|
As of December 1, 2004, this blog has MOVED. It's now hosted on my local site. Find it at:
My Life, Take II
Please update your links, I look forward to seeing you at the new place! |
|
It is the simplest things, the ones others might see as insignificant, that I shall miss the most.
I will miss sitting in our living room with my wife, watching Whose Line Is It Anyway.
I will miss long car trips, driving along with her hand resting lightly in mine, reminding me that she's there and we're together.
I miss the phone calls during the day, not the usual ones about mundane things but the ones when she called just because she was thinking of me.
I will miss the feeling of coming to bed very late at night, trying to be quiet as I tiptoe through the dark room, and slipping in beside her, feeling her warmth and knowing that even though she's not noticed me, that she's there beside me.
I will miss having coffee together.
I will miss those quiet mornings when Tony, our big tomcat, would sneak into the bedroom and climb up between us in bed, and then purr and cuddle up as though he were the happiest cat that ever lived, because he loved being near both of us.
I will miss grocery shopping together.
I will miss singing to her. In the last few weeks, she had complained that I never sang to her anymore, and she's right, I hadn't felt very musical for a long time. The night that my life changed, the night it all ended, the irony is that I had been in my office until about 2 AM, with a makeshift recording rig connected to my Macintosh, recording two songs that were meant to be a late anniversary present. I burned them to a CD, went home, and found no one there. I woke the next morning and she was still gone ... that was the last night I spent in our home. It was that weekend that we parted.
How does anyone ever get through this? I can't walk down the street, get in my car, sit at my desk, eat lunch, sleep, or even breathe without being reminded of her, the way she smelled, her smile, her eyes, her touch, her voice. I saw something in the window of a shop last night, thught, "Yvette would like that..." and then had to duck into the nearest rest room as I fell completely to pieces. Today I had to fill out paperwork for a new insurance plan at work and just writing her name was enough to make me crumble.
We both did things to drive each other away. I don't think either of us is any more to blame than the other ... what she did was what she felt forced to do, and what I did is what I felt forced to do, and we gradually put up walls that shut each other out.
There was an old movie starring Natalie Wood called "Brainstorm", about a machine that could record people's thoughts and memories and experiences. In it, the two lead characters are going through a divorce. He puts on the helmet and records a tape of all his thoughts, and gives it to her, saying, "It's me." She plays it, and instantly understands ... understands everything ... and they live happily ever after, eventually.
If only she could somehow see into my thoughts! Words don't work ... every time we talk, the question is, "Well, if you love me as much as you say you do, then how could you <do one of a dozen things I've done that created distance between us>?". The answer is inevitably, "I felt pushed away because you did <one of a dozen things she did that created distance between us>." The problem is that none of those things was meant to distance us, they just ... resulted, just as the ones she did resulted from mine. In the end we were so far apart that we didn't even remotely understand each other's needs. She says she opened up to me ... I think I tried too ... but here we are, and apparently we both failed to do enough. If we could have somehow seen what each other needed, if we could somehow have experienced each other's feelings, in a way that words and arguments and discussions can't hope to provide, it might have resolved everything.
If we could see into each other's minds and hearts, I'd be calling her right now to discuss dinner and tell her how much I love her, instead of sitting here at my desk wishing I could stop weeping.
My close and perhaps oldest friend, Kirk, who lives in Boston and has studied Psychology, feels I should stop sharing feelings like this publicly, that I should keep my verbal catharses private. My friend Omally recommends continuing to share, calling it "Blog therapy". I'm not sure what to think, so if anyone has further advice I'm listening. |
|
Disclaimer: What follows might be depressing. It might be boring, and it will definitely be long. I'm disabling comments too. This is something I need to write, and need to make sure has been said. It is going to hurt me to write it, but it is also going to help me because I will have let it out. If you want to keep reading with this in mind, that's fine. If you don't, I'll completely understand.
We met in Orlando. I lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment that suited me all right in the situation I was in. I was working as the chief technical engineer of what was at the time the largest and most prestigious recording school in the country, which was also a working recording studio complex and post-production facility. My work defined me, then. I had been alone, utterly and completely alone for more than ten years. My first marriage, to my high school sweetheart when I was but 20 years old, didn't work out because we were both too young; her understanding of commitment was that it was OK to sleep with other people as long as no one told me. The betrayal nearly destroyed me, and kept me very detached for a long time.
When I met Yvette I wasn't looking for Ms. Right. I wasn't looking for anything other than a good time, nor was she. The first time we met, though, something happened that made us both start thinking of each other a lot of the time. She was involved in a marriage where her husband abused her, and before I knew it I was involved in a rescue of sorts.
This was a hard spot for me to be in. I was falling in love with a married woman, and she with me, and helping her through a divorce was killing me because I felt like the same outsider who'd ruined my own marriage 10 years before. She had the same problem I guess, because she pulled away from me and moved with her husband to New Hampshire to start over. I cried, I fell apart, and then I started to recover. Slowly, I started to realize that I'd never belonged with her in the first place, and I should forget it and move on. I buried myself in my work again.
