Good Ideas on Paper

Characters and Spaces

2016-12-08T14:30:00.000-05:00

THIS POST WAS WRITTEN, BUT NOT PUBLISHED, in 2011. IT IS PAINFUL TO READ, EVEN IF ITS COMPLAINTS ARE EVER MORE RELEVANT.

There is a plenitude of happening.

(Somewhere, anyway.)

That last bit was written in jest. (Ingest.)

I actually don't think that I can disclose the primary details for legal reasons, but I can barely wait.

While I do feel like a pollutant in an already-filthy lake, it's been a good couple of days. That means that the more-quizzical aspects of life-and-living can receive some oxygen and be like an algae bloom.

My street--blighted by the calculated woes of the day, yet verging on redemption -- is confused by its inhabitants. I can relate to that, for I am puzzled by the minuscule cross-section of larvated humanoid-apparatus material here in the center of the newly diagnosed "13th-Best Small Town in America" (according to Smithsonian magazine). In their little paragraph about why it's so great here, they make no mention of anyone unaffiliated with Bowdoin College or AARP.

When considering where I live, and at the risk of sounding prudish, I must make a confession: the public appearance of topless men (in any climatic idiom) is profoundly unsettling, especially when they're mired gauzily in some state of crapulence. Journey's Don't Stop Believin' blares from a mysterious nearness, and I never started believin', and my skull fills with bilious badness. Cars on jacks, cars on blocks. If you stick around for long enough, you'll encounter a ribald sexist "quip" from someone that absolutely knows better (they're inured to my vocal disapproval of same). The distilled aroma of stagnancy. Oh, humanity. To these gentlemen, and with constancy, I issue my secret plea:
Keep wearing your clothes, please. All of them.

Then I wonder when, or how, slovenly decrepitude became normalcy. Yeah, I know that we're primates and everything, and we've always been kinda gross (we were, after all, made with the crotches of our parents), and I understand that. But that's not what I'm talking about -- I'm talking about a kind of dissipation of dignity. To hear it told by elders, people were once less obstreperous and less unraveled than they are today.

(I have a VERY funny story, marked with an asterisk, to tell you. After my soapbox sinks into quicksand.)

That is not by any means to say that there was nothing wrong in the past, but is instead to express my confusion. You might think that, given greater understanding and awareness of the world, a greater social consciousness and/or conscience would emerge. But the violence of speech is unbridled! So much xenophobia, and so little critical thinking. It's dangerous.

(You know, like how you'd assume that thespians, specializing as they do in character studies, would know how to keep themselves in check. Some do, but the ratio leans heavily toward the opposite.)

I grew up, in large part, among rednecks. The place -- Frederick, Maryland -- used to be a "farm town," but the 1990s saw its population quadruple. The arrivals, though, were (in large part) of a different stripe -- upwardly mobile, fast-food-fitness-club, Isuzu-Rodeo rednecks. I don't use the term redneck to indicate worker (according to its origins as an epithet, founded both in and upon an appalling classist disdain for manual laborers) -- that, I assert, is precisely why we have the term worker.

The redneck zeitgeist is an anti-cultural embrace. Untelligence. Volitional and categorical dismissal of any concept that fails to directly and explicity uphold dominion politics. Which would be fine, if their ideas were theirs. But they're parrots, and they like it that way, and if you can't see the total sense in exceptionalism to its core (i.e., I can sin free of consequence, but THEY're all gonna go to hell, or Americans are God's people, which means that whatever we do is God's will), then you're instantly on the wrong side of the us/them binary, which would also be fine if we weren't such a precious, scared-shitless conglomerate whose enacted laws have no objection to ruining anyone.

I am absolutely horrified by America's cultural and economic imperialism, by its disdain for human rights, by its unbelievably stupid (mainstream!) views of other cultures and religions, by the insane arrogance of thinking that they want to kill us because they're jealous of our way of life. Whomever "they" are, we can rest easy and assured that any animus is not an issue of jealousy. It's an issue of not getting their arses handed to them by jock-strap America with its clumsy, catastrophic bravado. Because this country launches unprovoked attacks, with predictably heinous consequences.

Oh, and so on. I could go on for days, but the gist is that the backslide continues apace. It's only growing in urgency as it becomes clearer that humans need to respect each other and listen to each other and be willing to take responsibility for the enormity of our privilege.

Modernizing Manners

2014-12-01T02:51:00.002-05:00

That title is unrelated to the contents of this post, but I've really been wondering who's gonna pick up the mantle of naming conventions and standards of conduct to suit this brutally insipid age. Chapters would include: Misspelled Tattoos--Should You Say Something?

But it's December, as sure as any vomit burp, so I guess that we all can in earnest begin discussing this year's superlatives, and admire (with the skills of reflection that we possess as Homo Sapiens Sapiens) how much we simultaneously

ballyhoo the unremarkable ("Best Hangnail of 2014", "Most Epic Flossing Fail Ever"),

minimize the cosmetically momentous (landing a camera on a comet, the Pope calling hell "a literary device"),

and

manufacture a retrospective sheen of non-existent distance from ongoing crises of ineffable impact and enormity.

Oh, yes--and the inevitable slideshows of "Celebrities We Misplaced in 2014."

I would like to add my own sets superlatives, but I’ll wait until 2015 begins—you know, after the ball drops. (By the way, it never bounces, that ball.)

Triumph of the Won't, a.k.a. Old Is the Older Old

2013-02-10T19:36:00.002-05:00

This is not new. What isn't?

