Tuesday, February 28, 2012

spare the rod

I kept thinking there was something I wanted to write about, something from way back, something colorful and constructive - but I couldn’t recall what it was or what I wanted to say about it. But as I started into this new notebook, I have recently undergone the ritual of note transference - torn-out sheets from notebooks past, stuffed into page pockets for future reference, moved from old books to new ones, sometimes repeatedly. I take a quick peek as I empty the old pockets so I’m not loading the new book with trash, but I rarely do much about the notes I’ve written to myself. But this time something stuck in my head - there was something I did want to write about. As I thumbed through those old notes, I found it - the last note on the bottom-most sheet: the thing I had been wanting to write up, as an incitement to re-embrace certain memories that, for some reason, I was reluctant to subject to the extinguishment of faded days and thoughts.

I don’t recall if they were good times or bad times or - most likely - mostly neutral. I’d started school, but it didn’t feel much like all that. They had us collaborating in groups and picking out letters from a banner that ran around the upper part of the walls, and there was plenty of time to play. They had outside playtime, and there were books of cartoons and mazes; there were board games and puppets and blocks… and also certain other blocks. That’s what I’ve been wanting to unblock for myself: the other blocks.

Mostly, blocks were for building things - forts and castles and little blocky houses, most anything featuring right angles and a flat roof. Some of the more careful children could build semicircular castles with keeps and Guelph merlons and all other sorts of delicate architectural elements. Not me. I could build anything that was rectangular and that was about it.  Sometimes I tried to put columns on top but those usually fell over pretty fast. I had to admit, blocks were fun but they weren’t really my oeuvre. Not the regular blocks, anyway.

But there were also the other blocks. They didn’t get stored higgledy-piggledly in the big wooden block box - they lived in a tidy cardboard container, with a snug-fitting cover and a special slot for every piece. It was easy, too, to see which one went where, because every block was just the same width and thickness, differing only in color and length. One group was just a bunch of little cubes, painted white and as high as they were deep as they were long. The next bunch was twice longer, like two of the cubes set end-to-end, and all a cheerful red. Then came a light green series, longer than the reds by the length of one white cube. The pattern went all the way up to a ten-unit shaft in vibrant orange, equal in length to ten whites, five reds, a light green and a black, a lavender and a forest, or the ever-popular brown with a red at the end.

Technically, they weren’t even blocks - they were “rods.” This technicality counted because these were technical counting tools that had come all the way from Belgium, home of technologues such as Georges Cuisinaire - a music and math teacher from an era before the dawn of the transistor age. He invented this series of colored rods to teach young Walloons to love math. I don’t know if it worked for them, and I wasn’t sure if it worked for me. I didn’t actively hate math in kindergarten, but I didn’t go out of my way to do any extra, either. However, I did really like those colorful little rods, and played with them frequently at the outset of my academic career.

I’d completely forgotten about them until I was visiting a friend’s house a few years ago and for some reason he pulled out his own complete vintage boxed set of Cuisinaire Rods. Everything about them struck a chord for me - the size and shape of the box, the font in which the product name was printed, the name itself - so disevocative of math toys that I recalled puzzling about it back in kindygarden, unable to read it for myself and sure I was getting it wrong even though I really wasn’t. The rods themselves were like sticks of candy - taffy or fruit chews or some kind of extruded treat. That day I saw those rods again, I didn’t give in to the immediate impulse to fall to my knees and build a colorful ziggurat or psychedelic rectilinear fractile or any of the other creations I so enjoyed making back in the day, but I sort of wish I had. Those Cusinaire blocks felt good in my fingers and triggered my creative impulses, despite their being so small and slender and limited in profile variety. Other blocks came with arches or cylinders or other non-squared-rod shapes, but I only built square things with them anyway. Cusinaire rods didn’t build structures, they built ideas.  They just seemed more interesting, somehow.

Even after reviving this recollection at my friend’s house not so long ago, I didn’t put 2 + 2 (or red + red) together and realize what they’d actually done for my thinking till only a few weeks ago, when my first-grade son was exploring some theoretical matters with me. He’s been doing a lot of arithmetic in school, and talking about basic theories of addition and multiplication and positivity and negativity and such. He was painstakingly explaining that any number plus itself must produce an even sum, but that an even number plus and odd number never do.  I had a little academic (or “acad") flashback on hearing this - to my own brainstorm moment at about the same age. I had imagined numbers as stacks of little cubes, all laid out in rows. An even number could also be laid out in two rows of equal length, but an odd number would produce two rows, of which one would be one cube longer than the other. If you put two odd numbers together, those extra left-over cubes could be alternated so they evened out - one left over in each row meant neither row need be longer, both rows match, and the total’s even again. Odd plus odd equals even; even and odd equals odd. Just like Z was telling me.

As he spoke, those little Cusinaire blocks were floating through my mind again. No, not again - still. That old Belgie’s math toy, those rods that were already twenty years old when I played with them in 1970, still seem to be shaping my thinking 42 years later. That is to say, a number of years equal to three oranges, two yellows, and a red. I could break it down a few other ways, too, and build a cool little pattern out of my years on this planet, but you get my point.

