Tuesday, May 08, 2012

The Runner Stumbles

Sometimes “full circle” is a straight line, and a straight line is no joke.  By which I mean to say, the runner may have run his final lap.

Perhaps I should clarify: I don’t mean me.  Any running I personally do or may once have done fails to rise at present to the admittedly low level of significance meriting blogworthiness.  However, there is another runner, one to whom I introduced you on this very screen a mere eight years ago.  And even then, that runner was verifiably old, having already been at that time my bosom friend for some 22 years.  And still was he older even than that - judging from his costume and haircut and overall vibe, this man on the go had been poised for action since the 1920s or ‘30s.  That’s a long time to be in cleats.  Well, I’m reporting today that it may be time he called it quits and hit the locker room for good.  End of an era, man.  Times change.

The running man to whom I make reference is less partisan than any political candidate, far more benign than Ahnold’s superhuman game show contestant from the eponymous 1987 blockbuster.  He’s just a man in outdated track gear, crouched at the starting blocks, photographically replicated in a big-pixel B&W image that occupies most of the transpectoral portion of a very soft grey sweatshirt.  I’ve worn that sweatshirt with greater or lesser frequency since 1982, when I splurged on it to the lordly tune of $50 at Philadelphia’s most prestigious department store. The running man sweatshirt has been with me through good times, bad times, neutral times and times that defy description.  It’s voluminous and comforting, and that picture on it is sufficiently distinctive as to have garnered more than its share of compliments in its day.  And its day was surely long and mighty.

But even long and mighty days eventually wane, and thus it is for my grey running man sweatshirt.  After what’s now been 30 years of use, it appears to have succumbed to a condition that afflicts various articles of my clothing from time to time: idiopathic shrinkage.  Some favorite garment that fit just fine for some indeterminate but lengthy period of time, suddenly… doesn’t.  And let’s not take the low road and accuse anybody of contributing to the situation by bulking up, because that didn’t happen.  Nothing else doesn’t fit.  Everything else is exactly the same.  It’s just that one item is now too small.  It’s also happened to favored shirts in my regular rotation that, one week, fit perfectly, and the next week, don’t reach my wrists.  All the other shirts remain properly sized, but for that one that went short overnight.  Everything in the universe is consistent save a single garment.  Like dark matter and Taylor Swift, it’s one of nature’s inexplicable miracles.  I don’t know why it happens, or how.  It just does, and I have no choice but to submit to the mystery.

This mystery has now visited itself on the running man sweatshirt.  It’s long enough down the trunk, fits comfortably around the neck, is not disreputably stained and remains plenty warm.  And of course, that running man still looks awesome.  But I find my arms are suddenly almost an inch too long for each sleeve.

Technically, I could keep wearing it, but to do so would, for me, denigrate the glory it once embodied.  The running man sweatshirt has served too well for too long to sully its memory with ill usage.  I owe it an honorable retirement.  I will miss it something fierce, but I prefer to remember it as it once was, than how it would be henceforward.  Goodbye, Ruff-Hewn Brand running man sweatshirt.  That was the best-amortized $50 I may ever spend.  Raging Mongol Daycare sweatshirt - it is time to step up.  You have big cleats to fill. 

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Better Dressed But Still Howling: 48th Birthday Ruminations

So it turns out, apparently, April is National Poetry Month. Not that it makes any difference to me.  I’m working through National “I’m a Taurus and I’ll Do the Same Damn Thing the Same Damn Way for Goddamned Ever” Month.  Which, for me, involves a little, ya know, poetry. It’s what I do, so I do it - regardless (or even in spite!) of conventional thematic monthology.

Which brings me to today, and myself.  (Big surprise.) As it turns out, I turned out - exactly forty-eight years ago today.  I’m still scrambling to make good on the hype.  I’ve gone from breathless birthday anticipation, to anxious birthday dread, to spacing out on it altogether, to philosophical musings, to philosophically spacing out, to poetry.

That’s the phase I’m in now: the poetry phase.

Since 2003, I’ve produced a fresh slab of uptight scansion every time my birthday’s rolled around.  Tricorder readings indicate that makes nine poem-years - plus one more today.  That’s right, imaginary peoples: today we’re up to ten self-indulgent jinglefests, each rhymier than the last.  No, really, you can even check, I’ll just wait here in suspended ani
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
I know, right?  It’s like, really?  Really? Rully. I so totally know.