Do you think that Benb Gallaher would ever do community service voluntarily?	Y	I guess that I would, but it’d have to be unstructured, like when I go out with Desmond to pick up litter. Passersby look at us as if we’re atoning for an undisclosed (unspeakable?) deed or spree. I guess that we are, kinda, but I just dig picking up trash. It’s not a fetish or anything, in case you’re a pervert who’d think that. But why do they have signs that say “Put Litter in Its Place”? The only place for litter is, by nature, an inappopriate place for refuse. So, the public is merely following the sign’s orders. The signs should change to “Put Trash into Trash Containers”, but no one actually cares because nothing actually matters.
Do you think Benb Gallaher prefers Coke to Pepsi?	N	What an awful question to countenance. The short answer is “NO,” because I find them both disgusting. If you ever want a real soda, try the Cream Soda from Squamscot Beverage Co. (http://www.nhsoda.com)
0o you think Benb Gallaher is good with kids?	Y	Our children like their mother much better than me, but \who wouldn’t? She’s absolutely wondeirful.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is dumber than Jessica Simpson?	N	Y’all are some kinda mean-spirited for asking a question like that. Even though it’s been suggested that I’m intelligent, I am treated on a near-daily basis like a hapless and bumbling fuckup. I don’t enjoy it.
Do you think Benb Gallaher shops 'til they drop?	Y	*‘Til I drop what? My belongings? My purchases? My self? The act?*
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is greedy?	N	I’m not. It’s true.
Does Benb Gallaher have a nice smile?	Y	I am smiling RIGHT NOW for whomever suggested that.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher can eat more than 3 Big Macs at a time?	Y	Several years ago, I could have done so very easily. I have an unidentified friend that would only eat ice when we were teenagers because it was low in calories. I decided, one day when I was 17 or so, to count a day’s caloric intake. You know, just for kicks. The total? 8.000.
Have you ever missed seeing Benb Gallaher?	Y	I’ve certainly missed seeing and being seen. People tend not to realize how resident they are in my heart.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is tone deaf?	N	What if I was or were?
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is a poser?	N	Most of life is posing; just reflect for a moment on how often you’re obliged to care about things that are utterly unimportant to you. The boundary between what something what something means and what that thing actually is, is nebulous on a good day.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever failed a class?	N	I have failed several classes. Some of them I’ve failed more than once.
Is Benb Gallaher fun to be around?	Y	That’s outdated information.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever smoked?	Y	Yes. And I would if
Would you blow a kiss to Benb Gallaher for fun?	Y	This person clearly likes to have fun, and I think that that’s just great.
Do you want to give Benb Gallaher a high-five?!	Y	I tend not to suffer high-fiving. It’s unnatural. My lack of depth perception leads to its being a rather protracted slapstick routine.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever fantasized about you?	N	That’s good, because I am sure that I've not ever done so. Anybody that isn’t Molly is as attractive as, say, a stapler.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher voted for Obama?	Y	I did—joyfully, but I expect that I won’t.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher would turn you in to the FBI if they asked?	N	I would not want to make their lives any easier. Those people are so sure that they know things about things that I feel sick to my stomach almost as much as I feel embarrassed for them.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is cute?	Y	I think that one of my parents answered this. And it wasn't even my mom!
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is funny?	Y	Looking.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher would ditch a date?	N	That’s true, especially that I only date Molly F. But even before, I didn’t get my license until I was 19, so I would’ve had to walk home. I was never really a “dater,” though. Especially given that “dating” has become a euphemism for sexual intercourse. The perceived need to sexualize friendships is offensive to me; I see promiscuity as being tantamount to consumerism.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is a good friend?	Y	I’ve missed many of my friends so deeply, and for so long, that I don’t even know what. And I remember tedious details—like the ID on Sam Zebovitz’s license plate (VBF 920), or Colleen Flanagan’s phone number from 2002 (860.729.7221), or Andy Fisher’s grandmother’s birthday (November 17), to name just a smattering—that do little to abet the process of staying in touch. Sorry, everybody—I thought that it would be different.
Would Benb Gallaher ever dress up in a mascot outfit and run around?	Y	That really depends upon the cause and the costume. Additionally, I was unable to run for about seven years due to hemiparesis from MS.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is a good friend?	Y	Then come on over! Shit!
Have you ever fantasized about Benb Gallaher?	N	Well, that’s good, because I’ve never fantasized about being the subject of a fantasy.
Would Benb Gallaher ever hit a girl?	N	Never. I am inflexible about the respect and equality to which all people are entitled in every relationship.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever smoked?	Y	I have, but many people that I meet seem not to believe that. I think that it’s because I wear neckties so often
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever played beer pong?	Y	Actually, I have not. What is it?
Do you think that Benb Gallaher could key a car for revenge?	N	Yeah, no. Strictly within the purview of “the weiner people.” Entitled moronity, straight up.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever punched someone?	Y	Not since being led to believe that it was the only way to function as a male specimen. So, not since my age was a single digit. And I’m clumsy and cataplectic, so I don’t really know how to inflict violence.
Do you think Benb Gallaher is cool?	Y	People are free to make their own determinations.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever stolen from work?	N	I am going to say nothing except this sentence about that.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher thinks wine in a box is classy?	N	For which class? Geometry—Yes! (It’s cubic.) Shop—Most assuredly not.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher still wet their bed in 6th grade?	N	My bedroom was the one closest to the bathroom in my house. And I had a window out of which I could pee if ever an emergency were to occur. (I didn’t mind peeing out of windows—in fact, back in 8^th grade, I peed out of the window in my 6^th-period Math class. Mrs. Botker would not let me go to the bathroom, quipping at my pleas, “No, you can’t go to the bathroom. But you can fix those drapes over there.” She gestured flippantly toward the window. Our class was on the third floor [Room 302?] of West FrederickMiddle School, and we had these dauntingly massive windows. I had to climb up on some shelving to adjust the drapes. Once I got up there, on my knees with the window open, I really had no alternative but to do what I did. This deed was not a cause célèbre until later on. Having to pee is a state of being whose “airtime” is not commensurate with its relative ubiquity. I had better bladder control then than I do now.) So, no.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is cute?	Y	Well, I think that YOU’RE cute, screen.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is socially awkward?	N	That’s all well and good, but I swear.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher can cook?	Y	I love to feed my people, but cooking is an entirely different story. So, the official answer: Not really, and not well. Too critical of self. I am in therapy.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is an underachiever?	N	This is a loaded question.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is religious?	N	This is correct, although that question is inspiring me tp recall that I had a dream last night featuring Desmond Tutu.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher likes blue eyes?	Y	Not especially, actually.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever failed a test?	N	Most tests that I’ve taken in recent years have garnered scores that would’ve disgraced me in the past.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher would bail you out of jail?	Y	Of course I would! Do you know where I can find a job?
Does Benb Gallaher have a nice body?	Y	Yes, yes. I spend my time watching it age, expanding and contracting with the seasons like a doorframe.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is a good kisser?	Y	Certainly, a good kisser named Benb was not to be found in the 7^th grade after-school bus queue. After severai minutes of calling for him, we dertemined that he did not exist. Still, the crowd at least 60 people formed around me and Bridget Moore (my 5^th grade love; we broke up then because I depressed. I was medicated inappropriately for it [i.e., max adult dosage of the powerful trcyclic Imipramine], but that was because our crooked family physician was receiving incentives from the drug company. Never mind that I would suffer projectile vomiting if ever I missed a dose, or that I can't really remember three years of my life. I'm pretty sure that they were dismal, anyhow). I always promised myself that if I had any chance to regain her favor, I would never falter). The kiss was strange, and it sucked, but people were screaming and applauding up in our faces. I was so freaked out that I had to break up our relationship. She’s an excellent person, and I’m very grateful to know her. We’re still incredibly close friends. She’s Desmond’s godmother (should that be capitalized?).
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is a tree hugger?	Y	I’ve hugged many—some out of utility, some out of sympathy (not only are they stuck to the ground, but they are subject to the vagaries of both the elements AND other species), and some as a proclamation about everything.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher still sleeps with a teddy bear?	Y	Ha. I sleep alone, because I’m impossible.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is smarter than George W. Bush?	Y	Everybody is as smart as everybody else. It’s the fucking truth. Sometimes it can be more obvious, and sometimes it can be less obvious.
Does Benb Gallaher dress poorly?	N	I’m wearing clothes that were outgrown by a dear friend’s teenage son in 2004.
Would you trust Benb Gallaher with your life?	Y	I don’t know that I trust me with my own life, but I certainly advocate living for everyone.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher would look good in a mini-skirt?	Y	I like the way that this answerer thinks. I love to wear clothing that diverges from the monochromatic monstrosity that is men’s attire in this culture. These big, capable men are afraid of color, or of anything that creates a sense of humor or warmth about what they project. I will concede that mini-skirts are seldom warm, but someone among you must understand what I’m trying to say here.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has ever stolen money from their friends?	N	True. Where’s the fun in that?
Do you think that Benb Gallaher puts 'hoes' before 'bros'?	N	*It is an illusion that they’re necessarily different. (I bet that* one'll rankle some relatives.)**
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is cute?	N	Mean either.
Would you want to see Benb Gallaher dance like Michael Jackson for money?	Y	It wouldn’t be a thrill, because I tend not to trust my movements (though I think that that is on the verge of changing because I care a lot less, or at least no longer have the energy to care). What kind of money are we talking about here? Sone people would pay out the wazoo to see an intermittent cripple shake a tail feather.
Do you think Benb Gallaher has ever pulled an all-nighter?	Y	Yes. For much better and for far worse.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher would do anything to succeed?	Y	Whomever wrote this obviously does not think highly of me, and that is their prerogative. I have no choice but to respect their answer, even if it's far from true.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher has a funny looking nose?	N	Opinions. Distilled. I think that this one, too, might be a parental answer.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is tone deaf?	N	*Man, it’s those tones* that are deaf! How many times do**
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is an underachiever?	N	If I knew the first thing about achievement, I likely would’ve done it by now.
Do you think Benb Gallaher drives too fast?	N	Everybody defines things differently. Would you think that I drove too fast if you knew that I was blind in one eye AND had Narcolepsy?
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is socially awkward?	N	You have no idea of how much I could swear that I am in an eternal underwear dream.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher is hot?	Y	To the touch, definitely. My internal temperature is conspicuously low—95 or 96 degrees Fahrenheit—and I am famously exothermic. I sleep alone because of this.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher would ever betray you?	N	Dear Friend, I do hope that you don’t see my having posted this anonymously attributed question/answer as constituting a betrayal of any kind, because it’s not intended thus. Besides, I don’t think that you can change your answer, Sucka.
Do you think that Benb Gallaher grinds their teeth while sleeping?	N	I am an incorrigible bruxist. Dentists hate me, but that’s okay. It’s generally mutual.