A few weeks later, the phone rang. Guess who. Her husband had started cheating on her practically the minute they arrived up there, so she'd left him, she was on her way back to Orlando, and wanted to come stay with me. With her 15 year old son and 6 year old daughter. And their dog and cat. For 10 years it had been just me and my siamese cat, dB, living on our own. I couldn't say no, because no matter how much I'd been hurt and no matter how much I denied it, I did love her. In they came ... three people, a dog, and two cats in a one bedroom apartment. It was not easy, but somehow we made a life out of it, and we've been together ever since.
Until now.
In the last two or three months, we've spent more time apart than together. We can't seem to agree on anything, we argue, we hurt each other emotionally, we make each other sad. Finally, last Friday, we came to the conclusion, unfortunately, that I guess we're better apart than together. I have not seen Yvette, Alexis, the cats, the birds, the house, or anything else that was part of my live since last Friday, ten days ago. Apparently, she came to that conclusion before I did ... there was a final indignity that I will not describe in detail out of respect for her privacy and mine, but it broke my heart.
Today, for the first time in four days, my wife called me on the phone. It was only about paying bills, and I just fell apart all over again.
Yvette and I were together for 10 years. Before that, it was just me and my beloved siamese cat. Now, everything that had meaning in my life, everything that really mattered, is gone. Yvette blames it all on me ... it's all my fault, it all started with me, I am the one who created the whole problem. I wish that were true, because then I could just change it all back. Fact is we both grew apart, we both made changes that the other couldn't handle.
I come to work every morning, and I sit here at my desk trying to force back the tears ... talk to friends in the chat room to pass the time ... try to concentrate and work and make something productive happen. I make it through until lunchtime, and I go out to my car, and I fall apart. I get my act together in time to come back in the afternoon, try really hard to get something productive done but I can't think. I hold it in until quitting time, do whatever I can to keep the grief and the anguish at bay, and then I drive to my seedy little weekly room, drink myself to sleep, and start over again. I am not living, I am dying.
I love my wife. I will always love her because she is the only thing in my life that ever made sense, the only person who ever looked at me and saw anything that I really am, the only person who ever made me feel like I was home. I don't know how to live without that. Half of me is gone, and the other half is just dying, just withering away to nothing because I have no soul without my soulmate.
The way things are now, I don't think we'll ever resolve things, and I don't think she wants to. Alexis, who is 15 and rebellious, has always hated me, and I know she's happier with me gone. Yvette has at least got relief from the arguing and the conflict. I have nothing. It's been made clear I'm not welcome in the house. The only computer I have that isn't in this office is there. The internet router there is broken, and I can't fix it from here, so probably she will bring in someone else who will not understand the network I have spent so much time building and tweaking and perfecting, and it will probably get butchered.
Tony, probably the sweetest and most affectionate cat that ever lived, would normally be my comfort at times like this. Now he's there and I'm here. My big bird, Sammy, and our little birds Phoenix and Big Bird, are also gone from my life now.
Our life together wasn't perfect. It was pretty awful sometimes, but it was also really good, sometimes. I wasn't ready to give up the things that were working, just because I was indignant over a few things that weren't, but now there's no choice. I have spent so much time and devoted so much of my energy to making this marriage work that now, when I turn around and take stock of what's left in my life, I don't have a single friend who's close enough and knows me well enough to understand what I'm going through. I do have two or three old, dear friends, but they live in other states. Atlanta is a place where I have had only one true friend, and now I have zero.
There is a picture of my wife in the office. You can't see it because it sits on a shelf right underneath the video webcam. There's a picture of Alexis right beside it. It is still there, but I don't really need a picture. I have loved Yvette for so long that I know every line, every dimple, every freckle. Her face is burned into my mind and will always be there, and it is a face I thought I would spend life with ... I wanted us to grow old together, I wanted us to experience everything life had to offer from now until the end. So many dreams, so many visions, so many things I wanted to happen. The birthmark below her right eye, the shape of her hands, the way her shape took my breath away ... I just can't forget, I can't get away from the visions, the memories, the pain is unbearable, I wish somehow everything could be fixed and we could be together again and I know it won't happen. I wish I could just erase all the memories. The weekend at St. Augustine. The week we spent in Gulf Shores, when she wrote our names on the wall at the Flora-Bama. The trip to Virginia Beach. The long drives. The afternoon at a picnic table at a rest area along I-95. It all keeps flashing through my head. Our first kiss. Nights walking along the lake at Sun Key, the apartment complex where I used to live. A chinese dinner in Boston. The dinner at the little Mexican restaurant when I proposed. A week in New York, walking around Times Square. Shopping. Nights when we stayed up until ridiculous hours, just talking. Intimate times.
Life, my life as I know it, has ended. Whatever happens from this day forward is just what came later. It will just fill the time between the day my life ended and the day I stopped breathing. This relationship, this love between my wife and I was all I had, my sole reason for everything I've done in the last ten years. It has been my only validation, the only thing that has made me feel a purpose in my life.
