I was sitting here thinking about a situation that happened to me a few summers back, thinking about the story itself and thinking about how to draw some significant meaning from it. A good writer will find a way to do that sort of thing often. A simple thing happens and years later the poetic significance of it shines forward like a zen koan, a master phrase which encompasses a great life lesson. Both writer and reader move forward after such enlightenment with a new understanding of the world, the universe, everything in it. You exist at a higher level. It's awesome. Or so I would imagine.
My story on the other hand, after numerous times told in my mind, embellished or simplified, straight truth or with Twainian hyperbole, never revealed any secrets to me. I was a little disappointed at this, but it is all I brought to the blog table today, so here you go. May you be slightly amused.
I was working as a carpenter's apprentice in Chicago. On this occasion, my work took place north of the city in a well moneyed place called Highland Park. The project house was a century old if it was a day. Old as dirt. Older, if you ask me. We were doing a partial remodel, my partner Mike and I. My task, for three weeks that summer, was to remove every inch of the ornate and irreplaceable trim on the windows and doors, strip off twelve and a half decades of paint, and replace said trim to its original position, naked to the grain, where it would get a fresh coat of paint. Mike got busy smoking a lot of cigarettes and hanging around in the back yard.
In order to remove the thick crust of paint, I used a product called Strip-eeze. I took the trim out to the drive way and set it up, two or three pieces at a time, across a pair of sawhorses. The horses stood on a thick plastic tarp. My stripping tools included a bucket, a barge load of steel wool, giant rubber gauntlets, and a face shield. I also wore my trusty respirator, as the magical ingredients of Strip-eeze had the less than magical side effect of causing massive neurological damage to the unprotected user.
A word about Strip-eeze; It is vibrant, pink, and gelatinous. It burns flesh like a phosphor flare and, as mentioned, will melt your brain when inhaled. It also strips paint quite handily.
I poured some of the pink goo into my bucket and then swabbed it onto the trim with a wad of steel wool, which for some reason my nine-fingered boss called a potato. As in, "Damien, hand me a wool potato!" I then stood back while the magic happened. Within three or four minutes the pink goo had worked its way through the eons of lead based Dutch Boy, raising the paint in one slick nasty layer up off the wood where it puckered and cracked like a fungus floating on a slime mold. Very cool. At this point I simply wiped the toxic crud off the trim with a wool potato and slogged it onto the tarp.
After several hours of this brilliantly entertaining chemistry experiment I noticed something else about the Strip-eeze. It attracted an inordinate number of bugs. Primarily the kind with stingers on their butts. I gave it to the way the sun reflected off the pink nasty, it must have hit those buzzers in their multi-faceted eye balls like the lights of the Las Vegas strip, beckoning all to come and enjoy the gooey embrace of sudden neurological meltdown. It was like a landing strip coated in soft porn. Perhaps half the local population of flying insects was suddenly way too interested in what the hell I was up to.
I hear there are more bugs in one cubic acre of the American Midwest than there are humans on the whole planet. I believe that to be a conservative estimation. For three weeks I was surrounded by wasps, bees, hornets, flies, at least four unidentified stinging species (now extinct), and an entire brood of fourteen year cicadas that had the unfortunate luck to hatch and subsequently perish just then. I slogged bug guts in equal parts to ancient paint. I feared for my very life from the constant threat of a sting, intentional or accidental. And yet, I suffered no such calamity. Remaining calm in the face of such piercing terror, I proceeded to clean nearly three thousand board feet of trim, passively observing the mass suicide of an entire ecological niche. I can't say if they died happy or not. The bugs would fly head on into the pink goo. A few seconds of ecstatic twitching, and then they were still.
Each day I would arrive to a job site that I had meticulously cleaned up the previous evening, thus making me feel slightly removed from the carnage that was about to commence. By mid morning, however, I was near ankle deep in a horrid sludge of used goo, spent wool potatoes, ancient paint, and innumerable wings, abdomens, heads and thoraxes. And each day I operated in a constant state of fear for my mortal hide, not sure one way or the other regarding my allergic response. I never grew numb to the swarms. The bigger ones would occasionally ricochet with a loud "Thwack!" right off my safety goggles, then adjust their course and dive straight to their doom. Had I not been wearing my respirator I probably would have inhaled more than a few bees. And yet I was still without a sting.
Finally my task came to an end. The half mile of trim was clean and back in place, ready for fresh paint. A few dozen hefty trash bags full of my criminal leavings sat in the back of Stumpy Digit's Astro van, and I had a big red dent on my face from my respirator, a mark that remained for almost a week thereafter.
As I tossed the last saw horse into Mike's crappy old pick up truck, I marveled that I had not been stung. I could not fathom how I could be so lucky. Heck with it, I thought, and hopped into the truck. We were a few blocks away from the house when the bee flew in my open window. I casually shooed it away, but instead of going away it went down by my feet. Then behind my legs. I responded by rising up off my seat and trying to shoo it away some more, but this merely encouraged it to fly up the back of my shorts. I, in turn, freaked the hell out. A moment later I felt a searing pain just below my left buttock. The truck was almost to a stop sign, but that didn't bother me. I just threw open the door and, angrily mashing the bee against my ass I tumbled out of the still moving vehicle, narrowly missing a fire hydrant with my face. As I rose to my feet, still clutching my swelling ass, I paused to note that a very pretty girl had just stepped out of the coffee shop on the corner and stopped to stare in bewilderment. A few other members of the sidewalk cafe set paused as well to note that a filthy, possibly deranged man just fell out of a moving truck, grasping his own butt for some reason. My embarrassment was immense. I imagine my cheeks were as red as my left ass. I stood tall and tried to gain some composure by shaking the mashed bee out of my shorts with a queer little dance. I doubted that any of my audience had any idea what the hell my problem was. In an effort to explain myself I said the first thing that came to mind, quoting the sagacious Homer Simpson:
"A bee bit my bottom! Now my bottom's big."
I didn't score any points with that one, so I just got back in the truck and rode home without ever actually sitting down.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
We be truckin'.
I knew October would be a busy month. Too much going on and not enough discipline paid to putting words on the screen, but I am back now.
Last night I had a dream that I was driving a big stinking dump truck through narrow streets crowded with pedestrians and small cars. The dump truck was an odd one. It was more like a giant Radio Flyer wagon than a dumper - I stood on top of it to drive and steered the beast with a long yoke that gave me precious little control. The brakes were so bad that I was forced to look into the future and anticipate events that had not yet occured - traffic lights changing a mile ahead or people randomly stepping into the street. I had to take evasive action and veer off the road several times into vacant lots. This only slowed my progress a little. The momentum of my truck was unstoppable. When pedestrians stepped into my path I leaned on the horn, but it gave out only a feeble quack. People grew angry with me, understandably, as I was about to run them down. All the other cars moved with grace and efficiency. I trundled forward like a blind buffoon, barely containing my load, narrowly avoiding mass homicide.
I think this dream means I need to go vote. I think I can change things if I do that. If this old dumper keeps on as it is, I am going to have to leap off into some bushes along the way and let the beast go do its worst. There is still a chance, however, that I might just be able to reach the E-brake or steer the thing into some alternate path where the rest of the world isn't going to get pissed off that I ran over everything they hold dear. A small chance, but it is there.
Good luck, America.
Last night I had a dream that I was driving a big stinking dump truck through narrow streets crowded with pedestrians and small cars. The dump truck was an odd one. It was more like a giant Radio Flyer wagon than a dumper - I stood on top of it to drive and steered the beast with a long yoke that gave me precious little control. The brakes were so bad that I was forced to look into the future and anticipate events that had not yet occured - traffic lights changing a mile ahead or people randomly stepping into the street. I had to take evasive action and veer off the road several times into vacant lots. This only slowed my progress a little. The momentum of my truck was unstoppable. When pedestrians stepped into my path I leaned on the horn, but it gave out only a feeble quack. People grew angry with me, understandably, as I was about to run them down. All the other cars moved with grace and efficiency. I trundled forward like a blind buffoon, barely containing my load, narrowly avoiding mass homicide.
