My Precocious Spawn

Well as you can probably surmise, during the pandemic, a LOT of kids these days are having a LOT of movie nights. We are not a tv watching family but come the weekend, when the parents have had it up to here with responsibility and parenting and responsibility and parenting, well, movie nights can be a real responsibility and parenting savior. 

A few weeks ago, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island graced (what is the opposite of "sic?") our screen. Now to no one's shock, Journey 2 didn't win any Oscars. Who cares? It won a couple of (relatively) parenting-free hours and so in my book, Journey 2, is a real winner. Unless of course you are counting Journey 2 as Journey without Steve Perry. It's NOT the same. (Sings softly: Highway run...)

While watching Journey 2, ludicrous plot and all, my six year old kinda shocked me. Granted, I don't think what I'm about to share here indicates he's some sort of nuclear surgeon or anything, but still, I thought it was pretty darn astute.

So let me set the scene for you:

To get off the mysterious island, that is sinking into the ocean by the way, Hank (The Rock) and Sean (Josh Hutcherson) must get to the submarine. Which they found out about by using their wits and, of course, the map. Oh no, they are too late! The submarine, is already in the ocean. Well, right after a "Let's do this!" Hank and Sean make a dive for it. )Who can't hold their breath for three minutes now a days?) But oh no! There's a giant electric eel between them and the sub. I think, if memory serves, as this has been a couple of weeks ago, Hank pile drives the eel after a couple of chest slaps and off-the-ring-ropes forearms, and Hank and Sean make it to the sub. End of story.

But oh no! The battery is dead on the sub. And they can't call triple A for a jump. Whatever will they do?

This is where my six year old comes in. He says, "I know what they are gonna do!" Now mind you he has never seen this movie before. "They're going to use the eel to start the sub!"

And if my name isn't Nikola Tesla, that is exactly what they do. 

So my spawn is precocious on at least two fronts here. One: electricity and how it works. Two: how absolutely ludicrous movie plots can be. 

FFS, the Rock swims out and throws a harpoon, which on one end is attached to an electric cable, and on the other, attached to the Sears battery that starts the submarine.

Having recently seen my retirement numbers, here is to hoping my precocious spawn will support me in my old age with all of the dough from his screenplays. 

JuJu and George

I finished reading Hatchet, along with my nine year old son recently and toward the end of the book he recognized that my voice was “getting different” as I fought off emotion. I was emotional for two reasons: one was just finishing a good book that involves a teenager (not that far away for my nine year old) being rescued after surviving in the Canadian wilderness for close to two months and two, the more powerful reason is that we read it together, as father and son. And the truth is that he is difficult and I am more difficult but reading this book together, we had powerful moments of connection and it became a beautiful, what Heidegger might call, project. A project is powerful in this sense because it posits a future. Over the nights reading I could ask him questions as his excitement showed on his sleeve and I talked about the power of a good story, a good paragraph, a good sentence. We were inside of this book, and it was beautiful and of course, books come to an end, and we would no longer be inside, and I became emotional. The time ended. Which made me think about my radical thanatism: The steadfast belief that I am finite and that I do not transcend this earthly life and how this focuses THIS life and makes seemingly simple moments like finishing a novel with my son, into intense cherishable moments that connect me to meaning and value in the absurdity (absurdism is realism around 18:22). In short my thesis stands, my radical thanatism is healthy, believing individual humans are eternal is, not; it cheapens our individual and collective lives. 

Later that night I also finished George Saunders’ most recent, A Swim In A Pond In The Rain and cannot help but bring relief to the subtitle: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. The next day I would share Saunders’ thoughts on the power of a good story with my JuJu and I would again become emotional but I prefaced it by telling him why I was emotional the night prior. Because we did that thing together and that time, with you, that time we have, runs out. 

Pardon the imperatives here: Value time, cherish time, it is all you really have. If you don’t believe me, please believe George Saunders (bolding mine):

Hi – I'm reading "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life" by George Saunders and wanted to share this quote with you.

"We ended the previous section by agreeing to confine our expectations for fiction to this: reading fiction changes the state of our minds for a short time afterward. But that may be a bit on the modest side. After all, as we’ve been seeing, reading fiction changes our minds in particular ways, as we step out of our own (limited) consciousness and into another one (or two, or three). So, we might ask, how are we altered, in that “short time afterward”? (Before I give my answer, let’s just say, again, that there’s no need, really, for me to do that. We know how our minds were changed as we read these Russians, because we were there. And we know, if we’ve been lucky enough to have other beautiful reading experiences in our lives, what those did for/to us.) But I’ll give it a try: 

I am reminded that my mind is not the only mind. 