Yes, this all sounds like wallowing. Yes, it's all emotional drivel, and yes, I'm a crybaby. If the loss of the love of one's life is not a good enough excuse to fall apart then I don't know of a better one. The usual thing people say to a man at a time like this is that it gets better, that the pain will fade, that I will forget, and that life will go on, and I know those things are not true. No one who understood how strong my love is would offer that. My wife may not have been happy with me, and I may not have done everything she might have wanted, but at the very least, I was a man who loved her ... she will never find anyone who will love her as much as I do, of that I can be sure.
Thanksgiving is this week. What have I to be thankful for? I wish I could just forget the day exists. Christmas is coming too ... I have always had a hard time at Christmas, missing my father and now my mother, and this year I will have no family at all. Can't I just skip into January? This is all just too much for me.
I am rambling. This is what I guess they call a stream of consciousness, and if I'm incoherent I apologize. There are some things I needed to say when I started out and I have no idea if I've said them, and if I try to read all this back, by the end I won't be able to see again, so let me just try this ... for the record, for the world, for anyone who cares to know.
1) I love my wife, and Alexis who hates me, and my pets more than life itself.
2) No matter how it may have seemed, everything I have ever done has been with my wife and family in mind.
3) I have never meant any of the things I've said in arguments, they just came out of pain and anger.
4) I have never had an affair or been unfaithful, nor could I ever do that to anyone I'm committed to.
5) The good and the bad, the last ten years, I would not trade for anything in the universe.
6) I remember all the good times, and I would gladly sell my soul for one more good day together.
|
|
Sick. Sick with a cold, sick with sadness, just miserable.
I may not write much here for a while.
That is all. |
|
As Karl Wirz sat in his hotel room, he reckoned that he had never been in such a desolate place in his whole life. As a newspaper photographer, he'd been sent to some hell-holes, but this one beat it all. One restaurant, one hotel, no bars, and a good hour drive from anywhere.
Karl was a true southerner, though, and a small part of him was comfortable here. He'd been sent to photograph re-enactments and memorial ceremonies at the site of Andersonville Prison, a Civil War camp that during its operation in 1864 had held 26,000 prisoners, mostly Union soldiers, within its 26-acre stockade.
Andersonville had been a hard posting even for Confederate guards, many of whom died from disease and malnutrition due to horribly unsanitary conditions and lack of food and clear water. For the prisoners it was a living nightmare. One soldier wrote, " Wuld that I was an artist & had the material to paint this camp & all its horors or the tounge of some eloquent Statesman and had the privleage of expressing my mind to our hon. rulers in Washington, I should gloery to describe this hell on earth where it takes 7 of its ocupiants to make a shadow."
Earlier today, Karl had walked around the site, his Nikon slung over a shoulder, looking for images that would compel, images that could somehow capture what this place was, and how it had been. Little was left now, just long lines of thin concrete obelisks that marked lines around the former stockade and its deadline. Here and there, historians had erected replicas of the stockade, the deadline, and the makeshift tent city that once stood inside. The place looked serene, idyllic now, just a lush green field, a perfect place for a picnic.
Now it was eight PM, and Karl was disappointed. He'd gotten nothing today. Amateurish snapshots and trite artsy crap, but nothing that had any power. No quintessential image. He was prouder of the photos he'd taken of cotton ready for harvest than of anything he'd shot at the prison. He had eaten the most tasteless, greasy dinner in recent memory, and was now sitting on a lumpy bed watching a rerun of Green Acres. Why? This wasn't what had earned him a Pulitzer.
He sat up, turned off the TV, and reached for the bag that held his Nikons. He loaded a roll of 1600ASA pan film, slipping the box tag into the slot on the back of his F2 and writing "ANDERS - PUSH 1X" on it with his Sharpie. Karl's meticulous nature had always served him well.
He clomped down the stairs of the old hotel, slid into the seat of his rented Geo, and headed over to the prison site. It was a short drive, half a mile or so, and he found a locked gate made of iron pipe, a low gate mainly meant to keep cars out. He sighed heavily, got out of the car, and hopped over the gate. The road into the prison was paved and covered with leaves that made a crunching sound as he walked. A flashlight might not have been a bad idea, he thought, but the moon was nearly full and the sky clear. Aside from deep shadows cast by the trees along the road, he could see quite well. He needed his night vision.
After a few minutes, he reached the northwest corner of the stockade area, where the monuments stood like sentinels. He stopped by the Wisconsin memorial, a huge, imposing stone structure featuring an eagle, and surveyed the site. To his left was the reconstructed northeast corner of the stockade, rough-hewn poles fifteen feet high with a "pigeon's roost" guard platform on top. Inside these, about six yards away, was the lower rail fence known as the deadline, which prisoners were forbidden to cross on penalty of death.
Ahead was a low valley that cut diagonally across the rectangular stockade area. This had been the latrines. Beyond was a small spring house, and an opposing hillside where small, earthwork forts were the only sign that there'd been any organized presence here.
