The Small Man

It was just somewhere to be for a year. Maybe two.
   That's what Stan told himself when he took the job. He didn't know what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go or what he intended his life eventually to become. But he knew this job wasn't it. Two years, max. Hell, six months if he could find something else that paid a little better.
   At the one year mark he told himself he had six months to find another job or else quit. He told himself the same at the two year mark. Then at the three year mark he stopped giving himself six months to quit.
   Stan got married in the summer of his eighth year on the job. His first son was born in the winter of his tenth year. He and his wife bought a house six months later.
   By the time he'd reached fifteen years at the same job Stan was going gray at the temples, and he wondered where the time had gone. Fourteen years longer on the job than he'd intended, and still no end in sight. There was college to plan for, and weddings for his three kids, and then retirement. His one year on the job looked like it was going to stretch into thirty.
   Then the economy tanked and Stan got laid off while some overpaid bastard took home millions in undeserved income. Stan foundered on unemployment - he'd never learned a skill marketable outside his company - and let himself feel emasculated while his wife shouldered the burden of being the family breadwinner.
   But one day Stan realized something. He wasn't shackled any longer. He was a free man. He could do anything. Literally. Follow his bliss. Find his passion. Indulge in the way he never had before. He found a new career.
   Stan never made millions, but he provided for his family and he held his head up and answered proudly when people asked him what he did for a living. And that was something he never could do before.

How Much?!!

I was out Christmas shopping this afternoon, you know, poking around, seeing what's what and getting the lay of the land. No, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for or where to even start looking, but I was out there, mixing it up with everybody else. I got a little hungry, and since I was in the holiday spirit, I decided to stop in at Baskin Robbins, where I have not been in years, literally. I got a single scoop of Quarterback Crunch on a pointy sugar cone, just like old times. I nearly had a heart attack when the guy told me it would be $2.50. But I had a hankerin' and forked over the cash anyway. Grudgingly.
   Am I so out of touch that $2.50 for a freakin' ice cream cone sounds like highway robbery to me?
   I mean, really... come on. I know you have to pay rent and pay your staff and carry insurance and whatever other crazy-ass add-ons California burdens small businesses with, but seriously... $2.50 for a single scoop sugar cone? I remember when it was like 50 cents, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and cavemen had just invented fire and the ice cream freezer.
   Maybe it's more of my pending old-man-ness showing, the cranky codger coming out in me, but Baskin Robbins must be doing pretty well if they think they can get away with charging that much for a few ounces of mediocre ice cream. They sure aren't going to get my return business, I know that much.
   I'm almost afraid to go places I haven't been in a long time, because I have a feeling they'll all end up astonishingly overpriced and ruin my cherished memories. Like Stuckey's, do they even have those any more? With the pecan logs that used to be 25 cents? What's Dairy Queen charging for a Dilley Bar these days, ten bucks? Jeez, I feel like my grandfather, reminiscing about places gone for decades.
   Is it 4:30 yet? I'm hungry for dinner.

Losing Touch

I went up to my local Target today, in an unsuccessful attempt to find Christmas presents. There were TONS of people all over the store, which is a lesson for me not to go to Target on a Sunday afternoon. Much more importantly, though, I noticed something alarming, something that shook me to foundations of my identity.
   They'd changed the shopping carts.
   For as long as I can remember they've had the same carts, metal bases with plastic bodies that also lock up when you try to take them off premises. Which is why homeless people use carts from the 99cent store, they're easier to steal. But Target no longer has the old kind, the familiar kind, the kind I remember.
   Now they have all-plastic carts, no more metal bases. The new carts are sleek and gray and red and just... wrong. It's kind of like shopping with the Jetsons, too streamlined and too modern.
   I don't know why this change affects me. I mean, really, who cares? They changed the shopping carts, life goes on. But there's something else. They've made this Target the kind that sells groceries too. And I knew nothing about it. They didn't run the approval past me like they should have. Time was I went to this Target all the time, I worked across the street, but it's been months since I've been in, and in that time they've changed the layout of the store, and they now sell groceries, and they've changed the shopping carts.
   Enough already. I thought I declared a moratorium on change a while back. Why is no one paying attention?
   Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna close my eyes and count to twenty, which should be more than enough time for everybody to find out what they've changed in the past year and then change it back. Okay?
   Here we go. One... Two... Three... Four... Five...
    Are you changing things back? Good.
   Six... Seven... Eight...