I mean, ouch.

Even for a Taurus, ten feels like a lot.  Maybe even enough.  I shouldn’t predict what I’ll be up to at this time next year, but maybe it’ll be time to move on from poetry.  I might be coming up on my Interpretive Dance phase .  I don’t want to commit quite yet, but I’m going to Febreeze my body stocking just in case.  It’ll be ready for me if I need it next year.  This year, you’re stuck with more ridiculous rhymes.  Oh, here’s one now!

Blow It Out

48 is super-great
It’s solid gold with platinum plate
a masterpiece rich and ornate
the kind you ought to laminate
It makes the ego to inflate
But listen now as on I prate
A birthday’s just another date
so why should it my heart elate?
This rhyme scheme makes it plain to me
that I have strained credulity
by acting out unfettered glee
this natal anniversary;
it’s forced and simple, dull and twee
repeating metronomically
with sophomoric repartee
a pattern anything but free
For what is it to have matured
with 8 by 6 years to my name
but to embrace myself, inured
to imposition, jape and game
to sleep with solace, dwell immured
in self-possession if not fame
Yet once again I feel lured
to glorify myself - my aim:
to reconcile this sinecure
embellish that which I became -
some poet-warrior begirt
with syllables from crown to wame,
each scintillating stalwart word
reflecting joy, deflecting blame
till ultimately I’m interred
in legends sweet as aspartame.
What abnegation of the self
compels me to conflate this tale
invoking superhuman might
and wisdom that exceeds my own,
charisma matched but by my wealth,
pillow prowess without fail -
making cinders of the night,
invoking flesh from naked bone?
I set the stage with slinking stealth
more in deception than travail
calculating to incite
mob passion as by pheremone -
full knowing my spot on the shelf
is well within the settled pale
So if I’m hoping to ignite
this weary world I must condone
a certain hubrisistic gloss
implying things which I aspire
to achieve - to scrape the dross
from how I’ve cast myself, inspire
a share of gilded gravitas
despite the sense of something dire
looming, some inchoate loss
as I maneuver through the mire
advancing onward like a boss
some tragic hero without choir
a rolling stone beset with moss
blind peregrine trapped in its gyre
or some exhausted albatross
that’s given up on flying higher
a gander cooked without its sauce
astride both frying pan and fire
And still this paper popinjay
keeps chirping out his roundelay
though all the world has gone away,
abandoning the cabaret
where I remain in disarray -
my face unguarded, lines astray,
no audience to hear or pay
for paltry chuckles I purvey
this poem, droll as child’s play,
because despite my deep dismay,
regardless what I might convey,
there is a truth I can’t allay,
a law eternal to obey:
no traveler can overstay;
the road is short and runs one way.
I’m forty-eight years old today
Hooray, I say - hooray

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Taking Rolling Stock: The Fast and the Fabulous

In honor of the fact that Doyle Drive is coming down later this month, here’s a bit of a screed about my local roadway.  Sorry, that’s as sexy as I feel like making it right now.

The phrase “cruising up California Highway 1” can invoke a broad range of images.  Growing up in L.A., it referenced Santa Monica’s beaches hemmed in by the Palisades, Malibu’s glamorous strand and rocky exoticism… up north, it’s a breathtaking, nervewracking, stomach-wrecking jangle of hairpins clinging to cliffsides above startlingly blue water and disturbingly exuberant white surf… But here in Fogtown none of that applies.  Great Highway is the beachside road, broad and beautiful, dune-hewn and accessorized with a delightfully undulating multi-use path.  It should be the Coast Highway, but it’s not.

Hereabouts, Highway 1 - the Pacific Coast Highway - mostly runs up 19th Avenue till it hits the park.  There it swerves through the verdure before emerging to the north at Park Presidio Boulevard, whence it rolls up into the Presidio itself and regains its limited-access “highway” street cred.  Up in those furthest reaches of Frisco it’s a beautiful road with greenbelts and a lake and the General Douglas MacArthur tunnel that brings you out to gorgeous bay views.  But the 19th Ave bit of Hwy 1 is something of a nothingburger, lined with auto shops and undistinguished cafes and plainfaced churches.  So when I say that J and I were cruising up Hwy 1 after dropping Z off at Korean School one Saturday morning, don’t start imagining anything too California-dreamy.  We were just plugging along up a busy boring street.  There wasn’t much to look at but the other cars.  However, other cars can sometimes be interesting enough.