The Past?

2012-06-13T16:37:00.004-04:00

http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/?p=391

Lines in the Sand, Underwater

2012-06-12T15:46:00.002-04:00

Won't you please?

alsso: http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/?p=365

Contemplating Movement

2012-06-11T09:52:00.000-04:00

this is a link. enjoy your day, please.

http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/?p=355

What to Do When It Happens

2012-06-09T15:03:00.003-04:00

http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/?p=345

Link

2012-06-08T22:48:00.000-04:00

Self-help literature for (n)either the helpless (n)or the selfless; a piece of conversation.

UPDATE: Here is the link, which I forgot to include before: http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/?p=337

thank you.

Gradually Growing Accustomed

2012-06-08T07:51:00.003-04:00

Hi, everybody. Still determining how to proceed, as made evident by
http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/?p=310

There Is the New Here

2012-06-06T12:12:00.002-04:00

Hi. Since I continue to learn, I'll have to just give you a link to my new blog:

http://www.goodideasonpaper.com/blog

Yes indeedy.

Actual Happenings

2012-05-16T08:58:00.002-04:00

Yeah, well, hi. Another fortnight has vaporized. Sheesh! And it’s May.

Because it’s been merciful (to some °) outdoors, I’ve been digging and moving objects and making myself grubby and oh-so-many whatnots in attempts at amounting to an effort to a) be less fraught with anxiety; b) transform the hitherto crucible of our house [yes, it’s in the middle of our street] into a beacon of intentionality and beauty for everyone; c) coax every neutrino of loveliness out of the springtime, which manages still to spring, somehow. This afternoon, we’re going to spread déchets cheval onto parts of our yard. On purpose.

Since we ran out of heating oil, I have changed. I have realized and rerealized and serially realized things. I’d list them all, but they’re kinda prosaic. Except one. Get down with this goodness:

REALIZED THING

1. When I shower after several days of not doing so, my balding head develops a glare sufficient to qualify it as a reflective light source.

Yeah. Ha effing ha.

I have to start my own business, which I am in the process of doing. All of this searching for work has been stunningly ineffective; in some respects, I have never (ever) felt worse about myself. After our refinance failed, my everything ached with consistent kvetch, but I understood the ultimate why behind my inability to find even a measly job after nearly 1,500 applications.

It is a lot like my experience with romance growing up—it seldom worked, and it never worked out. I always figured that it was something wrong with me, and that people would somehow catch on to the fact of there being something wrong with me. I never felt handsome or stylish or acceptable. Rather than consider that possibly my chronic pining was evidence of a deeper wisdom in how life was unfolding, I grew neurotic and estranged. I catalyzed that sense of alienation into creativity and humor, which kept my friends around, but its underpinning was always a longing for acceptance that superseded my awareness of my place, if there is or was one, in the great, big world. But I think that I get now that people were living their lives, just as it would dearly have behooved me to live my own. People knew that I belonged elsewhere (although there were no details available), and they had the integrity to demonstrate that. And I found my person, and we have made our people, and there is so much love there that I can only express gratitude for every awkward interlude that brought me here.

It is O.K. that others have priorities, and it is A.O.K. that your priorities are different from the priorities of others; said priorities become problems only when, instead of tending to your own priorities, you take to managing the extent to which the priorities of others operate at your expense. It’s a subtle shift, but a significant one.

I suppose that it’s all about actively doing, rather than not doing the opposite. When babies are born, they are BORN. They don’t merely fail to remain unborn. I told a dear friend of mine, leaden with guilt when considering ending a long-term relationship: “Just because [someone]’s not wrong for you, doesn’t make them right for you.” That was a lot smarter than I actually am, because it points to truths consistent throughout our lives. I guess it’s condensed to this: don’t default to the tarpit of projected responses. What’s real is real, at least in this context, and our respective and collective responsibilities are to trust our own perceptions and believe in them as we act.

So, instead of trying so incalculably hard to convince a prospective employer to say YES to me—even if it’s a dubious fit in terms of my skills and their needs—I’m going to do everybody a favor and launch my own business.

It is to be a writing, editing, and proofreading service. It is to be called, shockingly: Good Ideas on Paper.

Ha ha ha ha ha

2012-05-02T08:37:00.000-04:00

It is said that the mere experience of laughter will generate mirth. As the last fortnight has left me beleaguered, I'm gonna start laughing despite my inclination to fret. I will chronicle the results of this, my abjectly informal mockery of science, throughout the day.

I will start by laughing. Here goes:

Forced. It's 8:30 a.m.

Update to follow.

10:00 a.m.

All that I can manage is a snicker that sounds a bit like a scoff. Too much tedium. I did laugh at breakfast. Now, I am feeling amuseder at last night's Desmond after-dinner attempt to describe an animal ("It's like a tiger; it has like a lemony face [SQUINCHES] it's like, ...short and all sweating and everything, like covered in drops of water, and there are some scales on it and it looks out of its shell at you like... [GESTURES TO APPEAR SNEAKY AND MALEVOLENT]. What's the name of it?") that turned out to be the armadillo. "That is the BEST game!" Molly exclaimed, and I agree with her.