Sims Echo Park

When I was driving home today I was stopped at a light watching a phalanx of people trotting across the intersection. An old guy, a pregnant woman pushing a stroller, three women in office attire, a fat guy wearing a too-short shirt and pajama bottoms (I suspect he was an escapee from the hospital on the corner), two students with backpacks, and several men and women running for the local bus. Quite the collection. I could hear their conversation, but since I was in the truck I couldn't make out the words; it sounded like the nonsense sounds the Sims make.
   Then it hit me. Maybe they really were Sims. Maybe I was a Sim. Maybe the words I was speaking, thinking, and writing made no more sense than the gibberish the Sims used. Maybe I only thought I understood myself because my delusion was internally consistent. Like dream logic that makes perfect sense in the moment but doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you're awake.
   Thoroughly freaked out, I drove on when the light changed. Did I think in pictograms that only some at-a-distance observer could see? Was my existence a figment, and only in-progress when some person started a program? Was I just a copy of some piece of code, trapped somewhere in a larger algorithm?
   Then I realized that I was starting to think I was in the movie Tron. Or maybe the Matrix. Probably Tron because that's way cooler, and they're coming out with a sequel next year.
   But that brief two-block episode did bring me back to my college days and discussions in philosophy class. How do we know what's real? How do we know that we are experiencing what we think we are?
   I honestly don't remember the answers to any of that. Probably there aren't answers. But I would say that if I can sit behind the wheel of my truck and have a brief solipsistic crisis, then I have too much time on my hands. The fact of the matter is, real or imagined, there are other people in the world, and it's connections with those other people that matter the most. Any one of those people crossing the intersection this afternoon might have made a great friend. Or a terrible enemy. Or maybe they just had an interesting story to tell, or a tragic one, or an hilarious one. Thing is, I'll never know because I had the windows rolled up.
   I need to fix this. I need to get out more.

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm concerned every time I have to use an airplane's bathroom. I don't mean the bathroom in the airport terminal, I mean the one that's actually on the plane itself, either the one in front or the one in back. Or the bathrooms in the middle if you're flying one of those great big jets to another country.
   These bathrooms don't worry me because of the smell – though that is troubling – or the fact that so many passengers use them and you really, really don't know where these people have been. It's not the embarrassing, huge whoosh they make when you flush them. It's not even that I'm afraid that when I flush I might get sucked into the blue-water reservoir.
   I am concerned, however, that when I flush I might actually get stuck.
   How embarrassing would that be? I picture myself bent in two like a snapped toothpick, my feet pointed at the ceiling, my arms pressed tight against them, my lower half wedged firmly in the bowl. Remember that my pants would be around my ankles, which, once I get stuck in the toilet, would be above my head.
   I'd have to call out for help, but I wouldn't want to do it in a panicked way, because that would just be pathetic. I'd have to say something like 'Uh… excuse me? I seem to have run into a bit of a snag here…' or give it a little laugh, rap my shoe against the door and say 'You're not going to believe what just happened…'
   One of the flight attendants would have to investigate and once they see the situation I've gotten myself into they'd have to call the pilot over for a consult. The both of them would stand there, hands to their chins, a puzzled look on their faces as they say 'Never seen that happen before…' I just don't need the grief.
   That's why I hold it until we land and then run for the real bathroom in the terminal.

