Thought on Hallowe'en

Not one trick-or-treater! And I went out there in my ninja outfi.... um, I have this feeling that the whole darn neighborhood is quiet! Don't ask me how I know... I just... sense it.

Thought on 10/31/06

So.... I'd never seen "The Evil Dead" until last night... and I've been sitting here for roughly six minutes trying to figure out what to say about that first scene... with the vines... yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Wow. Eeee.

Thought on 10/30/06

Our pumpkins survived their first night on the porch! Way to go little guys!

Thought on 10/28/06

Pardon me, I've been completing secret birthday projects. They're so fun, I might have to post part of them here after the 4th.

10/26/06

Edit: Another squirrel attack! Actually I think it was a chipmunk this time. What the heck!


________________________
Although I don't want to be political on here, and I only get uncomfortable when I *think* too long about politics, today will be an exception. Please hit "next blog" up top if, like me, you mind.

Bill Maher simplifies it for us:

"Bush decides that he can detain someone *forever.*
Bush decides what is cruel and unusual punishment.
Bush decides who violated the Geneva Convention and who didn't."

Every day it feels more and more preposterous and friggin scary to maintain a US citizenship.

And if you think that's crazy: Reagan's brain alive in.... who's body? Listen.

(I've got to get this in here, too:
"If you're someone from one of the think tanks that dreamed up the Iraq war, and predicted that we'd be greeted as liberators, and that we wouldn't need a lot of troops, and that iraqi oil would pay for the war, and the WMDs would be found, that the looting wasn't problematic, that the mission was accomplished, that the insurgency was in its last throes, that things would get better after the people voted, after the government was formed, after we got saddam, after we got his kids, after we got zarqawi, and that the whole bloody mess wouldn't turn into a civil war, you have to stop making predictions."

Emergency Clarification of Thought Process 10/25/06

Pot pies are not permitted to attempt to post their own thoughts on this pubiary. Thank you.

Thought on 10/25/06

If staying up until 330am always racks me with guilt and makes me super-productive the next day, maybe I should do it more often.

I'd miss the warm bed though.

Correspondence 10/24: milk carton photo

Dearest Sal,

I’m making little adjustments. Our heat here is radiant; hot water pipes run around our apartment and do *not* circulate air... it’s gotten a little humid and foody in here. The window’s open. A candle’s burning due to my belief that it will help dry out the air a little. This belief may be one of myth.
I bought pot pies at the grocery yesterday. They didn’t have any face paint left, or at least I couldn’t find it, so I’m not sure how I’m going to turn my face into a skull for the “Night of the Day of the Dead 5k” that I’ll be running soon. Of course there’s also the problem of the ever-thickening beard. And the question of how much clothing I’ll be forced to wear (and whether that will cover most of the face anyway).
But that might be the most appropriate way to move my legs on that day anyway. Face given to the spirit (and spirits) of the day, concealed by a need for warmth and the ability to breathe. After all, the only skull I’ve got to trace, at this point, is the one I found you using in a picture a few years ago. You were a little closer to the border than I’ll be. A little less threatened by cold fronts and snow.
Anyway the little tweaks are ocurring. Slate’s got to leave for work even earlier this week, so I spent the middle part of the day integrating tiny pieces of the news into my dreams on the couch. I was on a ship, somehow stumbled into the captain’s quarters. One room bright and almost pastel, then, without a doorway, moving into the other room changed it all to night, dark wood, cigar-type feel. I felt obvious and in danger, as if getting caught would mean a lack of understanding on the cather’s part. But no monsters.
Which is to say that whole quiet thing - I’m led to believe - is working. I feel so in between worlds now. Sometimes good ways, sometimes not. My posture is still not the best; I haven’t really started sitting with my little Buddha yet. But I think my ears are growing back. I’m loving people I don’t know (not all of them, certainly. Certainly. But I see sweetness there). I carved a pumpkin and now he sits here on the desk, looking out the window with me. In his case, tradition feels like simplicity. Carving him and separating seeds and baking them and throwing goup in the trash doesn’t sound all that simple (why not let him sit full of his goup and fully round?), but it feels that way. Having these things be important to me. Does that mean letting someone else decide what’s important to me? Or seeing an educator in anyone who’s lived a day?
I’ve convinced Po, my Thursday Night Literature Forum buddy who I do wish you could’ve met for real, to acquire access to the means to chat with me online (this is the Antarctic scientist of fun). Before you know it, I’ll be staying up ‘til four in the morning, uncovering the secrets of our entire experiences contained in the open space in that pumpkin or the dishes which I still have so many of to wash. Or I may just uncover the fact that Carlo now makes me very, very sleepy.
But I’ll still be up. There’s something that bleeds out through the water pipes that late. It sings for supper and a place on these pages, missing, as I do, your vicious concern for its well-being and personal growth.