I think this dream means I need to go vote. I think I can change things if I do that. If this old dumper keeps on as it is, I am going to have to leap off into some bushes along the way and let the beast go do its worst. There is still a chance, however, that I might just be able to reach the E-brake or steer the thing into some alternate path where the rest of the world isn't going to get pissed off that I ran over everything they hold dear. A small chance, but it is there.
Good luck, America.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The things you don't do, the symbols of who you are.
How many times have you had a strong compulsion to do something you know you had better not do? It happens to me often. I don't know what that says about a person's character, though I am sure there are several different interpretations. I am not one for spending a lot of time doing character dissections, not since my days as a theater major. A brief analysis will reveal that I tend to prefer acting by intuition over thorough scrutiny of the choices. On the big issues, that is. It is the smaller items, I believe, which merit lengthy and pointless deliberation. What kind of pie will it be? Soup, or no soup with the club sandwich? No soup today, Helen. No soup today.
One occasion took place while working with my good friend Scott at the Chicago Tribune printing house. We were installing some a/v equipment in a training room. When we broke for lunch we took what we thought would be a shortcut through the building. An unmarked door lead us to a catwalk that spanned a large room full of the very machines that make the newspaper come alive. And they were alive. Huge blue steel rollers sent an endless sheet of newsprint through a labyrinth of printing and pressing and cutting machinery. The noise was deafening. The scene was astounding. I wanted nothing so much as to throw my Snapple into the works. Scott offered me a dollar to cry out "STOP THE PRESSES!" I had to pause for a moment to compose myself - I very nearly became one dollar richer. Of course we would never have gotten away with it. The consequences would haunt us to this day. Try as we might to escape, crippling laughter would have rendered us unable to run from a stone sow. Reason overcame temptation, and we went to lunch.
It all started when I was little. On a trip to Pentwater, Michigan, sitting on my mom's lap as we drove down the highway in our late 70's green and white Dodge Tradesman 100 van. Yes, I said sitting on mom's lap at highway speeds. Could have been that the seat belt was around me too. Knowing mom that is probably how we rolled, but I was still in the front seat, a blasphemy by today's standards. Sounds crazy, I know, but we thought we were the safe ones. In those days a lot of my friends would literally walk around the moving vehicle while their parents drove. Standing up on the seats, leaning out the windows, and so on. My friend Matthew would sometimes be seen riding on the roof of his mother's Cutlass Sierra, wearing only a Lone Ranger mask and Incredible Hulk Underoos. Society is more cautious about child safety now. Much, much more cautious.
Anyway, there I sat, playing with my dad's new hat. It was a gray/green fedora that included a bit of netting that could be worn over the head and neck to ward off flying insects. Pretty nifty idea. I held this lightweight handful of mesh in my fingers and - here's the part where memory and fact diverge - I rolled down the window and either let the thing go intentionally, or the vacuum from the only open window sucked the thing out of my hand. I don't know the truth. It was one of those two things, and either way the netting was gone for good. Dad was pissed. The hat had suddenly lost a major feature. His neck would pay the price, as it was undoubtedly black fly season in Michigan. We always went during black fly season. I said something about stopping to retrieve the net, but for reasons lost on my six year old mind, that was out of the question. Actually, I still don't get that one.
So did I throw the bug net out the window on purpose? I only ask because as I grew up I often found myself feeling the urge to chuck important objects out the window of a car, off the side of a boat, into a deep chasm, into the polar bear enclosure at the zoo, and so on. It seemed like such a great idea! Any time I was holding something important and in a position to dispose of it permanently, I sincerely felt that the world would be better for it. And yet I have managed to restrain myself these many years. Mostly.
Since the Tradesman-bug net incident I have followed through on a few marked occasions. I threw a ring off a bridge over the Mississippi one day. Just upstream from the I-35 bridge that collapsed last year. The ring was a gift from a girlfriend. I credit the power of the big river on that occasion. It overwhelmed my foolish and romantic sensibilities, and the spirit of the moment took me to a better place. I should have chucked the relationship with the ring, but that lame duck hung around for another year or two. Regardless, I have a fond memory of dispatching that tiny shiny memento with a long wind up, letting it sail for several seconds through the sun of a crisp autumn day until it was almost out of sight, then plopping without a sound into the turbulent and indifferent waters below. On the far shore stood the remnants of an old flour mill, roof caved in, silos falling to ruin. The industry driven by the falls at Nicollet had long since moved to more profitable locales. I should have read the significance in that picture and taken a likewise course with my life but as I mentioned, I was fool in those days.
I don't count premeditated disposal of baggage on this list. I speak to those moments when chance afforded me the opportunity to do something I could never undo, something that may have far reaching consequences and bear significantly on the remainder of my days. I want to say something here about freeing oneself of an albatross and pay homage to the Ancient Mariner, but the idea of consequence implies the opposite of what I plumb my memories for; actually acquiring this figurative dead bird by the act of removing a significantly endowed object from one's possession. Sort of ironic. The object was supposed to be the albatross. Instead it was the touchstone that kept the burden at bay.
The premeditated cutting loose, on the other hand - that is an act performed by someone seeking to be free. Like the time I went for a solo autumn camp at the Palisades and built a nice big cheery fire and proceeded to throw into it virtually every memento, photo, knick-knack and trinket from my first wedding. There was an amazing catharsis in watching each item transform from bitter memory to meaningless ash. It felt so good. I still have the memory, but the physical permanence is gone. The memory is mine to use as I see fit. The red hot embers of that pyre composed themselves to cook me a fine supper that night.
We imbue objects with such great power - let them hold station over our psyches, like a teetering bookshelf full of personal histories. I have a necklace that was once my grandfather's key chain. He carried it on his postal route, and everywhere else he went I suppose, and if he ever lost his keys this little metal tag would insure that the keys find their way back to him. This in the time of good deeds performed without recompense. This little tag is as sacred to me as any artifact in a museum collection, but to anyone else it is a tiny, worthless bit of metal. I take good care of it, but it has served time on the list. I have felt it call, "Hurl me into those falls now." "Drop me in the middle of this great deep lake now." "Out the window with me."
Why didn't I release myself from this piece of matter? I loved my Pipere, still do. To lose the little bit of metal would make me sad. It keeps his memory alive in me, keeps me aware of his influence on my life. I could keep all of that without this talisman. Why choose to carry such things?
For the sake of remembrance. What other reason could there be? I could sit here and write about my Pipere, but in the end this key tag speaks volumes to me. I will carry it on and pass it down, bearing great reverence to what is worthless by any other account. I will pass the albatross to the next generation, and she can find her own understanding of how to endow trivial things with deep meaning. And then be compelled to throw them to the abyss, or show restraint and carry on the symbol of my memory.
One occasion took place while working with my good friend Scott at the Chicago Tribune printing house. We were installing some a/v equipment in a training room. When we broke for lunch we took what we thought would be a shortcut through the building. An unmarked door lead us to a catwalk that spanned a large room full of the very machines that make the newspaper come alive. And they were alive. Huge blue steel rollers sent an endless sheet of newsprint through a labyrinth of printing and pressing and cutting machinery. The noise was deafening. The scene was astounding. I wanted nothing so much as to throw my Snapple into the works. Scott offered me a dollar to cry out "STOP THE PRESSES!" I had to pause for a moment to compose myself - I very nearly became one dollar richer. Of course we would never have gotten away with it. The consequences would haunt us to this day. Try as we might to escape, crippling laughter would have rendered us unable to run from a stone sow. Reason overcame temptation, and we went to lunch.
It all started when I was little. On a trip to Pentwater, Michigan, sitting on my mom's lap as we drove down the highway in our late 70's green and white Dodge Tradesman 100 van. Yes, I said sitting on mom's lap at highway speeds. Could have been that the seat belt was around me too. Knowing mom that is probably how we rolled, but I was still in the front seat, a blasphemy by today's standards. Sounds crazy, I know, but we thought we were the safe ones. In those days a lot of my friends would literally walk around the moving vehicle while their parents drove. Standing up on the seats, leaning out the windows, and so on. My friend Matthew would sometimes be seen riding on the roof of his mother's Cutlass Sierra, wearing only a Lone Ranger mask and Incredible Hulk Underoos. Society is more cautious about child safety now. Much, much more cautious.
