In the spirit of the season here’s some Christmas graffiti.
Here’s a reindeer.
Here’s a tree. O Tannenbaum! If this tree looks familiar it’s because it greatly resembles another work I’ve written about previously that’s just a few blocks away from this one. I’d really love to know who the artist is.
And finally you may not consider this graffiti, but it is a public work of art.
Source: Wikipedia
December 25th-I dropped a lot of hints and even made up a list of things I wanted and there were no birds on it. Or trees. And what do I wake up to find? A tree in the middle of the living room with a bird in it. Not the Christmas tree but a great big pear tree. That explains the dirt stains on the rug. At least I got most of the other things I wanted, but what am I going to do with a bird? And it’s not a canary or a parakeet but a partridge. Who gives partridges as gifts? The same sort of person who gives pear trees I guess. But he promised he’ll plant the tree in the yard himself later today.
December 26th-Feeling a little hungover from too much eggnog last night. I stumble into the kitchen thinking, what the hell is that noise? Then I thought it might be the partridge, but, no, it’s two totally new birds. He tells me they’re turtledoves. Nice. I know I married a romantic guy but we’ve got cruise tickets and I don’t think this is the best time to start getting pets.
December 27th-Chickens. What am I supposed to do with chickens? I reminded him we’re supposed to get a permit to keep chickens in the yard. He told me technically they’re French hens. Fortunately we’ve got a neighbor who isn’t using her chicken coop after coyotes took out her whole flock.
December 28th-MORE BIRDS. At least they’re tiny little birds but they’re noisy little things. I’m considering putting them in the same cage with the partridge and turtledoves and letting them all fight to the death. It would be just my luck they get along. He tells me they’re “calling birds”. He’s lucky I’m not calling the cops.
December 29th-When I saw the box I reminded him that Christmas was not only four days ago but this morning the only thing I want is coffee. And for those birds to shut up. He tells me this is an old fashioned tradition. Drinking an Old Fashioned at lunch is getting to be a tradition for me. And then I feel even more guilty when I open up the box and find five diamond rings. Guilty and confused. Am I supposed to wear all five at once? At least I can pawn these for some cash.
December 30th-Silly me. I went to bed thinking this would all be over, but, no, this morning when I looked out the window there were a bunch of geese waddling around the yard. Geese! Just last year we put one of those fake owls on our roof to keep birds away and now he goes and buys geese. He tells me we’re getting them for the eggs. I tell him we can compromise and have foie gras. He goes out to round up the geese and take them back. I would help but I need a drink.
Please let this be the end of this. I know it’s the thought that counts and all that but sometimes he can really overdo it and I end up feeling guilty. Like our first anniversary which everybody says is the paper anniversary. I give him a book and what did he give me? An origami menagerie of twenty-six animals for every letter of the alphabet. Who knew you could fold paper into an aardvark? And who knew the sixth anniversary is iron? Well, I do now. That reminds me: anybody want a Dutch oven?
Barely used. A little rusty.
December 31st-So he goes out to get some champagne for tonight and comes back with swans and a wading pool. Great. What are we supposed to do with swans? Oh, and they come with a “swan wrangler” who tells me it’s okay, it’s just a temporary display and then asks who the happy couple is. He wants to know where all the guests are. The only reason anybody orders swans is for wedding receptions. I tell him we’ve been married for years but that may change. He’s confused. I say “That makes two of us.”
January 1st-Last night I discovered the partridge, doves, and calling birds would shut up if I poured champagne in their water dishes. And everybody thought that was funny until one of the doves keeled over. And that’s the last thing I remember before I woke up this morning with a screaming headache. All I really want is some black coffee and to be left alone, but he makes me go out in the yard. COWS. Why are there cows all over the yard? And a bunch of strange blondes in blue and white dresses are out there milking the cows. “Have some fresh milk!” he tells me and pours it in my coffee. I want to scream “What’s wrong with you?” but instead I just tell him if I die of listeria before the cruise I’m going to kill him.
I know he’s got something planned for tomorrow and I’m dreading it. What could it possibly be? A bald eagle? California condors? Maybe he’s going to have the entire zoo come over. I love starting the year with a credit card bill that looks like the national debt.
January 2nd-I don’t like ballet anyway but I like it even less in the house. How he got nine ballerinas to come to our house is beyond me and at this point I don’t bother to ask why or even how much this is costing us. The good news is one of them knocked over that hideous glass vase he gave me for our third anniversary. The bad news is one of them let out the partridge and now there’s bird shit all over the house. And he still hasn’t planted the pear tree.