As ever,

T

Thought on 10/24/06

Today while "chatting" with Slate I used the term 'lol.' At some point a few days ago, I said "did you read my blog?" without even thinking about it.

From now on, I'll be referring to this website as what it is. My public diary. Pubiary? Dialic? Maybe just diary.

Thought on 10/23/06

Is it bad when your knees turn purple after being outside for fifteen minutes?

Thought on 10/22/06 postfact

Remember how the world would've imploded if Marty McFly changed anything in the future or the past in the Back to the Future flics? The whole paradox thing. Well, dear reader, today I bring you our own little spooky paradox, not based on time travel, but instead a much simpler, more elegant paradox...

One of these pumpkins was carved by yours truly. One, by Slate.

Of course, we know that I have dedicated much of my life and a fair amount of my spare time to words (and yes, at times, even the looks of them), and that Slate is a fan of a certain company's cartoons and cute things in general. But wait! Dun-Duhhh! What about the fact that I have chosen to remain unemployed for several months while Slate, alternatively, has put quite a bit more effort into her work, using her Master's degree to aquire a 9-hour-a-day job (working mostly with government, nonetheless)? In my personal experience, one of these pumpkins certainly took more effort than the other. Ah, dear reader, if the world implodes when you read this, at least I'll have about two pounds of pumpkin seeds to eat on the way out.

Thought on 10/22/06

Thoughts will be recorded locally until comcast's craptastic service gets back up to it's prior subpar levels.

Thought on 10/21/06

Certainly, Timothy requires one day in ten of total laying-around blobness. (Being Richie is hard work!)

Thought on 10/20/06

From A.R. Ammons' "Strip:"

if your forms aren't full of love it
doesn't matter what they're full of:

I do the best I can and god, I suspect,
does the same: his plans allow for

the emergence of the unexpected and
attempt amends for the consequences:

I am in this way made in his image:

_______________


For more on today, please visit W.S. Merwin at your local library.

Thought on 10/19/06

How excited am I about this: NightoftheDay!

Autumn in Ann Arbor (ehem, "Tree Town")

What, you think a few pretty leaves is what we get for living in tree town? Blarg!

This is six days ago.









And this? today.