The Bubble Bursts Eternally

2012-04-25T04:26:00.000-04:00

Here from scratch we start anew
e-i-e-i-o
i can't even sleep i'm so mired moreover in the resolution of this especial humor game, almost all contingent upon the diffident sadism as emanating from the hood of corporate persons.

here i shall detail the perversity of this cascading mangle:

it starts with a (sort-of) good thing: as i was diagnosed with mutiple sclerosis during my last semester of grad school (even though i'd had it for more than a decade prior to that), i was eligible for student loan forgiveness. i was psyched, as it was all on me to pay them (having insisted from the first upon responsibility for funding my education--mostly so that i could exercise poor study and attendance habits [i.e., spending beautiful days being youthful and chastely enamored of everything] without risking subsumption by the colic of guilt).

all well and good, but the lender reported me, without notification, as being in DEFAULT on my credit report. when i attempted, years later, to purchase a house, a co-signer was needed because of the resultant drubbing exacted upon my credit score. my brother volunteered, gladly. this was a huge deal, because he had a security clearance (the very existence of which depends upon its holder having a "good" credit score).

anyway, this was all in august of 2008, just as the economy was sounding its death rattle. i found myself unemployed. i have since applied for over 1,400 jobs with little-or-less luck (maudlin tales of same are all over this blog). i would've just walked away from an ever-moribund maine, but i couldn't do that to my brother. everything that has occurred since has featured an undercurrent of agonized fretting. i have done odd jobs wherever possible, but have had to borrow a preposterous amount of money from my parents (the total of which is almost exactly as much as i owed in student loans).

anyway, when our current president took office in 2009, i was thrilled at the prospect that he might initiate some home-financing improvements. if i could refinance my home, then i could free my brother from any responsibility pertaining to the mortgage. i wanted to be first in line. i kinda was, and you will see now a long story abridged deftly into a list of events:

* i wrote wells fargo (my lender) in march for information about mortgage modification.

* in may, received a phone call from wells fargo; i was told about a "trial period" of 3 months (to start that july), during which i'd be obliged to pay only 50% of my mortgage. i was asked to inform them if i was still without lucrative employment before the end of 3-month period. i agreed to this only with the guarantee that my brother's credit would not suffer.

* everything seemed to be okay.

* come october, finding work seemed even less possible than it had before. i wrote to wells fargo well before the trial period ended. minutes later, i received (justly) irate communications from my brother, whose credit had been destroyed. now, he had to change career fields on account of his clearance being jeopardized.

* i fought this development with both vigor and rigor, through my congressperson and all sorts of pompy others, until i reached someone way up high in wells fargo that coud help. he said that he would rectify the fallout from the misleading entreaty that i had been given over the phone, and that he would remove all late-payment history from our credit reports.

* there was no evidence of his having done such a thing, but i was unable to reach him in the 2.5 YEARS that followed (although i tried rabidly to do so).

* meanwhile, my student-loan errors were removed (so i didn't need a co-signer after all?), only for me to be ensnared in this situation that not only was derailing my relationship with my brother, but also was instilling a perpetual panic within me that precluded my "getting it together."

* the car that i had to purchase in vermont (when our brakes failed as we descended a mountain) was almost denied us (because i was such a "high risk"). the ONLY company that would finance us? wells fargo, with a hulking interest rate because that's what they do with "us types".

* on several occasions (and at considerable expense), efforts were made to refinance our home, but the owners of the property adjacent to ours walked away and have allowed their house to sit vacant, thereby extinguishing the equity that we have been building slowly in our residence.

* last week, in the deepening pit of yet-another refinance attempt that remains in process, i called wells fargo. this time, i got that guy! and he remenbered our case! and, looking at wells fargo's credit reportings, i heard him say, beneath his breath, Ohhh my God. six late payments stared back at him from our payment history. we discovered, eventually, that a clerical error had prevented his order of december 1, 2009 from being realized. all of that. my goodness. and my poor brother all this time had thought that i didn't care.

* they appointed a new, shiny person to my case, and i told her that "wells fargo, in no uncertain terms, drank the bongwater." also, "y'all really stepped on it." and, finally, "you're lucky that i'm nice."

* they erased the negative information from our credit reports (HOORAY!), but it's up to the bureaus, i guess, when they decide to give you props. this world is vile sometimes.

* so, now i wait another few minuteshoursdays to see if they'll finally let this refinance go through.

one more (or maybeven less than one) mistake of this magnitude and i might have the fortitude to say, "no more. i will live life, and i can find beauty everywhere that you're not, and eff you forever." and then be with my family and my friends in the enormous present moment, and we probably won't even die in any real way.

Knowing What (and Why Not to Bother)

2012-04-24T11:30:00.000-04:00

sheesh well i have so much that i have written to post that it's too much and my time is better (i.e., more constructively) spent saying hello then it would be to spend the remainder of this sunny morning to complete a telling of the taling because it's in the past and in this case is not veryvery subject to change. i know that you understand. plus, my fingers are considering unionizing at my expense for all of the typing that i've tacitly ordered them to weather.

so, there will be more to follow, for sure. it's already been written, but it's in little snippets of ribbons all of over the damn floor. see you soon!

Flying Leaps

2012-04-19T08:14:00.000-04:00

Good morning, everybody!

I hope that it's all going nicely today. It's Thursday, which always amazes me because, with a twinge of synaethesia, I always think of days like today feels. It's a color like this:

Now, lest anyone think that Thursday's perceived liaison with this color is a complaint, I can assure you that it is not. It’s distinctive. The sun may be visible on days like this, but it’s not terribly relevant.

So, I started this bit of writing for the blog yestereve, and it went on for hours, but I realized after a time that I likely had other things to do, and I was getting a bit worked up about my subject (about redneck America and the blight of our economic and cultural imperialism and the disgusting depths of our respective and collective sanctimony and how the paradigm of scarcity cripples imagination in worse ways than we’re no longer capable of imagining), typing rapidly and incorrectly, holding my breath through entire sentences (though not this one, thank goodness, because I’d’ve lost consciousness by now) and feeling very motivated, entering something of a self-imposed exile, when Molly came to see me, at which I saved my nearly completed post and we ate berries and talked past midnight until we started to fall asleep and I love her more constantly and I awoke this morning and approached my post to finish it but it was a snarling and seething blob of invective in which I was just getting ready to give those Baby Boomers a piece of my mind and when I remembered:

I quit smoking (for like the bazillionth time) yesterday. Ugh.

No wonder consumerist conformity pisses me off to an unmanageable extent!

I had almost 8 years of being quit, but not really, because I was a social smoker. So, I’m sad that I lost my mock-control of my ongoing low-level nicotine fit.

And I can’t be placated, which is sorrowful, because I’d like to take a placation (NEW WORD ALERT).

Oh, and this is good, and it pertains to the strident post of last night that did not tumble into public view: I’m going to post some writing (later today) that I did (back in 1999) about the town in which I lived as a child (Frederick, Maryland). (Sorry about all of the parentheses. I’m disorganized.)

