1986: You spin me around like a record.
1996: You spin me around like a CD-ROM.
2006: You burn me like a playlist.
2013: [content removed due to content violation]
2015: Your relationship will begin after this 30-second commercial.
2016: You spin me around like artisanal vinyl.
Feel free to fill in the gaps in the comments.
It wasn’t supposed to rain. At least I don’t think so. I really didn’t check as I was leaving the office because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. At least I don’t think so. I really didn’t look up. It was sunny and that’s enough, right? And I made it most of the way before it started. I was walking down the home stretch to home when the rain started. It was light but still wet, and the sun was still out, the kind of rain some people call “liquid sunshine”. Sick, twisted people who are desperate to find the bright side of everything. I know I’m not one to talk since I’m an incurable optimist myself. When a friend was hit by a car I said, “Well, on the bright side…” He punched me before I could finish the sentence which is okay because it was a Volkswagen Beetle that hit him, but that’s another story. The point is even the sunniest optimist has to draw the line somewhere and I draw the line at rain. And then it gets washed away, but I keep redrawing it.
So there I was walking home and a light rain started. It was light but still wet. And one of my neighbors was standing out in her front yard with her dog. She had a leash in one hand and an umbrella in the other. My neighbor, I mean. The dog had two pair and a king high in her hand and was obviously eager to get back to the game.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” my neighbor said.
“Yes,” I said, smiling, because I was too polite to say, “WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME? CAN’T YOU SEE I’M TRYING TO GET OUT OF THE RAIN?”
“Have you seen a rainbow?” she asked.
“No,” I said, smiling, because I was too polite to say, “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? CAN’T YOU SEE I’M GETTING SOAKED HERE?”
“There should be one around somewhere,” she said.
“Yes, keep looking out for it,” I said because I was too polite to say, “AS SOON AS I GET OUT OF THIS RAIN AND DRY OFF DEAL ME IN. I’M TALKING TO YOUR DOG.”
I kept going and got to my house. And there, in the backyard, was the rainbow. It was glorious. It was amazing. I even thought about going to get my neighbor, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
Source: Nashville News Channel 5, WTVF
Noshville on Division Street closed its doors at the end of 2015. Well, the restaurant has other locations, but the one on Division was its first and was the one I knew best because it was so close to where I worked. And I never thought to take a picture of it in its heyday when the Statue of Liberty stood tall atop its roof.
I still walk that way regularly, down the sunny side of the street, under where its awnings used to hang, usually on my way to JJ’s Coffee Shop. And there’s a bit of a tale: Noshville had been there since 1996. JJ’s has been there since 1974 and is still going strong in spite of a couple of major coffee chains moving in just a few blocks away. Noshville decamped to make way for developers who want to put up an apartment building but JJ’s is being the thorn in their foot. The owner of JJ’s has a lease through 2020 and, bless him, is defending his right to keep going at least that long in court. And so far has been successful.
I don’t mean to turn this into an ad for JJ’s but I like the coffee and the atmosphere of the place, and it also sells an eclectic mix of European chocolates and craft beers. It’s also the oldest ongoing establishment in an area that’s been in flux and is changing even now.
Anyway I happened to be walking down the other way—the shady side of the street, and I do mean shady, but that’s another story. I turned around and looked back and saw this:
It’s striking. It’s powerful. I have no clue what it says. It’s also huge. It also made me think about how much the building formerly occupied by Noshville looks like a submarine.
Graffiti is usually seen as a mark of a bad neighborhood, something that lowers the property value in an area, but the space where Noshville was has been sitting empty for more than nine months now. It’s hard to imagine the value getting any lower, but an artist has added something to the area. It’s fascinating and thought-provoking. Maybe it will even inspire conversation, at least among people walking down the shady side of the street.
Don’t ask me how I’m doing.
Having passed the two-year mark as a cancer survivor is something I should be happy about. And I am, but it’s complicated. I really celebrated the first year as the first of many milestones to come. At the time I still had things to overcome and I felt like I really hadn’t fully recovered my health, like I hadn’t completely bounced back. And I wasn’t sure I would fully recover. That was, oddly, something to celebrate. I felt there was a clear demarcation between me before cancer and me after cancer and that it was something I would deal with for the rest of my life.
It’s still something I’ll deal with for the rest of my life, but, in spite of all the changes, in spite of the fact that I have scars, both internal and external, in spite of having to wear bracelets with health information in case I’m left unconscious in an accident, in spite of still having a plastic bulb in my chest even though I no longer need to be pumped full of poison, in spite of taking a handful of medications twice a day-okay, not a literal handful or even a metaphorical handful really, but more than I ever took on a regular basis before-I still feel like the same person I was before. The before-cancer and after-cancer line is blurred, and I’m left wondering where to go from here. I’m left wondering where I will go from
here. During that first year, and even during the second, I went into every doctor visit with a sense of dread. What if the chemo didn’t work? What if it comes back?