Correspondence 10/18/06: a haunting and Hallow's coming

Hey Sal,

Can’t sleep... I’ve been a bit under the weather (can I go a letter without mentioning it? doubtful) lately and ended up sleeping all day... meaning, of course, that I will most likely relive once again the Stevenson 318 cycle: awake until 5:30 or 6:00, asleep until noon or 1:00, unable to sleep again tomorrow night. Of course I’m missing that good Old español with prof. Palmer at whatever ungodly hour the Presbyterians think education begins.
Anyway here I am, 3 am, noticing there’s just a hint of red light outside. Surely some extra from downtown and not the sun. We’re still in our cozy little daylight savings bubble and it’s disappearing way before cute little Katherine downstairs is put to her bed. Still, I’ve never noticed that extra light, and *that* extra light has brought my eyes over to the neighborly lights shining through our windbreak of a stand of trees... living in an apartment and on a busy road, we haven’t really thought to walk over and introduce ourselves, but it’s nice to know someone else is up; it’s our one note of morse code. “Present.” Or, maybe just “yes.”
Every once in awhile, I hear Slate rustling the sheets back in the bedroom. That’s another ‘present’ that’s good to hear. No doubt she’s reclaiming my side of the bed. No doubt come 4 or 5 my guilt of leaving her alone on this chilly October night will get the best of me and I’ll be balancing on no more than eight inches of mattress. I know that, despite my knack for exclusively long-term relationships, we both thought I’d be the one settling down at 50 or 70. In fact, you specifically told me not to date your sister once, because I was meant to be the one who swooped in from Burma with little notice, bringing tea and scarves to the adults and paintings of strange animals to her children, before lifting off again to another unimaginable place.
I think when this letter finally reaches you it will be in Argentina. Not sure if you still have any responsibility or life in Vegas or not; my instinct tells me that that little vacation you were going to take ended up being something of a soul/heritage search.
So we’re both now in the second half of our twenties... and it seems all things are turned upside down. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. I was always driving around the state visiting you and my crazy friends like you, yes, but it was always with the intention of locking myself in a room with you, pouring the Carlo like water, getting down to the business of ‘deep’ conversation and thought. You wanted to show me Rusty’s, you wanted to see McGaw and whatever coffee shop I was attached to at the moment.
Of course this cursed mind always works faster than my fingers will type (particularly as they now must be so careful with the deep impressions the Galaxie 12 makes in paper) so I’ve thought ahead to where this letter goes after I expose the early obviousness of our respective positions. Some of the possible ideas and topics got rather personal. They’ll stay where they are, for now - elephants trained gradually, first with chain bolted to deep pole, later with a simple length of string tied to a stick a few inches down in the earth - but we do have an important decision to make regarding their conversational merits. I’d rather not lead those elephants through the Alps; I learned my lesson the first eight or so times (he says, with a smile of bittersweet remembrance that in no way implies grudge or resentment). But if the weather’s clear and the land is flat, we could take a nice ride down the river, pointing out the flora and fauna to each other as we go.
I’m not sure it’s necessary. But the Officially Declared Starting-Off Point would be a nice agreement to come to. After all, someday you’ll swoop in from Argentina, strange poetry in hand, and I’ll have to know what color bath towel to hang in the guest room for you.

I apologize for the long aside, and for the continuing of this note. But may this blessed continuance serve to protect us from a trailing awkward silence as well as proof that this letter actually did have a purpose before I started knocking so much dust off these keys.
Me. Settling down. (Of course not fully true or in fruition or whathaveyou yet because I actually *do* now plan on reattending an institution of expensive education) Today I found an instance where the idea of Halloween and all of our little traditions around it gave me the same quiet awe that Christmas does. Christmas, I think, has always been the only holiday I take seriously. Maybe it’s all these years of receiving gifts. And that it was the only night in the year (Christmas Eve, that is) we’d have a fire in the fireplace. And Dad would read T’was the Night Before Christmas. The family for dinner; all the things Christmas would be in a very generalized book about American life. But this thing with Halloween, and just that so many of us for absolutely no apparent pressing reason at all adhere to these nonsensical traditions - scooping pumpkin glop out and replacing it with a candle, ritual begging, costume, encouraging tooth decay among young children - I realize there *must* be some bigger reason we’re still willing to do it. Because we do still feel connected to the harvest (of sugar and corn syrup)? Because it is still a good idea to designate a night on which all of our demons (internal or not) get their chance to visit the playground? Yes. Light on, yes.
We’re going to our party this year as Margot and Richie Tenenbaum, but now I think I’m glad that party’s not on Halloween. I’m also going to need a chance to let the Trickster in and use this vessel to move about in the night. Maybe he just wants to hide and watch. But maybe he wants to restore some of the respect he’s lost in this age of electric lighting and modern science with some good old fashioned trickery.
Welcome, Trickster.

As ever,

T

Thought on 10/17/06

It's so good to be spoiled.

Correspondence 10/16/06: slow current

So Friend,

Here we are again. I don’t have much time: Slate will be home in a little more than an hour and the chain of Monday events will roll into place: couchtime, dinnertime, triviatime. But I wanted to let you know that there’s a little scratchy monster in the back of my throat, and while I’m fairly sure it’s leftover allergy blahs, we can hope it’s all this cold weather kicking me in my pants for the unrequited love I’ve slobbed all over it.