MY MIND IS CHAFING,

WHICH MEANS THAT I SHOULD

WALK AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD

AND BREATHE DEEPLY. AIR ONLY.

THAT’S WHAT THE EXPERTS ALL SAY THAT

PEOPLE IN MY SITUATION OUGHT TO DO,

BUT THEY CAN TAKE A FLYING LEAP.

I WISH THAT I COULD TAKE A FLYING LEAP.

THAT’S WHAT I’LL DO; I SHALL PRETEND THAT

I AM ON AN AIRPLANE, AND THAT I AM GOING

TO VISIT THE MALDIVES. THE INDIAN OCEAN IS

FASCINATING! I WILL GO TO SRI LANKA, TOO.

AND OTHER PLACES AFTER THAT.

Sentimental Entropy

2012-04-16T05:35:00.000-04:00

I’ve got a peg on a singular trust: that sequence is either everything or a passable facsimile thereof, and that "correct" collisions of matter and meaning and relative relevance will, in the sweetness of chance, befriend this still-arcane saga.

Select any unit of time—it does not, evidently, matter what the interval—and the chosen amount will amount to a single frame in a film that is recklessly sluggish. I continue, as ever, to strive for improvement of our fortunes, but it actually, well and truly, seems not to matter. A change of perspective, or the addition of for-now-italicized perspicacity, has been, and still is, the “thing” of it.

In response, I have come not only to realize, but also to accept, that I'm fastened to the overarching/underpinning conviction that there's a punchline somewhere. In frustrating proximity, probably. And furthermore, I have observed—with more humiliation than humility—that the extent to which I’ve aggrieved myself may have, at the end of all of this, served as my undoing. Like a scuba diver, surfacing with breath instinctively bated, developing an embolism. That's grim.

It’s funnier than that, though. I have, in my rather-teensy lifetime, gone from being a person whose “success” was never at issue—my promise was such that I was regaled with hyperbole from all ilk of well-meaning adulty types (themselves incapable of accommodating the fact that I was merely biding my time with trifling muck until I could commit suicide)—to an adulty type whose legion attempts at establishing the level of self-sufficiency requisite to Life These Days have each and all met with ignominy of some sort or another. It seems nasty, but is more accurate than not, to say that, in the actualized primacy of this very-basic capacity, I am a failure.

But, dig this—what I’m saying is that that’s okay, because that definition of failure was tailored for those in situations like mine (certainly befitting me, by existing standards); it is seldom wielded publicly, because it’s divisive and rotten, and I can see a real argument for the thinker’s self-serving reluctance. Be that as it may, such discretion is not of any value to me—why not be frank? To consider today’s underfoot underclass as having failed is rather liberating, as it is not a treatise on anything but nomenclature, honest self-appraisal, and the obsolete values of an amorphous capitalistic thought virus. This process has been hell for untold numbers—sufferers and bystanders alike—that it's devastating to comprehend, but seeing myself as a failure actually EMPOWERS me. It allows the punishing yoke of boorish and reactive reeling to shift into revealing what life is rather than what life isn’t.

“Well, that’s great and grand and groovy, Benb, and now we know that you’re a frayed wick or something similarly screwy and ineffective,” says my projected Peanut Gallery. “But,” I protest, with immediacy, verve, and aplomb, “that’s the beauty of it—I haven't any choice but to forge forwardly! I've exhausted my own elastic in response to the vagaries of whatever contortion of my identity is demanded at a given moment. So, all that I can do is my best, in the devout service of maintaining what little stability we've managed to eke from the vast opacity of ."

(ABSTRACT NOUN)

I have always loved surprises, and ever have I shuddered at the plodding and prosaic attrition that lurks with rattling ubiquity in pockets and envelopes the world over. I can almost hear it breathe, slinking around me when alone in my car, on the toilet, or in the kitchen watching the mercury drop on a perfunctory thermometer. It was such an indelicate certainty that I had identified time as the antipode to spontaneity.

Anyway, I know (and will someday-maybe accept) that I’m in school, and I’ve had to acknowledge that the pervasive presence mentioned above is THE SAME INGREDIENT that

- makes you so uncomfortable upon hearing certain music that you HAVE TO DANCE.

- pushes swear words out your damn mouth at the dinner table when the exquisite experience of the food that you’re eating unbinds you and confiscates your manners.

- turns sentences into paragraphs, for no reason other than that you are capsized with joy at being near the person with whom you’re speaking.

And this fact—that the niggling currents in and out of a day are the feckless eddies of a second, that it is not only a surprise, but the surprise—is a gargantuan surprise. Which is a scorcher of a punchline.

Unfinished vs. Undone

2012-04-11T11:12:00.001-04:00

Momentum mustn't waver at this most crucial of junctures.

You see, it is too typical that, when I write about a niggling bit How Things Sometimes Are, I get sidetracked. By children, by circumstance, by this-or-that that I've forgotten to do. But not this time. No, sir and/or madam.

The secret to avoiding this, I surmise, is brevity. Starting with the premise: it is patently uncool for shows/movies/plays/productions that are set in a specific time to use music (for "atmosphere" or "legitimacy") that had not been written or released at the time that HAS NOT [expletive] BEEN WRITTEN OR RELEASED YET. This sickens me. It punctures suspension of disbelief, and constitutes an utter ignorance for what anything was ever actually like (inasmuch as that can be depicted anyway).

I think about the if-you-must climactic scene of 1987's "period piece" Dirty Dancing, set (as we all-too-likely know) in 1963. Johnny and Baby (Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, respectively, although it'd be great if they switched) perform a dance for somebodies (I forget whom).

Anyway, the chosen soundtrack? A duet of Bill Medley (once, but never truly, a "righteous brother") and Jennifer Warnes (whom didst Jennifer warne?) that was written and recorded in 1987, and sounds like it. Granted, the movie is full of stupid selections (e.g., 1964's "You Don't Own Me" performed by The Blow Monkeys), but that's neither here nor there. To end the movie with a non-anthem from Reagan's second term is an abomination.

Agggh. Children, whom are lovely, need my attention. More very soon.

Same Old Novelty

2012-04-04T05:11:00.000-04:00

I'm still in Baltimore, but I'm going to make it home. I tell myself that, in and from the throes of a barrage of contrary obstacles. It's humiliating, but the net effect is somehow even more destabilizing. I have done everything "right," and everything has responded by malfunctioning grandly.

And I miss my family A GREAT DEAL.

What is the synthesis that is lacking from all of this blasted life-and-living thing? At the risk of drowning in a stale puddle of metaphorical fluid, I will say through my resigned grimace that it's like an arch minus the keystone. So much will seem during these times to be going so well, and as my stride grows more assured and comfortable with that awareness, I encounter a snare that is (or at least appears to have been) designed for people that dare to be that way. Then commences the horrid cascade of thorny consequences, with trite-but-ever-truer results.

(Like, dig this: since we live in a world of cellphones, it is expected that the owner will be available at ALL TIMES. They take umbrage at your lack of complete, drop-everything accessibility. Why? When things happen faster, people become even more impatient? Fools.