January 3rd-A few years ago we went to see the Cirque du Soleil and I loved it. I’ve always said I’d like to do it again, but not like this. Certainly not in the house, and I’m still on vacation and want to sleep late, but, no, we have a bunch of guys in some sort of French 18th century costumes show up and start doing acrobatics in the living room. Will our insurance cover it if one of them breaks a leg? When one of them knocks over the dove cage I start yelling “THANKS! GREAT! NOW GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” Bunch of weirdos. They all sort of back out bowing and waving their big feathered hats at me. I’m not surprised when they all pile into one car.
January 4th-I couldn’t sleep last night worrying about what he had planned, and it’s a good thing. Six a.m., it’s still dark, and suddenly I hear music. Any other time I’d think it was the stereo but now I’m just afraid and with good reason. In the name of all that’s holy why are there a bunch of kids with flutes out in the front yard? They’re all wearing band uniforms and it looks and sounds like a junior production of The Music Man. And he’s out there acting like he’s directing. “Don’t these pipers sound great?” he says. I tell him if they don’t pipe down the neighbors are gonna call the cops. Again.
January 5th-If I didn’t know better I would have thought it was our neighbor revving her car, but, no, it looks like the same group of band kids, only this time they’ve got drums. Yeah, drumlines can be kind of cool, but, first of all, they should at least have a horn section to add some melody or whatever and secondly it’s nothing compared to the drumming inside my head. I lock myself in the bathroom with a bottle of aspirin and an expensive mineral water. Somehow curled up into a fetal position on the floor I manage to sleep. When I wake up I hear him tapping on the door and asking if I’m all right and telling me he planted the pear tree after the drumline left.
I can’t help it. I love the guy, but I make him promise to tone it way, way, way, way, way down next year. He’s agreed and said next year will be all about comfort and joy and something called wassle. Please tell me that’s not some kind of bird.
It’s risky to judge celebrities by their work, but I think there are some things that can be gleaned from looking at a well-known person’s career. Take, for example, Eugene Levy whose birthday is today. He’s had a long and varied career but he’s frequently reunited with fellow SCTV cast members and has had roles in Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries Best In Show, Waiting For Guffman, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. The current show Schitt’s Creek also stars SCTV-alum Catherine O’Hara as well as Levy’s own children Daniel and Sarah.
Maybe I’m extrapolating too much but it seems like somebody who appears with the same people over and over must be both a real pleasure to work with and to know.
And speaking of SCTV it was where I saw Levy first. His version of Floyd from The Andy Griffith Show…I laughed so hard I woke up the neighbors.
Source: Weather Underground
Several of my neighbors have put up Christmas lights, and in previous years my wife and I have spent at least one night during the holiday season just driving around looking at how people have decorated their yards. I always enjoy seeing houses lit up, even the insanely gaudy ones with fifteen Santas, sixty reindeer, three or four nativity scenes, a whole army of snowmen…yeah, you know the ones I’m talking about.
One of my neighbors has gone for a strangely subtle display by putting up a string of just green lights in the biggest tree in his front yard. They reach almost twenty feet in the air and are so separated they’re almost like individual stars. And then I turn to the backyard and the real stars.
Every year at this time I can look to the southeast and see Orion rising through the trees. Orion is the second constellation I learned to identify. The first was the Big Dipper. I remember one summer day a kid I knew said, “Tonight will be a good night to see the Big Dipper.” I asked my mother about it and that night she took me out and pointed up in the sky telling me, “There’s the handle and there’s the spoon.” I thought, what is she talking about? All I see are stars. Then I saw a picture of the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, in a book and it all became clear. A few months later I pieced together Orion.
And I know it’s winter when I see the hunter rising through the trees.
Gingko trees are distinctive even in the full green of summer but become even more so when the fall turns their leaves bright yellow. And they’re even more distinctive if they’re female gingko trees and drop smelly mushy tasteless (yeah, I couldn’t resist tasting some) fruits on the sidewalk that get on your shoes. That’s why I love them.
Recently I also learned the word marcescent. A leaf which is dead or dying but still clings to the tree is marcescent. It means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Of a part of a plant: withering but not falling off.”
A few years ago gingko was promoted as an herbal supplement that could make you smarter. I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be the leaves. Maybe it’s the fruit. I’ve been smart enough never to try one again. That reminds me of a joke: a city kid and a country kid are walking through the forest and find a pile of rabbit pellets.
