The Aerie
Three Little Pumpkins
Dio de los muertes. All Saint's Eve. Hallowed Evening.
In the tarot, death signifies change. To children, death is an
incomprehensible abstraction. Unless a loved one has died, when it's
an overwhelming aching hole that never quite closes. To adults, at
least in the West, death is a foe to be held at bay for as long as
possible.
But we rob death of its nobility at the same time. Even as we struggle
incessantly against it, we deny it. Like Perseus fighting Medusa, we
battle Death without looking at it.
Other cultures treat Death quite differently. "In rural Italy,
cemeteries are like parks where the survivors picnic and tend the
graves," says Camille Paglia. And Mexico celebrates "The Day of the
Dead" in a variety of ways, many quite expressive and colorful. In
some areas of Oaxaca, the spirits of the deceased are guided home from
the cemetaries by bonfires built on the street corners. Within the
home, a path of cempasuchitl flowers guides the soul to their personal
altar.
And our necrophobia isn't healthy. Carl Jung said, "Shrinking away
from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second
half of life of its purpose." But we're not the only ones with
counterproductive attitudes towards death. In China, one participant
in an online discussion posts, "Unlike the westerns, who consider
death as a natural and inevitable thing, Chinese people give an
unnatural meaning to death. If someone is dead, we will blame that
there is problem with the Fu Shan."
The world seems to be providing a message to be learned regarding
death. Adding to recent events, Warren Zevon appeared on the Letterman
program tonight, He was the only guest, and performed several songs in
a sort of a farewell performance. He didn't look too bad, but I guess
it's ony a matter of time.
Of course, the same is true for all of us.
His attitude on the topic was positive, but a little too flip, making
me wonder if he isn't still strongly in denial about his condition. If
not, then he's come all the way around to a profound degree of
acceptance.
My own attitude is closer to that which Jung decries. I can't claim
any notable capacity to understand death. I've been fortunate, really.
Only my Uncle John among my relatives has died. And while a few
friends and acquaintances have passed away, I can't say that I was
there when they died in any sense. So I think I have a lot of learning
to do about Death, and it colors my attitude with ignorant fear.
And I'm not interested in learning anything more anytime soon, thanks.
But maybe I can take some lessons from my kids. They'll go out tonight
and extort candy with empty threats, without a thought for the Big
Sleep waiting for all of us eventually. To do otherwise would waste
time that could be better employed filling pillowcases.
They don't really fear death -- they don't care about death, in just
the same way that the presently don't care about politics or sex,
either. Maybe that's the lesson to study -- that death is an
irrelevance. You only get one night to fill your pillowcase with
candy, and moping about what happens after the candy is gone, well,
that's just missing the whole point.
[1]Last
There's just been too much of it lately.
It's not just Wellstone. I'm not enough of a partisan to say I'm going
to miss Wellstone's politics per se, and I never knew the man at all
(I did see his wife last year at a small business function). While I
certainly regret losing a very necessary liberal voice in the Senate,
he disappointed me with his retreats on DOMA and on his two-year
pledge.
Still, those could have been forgiven. Politics involves, among other
things, picking your battles. If DOMA was a lost cause maybe he got
something valuable for turning his back on justice. And the two year
pledge, well, that's gotta pale before the concept of Republicans led
by the Bush Cabal holding all three branches of government. Shudder
Executive, judicial (they appointed him after all), and legislative
all in one ugly bundle. I can't imagine anyone allowing that to happen
when they had the power to stop it. Frankly it surprises me that some
Republicans don't fear it.
But days before Wellstone's plane crashed, my former colleague Jim
passed away. Thirty-eight years old, and he apparently died of a brain
aneurism while sitting at the dining room table, playing cards with
his three-year-old daughter.
And about the same time as Jim's death, there were those two walking
bags of waste murdering people in Virginia for laughs.
And before that there was 9/11.
And before that was Mark's wife, who was in her thirties when an
allergic reaction simply swept her away.
And before that was Dr. J, who taught me my trade and died of brain
cancer just after getting his Ph. D. in his mid-forties.
And meanwhile, Arafat is still alive. And Hussein. And Qaddafi. And
any number of powerful people in this country who I won't say that I
regret are still around because I don't need a visit from the Secret
Service asking if I mean them harm (I don't).
And there's the father of a girl I knew long ago, who used to rape
her. Alive.
And my classmate, who raped my friend, his cousin. All still alive.
All these powerful, evil, crummy people, alive. And the Wellstones,
and Jim, and Dr. J, and all the other good people, cut off in their
prime of life. It's a grim picture. The cliche that "only the good die
young" playing itself out in ugly, brutal reality.