Karl thought this was a far better way to see the prison site. Gone were the throngs of tourists with their strollers and their Polaroids and their picnic blankets spread over the ground. Gone were the cars and the noise and the park rangers with their repetitive talks about life inside the walls of Andersonville. He could hear the wind sweep through the trees, the gurgling of the little brook, and the rustling of leaves. He set up his tripod, put on his wide angle lens and took an establishing shot, a panoramic view of the whole stockade, bracketing the exposure. A second at F/2.8. It would look almost like daylight, he thought, and smiled.
He walked down the hill slowly, past the monuments, and found himself next to a replica of the north gate. It had a sinister look, as he looked uphill at it from the path at the bottom of the valley. He wondered how many Union soldiers had passed through this gate, going in, and how many had lived long enough to leave through it. He set up his tripod again and took several photos, using the 105mm lens this time to take maximum advantage of the sharp angles and stark perspective. The wind was chilly; he turned up his collar and walked on along the line of the stockade. It was at that moment that he noticed the smell. He froze.
Karl had smelled locker rooms, homeless people, bad food, stagnant water, and a million other unpleasant things in his career. This was a combination of all of them. A dank, musty, stale smell, like fabric rotting. The smell of human waste. The smell of unwashed bodies. Where was it coming from?
He looked around him. The road was deserted. Back the way he'd come the monuments stood as quietly as they had for a century or more. Along the treeline the leaves rustled but nothing else moved. Ahead, up by the old star fort ... what was that? Had it been there before? Just inside the perimeter road stood a low shack, resembling a guardhouse. Had he seen that this afternoon? Walking toward it, he rummaged through his camera bag and pulled out a rumpled park map. A blue block marked 'Guardhouse Site' seemed to mark the very spot he was walking toward.
As he reached the guardhouse, he thought it must be a terribly faithful reproduction. The wood was well-weathered, the fixtures hand-blacksmithed. He set up a few yards uphill, setting up a shot with the stockade in the background. He'd have to stop the lens way down, and make a long, long exposure to get the depth of field he wanted. He composed the frame carefully, and as he peered through the lens, the door of the guardhouse swung open.
The wind had been calm, hadn't it? And hadn't the latch been closed? At any rate, this was too good ... he stepped inside the guardhouse, walking to the windows that overlooked the stockade. Only, now they didn't overlook just row upon row of obelisks marking the stockade line. They overlooked a real stockade ... and within it, smoke from a thousand campfires rose into the night. The ground moved, only it wasn't the ground, it was a sea of men, tens of thousands of men packed shoulder to shoulder, constantly moving, shuffling, trying to find a bit of space. Karl shrank back and blinked. He ran from the shack, looked out ... and saw nothing.
"Calm yourself, Karl," he thought. "You've been in scarier places than this. You're losing it." It had just been his vivid imagination at work, he was sure.
He stepped back into the shack. Went back to the windows. The camp was back. He could smell it now. The same smell he'd noticed down by the gate was now assailing his nostrils, pungent, horrible, the smell of death. He nearly retched. He turned, and saw a figure in the doorway, limned by the moonlight, squarely blocking his exit.
"Who's there?", he said, sounding a lot less confident than he wanted to. There was no reply. The figure stood, unmoving, but he could hear the man breathing. Suddenly a fire flared in the camp behind him, sending a beam of light through the windows, illuminating the scene. The man in the doorway wore a confederate officer's uniform. He was gaunt, even emaciated. His face was unshaven, and his uniform hung limply from a body far too small for it. As the light flickered, the man seemed to recognize Karl, and he nodded slightly, then took a step back and walked away.
Karl rushed back to the window. He saw the man walking downhill toward the gate. Behind the guard shack, he saw a group of men walking toward him. All were wearing Confederate uniforms, all were very thin as they strode purposefully toward him. Karl rushed from the shack, but this time the scene did not change. Below him, the officer who'd just left was opening the north gate. Prisoners streamed out, all headed toward the guard shack. The stench was overpowering. The men shouted, pointed, and those who were able actually began to run toward him. This wasn't a good reception, he was quite sure.
He turned, ran ... and was caught by the arms by the group of Confederate soldiers streaming from the fort. He screamed. The officer, returning now, stopped before him. He looked at Karl with an expression somewhere between sadness and resolution, and finally spoke at length.
"We are the dead. We are the men who died here, on this ground. We have waited for you."
"Waited for ME?" Karl asked incredulously. "What connection do I possibly have with this place?"
"Karl, Karl. You are a maker of images, and detail means so much to you, yet you've missed the most obvious detail. Hundreds of confederate guards and officers, my brothers in arms, died not far from where you now stand. Thousands of union soldiers died the same way, only far faster and far more horribly. One man was responsible for this, one man placed in charge of this post. Do you recall his name, Karl?"
Karl shivered. He did remember. Earlier today, in the town square, he'd seen the huge monument dedicated to this man. History had long shown him to have been helpless to change conditions inside the prison. He was denied the resources to run the place properly, and was overloaded with twice the prisoners that his facilities could handle. He'd been made a scapegoat and hanged for war crimes soon after the end of the civil war. He'd never been the cruel monster he'd been painted to be, and the monument in town was a tribute to his humanity. These men, though, had died before the truth was known, and these men had been given one name to hate and revile through the decades.