The itching’s also doing funny things to my day. I still don’t know where they’re going so fast, but I’m spending part of the moments I’ve got convincing myself that Milwaukee’s where it’s at. No, no, no, after all the grudging yielding to Slate’s and my burning desire for a dog, I’m not giving up this apartment that easily. A porch in Milwaukee? Hm. But I’m inching my way back to school. Likely, another distance relationship to add to my narrative.

Today I had conversational occasion to count the years I’ve been clutching onto this bachelor’s degree like a tabletop in the sea. It’s not much in terms of protection and it’s certainly not providing me with nourishment. (Needless to say, I actually did *not* count the years, and I still won’t. We don’t want to risk the little emotional downpour that might happen, do we? Not on trivia night. Not here in front of this nice window, storm panes pulled shut now.) It’s been several. Almost many. I think I’ve done the whole life experience thing.

But you’re very right - I do wonder if it’s just the protection of a schoolbook’s womb I want. Do I care about the education? In the very same conversation today, I discounted much of what I learned back there in the middle of the largest Amish community this side of the country. It was a great time. I’d never be the same without it. All the obvious statements. But I don’t remember what makes past participle different from past tense or even amo amas amat. I remember a lot of deciding what an author was trying to say. Is Seymour Jesus? Sure. Is he also a representation of JFK, Muhammed Ali, Everyman, and the problem of woman in the 1940s? Sure. There aren’t any answers. (Is that what I learned? If so, and if it was purposeful, it’s sure strange that school would be structured in a way to make you think you didn’t need school to learn that one particular lesson. I realize this is all English major specific stumbling- and mildly heart-guided English major stumbling at that... bear with me)

Honestly, I *do* value learning that there aren’t any answers. It’s essentially the only truth. (Aside: if I’d been a philosophy major, would I have learned that there are no answers *and* how to disguise the fact? And a psych major the same thing and how to deal with it? The thought that the English major gets plopped down in this barren wintry flatland and left alone without his knife and without his match makes me smile. Not because I think it’s noble like that little metaphor hints at, but because, I think, he was asking for it. You and me looked into the pool, saw that there was no water, and jumped anyway. Because surely a pool is a pool, water or not, and no hole exists without deeper meaning.) We’re just expert drifters, I think. That’s where the stand-alone knowledge of all things’ transparent nature gets us.

Let’s see where this year’s going to take us. Because my year is starting very soon. New Year’s really needs to be much more of a mobile feast. I’m predicting November 20th this year. But we’ll have to see what the moon does.

My new tea is very nice. I should send you a little, and we’ll have tea together next time.

As ever,

T

Thought on 10/16/06

I have just determined the price to charge for the little tv I was going to simply give away: one box of little debbie treats.

I think I should write a letter today... for some reason it seems like that would be much easier if I could get my feet warm.

Thought on 10/15/06

I had my very first flying dream last night!

Thought on 10/14/06

I had no nightmares last night after watching Friday the Thirteenth VIII: Jason takes Manhatten.

Thought on 10/13/06

Wow. It is cold. Wow.

Edit: we got heat!

correspondence 10/12/06: snow!

Dear, Dear Friend,

Knowing my tendencies toward extended absences followed by extensive - exhaustive, probably - communiqués, you should understand how concerned I was about having *anything* at all to write about this soon after that last edition I sent you. This is your chance to quietly halt the proceedings and pretend you haven’t opened this letter yet; I’ve found plenty to write about this morning.

