remedial exercise

when in doubt, ask a teacher. i have a close friend who teaches advanced placement u.s. history and a.p. economics to high school seniors. when i confided to her that i was distressed at having writers block for over a month, she did what any good teacher would do. she gave me a homework assignment.

my problems with writing this blog seem to be a symptom of the constant anxiety i have always been prone to. i worry about how much i worry. i sometimes lay awake at night wondering if i am worrying enough.

sometimes, though, life gives me something concrete to worry about. i try not to be superstitious, but i really could do without the month of april. i wrote in my last post about how creepy things seem to happen in this month. a few days after writing this, something horrible DID happen to someone close to me. close enough that there was no way i could not be deeply affected. as to what this was, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to write about it in detail, at least not at this time. as of this writing, pieces are being picked up, damage repaired.

hopefully, with the passage of time, this event will move from being "the worst thing that ever happened" to being just another thing that happened. life does go on, but i spent a couple of weeks or so being stressed enough that the concept of writing my blog seemed trivial to the point of being ridiculous.

the real hard part for me is that i would like to think of myself as a writer. i can't do that if i am not writing.

when i told the teacher about my problem, she told me in so many words to dismiss all of the psychological reasons for writers block. just write for, say, two hours a day, about anything, absolutely anything. as she pointed out, my day job is to cook food at a restaurant. if i suffered from "cooks block", i would soon be unemployed. think of writing as my second job, and i will find the time and energy to get it done.

this teacher has an exercise she sometimes gives her students. they will be given a question, one example she cites is "to what extent (twe) was woodrow wilson an effective president of the progressive era?". the students are then given eight minutes to write on the subject. they must write steadily for the entire eight minutes without pausing to reflect or ask questions. the exercise is almost physical in nature, as the students may not stop moving their pens. they can write about anything relating to the topic, they can make personal observations, raise more questions for discussion, probably even confess total ignorance of the given topic, as long as they write about it for eight minutes.

after the eight minutes are up, then the students can re read, re write, do research, etc. the exercise seems to be almost more about the skills of thinking quickly and getting thoughts in writing quickly than it is about knowing early twentieth century american history.

so here is the question i was given. just for fun, i am going to try typing my answer in only eight minutes. i haven't decided if i will correct spelling errors. here goes:

" to what extent is the phrase "keep austin weird" lame and pretentious?"

i live in austin, texas. about 4 years ago, this expression began appearing seemingly everywhere on bumperstickers, signs, and t-shirts, said t-shirts usually being worn by tourists. this town has it's share of eccentrics, but weird? this is a university town known for having an educated populace and for being tolerant of different lifestyles and points of view, at least compared to the rest of the state. that's weird to someone? did "keep austin iconoclastic" have too many syllables? i have a new expression for you: keep austin safe - from whatever advertising/ marketing dipshit thought up "keep austin weird".

i am a little embarrassed that it actually took me all eight minutes to come up with the preceding paragraph, but at least i'm writing again. thanks teacher.

spring angst

i am eating breakfast and listening to NPR right now. they just did a story about today being the ten year anniversary of the columbine massacre.

that means today also marks ten years since my dad passed away.

there was probably not any connection. dad had a tv in his hospital room but was probably to far gone with cancer to be aware of much of anything.

but it's funny how things can get connected in our minds. these two events happening on the same day marked the beginning of the end of my fascination with crime and violence. i suddenly made the connection of violence to real pain and suffering. i can't hear a horrible story anymore without thinking about the aftermath for the people involved.

i try not to be superstitious, but april has become kind of a creepy month for me. things i don't have time to write about now have happened in this month.

i'm going to work now. i'm going to pull out of this downer mood by cooking cajun food today. for whatever reason, i can't stay depressed while making gumbo or jambalaya. if you're not feeling good, i hope you find something that works for you. later

expletive deleted

walking through my neighborhood today, i saw a thirty something, clean cut yuppie type playing in a driveway with a small boy, presumably his son. the boy was very cute, curly haired, maybe three or four years old. the man was tossing a ball at the kid, who was trying to hit it with a toy tennis racket. as i passed, i heard the man say (in a pleasant tone, not yelling) "swing a little slower, when you swing with all your strength, you miss the motherf****r."

 i don't even have kids, and even i know that you don't drop major league cuss words in front of a small child without expecting to hear them again. children learn by imitating the grownups in their worlds. 

the next time that man hears this oedipal swear word, it will be from that child. trust me, his parents will be mortified.