Captain Henry Wirz.
Ranger Sherry Parker found Karl Wirz' Nikon F2 the next morning, still on its tripod, his camera bag sitting beside it. She carefully packed it and brought it to the museum, sure that someone would arrive to collect it. Weeks later, when no one had, she decided there might be some clue to its owner on the film. With the help of a colleague, she removed the film, pulled out the box flap in case the processor needed it, and took it to Elmira at the drug store. The next day, Elmira called to tell her that her photos were ready. Sherry picked them up at lunchtime. "Not often I get a roll of 1600 that needs pushed to 3200," Elmira remarked. "Almost forgot how!" Sherry nodded her thanks and began to shuffle through them as she walked out onto the narrow main street sidewalk.
Suddenly she stopped. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she gasped.
In her hands was a beautiful, wide-angle photograph of Andersonville Prison, exactly as it looked in 1864. Campfires burned, smoke rose, and the faces of a thousand inmates stared intently toward the camera. The detail was sharp, crisp, and clean. It almost looked like daylight.
There were only two known photographs in existence of Andersonville's stockade. Neither of them included the whole area, and neither of them was of good quality. This was an impossible picture, taken at night with ultra-fast film. She shuffled through the rest of the photos. There was one of the north gate, with confederate guards standing sentinel posts along the wall. There was a photo of the spring house, with prisoners lined up for water. Another photo showed the hillside above the sinks, crowded with tents and filled with a sea of men, milling about, with barely room to stand. All totally impossible pictures, but undeniably real down to the last detail.
The last photo on the roll has baffled experts to this day. It's an image of a man, standing in the doorway of the prison guardhouse, a building that has not existed since 1870. He's gripping the door frame, poised to run, and he's looking beyond the camera ... in the direction of the star fort. It's the last image ever seen of Karl Wirz, the self-portrait of a Pulitzer-winning photographer and descendant of Captain Henry Wirz. Behind him, in the guardhouse, stands a man holding a rope, tied into the shape of a noose. |
| » Goodbye, Bandit |
|---|
We lost a little friend on Friday. He will be badly missed.
Bandit was never meant to be ... he was the result of hasty, unplanned sex that took place when our un-spayed female cat, Penny, somehow got outside and had a bit of a wild night. We don't know who his father is.
When the kittens were born, we knew we couldn't keep them. We weren't going to keep any of them at all, in fact, until my wife fell in love with one of them. He was a skinny little kitten but he had a cute face ... he almost looked as if he were wearing a mask, earning him the name, "Bandit". After my wife named him, all of my pleas about our overabundance of cats fell on deaf ears, so the other kittens went on to good, loving homes, and Bandit stayed.
Kittens have boundless energy. Older cats like my big, tiger-striped old tomcat, Tony, generally don't. With the other kittens gone, Tony became bandit's favorite unwilling play partner. He would stalk Tony, jump on him, bat at his tail, catapult over him, smack him in the face with a paw ... anything to get attention. Tony reacted as W. C. Fields generally did ... you could almost hear him saying, "Go away, kid, ya bother me!" There were times when he'd clearly had enough, and he'd get genuinely angry, hissing and growling. This was great fun for Bandit, who could not take a hint. We had several big cat brawls where all one could see were feet and tails and heads flying in and out of a big ball of flying fur, just like in the cartoons.
Bandit ate, and grew, and eventually it became clear that his father must have been a very large cat. His face was unlike any cat I've ever seen, he had these big, puffy cheeks that we called "jowls", and it made him look really cute, like a kitten even after he'd grown quite huge. He eventually got bigger than Tony, so it's a good thing that they eventually developed a calmer, more friendly relationship. When his kitten energy subsided, Bandit had become a lot like Tony. He was mellow, friendly, and above all, supremely lazy.
Late last week, he seemed lazier than usual. My wife told me he'd gotten out and stayed out for a while earlier in the week. Thursday night he was throwing up, not feeling well, and we thought maybe he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him, or maybe got a hairball. Friday morning he seemed a bit better, walking around and not throwing up. I decided that if he wasn't significantly better Saturday morning, I'd take him to the vet. I stroked his fur, rubbed his tummy, and went off to work thinking he'd be fine.
Friday night, on my way home, I got the call. Yvette had come home and found him, and at first thought he was asleep, he looked so peaceful stretched out on Alexis' bedroom floor. Then she touched him, and he was cold and lifeless. I had a lot of trouble seeing the road as I drove the rest of the way home. We wrapped him in a blanket that had been his favorite one to lie on, said goodbye. I then anaesthetized myself with a large quantity of Kentucky bourbon.
The bourbon didn't keep me unconscious for very long, certainly not long enough to make the grief go away, so I didn't continue, though I've got that bottle nearby should its contents be needed. Saturday morning we delivered poor Bandit to the vet's office where he will be cremated. We brought him to the same room and laid him on the same table where my beloved siamese, dB, was euthanized a couple of years ago, and it was not a place I wanted to be. Worse, the incompetent, deaf, or merely stupid veternary assistant told the vet to come prepared for a euthanasia, and she entered the room with a syringe of poison in her hands. It was the wrong kind of deja vu for me and I didn't recover from that one for quite a while. I went off and spent a few hours just sitting in a park, and at one point I even managed to fall asleep on a park bench. This is something fair-skinned people should not do on sunny days. Ouch.