Anyway, there I sat, playing with my dad's new hat. It was a gray/green fedora that included a bit of netting that could be worn over the head and neck to ward off flying insects. Pretty nifty idea. I held this lightweight handful of mesh in my fingers and - here's the part where memory and fact diverge - I rolled down the window and either let the thing go intentionally, or the vacuum from the only open window sucked the thing out of my hand. I don't know the truth. It was one of those two things, and either way the netting was gone for good. Dad was pissed. The hat had suddenly lost a major feature. His neck would pay the price, as it was undoubtedly black fly season in Michigan. We always went during black fly season. I said something about stopping to retrieve the net, but for reasons lost on my six year old mind, that was out of the question. Actually, I still don't get that one.
So did I throw the bug net out the window on purpose? I only ask because as I grew up I often found myself feeling the urge to chuck important objects out the window of a car, off the side of a boat, into a deep chasm, into the polar bear enclosure at the zoo, and so on. It seemed like such a great idea! Any time I was holding something important and in a position to dispose of it permanently, I sincerely felt that the world would be better for it. And yet I have managed to restrain myself these many years. Mostly.
Since the Tradesman-bug net incident I have followed through on a few marked occasions. I threw a ring off a bridge over the Mississippi one day. Just upstream from the I-35 bridge that collapsed last year. The ring was a gift from a girlfriend. I credit the power of the big river on that occasion. It overwhelmed my foolish and romantic sensibilities, and the spirit of the moment took me to a better place. I should have chucked the relationship with the ring, but that lame duck hung around for another year or two. Regardless, I have a fond memory of dispatching that tiny shiny memento with a long wind up, letting it sail for several seconds through the sun of a crisp autumn day until it was almost out of sight, then plopping without a sound into the turbulent and indifferent waters below. On the far shore stood the remnants of an old flour mill, roof caved in, silos falling to ruin. The industry driven by the falls at Nicollet had long since moved to more profitable locales. I should have read the significance in that picture and taken a likewise course with my life but as I mentioned, I was fool in those days.
I don't count premeditated disposal of baggage on this list. I speak to those moments when chance afforded me the opportunity to do something I could never undo, something that may have far reaching consequences and bear significantly on the remainder of my days. I want to say something here about freeing oneself of an albatross and pay homage to the Ancient Mariner, but the idea of consequence implies the opposite of what I plumb my memories for; actually acquiring this figurative dead bird by the act of removing a significantly endowed object from one's possession. Sort of ironic. The object was supposed to be the albatross. Instead it was the touchstone that kept the burden at bay.
The premeditated cutting loose, on the other hand - that is an act performed by someone seeking to be free. Like the time I went for a solo autumn camp at the Palisades and built a nice big cheery fire and proceeded to throw into it virtually every memento, photo, knick-knack and trinket from my first wedding. There was an amazing catharsis in watching each item transform from bitter memory to meaningless ash. It felt so good. I still have the memory, but the physical permanence is gone. The memory is mine to use as I see fit. The red hot embers of that pyre composed themselves to cook me a fine supper that night.
We imbue objects with such great power - let them hold station over our psyches, like a teetering bookshelf full of personal histories. I have a necklace that was once my grandfather's key chain. He carried it on his postal route, and everywhere else he went I suppose, and if he ever lost his keys this little metal tag would insure that the keys find their way back to him. This in the time of good deeds performed without recompense. This little tag is as sacred to me as any artifact in a museum collection, but to anyone else it is a tiny, worthless bit of metal. I take good care of it, but it has served time on the list. I have felt it call, "Hurl me into those falls now." "Drop me in the middle of this great deep lake now." "Out the window with me."
Why didn't I release myself from this piece of matter? I loved my Pipere, still do. To lose the little bit of metal would make me sad. It keeps his memory alive in me, keeps me aware of his influence on my life. I could keep all of that without this talisman. Why choose to carry such things?
For the sake of remembrance. What other reason could there be? I could sit here and write about my Pipere, but in the end this key tag speaks volumes to me. I will carry it on and pass it down, bearing great reverence to what is worthless by any other account. I will pass the albatross to the next generation, and she can find her own understanding of how to endow trivial things with deep meaning. And then be compelled to throw them to the abyss, or show restraint and carry on the symbol of my memory.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Dreams of sepia and stuffing
I have been meaning to play dream scribe for Melissa for a long time now. I know - that conjures up images in your mind of me sitting by candle light, late at night with a big huge feather quill and an ink bottle, stocking cap tilted haphazardly over one ear as I feverishly jot down strange and peculiar notions from the sleepy mind of my love. You've got it exactly.
One upshot of having a baby who sleeps about two hours at a go is that you never get into the deep and truly useful sleep your weary soul so badly needs. That sentence was originally intended to have a positive ending. I can't hide the truth from you - it's insane. My point is that when woken so frequently the dreams you do have are much closer to the surface of your conscious mind and therefore much easier to recall. I believe that I do dream when I sleep a full night, it's just that I was asleep and so I can't remember the dream.
Lately I dream mostly of matters related to a life in the service industry. But I did not come here today to write about my own dreams.
When she woke this morning Melissa told me that in her dream someone had sent her Pandora's Box. She did not know who the sender was. She just knew that this item was better left alone, unopened. And she could clearly see that it was made of styrofoam. Now I could be wrong about this, but I don't think Greek mythology identifies styrofoam as one of the many gifts of Zeus. Come to think of it, I have heard that it was actually Pandora's Jar, which sounds to me like it would be way easier to open than a box. A box can be locked, clad in iron straps, made of lead, and so on. A jar - that pretty much implies something fragile with a cork stuck in the top. Something that begs to be opened. But I digress.
In Melissa's dream Pandora's Box was made of styrofoam. I envision something I might use to keep my beer cold. Not something I would use to store the sorrows of mankind. And in my experience, the lids on those styrofoam boxes never stay on quite right anyway. But there you go - her dream. She went on to tell of being with her mother and her mother's boyfriend, a fictional conjuration of her sleeping mind but a man nevertheless of massive proportions, a man the size and shape of an antique French armoire. She told him not to mess with the box but, in an apparent attempt to find a cold beer, he opened it anyway.
The myth tells of sickness, fear, hatred, all things vile and nasty swarming out in a great black cloud and sweeping over the land bringing misery and old age. The myth also points out that the jar/box was in fact an accessory item that came with a wholly separate gift, a way better gift - women. Specifically, Pandora. It goes that before she showed up, it was just a bunch of Greek dudes cavorting around, presumably footloose and fancy free. I don't know about that. Anyway, this curious girl shows up, opens her bottle, and the shit hits the fan.
Instead of seeing a cloud of misery and woe, or beer on ice, Melissa was physically taken to a different place. She found herself at a gathering of some sort, perhaps a party, when suddenly the people around her took on a strange sepia hue and stopped moving normally, but rather began to gently drift around. Her description made me think of the footage I have seen from one of those ROVs exploring the remains of an old shipwreck, like the Titanic, where everything is in a decrepit stasis, suspended forever in an invisible medium, never quite still but moving only slightly by an unseen force. Imagine that you are at a party and suddenly that happens. Time to call a cab.
And that is pretty much where the dream ends. She usually gets to a point like that and then starts to talk or holler, and I put my arms around her and murmur about the good things in life.
Oddly enough, I did have a short dream after that. I know I said I wsn't going to bring up my own dreams, but this one bears mentioning. It was vague and cloudy, disjointed like most of my dreams these days. The flotsam and jetsam of a catch as catch can subconscious, trying to break through to the surface and have it's own irrational way for once.
I dreamed about one of those "Build-a-Bear" workshops, one where something went horribly awry. The bears all came to life somehow and naturally they all completely freaked out. Bears dressed as fire men and ship's captains and bakers with aprons and rolling pins were terrorizing mall shoppers. Mass hysteria. Unfinished bears sat half made, stuffing spilling out, with pained and quizzical expressions on their fuzzy faces, as if to say "Dear God, WHY?!?" It was a scene of utter chaos, one that I will not soon put down.