i kind of wish i could be a fly on the wall and see it happen.

believe me, i am not uptight about profanity. i love hearing offensive language used creatively and in proper context. the problem i have with using bad words casually is that they lose all impact. if i am upset enough to curse out loud, i want it to get someone's attention. if i am going to go on a tirade, i want it to be very distinct from everyday conversation.

if that child's parents aren't careful, that kid will grow up with a really bad attitude and end up working in food service.

actual exchange i overheard at work two saturdays ago between line cook danny and waiter jimmy:

danny: "dude, you got over hard eggs because you sent the ticket in over hard. if you want f***ing over easy eggs, than f***ing ring them up over easy."

jimmy (shouting) : "stop swearing at me, c***sucker, and get me those g***amn eggs!"

it's great fun to work in a place where the level of discourse could not get much lower.

silent underbelly

South by Southwest draws to a close tonight. despite a reported 10% drop in badge sales, the 24 hour cafe i cook for was as busy as any previous SXSW. i was busy cooking obscene amounts of carb heavy foods tuesday through saturday. i can't complain though. i'm glad to be employed. i am  glad to have picked up a set of skills that can earn me a living.

not that i am some kind of master cook. i spend most of my days cooking bulk amounts of soup and various sauces. i make a first class pollenta (with herbs) and really good baked mac & cheese. i can say that most of the food i make seems to go away. someone is eating it. i also do a lot of purchasing of supplies, spending thousands of dollars of someone else's money every week without squandering to much.

 the skills i am actually referring to might have less to do with the finished product and more to do with such qualities as being able to stay on my feet for up to nine hours without complaining (too much), or being able to work at a hot stove all day without setting myself or the kitchen on fire. i spend all day wielding a ten inch piece of razor sharp steel (this is a literal description. if your knife won't fling hair off your arm, sharpen it!) without cutting myself more than two or three times a year.

it is also a matter of pride with me that i have called in sick twice in sixteen years. i was given a week off when my dad died. every other shift i have been absent for was covered in advance. i have an annoying habit of showing up and doing my job to the best of my abilities.

i am not some kind of iron jawed super cook. i am driven as much by insecurity as anything else. for a variety of headache inducing reasons, i still feel like i am proving myself almost every day i work. i would be devastated if anyone ever accused me of being a slacker, or of not pulling my weight.

once i get over being devastated, though, god help anyone saying that about me.

**********

i am currently reading a book called You Can't Win by a man named jack black-not to be confused with the comedic actor. this book was written in 1926.- the book is blacks criminal autobiography, detailing his progression from youthful tramp to sneak thief to house burglar to safe cracker, and on through hard jail time before reforming himself in middle age.

this book was a childhood favorite of william s. burroughs, who was fascinated by this unveiling of the late nineteenth century american criminal underbelly. the book is overflowing with detailed descriptions of thieves and fences, pimps and prostitutes, corrupt cops and shyster lawyers, opium smokers and morphine addicts. burroughs freely admitted to appropriating characters and even whole passages from this book for one of his last novels, The Place of Dead Roads.

early in the book, the author leaves kansas city sometime around 1889 and takes to the road. he falls in with a group of kindly tramps who give him pointers on how to ride the rails and the various scams he can pull to get food and money. one of these involves handing a stranger a card with words to the effect of " hello. i am deaf and mute. i have had all my money stole. i need money for train fare to Great Falls, Mont. i have not ate for days."

black asks a tramp what he would do if he ran into an actual deaf person who exposed him as a fake. the tramps reply: "why, i would do what anyone does when they're caught doing something wrong. i'd cuss the hell out of him."

********

South by Southwest kicked in on tuesday. my shift was long and left me exhausted and somewhat irritable. i was riding the bus home and listening to my ipod when a man and woman boarded. from where i was at the back of the bus, i could see that they were both dressed a little odd, sort of like gypsies with lots of scarves and bandanas. they stood out also because they were both somewhat large- i'm 6'2 and weigh around 230 pounds. they were both, the woman included, about my size. they sat across the aisle from me.

the woman leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. i looked up and slid my headphones off. she shoved a laminated piece of notebook paper in my hand. in magic marker it read "i am a deaf person and i am hungry..." i handed it back and shook my head.