At one point we saw a candy-apple red sportster with big fenders and bigger attitude in the adjacent lane.  I drew J’s attention to it as a very fast car, but I couldn’t tell exactly what kind it was.  Then traffic in our lane suddenly opened up so I scampered ahead to check it out.  “A Dodge Viper,” I told J as he gaped at its low-slung profile and yawning air intakes.  “Much faster than us.” “Daddy,” he observed, “we’re beating it.” He was so right there was no point disputing it.  True wisdom is self-establishing.

Next we saw an old MG with the six-figure yellow-on-blue license plates that California stopped issuing in 1980.  I pointed it, too, out to J - how it was an older car, once quite fast and possibly still so, but surely a lot of fun to drive - tiny and responsive and so close to the blacktop.  I wondered aloud how much of its old racing spirit the old MG still retained.  J listened to me politely but seemed unimpressed.  Historical automotive personality analysis has yet to acquire much attraction for him, unless in the context of talking animated vehicles - of which, needless to say, this stretch of Highway 1 was markedly boastless.

But when the Maybach pulled up alongside us, that did get J’s attention.  Mine, too.

It wasn’t particularly ostentatious, for a 20-foot-long rolling hotel.  It was painted an understated shade of burnt umber, clean and shiny but not garish.  As it came up from behind me in the next lane over, I first noticed the distinctive stacked “M” hood ornament - not for that which it referenced, since only about 200 of these were ever sold in any given year.  I didn’t register at that moment that I was seeing the world’s most exclusive luxury vehicle heading into GG park with me.  What I noticed was that the hood ornament was bent a little to the side.  I thought, “Tacky.” This must be some neglected, road-battered vehicle.  Then the rest of the hood kept coming, and coming, and coming up past me.  I peeked to J’s seat behind me - he was watching, rapt, as the massive vehicle slowly overtook us in traffic.  We began to get a sense that this was a different kind of car, albeit on a very same kind of street.

The cab finally came into view, tall and spacious.  Behind the wheel sat a washed-out man with neat silver hair and wattled jowls.  His suit and tie lacked all personality, and I thought, Right - he’s not the sort for whom this car was made.  He’s aiming too high, and missing badly.  That busted hood ornament tells this guy’s whole story.  Tacky, I thought again.

The Maybach kept moving past us, with the inevitable incrementalism of cars traveling just a few MPH off each others pace.  The passenger compartment kept getting longer and longer - providing not just legroom, but literally enough room to recline your chaise and grab some horizontal shut-eye.  It looked like you could play croquet back there.  And then, finally, the back seat pulled even with us.  And that’s where the whole story came to life:

There was one passenger, seated in sublime repose.  I couldn’t see what she wore - everything below her neck was subsumed in the chocolate luxury of her chambers.  But her neck was slender and erect, and her head was exquisitely poised.  Through my window and hers I could sense the creamy smoothness of her skin.  Her gaze was fixed skyward, profound and thoughtful; her lips were pressed delicately together like halves of a strawberry cut and then rejoined on a plate.  Her profile looked as if it had been etched with a laser and her hair, of course, was perfect.  She was marmoreally motionless as her road yacht slowly outpaced our little Soob.  As it left us behind in the grumble of traffic, its long trunk slipping away like the flukes of some magnificent whale, I noted in particular how beautifully the blinds across the back window were pleated.  I thought three normal carlengths forward to that bent ornament and felt sure the chauffeur would attend to it as soon as circumstances permitted - but that only a qualified craftsman would be allowed to handle any repair, no matter how trivial, to this sublime machine.  Better to stay superficially broken, than to be ineptly fixed.

I looked in the rear-view mirror, back to J again - he was watching the Maybeck as it got (marginally) smaller ahead of us.  “Nice car, eh?,” I asked him.  “Big car,” he replied.  Truer words were never spoken, and my gritty little piece of Highway 1 had surely never carried a classier car.  Hell, I felt classier just driving next to it.  That faded, of course, after it left me far enough behind.

What hasn’t faded was my recollection of that woman in the back.  I have not spent as much time as you might imagine with royalty, and it’s not even for sure that her blood was truly blue - but no matter.  Next time I think of a princess I will think of her.  And next time I stumble my dusty way down 19th Avenue, I will not forget that it is now, for me, an avenue of aristocracy.  That’ll elevate my next trip down to the mall, all right.