Cusinaire rods - not so much a memory to be preserved, as an aspect of my own intellectual structure, one of the ways I make the world make sense. And since I’ve come to recognize this enduring mental legacy, I’ve seen it reveal itself many times over, when working out problems and looking at art and other ways too. Frankly, I’m as surprised as I am pleased.  Now I’m thinking of getting a set for my boys to use at home. Maybe they don’t need them, won’t use them, already know what they’d learn from them and have internalized the lessons they objectify. Maybe not. I guess we’ll find out in 40 years or so. 

Thursday, February 23, 2012

lest I list: last lust lost CHUCKLES NEEDS PROFESSIONAL HLEP

I don’t mind being busy; sometimes I prefer it.  But this is beyond ridiculous.  It’s ridonkulous.  It’s freak-tastic.  It’s...it’s… it’s.... (at this point the giant foot comes down, the Liberty Bell March starts playing, and vintage silliness ensues.)

Well, par example, here’s what went down last weekend - thank God it was a long one:

Joined a new writing group
Ran in the park - first time in months - on trails I’ve never tried on foot
Made a delicious smoked trout salad with bun mi pickles and shredded fennel
Trip to the city dump - divesting our household of 140 lbs of child seats for the car dating back to that 8 month period where we suffered three no-fault car accidents
Trip to charming park in the shadow of Mt Tam for children to run around like monkeys on speed
Suppered at mainstream American bistro, which was reasonably palatable - and the kids were pretty well behaved too, considering previous speed-monkey antix
Watched Justified
Attended Warren Hellman memorial concert with friends old and new, and even got a stylish new tshirt and an awesome korean burrito
Watched 45 minutes of Bridesmaids before realizing I was just not that into it
Watched Amazing Race instead
Took the boys to view a classic car museum (thru window) and then they played with sidewalk chalk and rolled around in it to my dismay on a questionable stretch of alley sidewalk
Got both boys’ hairs cut - possibly best ever
Visited local playground, then the produce market for fresh bread and nutella treats
Stripped wallpaper from kitchen
Detached and then re-attached the doorbell
Cleaned under the fridge and other places untouched by cleaning products for many years
Used TriSodium Phosphate to clean the walls of two-decade-old glue
Washed, folded, and ironed plentiful laundry
Watched 30 Rock
Wrote a new piece of fiction for the writing group
Prepped a tasty salad for work lunches

Now I find out that I’m in charge of a fundraising potluck for Z’s after-school program, and I’m up to my lobes (you pick which) in applications to review for work - many of which are, shall we say, challenging.  And that doesn’t touch the union activities, professional fundraising activities, doing-my-taxes activities, computer-updating activities, or occasional other activities presently incumbent on me.

I think I need to stop listing and start living.  I mean now.  Peaceout and have a rocking lent!

Friday, February 17, 2012

Life Imitates Bus: Sick Chick and Cupid versions

I like to mix things up here at the ‘hut, keep the variety… um… various.  The last post was about the bus, so this one should be about toys from my childhood, or weirdos in line somewhere, or suchlike.  But that’s just where the bus metaphor kicks in.  First, the bus brings what it brings, regardless of what you may have wished for in your naive heart.  JUST LIKE THIS BLOG.  And, one might say, like life itself, but let’s not overreach.  And also: the bus is often a bit late.  You wanted it yesterday, but it’s here today.  Again, just like this blog, though somewhat less like life.  This isn’t making much sense.  Much like life, though not exactly like the bus.  However, the bus can make some serious sense, if you step back from it and exercise a little perspective.  Let’s see if we can bring that life-bus perspective back to this blog.  I’m wearing my damn self out here. 

Tuesday was Walentime Day, and god bless Tiny Tim and the Tim-ettes and all the cupids in their cupidity.  I worked late and had frozen rizotto for supper, and a tankard of cheap wine.  But then came Wednesday, yesterday, and I hauled my non-romantic ass aboard my bus at buttcrack o’clock again for the haul downtown.  The bus was much more crowded than it should have been, for which I blame myself, having just blogged that it’s usually empty when I board and I can take my favorite seat every time.  Well, not this time, because the *good* seat was already taken by some selfish wanktwaddle.  Instead, I had to take, not even my old favorite seat, but the seat *across* from my old favorite seat.  Which wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but I figured it might get worse anyway.  And then it did. 

Things got crowdeder, and then more so.  Pretty soon the damn bus was packed, and we were still way out in the outer Richmond.  Old ladies were standing up; tottering liverspotted men in furry hats were swaying alarmingly from hand-straps all up and down the aisle.  I didn’t get up for any of them, though, because they were not really right in front of me.  Right in front of me were some fairly well-favored young women, and I was - I admit it - okay with that.  I had my funky Grant Green mix in my earbuds, my notebook was open on my lap, and a bunch of well-tailored skirts filled my immediate visual range.  Mornings have started on less promising notes.