I will never take our child to one of those stores.
Just in case.
One upshot of having a baby who sleeps about two hours at a go is that you never get into the deep and truly useful sleep your weary soul so badly needs. That sentence was originally intended to have a positive ending. I can't hide the truth from you - it's insane. My point is that when woken so frequently the dreams you do have are much closer to the surface of your conscious mind and therefore much easier to recall. I believe that I do dream when I sleep a full night, it's just that I was asleep and so I can't remember the dream.
Lately I dream mostly of matters related to a life in the service industry. But I did not come here today to write about my own dreams.
When she woke this morning Melissa told me that in her dream someone had sent her Pandora's Box. She did not know who the sender was. She just knew that this item was better left alone, unopened. And she could clearly see that it was made of styrofoam. Now I could be wrong about this, but I don't think Greek mythology identifies styrofoam as one of the many gifts of Zeus. Come to think of it, I have heard that it was actually Pandora's Jar, which sounds to me like it would be way easier to open than a box. A box can be locked, clad in iron straps, made of lead, and so on. A jar - that pretty much implies something fragile with a cork stuck in the top. Something that begs to be opened. But I digress.
In Melissa's dream Pandora's Box was made of styrofoam. I envision something I might use to keep my beer cold. Not something I would use to store the sorrows of mankind. And in my experience, the lids on those styrofoam boxes never stay on quite right anyway. But there you go - her dream. She went on to tell of being with her mother and her mother's boyfriend, a fictional conjuration of her sleeping mind but a man nevertheless of massive proportions, a man the size and shape of an antique French armoire. She told him not to mess with the box but, in an apparent attempt to find a cold beer, he opened it anyway.
The myth tells of sickness, fear, hatred, all things vile and nasty swarming out in a great black cloud and sweeping over the land bringing misery and old age. The myth also points out that the jar/box was in fact an accessory item that came with a wholly separate gift, a way better gift - women. Specifically, Pandora. It goes that before she showed up, it was just a bunch of Greek dudes cavorting around, presumably footloose and fancy free. I don't know about that. Anyway, this curious girl shows up, opens her bottle, and the shit hits the fan.
Instead of seeing a cloud of misery and woe, or beer on ice, Melissa was physically taken to a different place. She found herself at a gathering of some sort, perhaps a party, when suddenly the people around her took on a strange sepia hue and stopped moving normally, but rather began to gently drift around. Her description made me think of the footage I have seen from one of those ROVs exploring the remains of an old shipwreck, like the Titanic, where everything is in a decrepit stasis, suspended forever in an invisible medium, never quite still but moving only slightly by an unseen force. Imagine that you are at a party and suddenly that happens. Time to call a cab.
And that is pretty much where the dream ends. She usually gets to a point like that and then starts to talk or holler, and I put my arms around her and murmur about the good things in life.
Oddly enough, I did have a short dream after that. I know I said I wsn't going to bring up my own dreams, but this one bears mentioning. It was vague and cloudy, disjointed like most of my dreams these days. The flotsam and jetsam of a catch as catch can subconscious, trying to break through to the surface and have it's own irrational way for once.
I dreamed about one of those "Build-a-Bear" workshops, one where something went horribly awry. The bears all came to life somehow and naturally they all completely freaked out. Bears dressed as fire men and ship's captains and bakers with aprons and rolling pins were terrorizing mall shoppers. Mass hysteria. Unfinished bears sat half made, stuffing spilling out, with pained and quizzical expressions on their fuzzy faces, as if to say "Dear God, WHY?!?" It was a scene of utter chaos, one that I will not soon put down.
I will never take our child to one of those stores.
Just in case.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Trouble With Beeves
Sometimes I think that I'll start pissing off my friends if I talk too loud or too often about my opinions regarding the American food industry, or the state of our energy system, or how much we seem to carelessly consume whatever we can. My friends, if I do, just let me know. I'm not going to shut up, but at least I'll know who my friends are.
Then there are those other times, when I have difficulty holding my tongue even in the presence of total strangers as I watch them stuff their faces in an orgy of self loathing - or so it would seem, for did they not know of the fantastic array of malicious ingredients compacted together to form that meat-wich patty? I am, perhaps unfortunately, less inclined to raise my voice against drivers of Hummers or people who think E85 and "flex-fuel" are anything but horse shit! More like Big Oil flexing it's fat foot in your ass. Not to sound above the fray, I do drive a less than super-duper efficient truck of my own, after all. My Taco is not a novelty item, however, it's a beast of burden, and frankly I don't see a lot of people who drive H, H2, H3, or whatever other derivative they keep barfing out of the auto mills using their overblown rides to transport allied troops through hostile territory. You know what? I don't see any. Equating that with dropping your runts at soccer practice is a most asinine notion. These people should be publicly humiliated, and then given Smart Cars.
My belief is that the true solution to our looming energy crisis is in diversity. With all the freedom offered in the principles of the American way, it should be no surprise that we produce at least a few real technological innovations that will see us clear of our dependence on fossil fuel, "ancient sunlight" as some have called it, and of course thereby end our dependence on the corrupt kingdoms of oil and human oppression, and the immensely unclean process of powering our greedy lives.
Back to the food hole.
I wonder why people (in general) seem to blatantly ignore the mounting evidence which illuminates a rampant deficiency in the quality of their food. Because the FDA said OK? Lest we forget this is the same institution that told us those morbidly sick cows were just sleepy and no, don't worry about all the mucus they excreted into the milk supply. Got that crap all over your upper lip? Yummy. The more I learn about what is good for us and what is bad for us the more I realize that capitalism and economizing leads to what I guess old Tom Brokaw would call "The Fleecing of America." What is really in that meat patty, anyway? SOME meat? Also nutritious sawdust and important meat related parts, the supporting cast of the bovine opera, the filler that barely escapes the sluice farm floor. And why is corn syrup the first or second ingredient in damn near everything? Take the corn diet test, as my friend Josh suggested once. Eat nothing but corn for a week - from the can or from the cob. See what happens to your digestive system. Or let me spare you the dance with death; we do not digest the stuff. Modern corn is a genetically manipulated grass crop, which cows can't even digest anymore, not with all seven of their stomachs. It makes them sick and the beef makers response it to pump the beasts with antibiotics and steroids which remain in the meat. That is also why their milk is beyond bad for us. These outrages against nature smack of Moreauvian shenanigans. Soon the corn will walk right into our mouths. It will grow arms and legs like the hot dogs and candy bars that keep telling us with that irresistible jingle to just go out to the damn lobby and add some fat to our asses. Then one day, somewhere in Western Illinois (Garst country, where they grow corn favored by pirates, or so I am told), an errant ear of corn will, by some mutation, grow teeth where the kernels once were and it will bite the hand that shucks it. I can't freaking wait for that day.
Then there are those other times, when I have difficulty holding my tongue even in the presence of total strangers as I watch them stuff their faces in an orgy of self loathing - or so it would seem, for did they not know of the fantastic array of malicious ingredients compacted together to form that meat-wich patty? I am, perhaps unfortunately, less inclined to raise my voice against drivers of Hummers or people who think E85 and "flex-fuel" are anything but horse shit! More like Big Oil flexing it's fat foot in your ass. Not to sound above the fray, I do drive a less than super-duper efficient truck of my own, after all. My Taco is not a novelty item, however, it's a beast of burden, and frankly I don't see a lot of people who drive H, H2, H3, or whatever other derivative they keep barfing out of the auto mills using their overblown rides to transport allied troops through hostile territory. You know what? I don't see any. Equating that with dropping your runts at soccer practice is a most asinine notion. These people should be publicly humiliated, and then given Smart Cars.
My belief is that the true solution to our looming energy crisis is in diversity. With all the freedom offered in the principles of the American way, it should be no surprise that we produce at least a few real technological innovations that will see us clear of our dependence on fossil fuel, "ancient sunlight" as some have called it, and of course thereby end our dependence on the corrupt kingdoms of oil and human oppression, and the immensely unclean process of powering our greedy lives.
Back to the food hole.