“What are those?” asks the city kid.
“They’re smart pills,” says the country kid.
The city kid picks up a handful and pops them in his mouth and says, “These taste like shit!”
The country kid says, “See? You’re gettin’ smarter already.”
The idea that gingko can make you smarter seems to have withered, but I hope you feel smarter for now knowing the word marcescent.
While waiting for the bus I never pay enough attention to the cars that go by to recognize any. I’m at the same bus stop at the same time most days of the week so chances are good that some of the same people go by. I just don’t notice them and chances are good they don’t notice me either unless one of us is doing something unusual.
I was literally seconds late getting to the bus stop. I saw the doors close and the bus pull away. I started running. Remember the scene in The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman chases a bus until it gets to the next stop? That was me and that was my plan. There was a red light up ahead. If I could get there while the bus was waiting I could get on.
Then the light turned green.
I kept running. There was another green light up ahead. If it turned red before the bus went through I could catch up to it and get on then. I was a pretty good runner and it looked like I was going to make it.
It only turned red after the bus had gone through. I stood on the corner panting. Then I heard a voice to my left.
“You tryin’ to catch the bus?”
There was a guy in a compact car stopped at the light. He had his window down.
“Yeah.”
“Climb in. I’ll get you there.”
Now was the time to ask myself a serious question. Should I wait twenty minutes for the next bus or take a chance on a ride with a complete stranger?
I took a chance. His name was Mike and he’d seen me running. When he saw I wasn’t going to make it he felt bad for me. He explained all this as he deftly passed the bus and managed to get three blocks ahead of it. He pulled over at a bus stop.
“Have a good day!”
Thanks to Mike it was a good day. I thanked him profusely and only realized after he’d sped away that I hadn’t thought to notice what he was driving. Maybe I see Mike every day and don’t realize it. I wish I knew so I could wave at him as he went by.
There’s a saying that if you want a comedian to do something tell them not to do it. I’m not sure who said that. Maybe it was me because I seem to have seen so many examples of it. One of the most prominent is a story told by Rick Reynolds, whose birthday is today. It’s from his one-man show All Grown Up And No Place To Go. He ranges from very funny to very serious and always, even when joking, deeply personal.
He uses this story about a prison gig to illustrate his own childlike tendency to blurt out the most inappropriate things, but I think it’s also a valuable lesson in standup comedy.
The very nature of graffiti is that it’s ephemeral. Technically that’s true of all art, some works more than others. Gericault’s Raft Of The Medusa for instance looks like a well-preserved painting but the artist’s heavy use of bitumen, which gave it a nice sheen but is chemically unstable, mean the whole thing is a preservation nightmare and gradually breaking down. Maybe it’s fitting that Gericault said, “No sooner do we come into this world than bits of us start to fall off.” And that’s true of all art. In the classical view art was supposed to be a stab at immortality, something that would survive long after the artist was dust. The reality is nothing lasts forever, and most graffiti gets painted over a short time after it goes up.
And that’s what I thought of when I saw these two tags. Neither one’s all that great and the placement was probably purely accidental, but look at how the shadow of the tree falls across them. The shadow is visibly ephemeral—when it’s visible. On a cloudy day it’s gone but even on a sunny day it moves and changes. The tree changes too. It’s grown and spread, but with the cold weather its leaves have changed color and are falling off.
The tree itself has been there for years, maybe even decades, but even if gentrification or just somebody’s whim don’t take it down it’ll eventually die. All of it reminds me that nothing lasts forever.
Seen any graffiti you want to share? Send your pictures to freethinkers@nerosoft.com and be credited here.
December 8, 2014. I’m really not as cheerful as I look.
Recently I passed another milestone. It’s now been a year since my big surgery, the retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. In plain English they sliced me open from my nipples to my navel and removed all the lymph nodes from my midsection. When I was told I’d have to have the surgery I was devastated. I stupidly thought chemo would be the end of my treatment, that the scans would give me the all-clear and my life would return to normal. And at that point my life was returning to normal. The big surgery felt like a setback. It would mean more weeks of recovery. I hadn’t been able to swim since I’d been diagnosed and I was itching to get back in the water. Not literally itching because that might mean I had some kind of skin condition and shouldn’t be allowed in a pool used by other people but psychologically itching. The big surgery meant I’d have to forget swimming for at least a few more months.