Right at my left knee stood a tall, lithe woman in her 20s, wearing snug, costly-looking blue jeans and a nice coat.  Her skin was creamy and without blemish, and her features were patrician.  Her hair was thick and full, hanging with prep school straightness down her perfect-posture back.  I really got a strong vibe from her: no one on that bus was quite authorized to appreciate her loveliness.  So I only snuck glances as I wrote in my book.  I really didn’t care much about her anyway, but if someone beautiful is going to take up space in my immediate vicinity, I rather prefer them not to make me feel actively inadequate.  I’d get over it, though.  I’m the bigger man.  Especially since she was a woman.

But at Park Presidio she actually tapped my shoulder, and I extracted one earbud to indicate a non-excessive degree of attentiveness.  She asked me if she could have my seat, because (mumble) was (humble).  I wasn’t sure exactly what she was on about but what the hell, she wouldn’t have invaded my sphere of shiny bald austerity if she wasn’t serious about something, so I got up and gave her my - my! - seat.  I was congratulating myself on really being the much bigger man, when I realized she was curled up in the seat with her eyes closed and her fists pressed against them.  She looked mighty uncomfortable.  Occasionally she glanced up out the window to see how far the bus had gotten, but her gaze seemed unfocused.  I ventured to speak to her, offering to tell her when we got to her stop if she wanted me to.  She answered abruptly that she was going “all the way downtown” and she’d “mumble gumble fumblewuzzle...” I didn’t really understand her whole answer, actually, but it sounded like she didn’t want my help and wouldn’t need it for a while anyway, so I retreated back into my funky funky tuneage and let the bus roll along underneath my feet.

Within a few minutes we had reached Masonic-Presidio, just at the eastern edge of my neighborhood.  She suddenly stood up and left the bus - still far from downtown.  Whatever, woman.  I let an old Chinese lady take the seat, and watched out the window as slow-walking high school kids and Russian army veterans shuffled up into the double doors.  I noticed that the woman who’d been standing next to me, and then sitting right in front of me, hadn’t gotten very far after leaving the bus.  She was just perching on a low retaining wall next to Office Depot, her back curled in an uncomfortable-looking crook, her eyes closed again, her skin paler than ever.  Oh, I realized, she’s having a migraine and is about to hurl.  Now that’s a nice post-valentines day gift for me - she could have barfed on my feet while she sat on my bench, or even right in my lap when she’d been standing next to me.  That would have been disappointing.  Somewhere, someone was looking out for me that day. 

All these thoughts had been cheerfully extirpated from my mind by the time I got back on the bus to come home late that evening.  I did get “my” seat again, and reveled in it.  The people who boarded around me were generally young and interesting-looking, except for the big black guy who smelled strongly of very long-unwashed laundry, and the tall sketchy latino across from me who reeked of cannibis.  But the ride was smooth and reasonably quick, and I had a fun book about bomb-throwing anarchists to keep me company, and no one acted like he or she was about to york off on my couture.  Before I knew it I was back in my own neighborhood and needed to start paying attention so I didn’t miss my stop.

Near the back exit door, a little plastic document-holder was bolted to the wall.  Usually it’s empty but sometimes the bus folk use it to distribute new schedules or warnings about service changes or pickpockets.  Last night it was not empty, but from where I sat I didn’t recognize the documents within it as bus-related, so I hoisted up for a moment to grab one and examine it.  What I came away with was one of a stack of a dozen or so white business envelopes, with a black silhouete of a bird in flight where the stamp would go, and a single word printed - seemingly typewritten - front and center: “Love.” I’ll admit it, I was intrigued.

I opened the envelope and found inside it two small pieces of paper.  On one was a photocopy of an image of a mustachioed man sitting on a stone bench by an arched opening in a stone wall; a hat lay beside him.  He was dressed in a formal old-fashioned suit and tie, and stared out into a starry night sky with hands clasped over his heart.  In that sky hung a crescent moon, and on the crescent moon sat a young woman in a white gown, long dark hair cascading over her shoulder, hands clasped to her bosom.  It all looked stilted and staged and from a long-past era, but very romantical.

The other sheet contained the following poem, again, seemingly typewritten, with which I leave you as a bus-borne bonus for post-post-Valentine’s day, with the sincere wish that good things keep finding us all, and gross things choose other folks and elsewheres to do their dirty work:

Two Horses

I thought the sun breaking through
Sangre De Cristo Mountains was enough,
and that wild musky scents on my body
after long nights of dreaming could
unfold me to myself.  I thought my dance
alone through worlds of odd and eccentric
planets that no one else knew would sustain
me.  I mean, I did learn to move after all
and how to recognize voices other than the
most familiar.  But you must have grown out of
a thousnd years of dreaming just like I could
never imagine you.
You must have broke open from another sky
to here, because now I see you
as a part of the millions of other
universes that I thought could never occur
in this breathing.
And I know you as myself, traveling.
In your eyes alone are many colonies of
stars and other circling planet motion.
And then your fingers, the sweet smell of
hair, and your soft, tight belly.
My heart is taken by you and these mornings
since I am a horse running towards a cracked sky
where there are countless dawns breaking
simultaneously.  There are two moons on the
horizon and for you
I have broken loose.

Joy Harjo