I don’t think I’ll ever be entirely free of that feeling but at least it’s diminished. Before cancer I hadn’t seen my regular doctor in so long I couldn’t have picked him out in a lineup even if he were the only one wearing a white coat and maybe one of those head mirrors that you’d think should have a special name but, no, apparently it’s just called a “head mirror” which makes me wonder why stethoscopes aren’t called heart-listeny-tubes but that’s another story.
Before cancer I could joke about my health because I never got sick. The only reason I ever went into a hospital was to visit other people. It felt like cancer broke a winning streak. At the time that was strangely reassuring. I didn’t want cancer, or any disease, but as long as I never got sick there was always a dark cloud in the back of my mind that sooner or later the odds were going to catch up with me. When I was diagnosed I thought, well, I wish the odds could have caught up with me gradually instead of dumping a heap of tumor on me, but at least I can keep playing
even if I am losing a bunch of chips now. Why I put all of this in gambling
metaphors since I’ve never been in a casino in my life is a mystery. Besides I could always keep that cloud at the back of my mind with the reassurance that luck is an illusion, not something that builds up but has to be paid back eventually. Or to put it more succinctly, shit happens. So does cancer.
But as the two year mark got closer I started feeling I was on another winning streak, and this time that cloud was not only bigger but it was, and is, harder to push it to the back of my mind. Shortly after my diagnosis one doctor told me, “If you’re gonna get cancer this is the one to get.” Testicular cancer is in the easily treatable category, and, although my memory has been left a little fuzzy, I believe that same doctor was the one who told me I had a good chance of being cured. I’d never heard the word “cured” associated with cancer before. For a while I used it too but I won’t say it again. Saying I’m “cured” carries too much temptation to live as though nothing happened. And it feels unlucky.
This anniversary carries other, weirder, even more complicated feelings with it. I don’t want to go through cancer again but I do wish I could relive it and do it better. I survived so I must have done something right. Or did I? My wife took on too much responsibility, did too much that I should have done. If I could do it again I’d make decisions and be more conscious instead of just drifting through treatment.
There’s another feeling, one that doesn’t have a name. It’s not survivor’s guilt even though I know people who lost their fight with cancer. I have friends who didn’t make it. I know others who also survived, who laugh now about how easy their treatment was, that it was only a year or eighteen months. For me it was a just a little over three months. It’s not a competition, and it’s not one I’d want to win even if it were, and it wasn’t easy. I had health issues along the way. My white cell count crashed, leaving me vulnerable to infections which, luckily, I never got.
And yet I was able to keep going. Why was it so much easier for me than it was for others?
When I was first diagnosed, and for a long time afterward, I felt a connection to others who had or who’d fought cancer. It was reassuring. We were part of a club. As the experience recedes I feel less connected. I think maybe there was some mistake. Maybe I didn’t really have cancer, that I’m guilty of some weird fraud.
I also think about all the people who supported me: my wife, the doctors, and just friends and family who offered their sympathy and support. I feel unworthy of all that they did, and feeling anything but happy to be alive and healthy now feels like a betrayal.
My rounds of chemo came in threes: one week I would have five days in a row of treatment, then the next two weeks I’d just go in for a shot on Monday. Even though I say luck is an illusion three still feels like a lucky number to me. Two straight lines connected will leave one side open while three will form a triangle. The rule of three is one of the three secrets of all great comedy-the other is timing-and while two’s company three is a party. So even though I’m currently simmering in a complex stew of strange and even contradictory emotions there is hope.
Ask me how I’m doing a year from now.
Last week I shared a few pictures of a pottery piece I was working on, a fish bowl, and quite a few of you expressed an interest in seeing the finished product. You can skip to the bottom to see the result but in the meantime the project caused me to wax lyrical. So here’s a poem I composed to go along with it, but first here’s a reminder of the work in progress.
Ode On A Piscene Bowl*
What is beauty, and how is it defined?
And why do we see it everywhere we look, including the sky?
Surely it’s innate, not limited to those whose tastes are refined,
Since, as Shakespeare said, it’s in the beholder’s eye.
Is it really that simple? Take the Mona Lisa and her mysterious smile.
Her appeal has transcended ages
And prompted all sorts of wild speculations.
According to Freud, patron saint of psychiatric sages,
It’s her ample bosom that draws us in. B.F. Skinner, meanwhile,
Says we’re conditioned like rats to respond to her temptations.
Now I’m getting off the subject, but it’s difficult, as you can see.