It's at this point where I'm supposed to point out the ways in which
all these good people touched our lives. The justice that somehow
awaits the bad. And the valuable lessons that they taughts that we can
all learn and cherish as we move on with life. Take it all as read,
I'm not up for it.
All I know is that this it's been a bad couple of years for justice
and good living, and I'm certainly looking forward to the pendulum
swinging back the other way. Any time now. Any time...
[1]Last
Well, it's a start.
Okay, so I haven't, been keeping up with this thing. But I did return
to my daily gym schedule starting last Monday, and so far so good.
True, I have to juggle the numbers a bit: Sunday I took the kids
swimming at the gym. That's not quite an 80% cardio workout, but it
has a value of its own, so I'm not going to sweat it. Tomorrow could
be tricky, with a morning appointment, a lunch meeting and writing
group in the evening. It might be hard to squeeze the gym in there,
but I suppose I could go AFTER writing group. We'll see.
Meanwhile I've been working on increasing the number of billable hours
that I work. During the Dog Days of summer when we had nothing I
became so habituated to the search for new opportunities that I'm
having to very deliberately think in terms of working the billable
hours now that the opportunities are at hand. Ridiculous really, but
there I am: so worried about selling more jobs that I feel like
working on a job is counterproductive.
I'll get over it though.
Meanwhile autumn has slumped in like Mrs. Whatsit and emptied its
galoshes all over the neighborhood. The leaves had only just turned
when this incessant cold rain arrived and started sluicing them out of
the trees. My spouse is worried about cleaning out the gardens before
the ground freezes, and though I assure her that there will be some
sunny 50 degree days before winter crushes the drooping plants in its
icy grip, I'm privately not so sure.
Strangely, however, I'm up for a cold winter again. The last two have
been so warm that a lot of pests have failed to die in their winter
burrows, and its leading to trouble with crops, the trees, and local
politics. But, more importantly, we need another two-week stretch of
subzero weather to re-establish our Minnesota bragging rights.
"Forty below? Yeah, I love it! Same temperature, Farenheit or Celsius,
no conversion necessary."
"Cold? Yeah, I suppose it's a mite nippy, why? Oh, is that your ear?
Here, let me get it for you. You know, if you stick it on with tape
before it thaws, the whole thing will just heal back together."
So my hope is, we'll warm up next week in time for Hallowe'en, then
drop back off into the cold. Hallowe'en is like Guiness: best served
at about 55 degrees. You don't want it so cold that the kids have to
wear parkas over their costumes, and you don't want it so hot that the
costumes get hot and uncomfortable. Fifty-five is just right.
And lets not even talk about 1991. Hallowe'en that night was on a
Thursday (just like this year!) I left for my Thursday Night Game just
as the snow began to fall, warm wet flakes that promised an
attractively frosted morning. Little did I know.
At 10:00 o'clock Amber came in and said, "It's really snowing, if you
guys are going to get home, you probably should go." We thought she
was nuts. How much could it be snowing? But we looked anyway.
Everything was covered in snow. It looked like the aftermath of a
March blizzard, when a foot of snow falls atop a season of snow. We
couldn't believe our eyes.
I was still driving the Mazda back then, and its transmission was
never the same. Phil and Amber live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and we
spent the next two hours digging a trench down the length of the
street. All except Keith, of course, who managed to escape to Nicollet
Avenue by trusting to luck and barrelling forward at full tilt,
leaving us all behind to shovel each other out.
By midnight we'd reached the cross-street, and when I got there with
the Mazda I had a choice: right the way Keith had left two hours
earlier, sharply uphill around a curve; or left, sharply downhill, and
over to the freeway. Left seemed the best choice, with the slope
aiding my journey and quickly-plowed freeway service roads thereafter.
Right suggested a slow, uphill, fishtailing grind, ending in a
snowbank or the car turned sideways in the street.
I turned left.
One hundred feet down the next block, a van had turned sideways in the
road and blocked it, abandoned.
Of course, having come downhill to reach it, I could by no means get
my front-wheel-drive car to reverse up the very hill I had avoided
climbing in the first place. So at midnight, after having shoveled an
entire street, I got out of my car and shoveled a path AROUND the
abandoned van.
An hour alter I maneuvered my way downhill past the van, and all went
well thereafter. The Mazda plowed its way down the rest of the
unshoveled street, aided by the slope of the hill. At the bottom was a
parkway that had been partially cleared by plows heading for the
freeway, and by 3:00 a.m. the freeway itself was clear and easy
driving.
But the transmission on the Mazda was shot. Never did get it fixed
before trading it in on a minivan a few months later.
No, that was a fun year. Like a gangster who wants to let you know
who's boss, it snowed almost exactly as much four weeks later: a
second blow to let us know there's more like that waiting. By April I
was so sick of eight-foot-high snow drifts I was about ready to move
to Florida.