The pain's begun to dull now, as evidenced by my having an appetite this morning for the first time since Friday. Losing pets is hard, and I've lost far too many lately. Losing dB, who'd been my friend and roommate for over 12 years when I was single, was the hardest, but it's never easy. Bandit was only a year old. He should have had a lot more years ahead of him. We all blame ourselves, playing the what-if game. What if we'd taken him to the vet sooner? What if he hadn't gotten outside? The vet even wanted to do a necropsy to find out why he died, but he looked so beautiful and peaceful that it didn't seem right to let them cut him up.
Bandit, my friend, I'm sorry, and I'll miss you.
Oct. 31st, 2004 @ 11:18 am
|
| » Lyrical Things |
|---|
[WARNING: This will be a longish blog, because I'm including some quotes and snips that I think are important ... if you hate long blogs, and don't have time to read this one, I will completely understand.]
I have never had any luck writing music, but I have always enjoyed writing lyrics. I think it's because I admire really, really good ones, lyrics that take the power of the music and direct it right into your heart, lyrics that communicate, words that could stand alone if they had to, but are enhanced and reinforced by the music, and vice-versa.
As the great Harry Chapin once said, through a character in his song, "Stranger With the Melodies", "A song ain't got much meaning if it ain't got nothin' to say!"
I mention this because I've heard both ends of the lyrical spectrum in the last couple of days. I heard a song by local Atlanta artist Shawn Mullins this morning called "Twin Rocks, Oregon" ... part spoken, part sung, but awfully engaging, I thought. Here's the first verse and chorus:
I met him on the cliffs of Twin Rocks, Oregon.
He was sittin on his bedroll looking just like Richard Brautigan.
I thought he was an old man, he wasn't but 37.
He said he'd been ridin trains for 15 years, drawing portraits to keep his belly full of beer.
It looked to me like he'd died and missed the plane to heaven.
But he was a nice ol' guy for a younger man, he had a bottle of Mad Dog he held in his hand
That he waved around a lot to make his point.
And I listened as he told his tales of wine and women and county jails,
And we finished off that bottle and smoked a half a joint.
He said "I came here to watch the sun disappear into the ocean
'Cause it's been years since I smelled this salty sea."
He turned his bottle up and down
And I saw him lost, and I saw him found.
He said "I don't know what i've been lookin for.
Maybe me."
A colleague also passed some Tori Amos music along to me ... I'd only really been familiar with one or two of her songs, 'Silent All These Years" being the one I liked most. Now I've heard three albums' worth of her music and it's been a real awakening. I think I've decided that I really, really like her music, but her lyrics puzzle me. The throughts and ideas are so disconnected, they seem almost random. An example from "Little Earthquakes":
Yellow bird flying gets shot in the wing
Good year for hunters and Christmas parties
And I hate and I hate and I hate
And I hate elevator music
The way we fight
The way I'm left here silent
Oh these little earthquakes
Here we go again
These little earthquakes
Doesn't take much to rip us into pieces
We danced in graveyards with vampires till dawn
We laughed in the faces of king never afraid to burn
and I hate and I hate and I hate
and I hate disintegration
These lyrics clearly have deep meaning for Tori, and probably for those who understand her and her style better than I, but to me they're more of a texture ... they don't add meaning, it's as though her voice and her words are being used as just another instrument in the mix.
Without music, lyrics are basically just poetry with a bit more structure and repetition. So, being musically handicapped, I write a lot of poetry ... not that I would go so far as to call myself a poet. One kind soul recently offered to have a go at some of my lyrics, setting them to music, and one of these days I'll go through the things I've written and find some that are fit for such. It'll be a pleasant thing to hear my lyrics sung again.
Once, while I lived in Florida, some friends and I met a singer named Meta (MAY-Tah) Scholan. She was about seventeen, a breathtakingly pretty girl with long blonde hair, brilliant stage presence, and a voice that would make Britney Spears hang her head in shame. We all thought she was an amazing talent, and together we wrote, arranged, produced and recorded a demo for her. My friend Trina Harmon wrote most of the music ... she's a brilliant songwriter and has since gone on to write songs for Eden's Crush, Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey, and Jennifer Paige. Most of the arranging was done by John Marsden, another talented guy who's still working in the music industry too. All of us collaborated on lyrics, and I engineered and mixed. Just as we were finishing the project, I had to leave for Atlanta and I lost touch with everyone, which is a shame ... that was some of the most enjoyable time I've ever spent in a studio.
One last word about lyrics. Sometimes, the very fact that there ARE lyrics is a message in itself.