I wonder why people (in general) seem to blatantly ignore the mounting evidence which illuminates a rampant deficiency in the quality of their food. Because the FDA said OK? Lest we forget this is the same institution that told us those morbidly sick cows were just sleepy and no, don't worry about all the mucus they excreted into the milk supply. Got that crap all over your upper lip? Yummy. The more I learn about what is good for us and what is bad for us the more I realize that capitalism and economizing leads to what I guess old Tom Brokaw would call "The Fleecing of America." What is really in that meat patty, anyway? SOME meat? Also nutritious sawdust and important meat related parts, the supporting cast of the bovine opera, the filler that barely escapes the sluice farm floor. And why is corn syrup the first or second ingredient in damn near everything? Take the corn diet test, as my friend Josh suggested once. Eat nothing but corn for a week - from the can or from the cob. See what happens to your digestive system. Or let me spare you the dance with death; we do not digest the stuff. Modern corn is a genetically manipulated grass crop, which cows can't even digest anymore, not with all seven of their stomachs. It makes them sick and the beef makers response it to pump the beasts with antibiotics and steroids which remain in the meat. That is also why their milk is beyond bad for us. These outrages against nature smack of Moreauvian shenanigans. Soon the corn will walk right into our mouths. It will grow arms and legs like the hot dogs and candy bars that keep telling us with that irresistible jingle to just go out to the damn lobby and add some fat to our asses. Then one day, somewhere in Western Illinois (Garst country, where they grow corn favored by pirates, or so I am told), an errant ear of corn will, by some mutation, grow teeth where the kernels once were and it will bite the hand that shucks it. I can't freaking wait for that day.
Simple Gifts
I took Lucas for a short walk a few nights ago. In that time we were given a sweet taste of some of the finest aspects of life in the desert. In brief:
At first steps we heard an owl. Then another, and another still. Their haunting calls echoed with decreasing volume from farther down the small valley where we live.
A small squadron of bats soon joined ranks with us, presumably following the gnats that followed us. They would be our escorts for the duration.
The backdrop was spectacular - an enormous lumbering giant of a monsoon stormed its way across the valley, from the east. It rose into an otherwise clear sky, rose as if to devour the waxing moon. From our position, it looked as it it just might do so. The setting sun illuminated the rain wall with soul pleasing hues, drawing to mind a deep pink gown on the expansive girth of the beast that destroyed prom.
A pack of coyotes began to yip and howl from a few hundred yards away. Thunder joined the chorus, and the 'yotes stepped up their frenzy.
We made a short loop, Lucas off leash. On the return we saw the Great Horned Owls again. Two together this time on the roof of a neighbor's house. They looked for all the world like winged house cats. The larger one hooted, the other mimicked, not quite in the same cadence. Lightning flashed from the flanks of the storm, as the cheeriness dissolved and the pink diminished, turning her dress a deep foreboding gray.
We returned home just as the first drops began to fall, heavy and noisy. The air was alive with anticipation of the coming deluge. We lingered on the street, just taking it all in and enjoying a few fat rain drops.
I love this place.
At first steps we heard an owl. Then another, and another still. Their haunting calls echoed with decreasing volume from farther down the small valley where we live.
A small squadron of bats soon joined ranks with us, presumably following the gnats that followed us. They would be our escorts for the duration.
The backdrop was spectacular - an enormous lumbering giant of a monsoon stormed its way across the valley, from the east. It rose into an otherwise clear sky, rose as if to devour the waxing moon. From our position, it looked as it it just might do so. The setting sun illuminated the rain wall with soul pleasing hues, drawing to mind a deep pink gown on the expansive girth of the beast that destroyed prom.
A pack of coyotes began to yip and howl from a few hundred yards away. Thunder joined the chorus, and the 'yotes stepped up their frenzy.
We made a short loop, Lucas off leash. On the return we saw the Great Horned Owls again. Two together this time on the roof of a neighbor's house. They looked for all the world like winged house cats. The larger one hooted, the other mimicked, not quite in the same cadence. Lightning flashed from the flanks of the storm, as the cheeriness dissolved and the pink diminished, turning her dress a deep foreboding gray.
We returned home just as the first drops began to fall, heavy and noisy. The air was alive with anticipation of the coming deluge. We lingered on the street, just taking it all in and enjoying a few fat rain drops.
I love this place.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Open letter to "Anonymous L"
Nice of you to identify yourself. I thought that was you.
This is a special post in response to your comments; enjoy! This is the only time your words or thoughts will infect my blog with your special blend of ignorance and hate. This blog is intended to be a happy place detailing the events of my life that I feel are worth telling - not a place for inflammatory remarks that have no basis in reality.
Here then is your last comment, as it was posted on our birth story;
"M- Actually I know both of you well and it's pretty sad to see this blog, and the new one as well. So many people can't conceive and not only does Damien bitch about the people who arguably saved his daughter's life... but he leaves his 10 day old baby and his wife to go hiking all day?! You are both clueless. And I don't call myself your friend anymore because you have both changed for the worse. It's a good thing you moved. And if people aren't allowed to voice their opinions, then maybe you should disable the option to post comments if you can't handle someone calling you out on your bs. -L- "
Okay anonymous L, my first reaction to your comment is; you suck. You really don't know us at all. I am afraid your self absorbed life of delusion prevented you from ever truly knowing us. Now you are just being pointlessly rude - no surprise there, but for once you should try thinking about someone other than yourself. You do have a right to your opinions, but in this case you are flat out wrong. The opinions of other people (myself included) are worth entertaining if their foundations are well reasoned, but yours are mired in nonsense. Do not dare suggest that my life or my choices are BS - part of the reason we moved was to distance ourselves from the BS that you surround yourself with. You never once made an effort to see the other side of the story, to tear down that thick wall of shit, so why should we again go out of our way to make amends? It's always about you.
For six months we were two of those people who could not conceive. Six months is not long, but it was a difficult time for us. This is an extremely personal issue. Some dear friends of ours will never be able to do it - we don't know that sorrow, but we had our taste of wondering if it would ever happen for us.
To say I am bitching about the medical staff... wow. That just tells me you did not read the message in the blog. Try again, maybe you'll get it. Was it the shower cap comment that threw you off? Was it the part where I called the staff "brilliant professionals"? Maybe comparing the anesthesiologist to Wolfgang Gullich was lost on you. Coming from a climber, that is a great compliment. The dude was rock solid. I said we were not happy to be at TMC - that much is true. I was illustrating the several hours of stress and uncertainty that we had to deal with. The people who moved us through this time were amazing. I have eternal gratitude towards them; the TMC staff, the midwives, our doulla. All of them. I could have bitched about a couple of the nurses we had to deal with during the three days of post-partum recovery, but that was irrelevant, because we had our beautiful little girl. Nothing was going to upset us at that point. The delivery was an adventure, a thing that happens when your plans fall apart. When have you ever heard me bitch about adventure? Adaptability is a life lesson we live by. The reed bends, the rod breaks.
Speaking of adventure, when you try to call me out on my choice to go for a hike, you miss the mark by a mile. First off, I was not gone all day. I was gone from 6am to 4pm. Ten hours. Considerably less than a typical day out. Second, do you suggest that I lay down my long standing lifestyle, cease doing the things that feed my spirit because we have a baby? What difference does it make if she is ten days or ten years old? I will always have a heart for hiking, climbing, paddling, etc., and Melissa knows this. It is part of what makes me the man she loves. To ignore this call would be to snuff out a part of my soul. I took a risk, yes, but it was a well informed risk and as per SOP, Melissa knew where I would be (so did my friends) and she was not alone, she was with my mother. To suggest that I eliminate such risks is absurd. To hide in your house because you think it is safer will ultimately serve only to foster an unrealistic judgment of the things you do not know and bolster your irrational fears. I had a fear of heights once. Now it is a very healthy respect. I know my limits, and by testing my skills I have overcome the irrational fears and learned to handle the rational fears with much more respect. This is what we stand to gain from accepting certain risks in our life, and I can tell you it is an amazing reward. Besides that, your sheltered life is not without risks of its own.