If you try to take the Mona Lisa you’ll be arrested as soon as you touch it,
So instead just take my advice, which I promise you is free,
But you get what you pay for so don’t blame me if it breaks your budget.
Let’s get back to the issue of beauty now
And whether what it is can be answered simply.
Is beauty truth, truth beauty, and is it eternal or is it transitory?
And do we answer that question differently when we’re old than we do when young and pimply?
It’s an inescapable truth that what we once loved we might later disavow,
But that is another story.
*Apologies to John Keats, Ogden Nash, any other literati, glitterati, the Illuminati, and anyone stumped by this Gordian knotty
And here’s the finished product. It didn’t turn out quite like I’d hoped but that’s the way these things go.
That really is all of it. It seems like there should be more.
Public transportation etiquette is not written in stone. In fact it’s not written down anywhere as far as I know, although I don’t have any of Emily Post’s oeuvre handy at the moment. I do have some general rules I try to follow. For instance I believe people should board in the order of their arrival at the bus stop. When I got to the stop the other day there was an older woman already there so I was fully prepared to defer to her. We waited and then I could see the bus a couple of blocks away, behind a line of half a dozen cars.
The bus stop was at an intersection and the line of cars pulled up just as the light turned red, leaving them stuck there. And the bus was stuck too, about half a block away. I realize in city terms a “block” is not an absolute measure and the term has confused me ever since I was a kid and my parents would talk about “taking a walk around the block”. I had a bunch of wooden blocks with letters on them but they were so small it was easier to step over them than walk around one. And the size of blocks varies from city to city and even from block to block. In New York, for instance, a block may only be two or three hundred feet long on one side while in Boise a block extends twenty miles, but that’s another story.
Let’s just say the bus was within easy walking distance. And the etiquette in such a situation varies from driver to driver. Some prefer that the passengers-in-waiting get up and walk to the bus so when the light turns green they can go on without stopping. Others prefer that we wait to be picked up at the authorized bus stop. I usually defer to the former, but the woman at the stop next to me was remaining firmly seated.
And there’s the conundrum. If I walked down to the bus and was let on I’d be getting on ahead of her. And if I wasn’t let on I was going to look like a jackass. And either way the driver was going to have to stop and pick her up. So my only choice was to stay put, but I also sat there wondering, didn’t she know the etiquette? Most people in that situation walk down to the bus. If it’s hot or rainy or cold or even if it’s a really nice day it’s better to get on the bus sooner rather than later even if it means a bit of extra walking.
Then the light changed, the cars moved, the bus stopped in front of us, and the woman next to me picked up her cane. And it made sense why she wasn’t interested in taking walking even an extra half a block.
I just wish I’d gotten on the bus first. I don’t need Emily Post to tell me I should have let her take the seat closer to the front.
I looked at what had been scribbled on the back of this bus bench and my second thought was, I’ve really got to rein myself in. My first thought was, How intriguing. “Nails be ur trap.” Yes—obviously the artist meant coffin nails and that, paired with what looks like part of a readout from a cardiogram on the lower right make a comment nature of mortality. If I’d kept going I might have shoehorned the other tags into this grand masterpiece too but instead I stopped because I felt like I was turning into Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters. Except instead of seeing Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower in everything I was seeing art. I see a bunch of leaves fallen on a sidewalk and start thinking, well maybe someone put them there, arranged them in just that pattern as some kind of a statement, and only come out of this reverie when I walk into a lamppost, but that’s another story.
I would resist the impulse to tie all this together but I can’t so strap in: I’m diving into a bumpy train of mixed metaphors. This fits with a nagging thought that’s been in the back of my mind ever since I opted to take an art history class instead of wandering the halls for an hour each day. The whole idea of “art history” is based on a collective agreement between a bunch of people that we’re going to look at this artist but not that artist and pretend the whole thing fits into a neat line with cave painters at one end and, oh, let’s say Jackson Pollock at the other. Your endpoint may vary, especially since Pollock died in 1956 and history, including art history, has arguably continued on since then.
The problem with this line of thinking is it can quickly spiral out of control. After all every human endeavor that we consider historic or worthy of recognition is based on a collective agreement that it’s, well, worthy of recognition. And there’s a lot of stuff that falls by the wayside.
How do we decide what to keep and what to throw away? Is it random? Could be a trap.
-Hey Phil. Phil, you here?
-Yeah, a little shaken, but I’m here. What’s up Wally?
-Just checking. Everything got crazy there and now it’s gone quiet. Really quiet.
-Yeah, I know. I’m okay with the quiet. Better than dealing with—
-HEY EVERYBODY! AL’S IN THE HIZZOUSE!
-Whoop. Let’s party like it’s 2006.
-GOOD ONE PHIL!
-I’m Wally.
