Monday, June 28, 2010

Beaten by a Dried Jackfruit: A Humiliating Tragedy in 30 very short Acts

Wow, that last post was excessively self-indulgent, even for me.  Which reminds me of a recent snack-time gone terribly out of control.  And if I’m going so far as to remember that it happened, I might as well go all the way, humiliating-admission-wise:

1.  Oh look:

*

snacks for the office meeting!

2.  Eh, I don’t like those snacks.  I just won’t eat them.

3. Actually, that one kind

is pretty good but I choose not to eat any of them anyway.  They’re probably bad for me.

4.  I’ll just have this kind.

It’s the least bad for me, I’m bored, and my refusal to eat the snacks my boss brought to the meeting is verging on rudeness.

5.  Actually that one wasn’t the kind I wanted.  I accidentally got a really

good one that’s not so good for me, not one of the

not-so-good ones that’s okay for me. 

6.  Damn, that

good one was good, though.

7. I’d better go back and have

one of the kind I meant to have.  It’ll even things out.

8.  Wow, that kind really sucks.  I’m not eating any more of these at all.

9.  But that good one

was really good.  Please let this meeting end soon.

10.  New topic?  Damn.

11.  Let me just check the nutritional info.  Subtly, though.  I need to look like I’m paying attention.  I can’t grab that bag too eagerly.

12.  Oh no.  These things are awful for me.  Really bad. 

13.  Holy crap!  That’s not even for the whole bag, that’s per serving - and there’s, what, how many servings? 

14.  Really.  They leave it blank.  Not a a good sign.  Do I actually need to do math here?

now, how many grams per ounce, again?

15.  SIX SERVINGS.  Or seven.  In a one-serving-size bag.  DEATH ON WHEELS.  No more.  No way. 

16.  But that good one…

was soooo good..... and the lame one

was sooooo lame..... and that’s the one I can still taste....

17.  I’ll just have one more to, um, clear my palate… yeah.

18.  Yeah, that’s a nice clear palate.  I don’t need any more.  They’re bad for me.

19.  Meeting over.  Finally.  I’m escaping this mostly-full bag of tasty, tasty, deadly snacks.  Thank god.

20.  DON’T MAKE ME TAKE THESE TO THE CUBE NEXT TO MINE WHERE WE PUT SNAX.  I don’t think I have that kind of self-control.

21.  Okay, I’ll do it.  I’ll just leave them and turn around and walk away, three feet to my desk.  I do so have self-control.  And this will prove it.

22.  Who do I think I’m kidding.  I have no self-control.  I’ll just take some of these

bad ones and get away while I can.

23.  These

bad ones are not doing it for me.  Maybe I could sneak a

good one. 

24.  Or two.  Or so.

25.  No one is around - I could take as much as I want without anybody even knowing.  I’ll just, heh, clear my palate. 

26.  Oh god I’m completely out of control.  How many times have I even been into that bag in the last ten minutes?  I’ve lost count.  There are crumbs all down the front of my shirt and dried fruitmush is stuck between my teeth. 

27.  Empty?  EMPTY?  How in the name of jackfruit can the bag be empty?!!  I’M NOT SATISFIED!  I WANT MORE UNHEALTHY FRUIT SNACKS!

28.  I’ll just lick the crumbs and dust from the corners of the bag.  I can’t let it go to waste. 

29.  Oh.  My boss just saw me licking the torn-open bag.  I think this is going to wind up on my annual review.  Or as a blog post. 

30.  Probably both.

*: all photos taken with piece-of-crap phone camera.  what, I should be making myself look good here?  Come back next week, I’ll take a less-humiliating tack.  Relatively speaking.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Naked Cape

Looking back, as I am overwont to do, I see that certain moments of my life were more significant than I’d contemporaneously believed them to be.  Even when, in the present experiencing of them, I got a sense that something big was going on, there was sometimes a bigness behind the bigness, of which I was at the time quite unaware.  A really important moment might slip almost entirely past me, barely triggering my most cursory notice but initiating a psychological resonance that would build over time until I ultimately came to realize that that episode, that incident, was one of those that had so intimately and profoundly shaped my essential self-identity that, in retrospect, I remembered it much more - or at least, more often - from a distance than I had done in its immediate aftermath.