i feel like i have to defend myself here. first, the only cash on me was a twenty, and i needed it. after almost two decades in austin, i have seen plenty of panhandlers. these people just didn't fit the profile. their clothes, odd as they may have been, were clean. these people did not smell bad. i mentioned their size. sorry, but these folks weren't missing any meals. more significant to me, i ride the same bus twice a day five days a week. i had never seen these people before ( and i didn't see them the rest of the week). i believe they were drifting through. were they really deaf? i don't know. if they were, i feel sorry that they have to deal with this, but i still didn't have any money for them. and most deaf people learn to get by without accosting strangers on the bus.

the bus stopped at an upscale shopping center built around a Central Market grocery store.

the man and woman rose to get off, the woman first. as they were moving down the aisle, the man kept turning around and glaring at me. i stared straight ahead and tried to ignore him.

the bus driver decided to keep the bus stopped for a couple of minutes to keep from getting ahead of schedule. the man walked around to my window. he pointed at me, then made the "whatchew got man?" gangbanger gesture of slapping his chest with both hands and then spreading his arms wide. he repeated this, then stepped back and mimicked shooting me with a pistol. not every work day ends with a death threat.

i did not ask for this. i probably should have just ignored him, but.....

as it was, all i could think to do was to meet his i-kill-you glare and give him by biggest, goofiest, "aww shucks" grin. this seemed to confuse him. as the bus finally drove away, i shook my head laughing and turned away. i glanced up and saw him as a diminishing figure standing by the curb, still shooting at the bus.

i could wish all kinds of horrible fates upon this man, fantasize about how i should have stood up to him, kicked his ass. but the sad truth is that, deaf or not, he has let himself get to such a bad place that punishing him couldn't change anything. in a weird way, i found myself hoping that he and his lady friend got what they wanted without any more ugliness.

 

the next day, i told this story at work. my sarcastic friend doug said that it sounded like i was a victim of a mime drive-by.

slings and arrows

this post brings me back in to the real world for a little while. the last four posts have been chapters of a science fiction story about a dystopian, near future austin. the story deals with the nature of reality and perception. since i am also trying to have a little fun writing this, you can be guaranteed that future installments will touch on my favorite subjects : drugs, guns zombies, religion, firearms, extraterrestrials, conspiracy theories, and mental hygiene. 

*********

speaking of drugs...

saturday morning brunch was in full swing at the cafe i work at. people were waiting 30+ minutes for a table. cooks are yelling, waiters are running, etc.. a phone call comes in for the manager. 

as related to me:

"this the manager?"

"yeah"

"i thought you might want to know, the guy who cleans your carpets? he's a drug addict. he's all strung out on drugs."

manager: "and you want me to .... ?"

"i just thought you would want to know."

manager: "well, we're kind of busy here dude. later."

there's a couple of problems with this. first, he is a carpet cleaner, not a commercial airline pilot. who cares what he does as long as the carpets are clean? second, of all places, you call a 24 hour diner in austin, tx expecting people to be shocked by substance abuse? you must be high.

if the manager had not been so busy, he would probably have asked the anonymous caller if he thought the guy might be holding.

******

one of the cooks i work with, lets call him jim, told me this story.

he had been off work and partying pretty hard for a couple of days. he was planning to spend a quiet friday night at home, trying not to be hungover and sick for the next mornings shift. suddenly, a large group of his friends showed up and insisted he get cleaned up and come with them. they had something fun planned.

he was a little shaky and kind of out of it, but he couldn't help but notice that his friends were dressed oddly. some of the guys were wearing cheap suits. one young lady was " decked out like that dole pineapple chick."

they drove to a racetrack a few miles outside of town, but it wasn't racing that was going on this friday night. it was lucha libre, masked mexican wrestling.

 evidently, a touring company of wrestlers had rented this old racetrack with it's decrepit wooden bleachers ( i saw Survival Research Laboratories there in '96 or '97) for a no holds barred extravaganza, masked heros and villains throwing each other from one end of the ring to the other in ritualized combat.

since lucha libre doesn't usually come to central texas, the event was packed. mexican families had travelled who knows how far to root for their favorites and hiss at the bad guys. "we were probably the only white people there."

they had arrived in two car loads. as jim stood in the gravel parking lot trying to get his bearings, two of his friends began pulling grocery sacks out of car trunks. everybody had to carry at least two bags. jim assumed that his friends had loaded up on beer and snacks.

when they finally found a spot large enough for all of them near the top of the bleachers, jim found out what the bags really contained: about a shelves worth of H.E.B. corn tortillas.

jim was told that it was lucha libre tradition to throw corn tortillas at villain wrestlers. to jim, this made as much sense as anything else. when the first match began, jim got in to the spirit of things and began tossing tortillas down the bleachers. it didn't occur to him until later that he and his friends seemed to be the only ones doing this.