Poetry Ain't Sissy

When I was in middle school and high school I didn't like poetry. I read voraciously, almost anything I could get, from The Hobbit to Moby Dick (seriously, I read the whole thing), and all those books they assign you in English class, like Silas Marner. But when it came to poetry they lost me. Shakespeare was all right, but I liked the blood and guts and ghosts better - and the severed body parts in Titus Andronicus - than I liked the sonnets. Keats, Coleridge, Yeats, I could do without them all. Ode to Grecian Urn my ass. Poetry was not for me.
   Then I got to college, or specifically to my alma mater, Austin College (go 'Roos!) and an upper-level English class. We got to the inevitable poetry component, which I was determined to gut out like a recruit in boot camp. Dr. Gray had us read some old coot named Walt Whitman. So I put off the assignment as long as possible, and only a few hours before class did I crack the Norton Anthology and read 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.'
   After the first stanza it was like somebody punched me in the gut.
   I read it. And read it again. And a third time. It's not long but it is powerful. Nuclear. If this was poetry I was hooked. The lyricism, the immediacy, the raw energy of Whitman's words made me feel like I was there with him, waiting to cross the East River into 1858 Manhattan. Read it, please, and read it again. If you don't like poetry you will after you read 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.'
   A lot of what we think of as American democracy, the populist, inclusive, celebratory spirit that informs our national image comes from Whitman. His work was controversial because of its frank sexuality and sometimes erotic imagery, but that's part of what makes it so good. If nothing else poetry should be honest and evocative, and Whitman's work is absolutely those two things.
   I'm telling you, if you haven't read Walt Whitman you're cheating yourself. Go to the library - or libary - and check out a volume of 'Leaves of Grass.' Doesn't matter which one, he revised the thing every few years for most of his life, just get it and devour it. You'll thank me, I guarantee it.


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Sinatra and Shatner

During my time 'between assignments' I have a lot of time to think. I try to use this time wisely, pondering the larger questions of our existence, making the effort to tease the secrets of the universe out of our daily struggles. I made just such a breakthrough last night, when I realized that, for years now, William Shatner has been doing a Frank Sinatra impression.
   As I've written about previously, I recently rediscovered classic Star Trek, the one with the red, yellow, and blue velour shirts, the one with the hippy 60's vibe. The one that became a star vehicle for William Shatner. I noticed that on the show he wasn't quite Shatner, though. That is, he wasn't nearly the hammy parody of himself that he generally plays now. Which I thought was interesting but then didn't think any more of.
   Fast forward to last night, when I happened upon a PBS special featuring Frank Sinatra. The special was filmed in Carnegie Hall in 1980 (jeez, that's 30 years ago) and had never been seen before. As I watched Sinatra go through his Reprise hits, entertaining a concert hall full of jaded New Yorkers I finally saw it. Shatner's gestures are Sinatra's. His phrasing is Sinatra's. His knowing smirk is Sinatra's. Shatner has spent the last half of his acting career imitating Frank Sinatra. And getting away with it.
   During one of the PBS breaks to beg for money - which they do constantly now - a biographer noted that with his singing Sinatra intended to imitate Tommy Dorsey's trombone playing - lots of sustain, fluid, semi-classical legato of phrasing, no break between two lines of the lyric. So that means Shatner is also imitating a trombone. Which explains a lot.
   I'm calling you out, Shatner. I know your secret and I've just spilled the beans. Now, in the twilight of your years, you can go back to being a real actor. The ball is in your court.

One last thing: 'Send in the Clowns' sung by Sinatra isn't schmaltzy and horrible, it's sad and poignant. It makes sense.

From My Bookshelf

I'm feeling sort of martial today, what with the Fourth being last weekend and all, so I chose the best - and first - of the war stories.

The Iliad by Homer translated by Robert Fagles
   If you want a war story, one full of blood, guts, betrayal, personal grudges, sex, gods, goddesses and dirty tricks, you can't get a better one than the Iliad. It's the story of the last weeks of the last year of the ten-year-long Trojan War. It starts with Achilles - greatest of the Greek warriors - refusing to fight because Agamemnon took his treasure, a girl names Briseis. See? Two pages in and already there's sex and betrayal. What more could you ask for?
   Classics was one of my majors in college, and I actually translated a bit of the Iliad from ancient Greek. While there are other translations out there, this one comes very close to the poetry, majesty, and stomach-churning violence of the original. This is not a book you'd just sit down and read, most of you anyway, it's one you turn to when you want to immerse yourself in the language.
   It ends with the death of Hector, Hero of Troy, Breaker of Horses, son of King Priam. Most people think that it ends with the Trojan Horse, but that's from the Aeneid. Which was written five hundred years later by Vergil, who was Roman, not Greek.

Quote: "Giant Ajax hoisted [the rock] high and and hurled it down, crushed the rim of Epicles' four-horned helmet and cracked his skull to splinters, bloody pulp - and breakneck like a diver went the Trojan plunging off and away from the steep beetling tower as life left his bones."

   How about that? Pretty descriptive, huh?