Of these, one seems ripe for reconsideration now, for reasons I had trouble figuring out at first, are still rather vague to me, and which I therefore, incredibly, choose to leave unstated.  But, lacking that, let me start with a confusing diversion.

There is something inherently uncool about blogging, especially in the rambling, unfocused, autobiographical way which I embrace here at the Hut of Chuckletude.  The charisma I embody when writing up some incisive vignette evaporates utterly when I go back and review my archives, stuffed as they are with self-important blather; the power that surges from my fingertips as I type my trenchant screeds is dissipated into tenebrous echoes when my stat counter lingers on single digits and my comments hover equidistant between positive and negative values.  It’s easy, on-line, to lose track of the extent to which I actually impact (or fail to impact) the world that I like to think of as my oyster.  If I write something, then I have created it, and thereby become a creator, Godlike in my genius - or so my authorial impulse suggests to me.  It’s only in confronting my statistically verified irrelevance that I venture to question that hypothesis.

This tension between creative power and social irrelevance, between my dual identities as nerd and God, is at the heart of my recollection of a party I attended long ago.  How long ago, in fact, I am not entirely sure, but I can hazard a guess based on a few key details: I was reliant on others for my transportation, suggesting to me that I couldn’t yet drive; I was in the company of a young man I’d met in a theater workshop, and he lived up in the northern part of the valley, far from precincts familiar to me.  All this points to circa the summer of 1979, when I was fifteen years old and very much unsure of myself, a manchild in every sense of the word - rumble-voiced and hirsute, but naive to the point of embarrassment and as much inclined to idle amusement as anything else.

This young man I’d met at this workshop seemed in some ways a kindred spirit - smart but with much yet to learn, taut with frolics and questings, clearly as unsure of himself as I was of me but equally ready to find out.  He listened to antique LPs of baroque organ music, favored the wearing of full capes in the SoCal summer sun, and took nothing seriously, especially seriousness.  He entertained me and challenged me.  I had certain doubts about him, honestly, but none so many or so specific as to deprive myself of his company.  At the time I didn’t have enough friends to make any snap judgments.  I certainly didn’t think he was that much weirder than I was.  Then again, I thought I was pretty weird.  Then again, again, I guess I hadn’t really been around very much yet.

This kid - I have been struggling to remember his name, but have let these memories slide for so long that all I can say for sure is that it reminds me of “Vincent” (and not “Vince") so that’s what I’ll call him from here out - Vincent and I had enjoyed a few afternoons of conversation and wandering around various malls.  The time had come to move our friendship forward or to let it fade away.  The opportunity to make this decision came on a warm smoggy night: Vincent had been invited to a party some of his older friends were throwing, and invited me along to meet them.

This was big for me, a kid who’d barely made three friends throughout grade school: if things went as well as they might, I could wind up doubling that number or better in a single evening.  I remember excitement and anticipation.  Beyond that, I’m no longer sure - if I ever was sure at all.  I think I knew that it was a party of people who played Dungeons and Dragons but that they wouldn’t be gaming at the party itself, which was fine with me since I myself was not a D&Devotee.  I knew enough to expect that a lot of the attendees would be older than I, grown-ups in their late teens or even their twenties.  Role playing types, I think I thought.  Whatever I knew to expect, I was primed to see what awaited me.

My actual recollection of the party itself is spotty at best. I remember a cozy woodframe home in the foothills, a deck in the dusk perfumed with a few small blazes, a kitchen table liberally littered with flagons - flagons! - of ale and mead.  I remember a hostess of relatively mature years arrayed fetchingly in an elfish gown, and a stocky bearded host with leather pouches strung across his jerkin-clad chest.  I remember nice people who presented themselves first and foremost as characters - thieves and wizards and assassins - but who then spoke feelingly of quotidian matters like school, girlfriends, and where to shop for pewter figurines and dodecahedral dice.  As far as all that went, it was fine.