The drops of condensation are running in pairs down my front window now, so if I look through their streaks, or up to the top of the window, I’ve got a fair view of the snow stubbornly hanging on to our three tall pines. Snow. It’s not halfway through October and for a brief moment this morning it was blustering down for keeps. The sun’s back now, and it’s quickly sweeping up the dust, but snow!
And I know I’ll end up talking this to death. At least, maybe, come with me into November. Through Thanksgiving. Then, when I’ve got to wear four layers for my daily run, we can talk about my lunacy. Today I’ve got something important to admit.
I can’t get by the fact that I’ve come back to my home, and that my home is a frontier. Last year I realized I was a midwest boy, that I love having no a/c in my car, winter, girls bundled up in coats and boots, getting to March and thinking about how many crappy days I survived. This year I’m realizing what that means. That ‘midwest’ word.
I can’t stop thinking about why we here in Michigan and Ohio have gotten to keep that moniker. There’s that whole “aren’t all those square states west of the middle the midwest?” thing, but maybe no. These places, in what really should be thought of as the north, have kept their harshness. Their wild. Ohio was one big stretch of forest. (Michigan still is) Now we have much nicer cabins, but we still retreat for them every year at this time. Wild. Not all the time, and not lacking-electricity- or toilet-wild, but their bottom line of grave necessity for the company of others. And also long stretches of slowing-down, internal quiet. New England has winter too. I think of rocks and the sea and crabs and Boston-type things. Red. All those snowy mountains out west are light blue and fresh and yup. The midwest means dark grey, street slush, people who own snowmobiles as a viable means of transportation. Chin stubble.
And we’re all suffering through and damn do I become a blob when the sun hasn’t been out for six weeks. But there’s some deep animal recognition of that whole decay thing I was talking about, and it must give itself away by pheromones (seeing as how mosquitos can figure out who’s more or less stressed out and make their meal accordingly, I don’t see why there can’t be a specific winter-stress pheromone, too) because I think it’s the most communal time of year.
That’s why I love everyone all bundled up. It’s nudity of a different type: “here I am. I need this many clothes to stay alive today.” (Of course, I suspect there’s also something of an extension of the whole idea of lingerie - hey, the more clothes you’re wearing the more there is to take off, and the better the surprise will be when I get there! sort of thing, but let’s just keep this in general terms, okay?) We all get a swift kick come (apparently) mid-October and have no choice but to admit our remaining animal nature: we *do* have bodies, they’re *not* just decorative, I *won’t* be able to get a job, make friends, spend money, enjoy Carlo Rossi if I allow mine to become much less than 98.6 degrees.
The snow’s gone now, just an eyelid lifted at the still-dark morning, assuring itself that it’s day is coming soon and all is as expected, then closed again. For now. But the wind chill is 29 degrees and the bicyclists passing by today are wearing puffy winter coats. The mail was slow in coming. It’s getting quiet and yellow. And there’s more on the way this evening.

As ever,

T

Status 10/12/06

It snowed this morning. More on that later.

40 degrees. Wind chill? 29.

I have a curious bump on my tibia.

Dishes left to wash? 28.

Furnace on? Not sure.

Number of squirrels expected to run at my legs on 1-mile run today: zero.

Thought on 10/11/06

Today, on my run, I had to jump over a squirrel. It wasn't road kill, it wasn't asleep. It saw me coming, and ran a few feet off the road. Then, it turned. It looked at me. And, I suppose, it decided that I wasn't that big after all. It fricking dove at my leg!

Toothpaste for dinner, this is your next cartoon.