And, as if there were somehow an insufficient basis in the miasma du jour for keeping poor people in perpetual states and senses of lack, there's always a line of profiteers that are interested in exploiting any mistakes that could possibly made. No "trust" or any similar liability--merely unmitigated greed. And suspicion! For instance, combatting "abuse of the system" is a central aspect of political lip service [in this country, at least], and finding help in general is a dehumanizing procedure in which the person seeking assistance is subjected to constant monitoring, viewed as being somehow less than an actual adult. Yet, as this happens and happens, there is no accountability for iniquities that bring people to where today finds or has found them.

And for all of the heartless, stratified hogwash about an "ownership" society being bandied about in these last years, I've seen nary a shred of detectable ownership regarding privilege. It's anybody's privilege not to recognize his or her own privilege, but it's a prison that separates a person from people. And does so ever more with the passage of time; as the true consequences of an impropriety reverberate through decades, that betrayal is ever more likely to be dismissed as something from the past [blame for the victim's struggle with residue of the past], and is less likely to be examined authentically [disenfranchisement]. THIS IS A FLAWED SYSTEM. It's dripping with the very privilege that survives in the absence of its acknowledgment, and nobody at all actually benefits.)

That was indeed a lengthy digression.

Anyway, I'm happy with my negative bottom line, but just because that's the way that things have gone lately, and I owe it to every person that cares about me to have a happy life. So, I dedicate my only self to that premise. It won't deter me from looking, but it might enhance the quality of my family's life in this awfully meantime.
I hope that everybody's doing great today.

Love, Benb xoxoxoxoxo

Adjective Heavens!

2012-04-03T00:47:00.000-04:00

It is April. Welcome to that, for all that it may be (but, in my experience, typically isn't) worth. It seems nice enough outdoors, and it is, here in Baltimore. Not that I'd really know, having sat in uncomfortable proximity to my feelings over the weekend.

Sunday was Glenn's memorial service, and I attended. It was jocundity in the face of tragedy, with tenderness and laughter and uncharacteristically articulate accounts of Glenn when he was among us. New friendships were forged, by way of connectedness unearthed by the common vulnerability of our grief, that will doubtless span and endure decades. And, from everything that I could tell, none of it softened the precipitous sense of loss that we felt. But we all seemed to realize that there was little, if anything, that we could do to address that pain, so we tacitly agreed to transcend it with our unique respective love for our dear friend.

And here we sit, among the setting and trappings of April. Life is not moving as deliberately, nor with as much alacrity, as I would choose (if ever I were faced with a choice). I wonder if there's an April equivalent to the axiom that's wielded in concert with the idea of March. You've heard it a nauseating number of times, I'm sure: "in like a lion, out like a lamb." That's a very beautiful concept, and I do love beauty so, but what if the lamb gets eaten by the lion that will no doubt say, in arrogant Lionese, "April Fool!"?

I'll tell you what if. Everyone would be revealed as an outright sucker in that equation--including lions, dwellers of the jungle, having been left to suffer the failed fruits of their hunger with cold weather.

Having just said all of that, I am completely unaware of the current temperature or climate or whathaveyou. I long to see Molly, Desmond, and Ivor, I ponder just how I'll return home (awaiting a delinquent paycheck), and I'm reminded with maximal poignancy about all that I've learned to accept NOT having in life. This neither implies nor infers anything about what I DO have, as all of that is totally amazing. But it seems labor-intensive in a way that it shouldn't be. So, armed with some-or-other strength, I would like very much to declare the following for myself, I hope that you're ready. I am not ready.

1. I am not disabled. Yes, I have a disease and all of its accordant issues, but I remain aware of the world around me, am desperate to contribute to it, and won't (although I'd love to) mail satchels of barf to all of the purveyors of abuse and hapless judgment that I have encountered regarding my health. To them, I have only to say: YOU ARE MAKING THIS INCALCULABLY WORSE.

2. I need a reliable job. This is more serious than it's possible to imagine. While it may seem reductive to say that this is all that I need, it is the agonizing truth. The stress that my family and I feel from the relentless drip-drab of freelancing and unpredictable pay cycles is positively lethal. I am able to work. I want badly to work. This New-Age bullshit of visualizing a bountiful future is all well and good, but I have applied to 1,400 jobs. It has been said (by Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin [or another person of far-greater financial means than meager old me, no doubt]) that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Well, does that mean that I should refrain from applying for jobs?

3. I am committed to parenting. This supersedes everything else in my life, and the level of resentment that I feel toward those that have ignorantly drawn conclusions to the contrary cannot be exaggerated. I do not wish to inundate my children with television or plastic or sex-role stereotypes that will instill them with the same hinges and buttons, the same onus of irrelevant privilege, that I have worked tirelessly to surmount. My goal with my children is to help them be, without shame or fear, exactly themselves. And, despite, or even because of, my health, I am a capable and conscientious parent.

I have become so incensed with the well-meaning attempts to corral me that are actually deleterious that I am quite sure that I need to end here and possibly sleep.

New Things for Old

2012-03-27T20:50:00.000-04:00

It would seem--nay, it DOES seem--that a new post is necessary. All of these convoluted incrementality blog spots are almost as irritating to oversee as they are to behold.

Oui, oui, all the way home.

What's this coming year to bring? (That's a fine thing to consider, Mr. Gallaher; if you repeat that with some frequency, then it stands to reason that the foolhardy construct of a calendar year will dissipate, and that can't be a bad thing. [The passing of time--the impossibly simpleminded way in which those of us ensnared by modernity measure things--is such a lousy barometer of success. First of all, it's elastic (boogie woogie woogie [clap clap]). Second, that same elasticity renders impossible an empirical determination of success.] So, it's better just to change subjects, is all I'm saying.)

So, it's been a lovely birthday, and it's been very much like any other day. I think that this type of thing is comforting--sexy, even. Why have a time that involves such a labor-intensive departure from normalcy in order to commemorate existence, when it's "normalcy" itself that deserves change into something more affirming.

For instance, I would have loved a party with all of my friends around. Of course, that couldn't happen, because we're all far away from each other, and it'd be an impracticable humor game to accomplish. Instead, there could exist options for envisioning (and perhaps enacting) life changes in order to address that issue of separation.

It's possible that it could even be as simple as a perspectival issue, which is something to which I am awakening. Seeing my life and my time spent in relatively remote circumstances not as being shrouded in lack, but supported by a wide-ranging and far-reaching abundance.

I'm going to try to watch the premiere of Mad Men. I've waited for so long.

Dont Mind Me It's Incremental

2012-03-26T18:13:00.000-04:00

This is obnoxious. Why, in my one moment of complete permittance to compensate for last nights complete lack of repose with a feeble nap, do I suddenly feel inspired to write on this blog? That blog. Don't answer and I will stop asking. It's a shame that they don't have anything analogous to a 12-step process for those that compulsively confound themselves. Oh well.

The story of the day is not related to this post of the day. Reason being that I am unaware of any stories of the day.