I remember not seeing too much of Vincent at the party, but that was fine too.  He wasn’t Vincent there, he was some fictive entity distinguished by hit points, mystical powers, and imaginary exploits in fantastical lands.  He was part of a crowd of which, over the course of the evening, I came increasingly to realize I was not a part myself.  I don’t recall anyone’s name, the ride home, or ever getting in touch with Vincent again.  The party was the end of all that for me.  The leggings most of the guests wore seemed too confining; the mead they drank, too cloying.  I had no actual objection to anyone I met there or how they spent their time, but once I got back home I could just tell it hadn’t been my scene. 

I felt a small disappointment to discover that I’d invested myself in a friendship that lacked at its core that ineffable consanguinity that would have made it a new and continuing part of my life’s path, but also a counterbalancing relief to have come to this realization when I did.  It occurred to me that I’d visited a shopping mall with a man who wore a lined satin cape in the summer in Los Angeles, and his friends had had a get-together where their actual personalities were essentially party-crashers.  I decided that I wanted friends who were front and center, and who didn’t hide behind costumes any more than was absolutely necessary.  I also recognized that I myself might not meet this lofty standard, but I had the audacity to seek aspirational examples.

Now I find myself looking back thirty years to that night, and the natural questions arise in my mind.  Not whether I’d made the right choice, but just - what if I’d chosen differently?  Whom would I have been, which manner of me would have evolved, had I made that night a moment of turning toward, rather than away?  What would today look like, had yesterday been different?

In the face of such inquiries, I first need to assess what today has brought me, and I to it.  I’m a man of some modest accomplishment, a diligent servant to my colleagues, a devoted dad and a heartfelt husband.  I have wrought a career and an identity from countless rough drafts and tenuous ventures.  I have made my path the path of action, and live each day of my life in a world which, so far as I’m able, I actively engage with and make my own.  In doing so I believe that I make it better.  I can’t know what any other life would have meant, whether I’d have been so dedicated to making a difference - though god knows I don’t make much of one as it is.  But so far as I do make an impact on my world at all, minuscule though it may be, it’s because I choose to dress in my own clothes and to act as myself.  I opted, a lifetime ago, to forgo costumes for transparency.  I admit I wavered sometimes in this resolve, but mostly I stuck with it.  It has often not been an easy choice or a comfortable one, but it has set me on a path which now brings me much quiet satisfaction.  A costume cape can hide a lot of nakedness, but ultimately, the nakedness makes for a more robust performance. 

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Get Out of My Brain, Dave Eggers, Part Two: Generalities

Got that, Dave Eggers?  It stings, does it not!  It stings with the cruelty of irony, and the scourge of bitterness, and the awe-inspiring goad of a genius so towering that it cannot read a calendar.  That is my genius, my bitterness, my irony, and my half-downed beer, dude.  Hands off, Dave Eggers.  Don’t you have better things to do? 

Apparently not.  For even as I was writing up the story (posted below if you are late to the game, in which case, join the club) that I wrote to win a four-years-closed contest (and I woulda, too), DAVE EGGERS, a man clearly dedicated to rendering my work irrelevant and redundant (and irrelevant!), was ordering his McSweeney’s minions to post a “humorous" essay about Lebron James being courted by the Washington Generals, the world’s most hapless basketball team.  The Washington Generals!  What folly!  Such a parody would effectively write itself!  Why, who could even possibly take them seriously? 