That's how Floridians get that way. Northern weather drives them
crazy, and Florida sets the crazy in their souls like a bad stain.
Then you end up with Jeb Bush and Orlando and Cuba policy.
Which is why we need a nice, brutally cold winter. To push the
nutcases and the lunatics over the edge and send them off to Florida,
scouring the state of mild insanity and leaving only the truly, deeply
disturbed behind. Who knows, if it's cold enough maybe even Jesse
Ventura will move, saying "I ain't got time to freeze!"
C'mon COLD!
[1]Last
And no, I'm not talking about ball-gags and whips.
What I'm talking about is fighting fire with fire, using discipline to
overcome... discipline!
It probably all started for me when I entered college. I graduated
fourth in my high school class of 250 without even trying. Actually, I
probably spent most of high school in the computer room (Thanks, Dr.
J!), and had I applied even half of that effort towards my schoolwork,
I would have graduated 2nd.
I wouldn't claim I could have graduated first: that honor fell to
Karen. She graduated with a 4.192 GPA -- more A+'s than A's -- and
went on to (as I understand it) a career as a missionary. Sorry, I
know when I'm bested. But I could have beat out Dan Mason! (Sorry Dan
;-) )
So when I arrived in college, I was a lamb come to the slaughter. And
unfortunately for me, the University of Minnesota was an abbatoir. I
got to college and I didn't know how to study, because I'd never had
to. I worked hard twice in high school: once on a social studies
report and an extra credit report simultaneously, and the other time
on Mr. Abhraham's high school chemistry contracts.
My social studies reports were 1) the Rise to Power of Adolph Hitler
(which was supposed to be the Rise and Fall of Hitler but at 35 pages
I decided to stop with his election), and 2) an extra-credit report on
the Battle of Midway.
My teacher got my reports mixed up. This one confuses me. He mistook a
five-page report on the Battle of Midway for the semester report, and
a thirty-five-page missive on Hitler's Rise to Power as an
extra-credit assignment. Anyway, I got a B: a 'C' for the five-page
semester report, raised by an 'A' for the 35-page extra credit.
Some of my high school's teachers were brilliant. Not this one. I
would have gotten straight A's that quarter except for his mistake.
My mother ended up chewing the fellow out for his mistake (which we
only learned of after it was too late to correct the grades). The next
semester I got an 'A' in his class without even trying...
Anyway, those were the only two times I worked hard in four years.
Chemistry contracts were a brilliant notion -- work as hard as you
like, and if you rise to the challenge you get to work on more
interesting stuff. My partner was Trudi, who if I'd have had any guts
at all I would have tried to date, but I was afraid of her because she
was tall, gorgeous, funny, and athletic. Anyway she and I were great
lab partners (and that's all, sigh...) and burned through our
contracts rapidly, leaving us with little to do towards the end of the
year.
So I get to college, and I don't know how to schedule, how to study,
how to focus or concentrate, nothing.
It was a long road. College was a hard time for me -- all twelve years
of it, off and on. But at the end I knew how to study, and I knew how
I learned. Figuring out how you learn is an important thing to
ascertain. It was for me.
Then in the midst of it I got a job. My first REAL job, $26K/year
working as a programmer. And I had to start learning all over again.
Oh, I'd had jobs before -- starting as a fast-food cashier and up
through bag boy, security guard, and graveyard-shift computer
operator. But this was a "real" job, eight-to-five, cubicles and
desks, etc. And I had to learn how to survive in the workplace.
It took a while. But I did it. And then came parenting, and then other
jobs, helpdesk, consulting on the side, and finally running my own
business.
Now I am capable of being a Work Machine. I can, when necessary rev up
into a productivity monster, belting out phenomenal products in fairly
short periods of time, working intensively and incessantly.
And now I'm faced with a new dilemma. Having learned how to learn,
having learned how to work, I now have to learn how NOT to work, and
how to STOP and rest.
I somehow have to learn to balance the work (which would be
never-ending if I let it) with my life in general: being a Dad,
writing, exercising, resting and playing. And that's why I need a
little discipline. I need to make my self stop working when I'm tired
and sick (like today), to write when I want to write, and to rest and
do nothing without a constant niggling secretary in my head telling me
just what needs doing and how urgent it all is. After the last couple
of months spent trying to survive, I need to allow myself to wind down
and rest while not neglecting the work that needs doing.
So we'll see. I'd like to write these journal entries on a more
regular basis (I mean, I know it's comparing apples to oranges, but
I'd like to write daily the way that Lileks does, rather than
weekly/monthly after the fasion of Asia Carrera. But while Lileks is a
househusband, he's also a professional writer with a working spouse,
and I'm merely an amateur writer as well as being sole-provider for my
family).