Chet Atkins was one of the finest guitar players on this planet, and I think few people would dispute that. Every guitarist in the world has probably spent at least two or three hours trying to steal one of Chet's licks, because he made the instrument sing in a unique way that was his trademark This is why he's been described as "Mister Guitar" and is world-renowned for his skill and innovation ... as a producer, a record company executive, a songwriter as well as the most-recorded solo instrumental artist in history. Chet, however, simply could not sing. In fact, the man was so shy, so soft-spoken that he could hardly talk. His hit songs are all instrumentals, he hasn't really recorded a vocal since the 1950's ... except for one song. One song that was important enough that it had to be sung, and he had to sing it.
Around 1988, Chet wrote a song about his father. It's a nice song, but being about his Dad, it needed lyrics. He wrote them, and in the first of what would become dozens of live performances, he stood on stage with only a guitar and a microphone, wearing a hat, and introduced the song by saying, "Every time I look in the mirror, I see my Dad. I guess that's why this song means so much to me." He then played the song and sang it, in a shaky, unsteady voice that everyone knew was the real Chet, and not one person noticed that he was no singer. They didn't hear that the lyrics were a little disjointed, a little choppy. They just heard something so real and so deeply personal and honest that it was breathtaking. These are the lyrics he sang.
When I was young, my Dad would say,
"Come on Son let's go out and play!"
Sometimes it seems like yesterday.
And I'd climb up the closet shelf
When I was all by myself
Grab his hat and fix the brim,
Pretending I was him.
No matter how hard I try
No matter how many tears I cry
No matter how many years go by
I still can't say goodbye.
He always took care of Mom and me.
We all cut down a Christmas tree
He always had some time for me
Wind blows through the trees
Street lights, they still shine bright
Most things are the same
but I miss my Dad tonight.
I walked by a Salvation Army store,
Saw a hat like my daddy wore,
Tried it on when I walked in.
Still trying to be like him
No matter how hard I try
No matter how many years go by
No matter how many tears I cry
I still can't say goodbye.
If you can listen to that recording with a dry eye, you are a better man than I am, because I can't. Chet's not with us any longer, he passed away in 2001. His memorial service was held in the most fitting place imaginable ... the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Chet once said in an interview, "Years from now, after I'm gone someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me."
And your words, Chet.
Oct. 28th, 2004 @ 03:03 pm
|
| » Police, out of control. Again. |
|---|
The young woman you see to the right was a journalism student at Emerson College. She was a Boston Red Sox fan. She was bright, attractive, and by all accounts on her way to great things. She was 21. Was. Now she's on a slab, thanks to an overzealous Boston police officer.
An important win by the Sox led, as important wins or losses often do, to a riot. Kids scaled the rafters of the "Green Monster", climbed up on signs, set small fires, and generally made asses of themselves. Police arrived on horseback just in time to make things much, much worse than they might have been.
Apparently, one particularly unpleasant kid refused to leave the area after being ordered out by a police officer. Enraged at the youth's contempt, the officer grabbed him by the back of his shirt and threw him to the ground. Others, seeing this brutality, began hurling bottles and other debris at the officers. It's interesting how sometimes, all it takes is a bit of contempt to turn a person sworn to uphold the law into someone determined to uphold his own ego.
One cop began firing what are sometimes called non-lethal projectiles into the crowd. These were plastic balls filled with pepper-like spray, designed to shatter on impact. They're designed to be fired low, but the officer shot into the crowd at eye level, apparently in an indiscriminate way. Victoria "Torie" Snelgrove was standing by a hot dog cart with friends, not part of the altercation and not involved in anything other than conversation. When the officer fired into the crowd, she was hit directly in the eye with a projectile. She went down, bleeding profusely.
Friends tended to her as she lost, regained, lost consciousness. A cop, not the one who fired the projectile, briefly checked on her and then left. Someone called an ambulance. Five minutes after being hit, she was taken to a hospital.
The "non-lethal" projectile inflicted a lethal injury. She died hours later. The Boston police commissioner, in a stunning emotional response, spoke today and said, essentially, "Gee, maybe we shouldn't use those things anymore."
The recent ubiquitousness of video cameras has shown us a side of law enforcement most of us aren't keen to see. We have seen deadly, out-of-control police chases kill people and destroy property, solely to catch someone guilty of speeding or driving a stolen car. We have seen police beat people to death with wooden clubs for the crime of vagrancy. We've watched people shot with tasers, and we've heard about a few of them dying mysteriously, hours or days later. We've watched the Philadelphia Police serve their version of an eviction notice on some extremists living in a row house: a bomb, dropped by helicopter. (That one was a long time ago, but I still get visions of Philadelphia Police cruisers driving around with little row-houses painted on the front fenders.) On the other end of the spectrum, every day I see taxpayer-owned police cars being driven at unsafe speeds and in an unsafe manner for no apparent reason. At every level, our police are in many cases completely out of control.
Will this young woman's death finally bring this situation to the attention of the public, the only people who are empowered to actually do something about it? I wish I could think so.
Oct. 22nd, 2004 @ 06:22 pm
|
| » Sammy-bird, Teresa Heinz-Kerry |
|---|
Yesterday was an interesting day. My big blue and gold macaw, Sammy, came to the office with me so we could more conveniently get him to an afternoon grooming appointment.