Well, me, as it turns out.  I had taken them seriously some weeks earlier when I started writing a poem about them.  And you know what, Dave Egghead?  I didn’t let your dumb essay stop me.  I finished my poem and it turns out I rather like it.  And since I’m obviously scraping bottom here and not in a good way, I’ve posted it.  Maybe it’s not funny, or on a widely-read blog, or very good.  Why should this post be different than anything else on this site?  And with that pseudo-talmudic musing (the name, btw, of my next band, genre as yet undetermined but album cover clearly visualized already), I present to you:

Generalities

Knuckles and elbows ( ) clam pandowdie
a strong seventh man ( ) with a see-through smile
I majored in fitness ( ) and minored in faith
gave it all that I had ( ) but it still wanted more
Suited up daily ( ) for baselines and hoop drills
a solid eighth man ( ) on a squad with heart
I played out of love ( ) representing, defending
expected my fame ( ) to resound in the rafters
I shot for the world ( ) but kept hitting the rim
saw most of my court time ( ) when Jimbo got injured
or ran out of fouls ( ) or needed to detox
kept a spot on the team ( ) with my ass on the bench
we were proud in defeat ( ) but defeated regardless
My senior year record ( ) was 4 and 16
with a 1.8 average ( ) both game points and gradepoints
I had to believe ( ) that those numbers belonged
to some underperformer ( ) who wasn’t myself
I was better than that ( ) my name should mean something
there was more in my future ( ) than clapping from sidelines
junior high coaching ( ) or folk dance for seniors
my teammates took jobs ( ) in construction or sales
that wasn’t for me ( ) couldn’t live with myself
I need seams on my fingers ( ) and wood underfoot
I didn’t get drafted ( ) couldn’t even walk on
to a C-league expansion team ( ) playing outside
I was starting to wonder ( ) how long it would take
The obvious option ( ) occurred to me suddenly
Sweet Georgia Brown ( ) never sounded so sweet
the Clown Prince of Basketball ( ) that could be me
I googled and wikied them ( ) lay-z-boy research
drank up their legend ( ) inhaled their lore
the children adore them ( ) fans on five continents
dozen-year win streaks ( ) eight decades of joy
but of course the audition ( ) is where things got tricky
fate set a pick ( ) and I never got round it
They were polite ( ) but I wasn’t a Globetrotter
would I consider ( ) a generalship?
The Generals tour ( ) wherever the Globetrotters
need someone to beat ( ) and be awesome against
Their job: to inspire ( ) that Globetrotter greatness
can’t be too obvious ( ) have to keep losing
They wear matching jerseys ( ) so they are a team
but the symbol emblazoned ( ) on Generals’ chests
is a General getting ( ) his ass handed to him
by a graceful dark Globetrotter ( ) soaring in triumph
That was my destiny ( ) a General, I
suiting up every Sunday ( ) each game like the last one
It used to be galling ( ) to know what was coming
like living in replay ( ) heroically bested
a rotating door ( ) inescapable loss
I had grown up to honor ( ) traditional winning
the kind that evaded me ( ) each time I laced up
paid to be helpless ( ) flatfooted and slackjawed
A circus of sportsmanship ( ) not even basketball
magically circular ( ) Georgian Brown Sweetness
Introduced flatly ( ) just ushers applauding
a one-on-one defense ( ) that’s never succeeded
A General’s strategy ( ) tactical tragedy
footsteps like thunder ( ) come merciless at me
my spine is their ladder ( ) my ego their punching bag
Masses delight ( ) in our humiliation
Seconds tick down ( ) with the score leaning sideways
we remain in contention ( ) with hobble-kneed hopes
till the buzzer resounds ( ) to another defeat
And yet I continue ( ) invoking my failures
playing for the joy of losing
only salvaging my comfort
in this rationalization:

Any hero worthy of the name (...) has got to beat somebody.

Okay, I think I got that out of my system.  Dave Eggers, all is forgiven.  By me, anyway.  If you’re still mad, I’m willing to make it up to you by letting you do a guest-blog posting here at the Chucklehut.  For some of us, it’s the best we can hope for.  For others, hope is a luxury our budget can’t cover.  I’m man enough to let it go.  Now it’s your turn.  The ball’s in your court, Dave Eggers.  Sadly, I think I’m on the Generals’ squad on this one yet again.