at first people were laughing. then they were not laughing. then they were shouting.

things reached critical mass when jim decided to see how far he could hurl an entire package of corn tortillas. "i hit this old lady right in the face. she screamed, and everyone around her stood up."

before jim and his friends could get what they had coming to them, an armed security guard told them that they were about to start a riot and would now be leaving. now.

the only other thing jim really remembers from that night is hearing the words "pinche gringo" over and over.

jim is actually a very cool guy, but i fault him for accepting dubious instructions in a culturally unfamiliar environment. he may be proof that god does, indeed, watch out for fools and drunkards.

the story reminded me of a mentally unbalanced friend of mine from high school. his mother was a scientologist with a murky past as a "showgirl". she was also canadian. 

she liked me because her son was usually a complete jerk to her, whereas i had been raised to be respectful of my elders. she liked to tell me stories about her past because, unlike her son, i would listen politely.

to hear her tell it, her and her first husband had been some kind of hippy free spirits during the seventies. their favorite thing to do was to follow gordon lightfoot all over canada and the northeastern u.s., much like the deadheads that used to follow the grateful dead. they followed him on tour from town to town, seeing every show they possibly could.

to distinguish themselves from your everyday gordon lightfoot fans, they came up with a novel way of expressing their affection: they threw turquoise jewelry onstage. i asked, but she had no idea how they came up with this.

mr. lightfoot was the recipient of many airborne bracelets, rings, and necklaces, all with lovely polished blue stones until a fateful evening when a stage hand saw them in the act. during intermission, the manager of the club invited them backstage to meet the man himself.

this should have been the high point of their lives, instead an unsmiling gordon lightfoot asked them to please, please stop throwing things at him.

i can imagine canadas finest songsmith explaining patiently that it was hard enough to remember all the words to "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" without having to dodge stone jewelry, eh?

that's all for now. think twice before throwing things.

tesla waves chapter 4

seconds. everything on the bus happened in a space of about twenty seconds max.

later, i replayed the assault in my head and broke down my reactions as follows:

first, i became completely detached from the situation. i went in to absolute denial. i thought for an instant that maybe if i closed my eyes he would go away. i would open them again and he would be sitting calmly in his seat, not lumbering towards me screaming and flailing. maybe he would not be there at all. i seem to have already hallucinated twice today. maybe he was just part of an ongoing trend. maybe if i breathe deeply and concentrate, i can disbelieve him away.

that didn't work. he was real enough to give me a swollen left ear and turn both of my forearms in to one big contusion.

the denial part of my response-to-crisis lasted maybe a half second. the next half second was spent having a deep existential conversation with the universe-something along the lines of "why me? am i not a good person? did i screw up in a previous life?"

a half second later and the universe had yet to reply, but the part of my brain given to self preservation was saying a lot. i raised my arms in front of my face to take the first salvo of punches. the pain in my arms turned to numbness with amazing speed. then he wasn't punching anymore but instead was trying to pry apart my upraised arms, probably trying to get to my throat or my eyes. 

i was trapped in a bus seat designed for one small person, not two large guys. i got both of my feet off of the floor and up to the seat. i used my legs to launch me sideways into the seat behind mine. i ended up crumpled into a sort of fetal shape with my legs in the air and my head on the seat and in no better of a position to fight, but at least he is not right over me.

when a wave person goes mayhem, they lose all of their higher brain functions and become creatures of pure rage. they have the psychotic energy and overwhelming  desire to kill, but, fortunately for the rest of us, the effect does not increase their coordination or reaction time. the wave stands there, unable to comprehend how i could be in front of him one instant and gone the next. an attacker with just a little more awareness would simply slide over and continue his attack, but this is beyond him-for now. i need to get out of the seat and in to the aisle, where i will at least have a little more room to maneuver.

luck seems to be with me, as the driver is now on his feet shouting profanity laced threats. the still detached part of my brain hopes that he remembered to stop the bus. the more present part of my brain moves me in to the aisle. just as i have my feet under me and am beginning to stand, the wave whips around and throws a fist like a stone at my head, i duck, but my left ear takes the blow full on. i see stars....

and like that i go blank. if the stress of everyday life can send me in to a fugue state, just how long did i think i could fight without going blank?

that should have been the end. blanked out and helpless, the wave should have pounded my skull in or crushed my larynx or driven rib bones in to my heart and lungs.

but it wasn't my day (to die). when i blank, usually that's it. lights out. this was different. this episode had.... substance.

i was in a darkness that wasn't true darkness, but something more like an energy without room for light. there was a voice.