I was up with Ivor at a ridiculously early hour. Acrtually, the hour was still late. Blurrily staggering, I proclaim to myself and to others that I got some rest, because my blinks were like Morse code to Morpheus, like, "Nooooooooooo!" But it wasn't, you know, restorative blinking.

Now Desy's drumming anyway, so I don't think it so strange that I'm awake. He plays loudly, but with a handle on dynamics that expresses something subverbal that evades his hyperarticulate precocity. I am so, so happy that he has that venue. My parents just sent me a beautiful new crash cymbal for my birthday (tomorrow), and its resonance is very warm and embracing. To hear Desmond play with it is so magical.

Aaaaaaaaaaand hypnotic. Now I have to nap. Crap. More soon.
(elapsed 19 hours)

Yes. Well, now I'm thirty four, which is neither here nor there, but my visit last night from the birthday surgeon gave me one obvious white hair near each of my ears. That shit is real.

For everything that defies logic, there is a logical trajectory. I don't know what that means or why that matters, but I desperately need another nap, for sure.

I'm often asked what I want for my birthday. Generally speaking, I don't want much of anything except exemption from unpleasant variousnesses (examples: barking creditors, abrupt neighbors, passive-aggressive mock-friends, my 2 children pummeling each other, loneliness in a state where we feel exiled, headaches, thwarted attempts at romance with my one true love, et al.), which en toto feels exactly like a gift.

Another gift: the right to NAP. Which I'll do now.

(elapsed 2 hours)

I didn't nap, and I should've. I gave up on it when Pat Sajak appeared in some hypnagogic depth. I was like, "This ruinous image can't be overwritten in time for me to enjoy the remainder of the day." So, I went for a walk with Molly, Desmond, and Ivor.

(This vs. That) vs. the Other =

2012-03-14T21:36:00.002-04:00

I was asked earlier about where a new post could be found.

Here's one! Right here! And it's not even written yet!

I apologize wholeheartedly for my absence from the fray. I would absolutely love to have something profound, beatific, and/or mesmerizing to show for it, but I do not.

I have been suffering the loss of a good, good friend and human force, yes, but

I feel also that I have arrived at an impasse in which the "thing" of "where i'm at" cannot be suitably conveyed without reprisal (or debilitating fear thereof). It's the worst.

What this means is that I have to take some time to reconfigure my relationship to this blog. I puke in both my mind and my heart when I think about that, but it's likely an integral part of some process.

So, thanks for your patience.

Revisited Currency

2012-03-11T10:09:00.001-04:00

I've been so kinda sad and screwed up over the passing of my friend Glenn that I haven't been able to think in any organized manner over these last two weeks.

What is there to say about it? Glenn Sorvisto was like no other person that ever existed, but I guess that that's true for/about everybody (cf. that whole snowflake milieu), so I'll have to expound, and this is where it gets inarticulate and intangibly sorrowful. And there's advance dread about it, so I'll get to it after an interval during which I'll perform mundane tasks and tend to reponsibilities like getting dressed.

I think that there are too many stories to tell, each of which is too difficult to parlay, so what follows is what I have gleaned as the gist of my friend.

Glenn was disarming, in many senses and senselessnesses of that word. While striking in appearance (not only handsome, but also with a peerless sense of style that featured, among many other items, alligator shoes, an easter-grass bowler hat, and simultaneous boisterous plaids), his personality was truly artful. A dazzling array of people each knew and remember Glenn differently.

To many, Glenn is remembered for a loose-limbed eschewal of decorum that seemed to verge on haplessness—embodying a defiant and devilishly funny maelstrom of caustic and extemporaneous alchemy. Like a song that swings with such ferocity that it threatens constantly to come apart, until it is made apparent that such swinging is actually fundamental to the song. None of it was orchestrated but for every separate and collective memory of it.

Dozens were the occasions on which I experienced genuine discomfort in Glenn's company, although hindsight reveals its majesty. I'd say so now if I could:

"YES, Glenn! I am so grateful that you smoked a cigarette in the banquet hall during that wedding ceremony. And inside the DMV that one time."

Or, "It was brave of you to walk into that liquor store, grab a 6-pack of beer, and walk past the cashier, saying, 'Mañana!' Repeatedly. Until the clerk was so overcome with laughter that he allowed you to leave without paying."

These are among the more minor incidents to which I bore involuntary witness in the company of Glenn Sorvisto.

But that's all shallow nonsense on so many levels, because Glenn the person was so loving and gentle and kind that it's extraordinary for us human people to have been blessed with his presence for as long as we were. In all of the apparent chaos that surrounded him, there was always immense comfort. Glenn subverted my understanding of decency, because he was nothing if not singularly decent. He was deceptively sensitive and keenly thoughtful, even (especially?) in moments of alleged ignorance. He was always himself. He gave himself over to being himself.

There are bazillions of stories, but I don't feel like telling them at the moment, and I know that my facts are only as factual as the distance that separates me from them. I think about his love, Jody, and their incredible 18-year romance. I think about all of the friends that we shared, and the different ways in which each and all of these people experience this loss.

And a world without Glenn Sorvisto appears all the more daunting. But then, I remember that, irrespective of how daunting is any future, it remains inexorably destined for the same pile of pasts and precedents that houses hobbled former futures.

A Renewed Post

2012-02-25T12:32:00.000-05:00

This is an old post.

Jan 12, 2011 8:25 PM

Futility Is the New Utility
by Benb Gallaher

I've got a bizarre amount of explaining to do, although not really TO anyone. That, I suppose, is blogging's raison d’être, but that doesn't really mean that much yet in my life with a dead computer and the fact that I've been paralyzed by financial desperation and the claustrophobic crescendo of January's abject stupefaction.

Yesterday and the day before that, people came and replaced our windows and did all sorts of sawdusty [Ziggy Sawdust?] things, so we showered in Bath (funny funny) at the YMCA (they'd given us a "2 WEEKS FREE!" membership for unspecified reasons) and tried to occupy ourselves, to some avail. I suppose that the windows aren't offensive, but gosh, do I ever miss their beautiful, unwieldy predecessors.

I attended a function today, amid a horrid blizzardy apparatus. I'm really good at attending functions when there's a blizzard happening. Other times, it's a crapshoot. That may sound flippant, but it's more apparent with each huge storm.

(DIGRESSION: Everyone that's known me in day-to-day life knows about my fixation upon people discussing the weather--not the weather per se, but people talking about it like they have some kind of handle on what's vaguely imminent at all times. Paid to lie, just like most policymakers [and, while we're being candid, most other grown-ups], meteorologists have categorically undue sway over and say in how life [insofar as any of us has one of those] gets conducted in their aftermath. Wouldn't it be weird if every person that you saw in a day were to predict some other element of your life in the immediate future? Like Miss Cleo, but inescapable?)

Oh, hold up.

(ADDITIONAL DIGRESSION: Speaking of Miss Cleo, and bringing us niftily if not neatly to an existing narrative that's rather in progress, my father went to see a psychic a couple of years ago. This itself is far from newsworthy, as people tend to do things like that. [Indeed, the attendant stigma of yore regarding psychics is possibly why the telephonic franchise of Miss Cleo herself was so popular, and its dissipation is probably why her star receded.] Anyway, this particular psychic told him that, in order to get a job, "your son with MS [that's me] needs to join Mensa. My folks offered to pay for it and everything, so I opted to ignore my decades-long distaste for people that think of themselves as being intelligent [which is just plain silly] and test for it.