But I'm sensing that I'm recovering from September and August. I may
soon have enough energy to try to set up another healthy schedule of
exercise, work, rest, and play. Including posting these things more
frequently.
But right now... I'm going to rest. I'm getting a cold, and my ears
are ringing so badly that walking up the stairs sounds like playing a
kettledrum. I'll just go lie down, and try not to listen to the voice
telling me about all that I ought to be doing.
A little discipline. A little learning how to unlearn. Maybe in twenty
years I'll be good at having fun.
[1]Last
We live right by a park. Actually, that's one of the best things about this neighborhood: the setting. That's what sold me on it. We're near so many interesting and attractive things -- the park, the school, the river, soon even the Greenway and the Guthrie Theater. Wow!
A couple of years ago the park building was replaced after a massive and intense lobbying effort on the part of a number of the neighbors. The old building was horrible I think it was the oldest remaining park building, a cinderblock hut with a wooden meeting hall tacked on one end. The new building is quite attractive. Unfortunately, the increasingly-shabby playground was not on the table for upgrades.
Now, however, it sounds like enough time has passed that our park's playground is at the top of the list for service. Unfortunately, of course, the dot-com collapse means that there's no money, and it may be delayed. Whenever they get around to it, what I'd most like to know would be how we could keep some form of "rocket" in the park.
Yeah. Our park has a rocket.
It's cool -- a classic finned phallus rising four levels above the ground, with a welded-in-place steering wheel on the third level and a couple of welded-in-place-levers, for real dramatic action.
"Dammit, Scotty, we've got to turn this thing! We're headed right into the flaming heart of Sinistra nu Ophiuchi!"
"Ah'm doin' th' best Ah can, sir, but the controls! They won't move! It's like they're welded in place!"
Granted that plot would get stale after a while, but imagination is as boundless as the stars themselves...
"Dammit, Scotty, we've got to turn this thing! We're headed right into the flaming heart of Barnard's Star!"
"Ah'm doin' th' best Ah can, sir, but the controls! They won't move! It's like they're welded in place!"
And you wondered how the Star Trek writers managed to keep coming up with new stories after 35 years... it's easy!
Anyway, if the current rocket could be restored that would be okay. But if that's not possible I would like to see something replace it of a similar design.
Which is not to say I'm going to stand in the way of progress. I'm 110% in favor of new playground equipment. It's a miracle that none of my three ever knocked their teeth out on the warm, welcoming gray concrete train (made largely of leftover sewage piping). Or broke an arm gamboling over those quaint play-devices alled "boulders." Come to think of it, they've each broken an arm, two of them doing so in separate incidents by falling off the three-foot-high soft green plastic Playskool(TM)slide in our back yard...
But the rocket is a different issue. It has both style and history. I'd hate to see a local landmark like the rocket tossed onto the scrap heap. I can understand if the present rocket is somehow no longer viable, but if so we should get a replacement rocket.
Restoring this baby would take some work, I think. Over he years all sorts of additions have been made as the Perceived Threat Level of the Universe increased. First a metal plate was installed to shut away the topmost level of the rocket. There wasn't anything up there but a little crawl space,
but access to the rocket's interior is only achieved through a series of narrow holes ("hatches" as we space rocketeers refer to them). Over the years these holes have either gotten narrower, or the Average Human Ass has increased in size. I'm not going to venture a guess as to which is which, because many of the portly parents unable to fetch their children from the "prow" (as we call it) are my neighbors...
And of course, the Increased Threat Level of the Universe means that the paltry inverted-U "railing" around the metal-edged holes are no longer sufficient, and would need to be replaced with Buff-a-Babe(TM) brand padded floors, walls, ceilings and ladder.
Somewhere during the past ten years, in fact, the open metal bars of the ship's hull were reinforced with wire mesh. This was done only to spare the gray hairs of the landbound-parents: it's impossible for even the smallest child to force their way through the bars. I know.
Mine all tried. Nothing more fun than watching from high above as Mommy and Daddy jump up and down screaming "Get back! Stop! Pull your arms back inside the bars!" A complete laugh-riot for a three year old.
Despite the fact that you couldn't grandfather this relic into any existing health and safety regulations, I'm not willing to give it up without a fight. I've been telling my acquaintances that I live near "Rocket Park" for too long now to change my ways. I'll start having to tell people to "turn where the rocket used to be," and giving directions based on long-vanished landmarks is one of the first sure signs of old age.
No, whatever replaces the current rocket will be made of padded plastic, smooth surfaces, and bright, friendly, grafitti-resistant colors. While that might damage the military verisimilitude of our current starship, at least we'll have one. A rocket, to carry our children's dreams to the stars... and, if they can't free up the steering wheel in time, directly into them.
Hey, rockets are cool!
[7]Last