"what's shaking there, bobby?"

the darkness parts like frost being wiped from a car window. the mayhem wave is standing over me, screaming, but at the same time he is not there. he is at the other end of a long tunnel.

the voice again : "oh dear. can't have that now, can we?"

i wake up, not knowing if i have been out ten seconds or ten days. at the other end of the otherwise empty capmetro bus, the wave is clubbing the driver to the floor with one brutal punch after another. the driver has maybe two seconds before something irreversible happens to him. i stand there on rubber legs, trying to shake traces of the blank effect from my head. i know i should be saving the drivers life, but i don't know the how of this.  hear the rear door slide open behind me, and this almost makes me laugh. how drunk or stoned would someone have to be to board a bus not noticing a murder in progress?

"excuse me please." someone crowds past me in the narrow aisle and i register a glimpse of short blond hair and wire rimmed glasses and realize that it has to be the snotty college kid who had been studying me like a bug under a microscope.

the wave is standing with his legs parted slightly for balance. he doesn't notice the kid standing behind him until the kid launches a kick between mayhem boys' legs with such brutality that i swear it can be felt standing almost ten feet away. my hands move reflexively to cover my own privates.

any man not wearing a titanium jock strap would have been permanently disabled by a kick like that. the wave is still on his feet, though. before he can turn all the way around, the kid slides his right arm behind his neck and and curls his left arm in front of the neck. the kid is seriously outweighed by the wave, but using this choke hold he has the wave on his knees and then on the ground, out cold, maybe dead for all i can tell. u. t. must be offering courses in submission fighting 101.

college boy looks at the two limp bodies at his feet, not even bothering to check the drivers' pulse. he walks up to me and grabs my i.d badge hanging from my throat. he begins reading my name and vital information out loud, like he is relaying information to an unseen partner. i realize that his glasses probably double as a bluetooth.

i wonder if he is an undercover agent or just a teenage martial arts freak. he glares at me, and with a snarl in his voice, says:

" great. first anger, then violence. your damn lucky you only fought a defensive battle. they ought to send you back to the ..."

"let me guess" i interrupt "back to the chalkboard?"

he laughs. "you wish."

he sighs, his shoulders sag. he looks at the bodies.

"fulton, you have had a long day. get your sorry ass home before the cops get here."

to be continued.

tesla waves chapter 3

i don't want to think about chalkboards or anything else. i have a borderline migraine and the mounting sense of space and time dislocation that usually comes shortly before my going blank for an hour or two. i don't need the damn bus driver testing my mental health.

"excuse me?" i say to the driver. he doesn't say anything in reply and just looks straight ahead, making me believe that i may have only imagined that he spoke to me.

my wave badge serves as a bus pass, entitling me to yet another free ride. i board the bus and find a seat as far to the rear as possible. most of the other passengers appear to be u.t. students heading to evening classes.

some of these college kids notice my badge and are sneaking glances at me as i sit down. one guy, cant be more than nineteen or twenty, is staring at me through wire rimmed glasses while typing on his blackberry.

probably a psyche major, taking field notes on me like a zoologist in a rain forest.

i would like to tell him that it is always, always, rude to stare, that i hope i wouldn't behave like him if our positions were reversed.

but i can't work up any real anger towards him because right now i am too worried about going blank. fortunately, i have just enough presence of mind to remember the meditation techniques they taught me in the hospital after i was diagnosed. i start counting my breaths while concentrating on the back of the seat in front of me.

after a few minutes, my headache recedes. when i look up, reality is in it's rightful place. the bus has stopped at the far western edge of campus and the students are all gone. 

as the bus pulls back in to traffic, i hear a voice behind me.

"don't tell me."

i look. the voice belongs to a heavyset young man with a ragged beard and a mountain of dark curly hair covering his forehead almost to his eyes. what gets my attention mostly is that he has a wave badge safety pinned to his flannel shirt.

but he is not being friendly. he is not making polite conversation with a fellow wave person.

"don't tell me. don't tell me. don't.... tell... me..!"

he is yelling and squeezing his eyes shut, a line of spittle running down his chin. in a wave person, this can only mean one thing : mayhem effect. when his eyes open, he will become homicidal to the person closest to him.

his eyes open, and he sees me looking at him, only two seats away. he stands, and i realize how big he is just as he lunges toward me, fists swinging at my head.

to be continued