Thought today

Dear Friend,

In the future these generalized correspondences will be hand-typed out on my beautiful blue Smith Corona Galaxie Twelve. She does not have a name yet, but I suppose that's because I haven't taken her on too many dates. She can get a little excited when we start talking, and before we know it we're causing quite a ruckus. (Truth be told, she's a bit heavy, too...)
Anyway today I do it electronically. I'm making dinner arrangements that were meant to be made days ago and playing, of all things, an album of moody Christmas music. Perhaps I look too far ahead to the looming difference between here and that place I came here from (namely, the happening of winter, winter weather, winter clothing, winter runny noses, etc.), but to be honest, it's the place where nearly all of my hope resides. As my "four to six months" of rest are nearly passed, and income as a consideration toward my well-being slowly accumulates on my beard, we'll soon find out whether that Hope has a cozy fire built near the couch, or if it ends up freezing its poor (ha), skinny ass off on the uncluttered porch.
But at least there's another 405 grams of tea in the back of some USPS semi-trailer heading west from Connecticut toward Jackson Ave., so I'll be sure to have a good half hour, rich or poor, fed or not, every morning (jasmine oolong, chun mee green, and a sample each of sencha and lotus, Not that briefly-named 'tea' that ann arbor is better known for).
And what happened during those four to six months. Well. I'm figuring that out. (Thus, the letter.) All that time of ickiness, I think, makes me now wonder if I've lost the things I was before the ickiness. I don't feel as forgiving, most of the time, now. Or perhaps just as passive. Or quiet. Definitely quiet. That may be why so much of the rest period went by with so little writing getting done... I'm having to reassure myself that sitting is valid. I'm scared that everyone will let me down. It would do me some good to stop listening to the news every morning.
I'm seeing details and feeling informed but missing texture and not feeling those little miracles of decay and rebirth.
Yesterday, though, I sent the fall leaves Erin asked for off to the Antarctic ice. And realized the ones lined up along the curbs are, for their trust in decay as investment in creative potential, all individual romantics. All in love with that whole dust to dust thing.
Alright, a bit sap. But no deleting. The Galaxie Twelve will not have it, nor will I. (And besides, it works for me, and who did you think this letter was for, anyway? I don't think it'd be healthy for me to enable any more of your whimsical illusions: they haven't named any flowers after me yet, but I do spend an awful lot of my spare time concerned with the reflection - just not the eyebrow-plucking one) First thought, best thought. Ah! I think it's official; I've forgotten the three rules (out of twenty-six, I think)I used to have emblazoned in my writer's brain from Kerouac's list. I'm no longer a Beat! Well, beat lover. BLeat no more! I'm pretty sure that started in Kentucky and is *not* a result of losing my mind on sadness in Inty and NC... the sensuality revolution of listening to the smallest of accents envelope itself in personal history. And Ammons, yes indeed. Small poetry. No need to overwhelm, just softly lay that feather down in the pond and let us all marvel at whether it's actually touching the water at all or floating above it.
Small poetry. Long ass letters. I'm going to go on feeling comfortable doing so with the reasoning that, it's a letter, we're just talking, no need to create some grand scheme by which to tell the tale of my Tuesday, but you and the other part of me can both secretly suspect that really it's about not creating a grand scheme by which to hope you get the point while simultaneously *not* getting that thing we just talked about: that young boy falling into the river. You'll be right.
Perhaps that's next letter's topic; besides the jug or two of Independent Study Carlo Rossi I spent on the idea, I've yet to just let go on the whole writing-as-excrement deal. Maybe because the only conclusion I can come to is to stop writing. Maybe not. Don't worry, I'll keep it in terms that are dinner-appropriate. Mostly.

Dinner tonight with Slate's mom. Oh, to be that smooth-talking track star again.

Stay warm,

T

Thought on 10/10/06

That's what happens when you start getting me up before 10 am.

Thought on 10/8/08

Yes, I know what year it is.

Thought on 10/7/07

Tim's advice for picking out a couch: your significant other should take up no more than one third of any couch you consider. (Please see image for optimal couch fit)

Thought on 10/6/06

Is it illegal to send dormant plantlife to antarctica via post?

Thought on 10/5/06

Two miles is SO much easier to run than three! Now, is that 33% easier... or 66... or do we have to take into account the lactic acid buildup as increasingly difficult and thus, each mile is more difficult by the power of a number dependent on my cardiac fitness, muscle length, lung size, wind resistance, and caloric intake from the previous day? Then there's the fact that the third mile is almost always uphill...

Thought on 10/4/06

I can always count on home to bring about the much-needed Night of Eleven Sleeping Hours.

Thought on 10/3/06

Hi Mom and Dad!

Thought on 10/2/06

I hope I remember how to drive... and that my old Ohio home is okay with having me dawdling in its sleepy fields for a few days.

Thought for 10/1/06

Michiganders sure do love their Quaker quick oats on Sunday! Sheeeeeeeeiiiiiit!