It was quite an adventure. I was late to work because of all the preparation. The porta-perch had to be washed and disassembled for the trip, water and food needed to be brought along, the carrier needed to be prepped, and Sammy had to be convinced that going into that box was in his best interest. He was unhappy but managed not to inflict any serious injuries to me or himself during the hour drive to my office. Once he was here, porta-perch assembled, newspapers spread out on every poop-imperiled surface, he finally relaxed. I put the webcam on him for the day, so the world missed a day of my silly facial expressions and got a day of wing-stretching and yapping and chewing instead. The bird, not me.
When we finally arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time, the woman who had promised to be available to do his grooming was nowhere to be found. When we called her on the phone, she simply said she'd changed her mind and was going home. Sammy spent two hours in a box and seven hours in my boring office for essentially no reason. I believe we'll be finding another groomer ... it's not easy to find one who's competent and worthy of trust, but this one is a flake for sure.
Speaking of flakes, I really don't understand people who idolize Teresa Heinz-Kerry. I don't usually make snap judgements about people, and when I do they're usually positive ones, but I really think that Mrs. Kerry isn't the sort of person I'd like to see become our First Lady.
I'm remembering the incident in July where she made a speech calling for a more civil tone:
"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics," she said.
A reporter for a Pittsburgh newspaper asked her afterward what she meant by "un-American," in an encounter caught on tape by a nearby TV crew. She said "I didn't say that" repeatedly. A moment later, the reporter tried again and she replied, "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."
What does this exchange say about Mrs. Kerry? For starters, it shows she's not only dishonest, but comfortable about lying. She repeatedly states that she "didn't say that", even when videotape and thousands of eyewitnesses confirm that she did.
The exchange also shows that while she's confident when she speaks publicly, and seems to make her points dramatically, she's clearly not prepared to support, explain, or even justify her words in an unscripted conversation. This is probably because they're not her words, but a speechwriter's. Still, most political figures tend to deflect direct questions in a more graceful manner.
Finally, in my opinion, she's shown herself to be a bad-tempered, unpleasant woman. Even under ordinary circumstances, I would have expected more self-restraint from a woman of her supposed status and maturity. If she can't even rein in her foul mouth when her husband is running for the nation's highest office, if she can't present herself in public as a woman worthy to be called First _Lady_, then I have to wonder about her judgment in other situations, perhaps more important, diplomatically crucial ones.
The battle for the Presidency may not yet be over, but if there were a battle of the first ladies, Laura Bush (quite a lady in anyone's book) would have already won.
Pistachio stats: NONE yesterday (hands were too busy keeping the bird from eating the office), NONE yet today.
Oct. 14th, 2004 @ 11:10 am
|
| » Librarian Abuse |
|---|
There's been a recent flurry of stories in our blogring about teachers, and ways of gently but hilariously tweaking them. I've felt the need to participate, but most of my teachers were boring, a few were inspiring, a few were infuriating, but none was genuinely, spontaneously funny even when teased.
Librarians? I did have an interesting high school librarian. There's the story!
Molly Miller was the stereotypical librarian. She was an elderly, gray-haired lady who wore eyeglasses that covered only the lower half of her eyes, and which were perpetually perched on the end of her nose. She was a strict disciplinarian and allowed no noise or other distractions in her library. This hard facade was softened somewhat by the fact that she was a bit unbalanced. By this, I mean that she was as crazy as a bedbug. She was often seen talking to nonexistent people, and she sometimes went off on strange tangents in her speech from which she returned only with great reluctance. If someone said something to her that was too complex for her limited ken, she would freeze in place with a peculiar expression on her face, sometimes for a minute or two at a time.
One day, my friend Kirk Steele and I were in one of the study rooms of the library. I was reading something, I don't recall what, and Kirk was eating popcorn out of a small vending machine bag. Molly walked in, saw the popcorn, and informed Kirk, "There's no eating in here."
Kirk said, "I'm not eating." and continued to crunch.
Molly put on her very best cross expression and repeated her warning.
Kirk, with a "Who, me?" expression on his face, said again, "I'm not eating, Molly!"
Molly blinked. Then she blinked again. She cleaned her half-glasses with a fold of her blouse, put them back on, and blinked again.
"Kirk, I can see you eating. You're eating popcorn. You can't eat in here!"
Kirk sat up very straight. He looked right into Molly's eyes as I sat there chuckling.
"Molly. I am not eating. I am not eating. Do you see? NOT EATING!"
He then picked up a large kernel of popcorn, took careful aim, and bounced it off Molly's forehead, *THORK*, right between her eyes.
Her eyes crossed. Her mouth opened wide. She tried to speak, but words failed her. She blinked again, spun precisely five hundred forty degrees in place, and walked briskly away, muttering. Kirk laughed so hard he spilled the rest of the popcorn, while I fell over backward in my chair.
Molly never spoke of the incident again.
Pistachio stats: One 1.5oz bag this morning.
Oct. 12th, 2004 @ 12:38 pm
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
kd4dcy's journal