I feel an increased confidence in my ability to imagine the experiences of other people and accept these as valid.

I feel I exist on a continuum with other people: what is in them is in me and vice versa. 

My capacity for language is reenergized. My internal language (the language in which I think) gets richer, more specific and adroit. 

I find myself liking the world more, taking more loving notice of it (this is related to that reenergization of my language). 

I feel luckier to be here and more aware that someday I won’t be. 

I feel more aware of the things of the world and more interested in them. 

So, that’s all pretty good."

These Mornings

 These mornings. The alarm I pay not enough mind, the keyboard that gets not enough action, and my mind that knows not what it wants. These mornings. The wants should come from me but I will be satisfied if they come at me. I will not duck or flinch. Hit me! Hurt me. Punish me. But do not ignore me. Apathy is the opposite of love. Is there no calling for me? These mornings. Where comparison is the enemy but a necessary one. On a deserted island on takes on all the properties, traits, and characteristics. I am not on an island, these mornings. My world is populated. Hell is other people, per Sartre but Heaven can't be devoid of our brothers and sisters. We...compare. We...must. For we got here together. We...survived. From aboriginal Africa through industrialization, and face to face with our digital selves...we. These mornings, I think about you. And us. Never one from the other. Impossible. There is no I. There is only us. The forsaken and the deserted are just that. Past tense. We are here and now. We have a future. Together. These mornings. All of us.

Monstrosity of a Driveway

 

1. In your notebook or on the computer, write a scene that occurs between no more than four characters in one single location over a unified period of time (a morning, a day, or even a long meal).

Winter storm Gloria had dumped a foot of snow on most parts of Rhode Island. Weather technology being so advanced in 2020, schools were called the day before, which meant the idiot neighbor would be out there with his measly shovel to dig out almost a ton of snow - a driveway thirty yards long and ten yards wide, as his sons “helped.” How can he not possess a snow blower. I watch this idiot toil away for hours with this heavy, great snowball making snow. I have to imagine his back will suffer soreness untold. Of course he takes breaks here and there, to yell at his sons, one wielding a sharp edged shovel, trying his best to help the old man but probably just creating more work, when he isn’t nearly decapitating the old man with reckless swings. The other son has a broken plastic shovel but gave up helping an hour ago to roam the yard and ponder things to break. Two hours of this and I see him head back inside - not even half-done with this monstrosity of a driveway. His neighbors have a service - a huge truck with a plow comes in and wipes the driveway clean in ten minutes. This guy shovels his back to mincemeat for two hours and isn’t close to done. About a half-hour later he trudges back out, yells at his boys about not killing or maiming each other and sets back to murdering his back. This idiot, taking years off his life, because he’s too cheap or too dumb to get a snow blower, is nearing completion as the suns sets, taking breaks only to reign in his sons, when I decide to pour salt in his wounds and take my snow blower over and help out. Ha ha this fucking guy. You should have seen the look in his soul - not on his face, no he was all “Thanks!” on his face but his soul was all, “Could have used you three hours ago.” I love it. I clear the end of the driveway for him, oh and get this, right as I’m turning around to leave, I say, “Merry Christmas,” and this dolt, who can barely stand up by now says, “Thanks.” Merry Christmas indeed.

Timefull

 1/24/21 5:41 AM

I was awake very early but felt that perhaps I had slept though my alarm. I do what I have restrained from doing over many decades now, and check the time. Not yet four. I worry I may not get back to sleep but don’t worry too much because my alarm goes off at four-thirty. I do fall back asleep, and have a sex dream. I was standing in the dream; a near sexual impossibility in real life. I was inside skin and all I could see was skin, moist sweaty skin. I could feel the pressure but all I could see was skin. No face, no faces. Face-less pressure. Then I got out and could not get back in. I tried. I fumbled. I fingered. Skin and folds, no pressure.

Alarm.

Awake.

As I write this, I realize I am inside skin. A body, a passive body in the philosophical sense; in a body that can be split. A body that is in time and can be taken out of time. A body occupying space, what philosophers call, extension.