-DON’T BE A HATER PHIL. WHERE’S MY MAN BRAZZY? BRAZZY, YOU HERE?
-Da.
-AWESOME. THIS IS MY GUY!
-Ich hasse dich so sehr.
-HE’S THE MAN, AM I RIGHT EVERYBODY? LET ME HEAR EVERYBODY SAY YEAH!
-You two want to be alone?
-DON’T BE LIKE THAT. YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU PHIL!
-I’m Wally.
-WHERE’S PHIL?
-Over here, next to your Teutonic twin.
-Ich verachte Euch alle.
-Some of us can understand you, Brazzy.
-Mein Name ist Bertholletia.
-YOU SPEAK SPANISH PHIL?
-I’m Wally. And [sigh] the most common language there is Portuguese, and anyway he’s speaking…forget it. Yes, Al. Yes I do.
-Dies ändert nichts
-COOL, COOL. WHAT’S HE SAYING?
-That you’re his best friend in the world, Al.
-HA! YOU BET I AM! EVERYBODY LOVES ME! AM I RIGHT EVERYBODY? LET ME HEAR EVERYBODY SAY YEAH!
-Wenn es einen Gott ist, werden Sie das erste zu sterben sein .
-YOU SAID IT BRAZZY! HE PHIL, HELP ME OUT HERE. WHAT’S HE SAYIN‘?
-I’m Wally.
-YEAH. WHAT’D HE SAY?
-He’s trying to butter you up.
-WHOA, HARSH BRAZZY, HARSH. I KNOW THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU MEANT BUT HARSH ANYWAY. I HAD SOME COUSINS WENT DOWN THAT WAY.
-Ich würde Sie mich zerquetschen, wenn ich könnte.
-He says he’s sorry.
-THANKS PHIL. I GOT THAT. AND BRAZZY REMEMBERS GOOBER TOO. A MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR OUR OLD FRIEND GOOBER.
-Y’all keep it down.
-WHO SAID THAT? SOUNDS LIKE GOOBER! GOOBER, YOU HERE?
-Der einzige von euch, die erträglich für mich ist.
-Y’all make more ruckus than a mess of hounds done got a possum.
-Who is that?
-Pecan.
A recurring theme in my part-time pottery hobby has been fish. It started one night when I was going through the instructor’s box of patterns and found a fish one, so I used it to make a pencil jar and a coffee mug, both of which now adorn my desk.
Also pictured: Mark Twain, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Star, and a few unmentionables.
I also just made some flat fish for, er, some reason. They’re purely decorative.
And that, combined with a desire to find a bigger project, gave me an idea. I started making more fish.
Then I formed them around a mold and a base. I applied vinegar, which makes clay stick to itself, gradually building up layers.
It’s a fish bowl. Get it?
I have no idea how this will ultimately turn out which is why I’m sharing the process with you now. Pottery tends to explode or fall apart or do other strange things and, as the saying goes, the journey is more important than the destination. So I’m sharing it now before the destination disintegrates.
Yesterday I wrote about how, like any good Star Trek fan, I celebrated the 50th Anniversary on September 8th with a marathon of episodes and movies, including Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home which I first saw in the theater with a friend who I thought was a bigger Trek fan than me. He had a whole series of books, and comic books, and was the only person I knew–prior to the recent reboots, anyway–who knew Uhura’s first name.
And then as we were coming out of the theater he said, “Well, it was pretty good except for that crap about the whales.” And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought every fan knew that Star Trek’s science fiction was merely a smokescreen that allowed Gene Roddenberry to take on controversial subjects like racism, sexism, and, um, the environmental threat posed by invasive species.
Tribbles were actually a metaphor for the zebra mussel. Source: Wikipedia
And for a while I thought, Well, he’s just not a real Star Trek fan. It was a terrible assumption on my part. I was falling into the No True Scotsman fallacy, and not just because James Doohan’s accent was fake, but that’s another story. Fans come in many types and varieties. All that makes someone a Star Trek fan is that they enjoy Star Trek, right? Besides I have a conundrum that’s got me questioning whether I’m really a fan. In his book Get A Life William Shatner shares a story about his decision to walk from his hotel to a horse show one morning. It was a crisp, sunny day and he was feeling his oats. It was only when he realized how many miles he’d be hoofing it that he started to panic. At an intersection he talked to a couple in a pickup truck stopped at a red light, explaining who he was and begging for a ride. They pointedly ignored him but before they drove off the woman yelled, “Kirk sucks! Picard rules!”
I have trouble believing this story because I don’t think any true Star Trek fan would turn down the chance to give Captain Kirk a lift, and yet I also don’t think any true Star Trek fan would doubt William Shatner, especially since that book was such a love letter to fans. So, how do I solve the conundrum?
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/trekkies/n9511