounces of rice stick noodles in hot water to soak for 20-30 minutes.  Drain and then set aside.

            2.  Add 8 ounces large shrimp (peeled deveined, and split lengthwise in half) into 1tsp. cornstarch and 1tsp. toasted sesame oil.  Marinate for 15-20 minutes.

            3.  Then, separately, stir together 2tbl. Thai fish sauce, 2tbl. Soy sauce, ¼ cup fresh lemon juice or lime juice, 3tbl. Sugar.

            4.  Heat 1tbl peanut oil in a large skillet and swirl the oil around so that it is very hot but not smoking.  Add the shrimp and stir fry 30-45 seconds.  It says to drain the shrimp but I don’t know what you are draining them of.

            5.  Add 2tbl peanut oil and swirl briefly.  Add 3 eggs well beaten and stir vigorously until set.  Remove to a plate.

            6.  2 tbl. Peanut oil.  Swirl and then add:

                        ½ cup 1½ inches pieces scallion (white part only)

                        1-2 small green chiles, seeded and chopped (I recommend one)

                        1 small garlic clove (finely minced)  Cook until garlic browns slightly.

            7.  Add noodles and stir until well coated.  Add fish sauce mixture (its alright if you’ve marinated the shrimp in it) and stir well, then add the shrimp and eggs and stir well.  In the order listed, stir in:

                        ½ cup fresh bean sprouts.

                        1/3 cup roasted peanuts coarsely chopped.

                        ¼ cup basil leaves cut into thin strips.

                        ¼ cup cilantro leaves

                        ½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes.

David Foster Wallace Part 3:3

Last post on David Foster Wallace.  I suggest that you read the three previous parts prior to reading this post, which will focus mainly on Wallace’s writing and what he tried to accomplish through it.

The ideas behind his third novel, The Pale King, only of which a third he completed before his death, matriculated into his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005.  He addressed the students on the meaning of true liberty, “[it] means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to construct meaning from experience.  Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.” 

The Pale King deals with a group of employees who work at the Internal Revenue Service center in Illinois and how they deal with the monotony of their work.  If Infinite Jest broadcasts our addiction to entertainment, it is his last novel that suggests the antidote.  One character comments, “Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain, because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low level way, and which most of us spend nearly all of our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from.”

It is ironic then that the character Chris Fogle, a college student, gains his moment of epiphany through television: “There was certainly always reading and studying for finals I could do, but I was being a wastoid…Anyhow, I was sitting there trying to spin the ball on my finger and watching the soap opera…and at the end of ever commercial break, the show’s trademark shot of the planet earth as seen from space, turning, would appear, and the CBS daytime network announcer’s voice would say, “You’re watching ‘As the World Turns,’” until the tone began to seem almost incredulous –“You’re watching ‘As the World Turns’” –until I was suddenly struck by the bare reality of the statement…It was as if the CBS announcer was speaking directly to me, shaking my shoulder or leg as though trying to arouse someone from sleep –“You’re watching ‘As the World Turns.’”… I didn’t stand for anything.  If I wanted to matter –even just to myself –I would have to be less free, by deciding to choose in some kind of definite way.”  Perhaps, what he found so frustrating was that the realizations he composed for his characters seemed so hard to grasp for himself.  As if he had some kind of intellectual idealization of enlightenment that played out accordingly in his fiction but not in his reality.

Could it be that life is an unraveling of the intertwinement of our greatest gift tangled within our Achilles heal: that the gift of language can be equally destructive?  An emerging field of Psychology, ACT, a branch of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, links language to one of our root causes of our suffering.  The paradox, which the founders are quick to point out is that our survival is deeply indebted to language: that while we are inferior to most other animals in speed, in size, and strength, we are cognitively superior.  Coincidentally, there has been no other known species that has been scientifically proven to commit suicide. 

Wallace, cognitively superior to the cognitively superior, saw language as a means of nourishment.  While he found a comfortable discomfort in irony, he attempted to escape it because although he claimed it could critique it was a voice incapable of nourishing or redeeming and ultimately, impeded him from creating: “morally passionate, passionately moral fiction.”  His language would turn to the use of extensive footnotes and parentheses, which allowed him he wrote, “a discursive, authorial intrusive style w/o Finneganizing the story.”  And in the wake of authors who wrote to flaunt and impress, for recognition and wealth, his attempts were to discover a voice that could convey truth. In an interview with Larry McCaffrey, English Professor at San Diego State, he said, “It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies…in be[ing] willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow.  Even now I’m scared how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this.  And the effort to actually do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet.”  “It [fiction], Wallace goes on to say, “should help readers to feel less alone inside.”

        

And as I sit here writing this, two brothers, one obviously out-aged by the other, lead an army (I can’t see anyone else) into a courageous battle hurling grenades (unripened crab apples) at the approaching army (a stagnant shed that contains restrooms and janitorial supplies).  Outnumbered, they retreat (manifested by frequent explosive noises and hands flailing in the air), and they are forced to retreat to their trenches (behind a fence made of two levels of logs laying horizontally against evenly spaced posts).  One has been hit in the leg (I don’t know by what) and crawls toward the trenches. Nonetheless, his valiant brother risks his safety to drag him off the battlefield (the younger brother seems to be struggling to free himself).  The excitement is interrupted by a distant battle cry summoning them for bed and this band of brothers is forced to relinquish its citadel in order to appease their mother.  It’s a question that’s been asked too many times before to circumvent cliche–and I know happy sappy this will look in writing –but is ignorance bliss?