I go further. I AM my body, not just inside A body. Per the principle of the conservation of matter, I am nothing new but this shape will never exist again. This shape, this logic, this consciousness, composed of the timeless but somehow, timefull but not eternal nor infinite. Fleeting. Not even a geologic wink. In short, I am special. Not because of what I do but because I am. Name one nothing that is special. See, can’t do it.

Inside this skin, I am special. And desperate. Desperate to feel skin against mine, lips on mine, pressure upon me. Forsaken, my body (me) resorts to dreams. Pleading, my body (me) fires up during REM sleep to arouse the appetite without bedding it back down. Exasperated, awake (not woke), I curse my forsakenness and my actions leading to such; I rage against that body (me) and blame it, all day long. Name one nothing you can pin the crime on. See, can’t do it.

I am special; part of the eternal unchanging.

Nothing changes.

Perhaps I should be nothing.

An Iota

 I was reading George Saunders’ new book last night and he is so incredible. The book is about writing and he basically takes the reader through his mind as he teaches a class on Russian short stories. The second of these stories is Singers by Ivan Turgenev. I won’t spoil too much here but Saunders teaches us that an artist, at some point, must choose himself and go with it, warts and all as they say. I’ve no doubt read this in other places but it’s the small anecdote he tells about wanting to be Hemingway and writing all this Hemingway-esque stuff but in so doing not choosing himself as an artist. But then one day while doodling essentially during a phone call, he creates little stories. After the phone call he thought of throwing them away but something caught him. The stories/cartoons wind up on the kitchen table and while off in the other room he hears his wife laughing. The proverbial light bulb goes off above his head and George chooses himself. And of course we are all better off.
Now of course it isn’t this easy. One might choose one’s self but not have the talent of Mr. Saunders. 
So I ask myself: How can I choose myself? 
No clue. 
Write what I like?
Like what I write?
Be who I am? Oof, what if I don’t like myself a whole lot?
Not gonna figure it out by not writing I know that.
Ok, we’ve got something to build on. An iota.

It might be worth mentioning here that the pedagogical upshot of the first Russian short story is this: an artist takes responsibility.

Damn.

Plunging Toward Self-Actualization

Abraham Maslow, in his magnum opus in Psychology, which I can’t remember the name of right now, tells us that self-actualized persons are not embarrassed by bodily activities like defecation and flatulation. Not being self-actualized, or remotely un-crude, I am still going to tell you about a shitty experience I had recently. 

The morning poop came on, even before the coffee, but alas, in the toilet was a log of brown and some heinous colored water. I interrupt my son’s chess game and gently/firmly remind them that every time we use the toilet, we flush the toilet. 

“Capiche?”

“Yeah dad.”

So I flush.

It is clogged.

Lovely.

Right about now the pressure in the bowels is nearing “Houston, we have a problem,” so I head to the upstairs bathroom. Quickly.

And I sit.

On a toilet seat with urine on it.

[Replays in mind how many times I have told them] Sons, listen to me now, every time we urinate, we lift the toilet seat up. Every time. 

“Capiche?”

“Yeah dad.”

Urine for it, kids!

A quick wipe of the seat and my arse, and I, Maslow-inspired here let us not forget, defecate. 

The toilet clogs. 

Shoulders droop so far as to seem out of sockets. Exhale powerful enough to steam towels in hamper. Frustration at Defcon 5. Full, complete domestic defeat.

Two toilets clogged, not yet 7am? Check.

I trudge downstairs to retrieve the plunger and begin with the downstairs toilet.

I plunge.

And plunge.

Complete tricep workout later, the toilet is unclogged.

I trudge upstairs to plunge.

I plunge, upstairs.

You may not remember the old Army commercials: “We do more before 9 A.M. than most people do all day.”

Well, I think Abraham Maslow would be damn proud of me for defecating before 7 A.M., given the tremendous domestic hurdles god hath given me on this day. And let us not forget the incredible parental modeling that went on here. Did I scream to the high heavens or curse or use the lord’s name in vain or rip out a toilet with a crowbar in an early morning rage? Of course not, I hadn’t had my coffee yet. No I showed tremendous calm and poise to defecate the way I did. 

I hope you can take this story and use it to become near-self-actualized. Maybe not as close as me, but somewhere in the general vicinity. The next time life gives you multiple clogged toilets, make lemonade.