Swimming for me isn’t just good exercise. Actually for me I’m not sure it is good exercise because I’m kind of a clumsy swimmer, but it burns some calories and works the major muscle groups. It’s very mentally liberating being suspended in water. At the pool I go to regularly I start every lap in the shallow end then as I swim across the pool it gets deeper and deeper. When I turn to go back I like to dive down, completely submerging my body. I like to go as deep as I can, all the way to the bottom. I sometimes wonder if this freaks out the lifeguards. Or maybe they don’t notice. Well, I hope they notice, but maybe they realize that as long as I’m down there doing the breast stroke everything’s okay. I admire lifeguards. It’s one of those jobs where a good day is one where absolutely nothing happens, so I admire their ability to sit in one place and do nothing for a really long time and not fall asleep. And it’s mostly adults at the pool so we aren’t subject to the mandatory ten minute rest period every hour the kids get. When I was a kid and went to the pool almost every summer day I hated that rest period. That ten minutes always seemed interminable and it never occurred to me that it was a rest period for the lifeguards too, and that for them ten minutes was barely enough time to smoke a couple of cigarettes and maybe have a beer, but that’s another story.
When I’m deep under the water it’s very peaceful. It’s as though all the problems of the world disappear into the silence of the depths and I’m alone to contemplate big questions. Do we have a purpose in the universe? Can we survive as a species? If you swim hard enough do you sweat in the water? How can I keep my goggles from fogging? Is that a hairball?
At least that’s what I could do before the chemo and surgeries. When I first got back in the water I noticed I couldn’t swim as many laps. And I expected that. I was out of shape. The whole experience had been physically draining and emotionally it wasn’t easy either. There were a lot of times when I could have exercised that I spent lying around, times when I just felt so down I wouldn’t even have wanted to swim if I could, times I didn’t even want to get up and walk. There were times when the flesh was willing but the spirit was weak, and then the flesh got weak. So once I started swimming again I knew I had some catching up to do. And after a few months I could see the improvement, but I still couldn’t dive like I used to. I couldn’t stay under long enough to touch the bottom of the deep end.
Chemo left me with lung damage. That was one of the trade-offs: I could either get rid of the cancer and have lung damage or, well, eventually the cancer would probably have spread to my lungs as well, but at least with chemo I’d have lung damage and still be alive. I just accepted that the depths would forever be off limits to me. It was hard to accept that I’d be stuck almost at the surface for the rest of my life, but at least I was still swimming.
In some ways my recovery has been so gradual I really haven’t even noticed it. After all I’ve been through I should be a lot more conscious of my body, but I’ve been so determined to focus on what’s wrong that sometimes I don’t even notice what’s right. Some things take me by surprise. About a month ago I had reached the wall of the deep end of the pool, turned, dove, and realized I was descending. I kicked, went about halfway down, then turned and came back up. I breached like a humpback whale and took a deep breath which I’m almost positive freaked out the lifeguards but then kept swimming so they could relax and continue doing nothing. I started pushing myself, spirit and flesh working in tandem. And a few days ago I did it. At the deepest point in the pool, the ten-foot mark, I planted my left foot flat on the bottom. I’m five foot six inches on a good day so that meant there was a four and a half foot column of water over me. Then I pushed off gently and glided back to the surface.
Cancer has changed me permanently but not every change is permanent. It’s taken time but I realize that some of the things it took from me can be taken back.
I went out for a walk at lunch and got caught in the rain. Rain doesn’t just come down on me out of the clear sky. I’m not Douglas Adams’s Rain God who was followed everywhere by rain. That would be crazy. Hilarious, but crazy.
But if there’s a chance of rain I’m going to get caught in it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone out for a walk on my lunch break and it’s started raining and I have to run back or take a slightly longer lunch than I planned because I’m waiting for it to pass. I’ve lost count mostly because I never bothered to count but it’s also happened to me a lot of times.
And every time I remember an old joke: a minister is standing outside the church after services and a man comes up to him and says, “Your sermon on the Ten Commandments was very inspiring. I lost my umbrella and I was going to take someone else’s.”
The minister says, “And it was ‘Thou shalt not steal’ that stopped you?”
The man replies, “No, it was ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ that reminded me where I left my umbrella.”
The joke doesn’t keep me dry but it does make getting caught in the rain a little more bearable.
There’s a lesson in that and that lesson is that if you want to have your cake in sheep’s clothing you can pick your friends and you can pick a guitar but it never hurts to carry an umbrella.