There was a snow event, occurring on R. Stevie Moore's 57th birthday [January 18, 2009] and appearing in Maine shortly following the arrival of my very-wonderful friend Bridget Moore [no relation to R. Stevie], who not only was living in Boston while attending grad school, but also had agreed in advance to accompany me on the half-mile walk from our new-to-us house to the testing facility. "How great," I thought.

My predictions regarding that process merited my failure before the test even began. First, the snowfall began to intensify as if timed to coincide with our walk [I remain amazed at how people (like me) can actually take the weather really/actually/legitimately/sincerely/personally. Wow. That makes meteorologists into sinister henchmen rather than average guessers.]

Speaking of guesses and how awry some guesses go, it should be said that the distance was not what I had calculated. [Blind in my left eye, I have a distorted perception of depth. But that doesn't explain an error so egregious.] Instead of 0.5 miles, the distance was 1.6 miles. [I only learned that later.] And the snow started hurling itself at us, my already-large eyebrows transmuted to gigantic Narnia caterpillars, and Bridget graciously trudged beside me, asking only on occasion, "Are you sure that it's only half-mile?" I insisted with diminishing confidence and icicled eyebrows that it was?

By and by, Bridget and I hobbled across "the finish line," arriving punctually at the testing location [if memory serves, it was a Presbyterian church]. No matter what or which, however, there was some kind of emergency unfolding, with fire trucks and related trappings of emergency response [I'm pretty sure about this, but I could very well have been hallucinating by that point]. Bridget went into the chapel to study, while I went to the testing room in the church's fluorescent-lit basement [again, it's as I recall], feeling profoundly screwed up at how vividly surreal life had smelted itself into being. Time was passing spasmodically, lurching and skidding to such extremes that a person [like me] could grow woozy [like I did] just by watching the hands on the wall clock [like I was doing, compulsively]. And I was surrounded by either Mensans [eek!] or hopeful Mensans [eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!] under these willfully wearisome fluorescent lights, and we had to take this test that would somehow make a factual statement about our smarts. Curiously, we were given an "obvious" practice question [to boost morale? to ensure adherence to testing procedures?] as a prelude to the proper test.

I say to you now, with pride, that I gave it my best shot, and that I did not answer that sample question correctly. And I wasn't making any kind of statement other than, "Oh my effing WORD" by default. Everybody present thought that I was joking. I decided to go through with the test regardless, mostly because I wanted to explore maximally the alien feelings that were my only companion for this episode's duration. Anyway, we got a ride home from a very-gracious proctor-in-training, and I passed the damned test, but that did not discernibly affect my job prospects. Oh is the new zero—Join Mensa today!

Which brings us to the sadistic climatic tomfoolery of yesterday.)

On account of my illness, which is considered a disability (for which I would receive a pittance in perpetuity), I have been affiliated with Vocational Rehabilitation for about a year now. They don't know what to do about me and my inconsistent physical considerations (i.e., no restaurant or construction work), so not only have they adopted a default of blaming me for not having found work, but I have to resist at every turn their inscrutable wont toward placing me into positions in which I will definitely not succeed (I've pursued such positions with all sincerity, but have been met unfailingly with resounding lassitude.).

This is rather well-worn territory—plenty of people have behaved ignorantly and hurtfully toward me on a basis of things that they don't understand—but this is a STATE PROGRAM. This doesn't feel any better than the legion of occasions on which strangers have assumed my drunkenness because of my variable dexterity. Well, it feels worse, because it's the job of these people to take me seriously; they're paid to take me seriously—not to rest upon my shoulders the "fault" of my not getting paid.

So, I went to the newspaper for a Voc-Rehab-endorsed "interest interview." Even though that interview was not for any vacancy or available position, I was grateful for the opportunity to meet someone that was maybe capable of providing some insights. At any rate, the outdoor bluster began hours beforehand (thus necessitating a taxi ride to the interview; conditions were deteriorating so rapidly that, as I was en route, the decision was made to discontinue taxi service for the day). I met my Voc-Rehab contact person there. True to his doubting view of me, he certainly hadn't expected my appearance amid a blizzard, and I think that my being there (for lack of a better term) effed with him. It seemed to me that, throughout the meeting, he was actively pursuing any possible avenue for (a) proclaiming stratified demarcations between us, and (b) creating dissonance within me.

The friendly and warm-hearted gentleman with whom we met did indeed provide me with some insights, but they were retreads of prior insights. (It's difficult to project confidence when rejection becomes so routine.) I didn't have the heart to evaporate, but I couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't have done just that. As my contact person gave me a ride home, white-knuckling and scared stiff by road conditions, he was probably wondering about what had been gained by way of this exercise in "I told you so" hubris. Meanwhile, I sat in the passenger seat, thinking about how spite can motivate people in ways that they'd never foreseen.

Feb 18, 2011

11:58 PM

if you had all your verbal gems minted, you'd be a vocablillionaire.

Feb 19, 2011

4:30 PM
where y'all comments at? does anyone else think that, when we get to the airport, we should sign a release form, get into huge smocks, and get knocked the expletive out until we arrive at our destination? the airlines would save a fortune! we'd live to overripe old ages!

4:49 PM
If possession is nine-tenths of the law, and "possession" is a 10-letter word, then could it stand to reason that 'possessio' is nine-tenths of possession'?

4:50 PM
Julia said:

I for two would love the idea of getting into a slanket, being given my knock out drops, and waking up refreshed and halfway round the world, it seeming that no time had elapsed.Better than downing all the free booze pronto and spending the flight passed out on the restroom floor.

5:19 PM
Benb responds: That's assuming that the restroom floor will contain you. It rarely happens thus; consider all of the people whose lives are irrevocably altered (almost exclusively for the worse) by obstreperous behavior while aloft. Tedious rockstars (like the once-worthwhile peter buck, the often-worthwhile viv prince, and the never-worthwhile jim morrison) have had this problem with some regularity, but in a nine-twelve world, everyone's always wrong. So knock us out, onetime. Please.

Going on with Our Bad Selves

2012-02-24T11:48:00.000-05:00

hi there short post today oh look and free of punctuates
but worry not for i will deploy them shortly

!@#$%R^Y&*(.?"? pretend it's a swear word.

Anywise, it's life in Brunswick, M to the E.

Weather people apparatus creatures said, for at least the fourth time this week, that it's set to snow today, but they lie.We are that person's sniveling consituency.

I think that I am numb from having fried my suspense nerves (suspenders?) without resolution this week in terms of the job. It's still infinitely possible.

Everybody in the family is ill with this admirably persistent nettlefest of a cold. The boys, who refer to mucus as "oogum boogums" (in deference to that excellent Brenton Wood song; maybe I'll attach it to this post and have a listen now, just to remind me of what I should never forget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLXvMb5bYHE