I am all for free speech and keeping the dialog open. I will not censor commentary from anyone, but I will move hateful commentary to a more appropriate thread. Game on.
This is a special post in response to your comments; enjoy! This is the only time your words or thoughts will infect my blog with your special blend of ignorance and hate. This blog is intended to be a happy place detailing the events of my life that I feel are worth telling - not a place for inflammatory remarks that have no basis in reality.
Here then is your last comment, as it was posted on our birth story;
"M- Actually I know both of you well and it's pretty sad to see this blog, and the new one as well. So many people can't conceive and not only does Damien bitch about the people who arguably saved his daughter's life... but he leaves his 10 day old baby and his wife to go hiking all day?! You are both clueless. And I don't call myself your friend anymore because you have both changed for the worse. It's a good thing you moved. And if people aren't allowed to voice their opinions, then maybe you should disable the option to post comments if you can't handle someone calling you out on your bs. -L- "
Okay anonymous L, my first reaction to your comment is; you suck. You really don't know us at all. I am afraid your self absorbed life of delusion prevented you from ever truly knowing us. Now you are just being pointlessly rude - no surprise there, but for once you should try thinking about someone other than yourself. You do have a right to your opinions, but in this case you are flat out wrong. The opinions of other people (myself included) are worth entertaining if their foundations are well reasoned, but yours are mired in nonsense. Do not dare suggest that my life or my choices are BS - part of the reason we moved was to distance ourselves from the BS that you surround yourself with. You never once made an effort to see the other side of the story, to tear down that thick wall of shit, so why should we again go out of our way to make amends? It's always about you.
For six months we were two of those people who could not conceive. Six months is not long, but it was a difficult time for us. This is an extremely personal issue. Some dear friends of ours will never be able to do it - we don't know that sorrow, but we had our taste of wondering if it would ever happen for us.
To say I am bitching about the medical staff... wow. That just tells me you did not read the message in the blog. Try again, maybe you'll get it. Was it the shower cap comment that threw you off? Was it the part where I called the staff "brilliant professionals"? Maybe comparing the anesthesiologist to Wolfgang Gullich was lost on you. Coming from a climber, that is a great compliment. The dude was rock solid. I said we were not happy to be at TMC - that much is true. I was illustrating the several hours of stress and uncertainty that we had to deal with. The people who moved us through this time were amazing. I have eternal gratitude towards them; the TMC staff, the midwives, our doulla. All of them. I could have bitched about a couple of the nurses we had to deal with during the three days of post-partum recovery, but that was irrelevant, because we had our beautiful little girl. Nothing was going to upset us at that point. The delivery was an adventure, a thing that happens when your plans fall apart. When have you ever heard me bitch about adventure? Adaptability is a life lesson we live by. The reed bends, the rod breaks.
Speaking of adventure, when you try to call me out on my choice to go for a hike, you miss the mark by a mile. First off, I was not gone all day. I was gone from 6am to 4pm. Ten hours. Considerably less than a typical day out. Second, do you suggest that I lay down my long standing lifestyle, cease doing the things that feed my spirit because we have a baby? What difference does it make if she is ten days or ten years old? I will always have a heart for hiking, climbing, paddling, etc., and Melissa knows this. It is part of what makes me the man she loves. To ignore this call would be to snuff out a part of my soul. I took a risk, yes, but it was a well informed risk and as per SOP, Melissa knew where I would be (so did my friends) and she was not alone, she was with my mother. To suggest that I eliminate such risks is absurd. To hide in your house because you think it is safer will ultimately serve only to foster an unrealistic judgment of the things you do not know and bolster your irrational fears. I had a fear of heights once. Now it is a very healthy respect. I know my limits, and by testing my skills I have overcome the irrational fears and learned to handle the rational fears with much more respect. This is what we stand to gain from accepting certain risks in our life, and I can tell you it is an amazing reward. Besides that, your sheltered life is not without risks of its own.
I am all for free speech and keeping the dialog open. I will not censor commentary from anyone, but I will move hateful commentary to a more appropriate thread. Game on.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A bad turn unintended
This was written on August 25th, 2008.
5:07 AM. Amelia wakes again and starts in with the hungry song. I sit up, on autopilot, and put my feet on the floor. With my first step I realize I made a mistake the night before by not bandaging my Achilles tendon. The new skin that formed over night while I "let the wound breathe" has no elasticity, and it tears open as my foot flexes. Oh hell. I limp around the foot of the bed and kneel somewhat painfully (this time it is my aching quads) by the cradle to extract the source of our joy from her swinging nest. She is doing very well at ten days old - sleeping almost three hours straight between feedings. I deliver her to Melissa, still in bed, and they begin the simple beautiful act that has sustained the Mammalian Class for... an absurdly long time.
This post is not about the two girls that I am so in love with. It's about my selfish self, and a bad decision I made two days ago.
5:00 AM (two days ago). My alarm wakes me and I sit up. I have had about two and a half hours of solid sleep since Amelia last woke us. She and Melissa stir gently, but sleep on. I get up and make my way to the pile of clothes I prepped the night before, dress, and go make a triple espresso. I load my pack with 132 oz. of water; 100 in a Camelback bladder for myself and the rest in a quart bottle for Lucas. Everything else we will need is in the pack already so I take it to the truck then come back in to make a protein shake for myself and some toast for Melissa. I take her the toast with cold water and some fresh fruit. A kiss to each of my ladies and I am off.
6:00 AM. 40 mph on the Mt. Lemmon highway, Lucas drunk on the wind. We stop at the upper Bug Springs trail head and start hiking up the steep, well maintained trail. This trail gains several hundred feet as it cruises up a ridge line for about one mile, then drops off into the south facing slopes of Molino Basin. That is not our destination, however. I just wanted to see if this trail would take us close enough to some impressive and enticing looking crags to the north. With perhaps an hour of contour bushwhacking, it just might be the way. Adventure potential noted, save this one for another day. Lucas and I turn back and trot down the trail, arriving at the truck exactly sixteen minutes later.
8:00 AM. We arrive at the top of the ski lift road, the highest point to which one can drive for about fifty miles in any direction. Altitude, 9,151 feet according to my watch altimeter. So far, so good. I keep Lucas on a fifteen foot lead. He is generally fine off leash, but encounters with other hikers and their dogs are frequent here, especially on a Sunday, and especially this close to a major trail head. My real concern, however, is a rattle snake encounter. Lucas has responded well both times we have come across rattlers on the trail - he gets out of the way very fast. Faster than I possibly could. But you never know.
There are also black bears here.
The Lemmon Lookout trail is a two mile spur that connects the Mt. Lemmon trail to the Wilderness of Rocks trail, creating an eight mile loop around three enormous upper mountain crags; Rappel Rock, The Ravens, and The Fortress. The WOR trail winds through an amazing area of pristine forest and fantastic boulder formations. A splendid creek follows the trail for some length, with several secluded pools and falls. This is the perfect place to get away for a few days. My goal today is to drop down the spur - an elevation loss of roughly 2000 feet - and into the Wilderness of Rocks area for a nice picnic and a swim with Lucas. An early start would put me back on the road home by 2PM. My buddy Jeff might meet me with another friend or two.
Almost exactly one hour later Lucas and I arrive at the trail junction where the spur trail hits the Wilderness of Rocks trail. I have never been here before, so I decide to take a twenty minute detour down the WOR trail before returning to this junction to swim in the nearby creek and relax while I wait for Jeff. I cross the creek and follow the path over a small rise, then drop into something wonderful as I encounter what I believe to be one of the happiest places in all of Arizona. A magnificent stand of very tall, very old pine trees. The kind of trees that create their own weather, maintaining a cool and peaceful atmosphere among the towering trunks, allowing ample space between for sunlight and bird flight, and laying a deep bed of sweet smelling needles that cushion the ground. Beyond a few dozen yards the pine cones scattered over the russet needles look like peppercorns on a bed of cinnamon. The sunlight dapples everything with a permanent hue of autumn so that when a jay appears his blue plumage stands out with intense contrast. This place was not missed by the seasons of fire - I can see a few smaller trees that did not survive. Now all that remains is standing charcoal. Most of the giants, however, wear a thin coat of char on their lower trunks and appear none the worse for it. I stand here for a long time, just breathing, living, thanking.
We scout forward another ten or fifteen minutes and see that there is much more here than I can explore in one day, or one lifetime. Turning back we pause again in the happy pine acreage, then cross the creek to the junction. This time I head up the other leg of the WOR trail, and when it crosses the water again I stay in the creek, hopping from boulder to boulder until I come to a large pool with a sun drenched slab of bare stone for a beach. I strip naked and wade into the water. It is so cold that my hot feet are instantly numb. The rest of me soon follows. I sink my body into the deepest part of the pool and marvel at the refreshing silence. Lucas swims to me with his powerful webbed toes. The water inspires him to completely freak out, a thing at which he excels. After a few minutes I rise, dress, and gather my pack. I return to the junction and set up my hammock near a small fire ring. Here I wait for about forty minutes while I eat my lunch and nap.
11:30 AM. No sign of Jeff. I decide to give myself some extra time to make the hike out. 2000 feet and two miles down hill in one hour is a reasonable pace, but I had better plan on at least twice that to get back out. An extra half hour on the end just to play it safe - I want to get home to my girls before dinner. I am almost packed up when a fellow about my age comes up from the WOR trail, having started the loop hike at sunrise. We chat briefly, I tell him the spur is the fastest, albeit steepest, way back to the trail head. He carries a small half empty bottle and no pack. That's brave, I think, but do not offer some of my own water to him. I probably should have, but I was about to start the toughest part of my day, with about %65 of my water supply remaining, and no filter for the abundant natural source. Foolish choice, that. Anyway, if this guy really needed water I would probably find him parched on the trail soon enough, and naturally at such time I would oblige his thirst.
Lucas and I begin the ascent. The first half mile or so is mellow and well marked, gaining little altitude. We come to another water crossing where we meet two more guys in their mid twenties. They ask me what trail this is, and say the last half mile they came down was very poorly marked and maintained. I had come that same way only a few hours earlier, so I figured they were just a little green and having a tough go at reading trail sign - the odd branch laid across a misleading path, the occasional cairn when the path itself is hard to see. Stuff you need to be looking out for. I describe what lies ahead for the two fellows and take advantage of a brief pause in the shade. My thighs are already complaining, and I figure it's because I haven't had more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep for over a week. New babies will do that to you. No time to lament for more sleep, however, I have nearly 2000 feet to climb over less than two miles. It seems like a very little distance in my head, but I knew it was going to be hard work. I press on.
As it happens, within a few hundred yards I am utterly lost. I spend several minutes back tracking to the water crossing and looking for sign, but the path absolutely evaporates before my eyes. I see cairns and foot scuffs here and there and I follow each possibility into nothingness. Only rocks and trees and steep, steep ground. I know I am within a dozen yards of my salvation, but it eludes me still. I grow prematurely frustrated and curse the baffling circumstances I find myself in. What the hell! Without even realizing it, I am in the very last place I want to be - I am off trail. As I become aware of this fact, I start to think of alternate lines out of this wild place, this place so close and yet so far from something familiar. Somewhere in the distance, voices cry out. I cannot make sense of their words, but the tone seems casual.
I tell myself that I know the lay of this mountainside. I have climbed on Rappel Rock once before - four years back. Two old friends and I were on the second pitch of our ascent of a route called "Black Quacker" when a not so surprising summer storm turned our route into a sudden fury of falling water, driving us off the crag in a desperate soaking rappel. I knew I had hiked at least from the base of that crag back to the high ridge trail that would take me back to my truck. From my current position, the base of that crag was still about 1000 feet above me, up a fifty degree slope of loose rock, pine litter, and nasty thickets of extremely shitty undergrowth. A mile of very steep off trail bush-crashing to the base of Rappel Rock, then roughly another mile of the same to the ridge trail. That was one choice. Or I could try to follow the water up the gully to its source, a three inch pipe sticking out of the ground near a small tin shed on the ridge trail. I assume that shed covers, protects, and maintains a natural spring, but I am not certain. At any rate, this option involved climbing over a lot of loose rock on steep slabs, with heavy vegetation jealously guarding its precious water source. This was a pretty poor choice for me, even worse for the dog. The third, wiser option never even occurred to me. Go back and find the damn trail. In retrospect I know this is what I should have done. The line was there. I simply had not looked hard enough. Perhaps sleep deprivation muddled my thoughts - whatever the case, I broke a cardinal rule.
I chose option one.
At this point I was already off trail, so why waste more time? Easy to answer that one now. I could see a few less horrid looking stretches between the thickets, and I made for these weaknesses. I moved at a slow but steady pace, trying to conserve my energy reserves. As I gained altitude I remembered a survival tactic of back country orienteering. If I kept the towering hulk of Rappel Rock to my left and the drainage gully to my right I would eventually make enough elevation to suss out a contour path across the gully, inevitably intersecting the spur trail which I knew was to the right, or east of my position. Orienteering 101. I kept plodding upward. The pine litter was a slippery mess and I lost my footing frequently. Lucas fared a little better than me. It was very slow going, and I realized quickly what a horrible thing it would be to take a tumble and break an ankle, or worse. Getting found out here would be a stunning feat. There were countless hiding places under boulders and bushes, places a person could lay for days without being discovered. Now, more than ever, I had too much at stake to make such poor decisions, to behave with such selfish ignorance, to go off trail. On the other hand, this was not some vast tract of forbidding back country wilderness. This was our beloved Mt. Lemmon, and only a few steep square miles of it. In all likelihood, there was not one single bear within ten miles of my location. I had food, a water source, warm layers, a 250 lumen "Fenix" torch, pretty good legs and a very strong dog. Indeed, I could almost see my house from here. But the chance of a misstep was high, and a bad bump on the head could lead to a very unpleasant night. More than that I feared the idea of Melissa at home with the baby, not knowing what had become of me. I trust my durability to weather a mild night in mid summer, but what thoughts she could be dealing with... that just ain't right.
1:45 PM. The base of Rappel Rock. The granite behemoth towers up and over my head almost 500 feet. The first peoples to name this mountain called it Babat Do'ag, meaning "frog mountain." Looking at Rappel Rock from various distances I have noticed that it somewhat resembles a frog, crouching and preparing to leap. Either that, or the head and shoulders of an angry gorilla, scowling at the sky. It all depends on how you look at it. This was a sunny day. This day, the rock was a nimble frog for me. No angry apes, just me and the dog and a brief rest at the foot of an ancient friend. I took off my left shoe, pulled off the sock, and peeled away a flapper of skin from my Achilles tendon. I muttered something about how unprepared I am - no moleskin, not even a roll of climbing tape, something that I always carry. What was I thinking when I packed? Apparently I wasn't.
We began to make our way up and around the flanks of the crag. I was looking for climber sign, as I knew this rock was a popular place for multi-pitch trad routes. My timing was no good, however, as this crag had also been closed to climbing for several months due to raptor nesting. Any recent tracks had been washed away or overgrown. Plenty of small game trails came and went through the dense thickets, however, and after coming to a vertical wall of granite some twenty feet high, the only choice left was to follow one of these scant pathways. Of course they only seemed scant to me - to Lucas they were the shining paths, and so I told him to lead on. Time and again he located passages between the brambles that I would not have seen. I followed the dog as he cut a rough contour to the east - exactly the direction I wanted us to go. I could only hope we would not encounter any large and ornery mammals - or rattlers.
2:00 PM. I take the lead back from Lucas as we finally emerge from several hundred yards of the nasty undergrowth. More than once while in the thick of it I snagged a foot, stumbled and fell hard into the vegetation. I swear the thickets were set like crude snares intending to drag me down. Dead branches suddenly sprang out with malice aforethought. I managed to deflect most of these with my face. My shins were soon bloodied by the clawing brambles. My feet raged but stamped on at my stubborn behest to fight the inexorable tug of gravity. At last the thicket thinned. Small aspen stands gave way to open slabs as we drew near to the water course, a series of stepped falls , ten to twenty feet on average. We pushed on to a ledge where one shorter fall landed, splashing merrily on its search for a lower point. Lucas drank long and deep and I knelt beside him, letting the water soak my head and shoulders. I splashed water on my face and chest, I filled my hat with water and put it on my head. This water was among the finest I had ever worn.
Refreshed but still weary, I took a vantage point atop a large boulder and looked at the shape of the slope across the gully. I estimated another few hundred yards of traversing and bush whacking along this contour line. Then, as if waiting for me to take this particular point of observation, a family of hikers appeared on the spur trail, about a half a mile away, and then vanished into the woods again. Now, for the first time, I knew for certain that we were very close to being on our way out. Standing still on the boulder I felt my quads seize up like cinder blocks again. They protested further use, but I gingerly stretched them out and hopped off the boulder. We were close to the real trail.
Indeed only a quarter mile past the drainage, my theory proved sound. Cresting a small rise over pleasantly clear ground, I saw the wide and well worn track of the spur trail. I thanked Lucas and took a brief pause. From here it was just one step after another on auto-pilot. None of this orienteering nonsense, no more bush crashing insanity. No thinking required from here. The trail head was only about a mile away now. After a few minutes I paused again in a nice shady spot and took a long sip from my drinking tube. Not much water left, but enough. I gave some to Lucas. Voices rose up from the trail below. I waited, and soon the three hikers I had seen about three hours earlier appeared, moving slowly together up the trail. When they saw me they stopped in the shade, and we discussed our various adventures. According to them, the trail was never an easy find, and they foundered in roughly the same place as me. Their saving grace was a GPS device that allowed them to backtrack along their own errant path, eventually taking them to the spur trail near the point at which they first lost it on the way down. We continued on up the trail, and they gradually moved ahead of us.
I found out later from Jeff that he had crossed paths with all three of those other hikers, but they made no mention of meeting me. Nor did they tell me they had seen anyone else on the trail that day. Apparently, Jeff and I had missed each other while I was off trail. That made perfect sense. Of course. By the time I finished my staggering march back to the truck, my blister was screaming and Lucas was lagging about ten feet behind me. The big shiny machine never looked so inviting - not since last summer's unintentional fifteen mile rain soaked tramp with Melissa and a couple other friends - maybe you have read that blog post already...
5:07 AM. Amelia wakes again and starts in with the hungry song. I sit up, on autopilot, and put my feet on the floor. With my first step I realize I made a mistake the night before by not bandaging my Achilles tendon. The new skin that formed over night while I "let the wound breathe" has no elasticity, and it tears open as my foot flexes. Oh hell. I limp around the foot of the bed and kneel somewhat painfully (this time it is my aching quads) by the cradle to extract the source of our joy from her swinging nest. She is doing very well at ten days old - sleeping almost three hours straight between feedings. I deliver her to Melissa, still in bed, and they begin the simple beautiful act that has sustained the Mammalian Class for... an absurdly long time.
This post is not about the two girls that I am so in love with. It's about my selfish self, and a bad decision I made two days ago.
5:00 AM (two days ago). My alarm wakes me and I sit up. I have had about two and a half hours of solid sleep since Amelia last woke us. She and Melissa stir gently, but sleep on. I get up and make my way to the pile of clothes I prepped the night before, dress, and go make a triple espresso. I load my pack with 132 oz. of water; 100 in a Camelback bladder for myself and the rest in a quart bottle for Lucas. Everything else we will need is in the pack already so I take it to the truck then come back in to make a protein shake for myself and some toast for Melissa. I take her the toast with cold water and some fresh fruit. A kiss to each of my ladies and I am off.
6:00 AM. 40 mph on the Mt. Lemmon highway, Lucas drunk on the wind. We stop at the upper Bug Springs trail head and start hiking up the steep, well maintained trail. This trail gains several hundred feet as it cruises up a ridge line for about one mile, then drops off into the south facing slopes of Molino Basin. That is not our destination, however. I just wanted to see if this trail would take us close enough to some impressive and enticing looking crags to the north. With perhaps an hour of contour bushwhacking, it just might be the way. Adventure potential noted, save this one for another day. Lucas and I turn back and trot down the trail, arriving at the truck exactly sixteen minutes later.
8:00 AM. We arrive at the top of the ski lift road, the highest point to which one can drive for about fifty miles in any direction. Altitude, 9,151 feet according to my watch altimeter. So far, so good. I keep Lucas on a fifteen foot lead. He is generally fine off leash, but encounters with other hikers and their dogs are frequent here, especially on a Sunday, and especially this close to a major trail head. My real concern, however, is a rattle snake encounter. Lucas has responded well both times we have come across rattlers on the trail - he gets out of the way very fast. Faster than I possibly could. But you never know.
There are also black bears here.
The Lemmon Lookout trail is a two mile spur that connects the Mt. Lemmon trail to the Wilderness of Rocks trail, creating an eight mile loop around three enormous upper mountain crags; Rappel Rock, The Ravens, and The Fortress. The WOR trail winds through an amazing area of pristine forest and fantastic boulder formations. A splendid creek follows the trail for some length, with several secluded pools and falls. This is the perfect place to get away for a few days. My goal today is to drop down the spur - an elevation loss of roughly 2000 feet - and into the Wilderness of Rocks area for a nice picnic and a swim with Lucas. An early start would put me back on the road home by 2PM. My buddy Jeff might meet me with another friend or two.
Almost exactly one hour later Lucas and I arrive at the trail junction where the spur trail hits the Wilderness of Rocks trail. I have never been here before, so I decide to take a twenty minute detour down the WOR trail before returning to this junction to swim in the nearby creek and relax while I wait for Jeff. I cross the creek and follow the path over a small rise, then drop into something wonderful as I encounter what I believe to be one of the happiest places in all of Arizona. A magnificent stand of very tall, very old pine trees. The kind of trees that create their own weather, maintaining a cool and peaceful atmosphere among the towering trunks, allowing ample space between for sunlight and bird flight, and laying a deep bed of sweet smelling needles that cushion the ground. Beyond a few dozen yards the pine cones scattered over the russet needles look like peppercorns on a bed of cinnamon. The sunlight dapples everything with a permanent hue of autumn so that when a jay appears his blue plumage stands out with intense contrast. This place was not missed by the seasons of fire - I can see a few smaller trees that did not survive. Now all that remains is standing charcoal. Most of the giants, however, wear a thin coat of char on their lower trunks and appear none the worse for it. I stand here for a long time, just breathing, living, thanking.
We scout forward another ten or fifteen minutes and see that there is much more here than I can explore in one day, or one lifetime. Turning back we pause again in the happy pine acreage, then cross the creek to the junction. This time I head up the other leg of the WOR trail, and when it crosses the water again I stay in the creek, hopping from boulder to boulder until I come to a large pool with a sun drenched slab of bare stone for a beach. I strip naked and wade into the water. It is so cold that my hot feet are instantly numb. The rest of me soon follows. I sink my body into the deepest part of the pool and marvel at the refreshing silence. Lucas swims to me with his powerful webbed toes. The water inspires him to completely freak out, a thing at which he excels. After a few minutes I rise, dress, and gather my pack. I return to the junction and set up my hammock near a small fire ring. Here I wait for about forty minutes while I eat my lunch and nap.
11:30 AM. No sign of Jeff. I decide to give myself some extra time to make the hike out. 2000 feet and two miles down hill in one hour is a reasonable pace, but I had better plan on at least twice that to get back out. An extra half hour on the end just to play it safe - I want to get home to my girls before dinner. I am almost packed up when a fellow about my age comes up from the WOR trail, having started the loop hike at sunrise. We chat briefly, I tell him the spur is the fastest, albeit steepest, way back to the trail head. He carries a small half empty bottle and no pack. That's brave, I think, but do not offer some of my own water to him. I probably should have, but I was about to start the toughest part of my day, with about %65 of my water supply remaining, and no filter for the abundant natural source. Foolish choice, that. Anyway, if this guy really needed water I would probably find him parched on the trail soon enough, and naturally at such time I would oblige his thirst.
Lucas and I begin the ascent. The first half mile or so is mellow and well marked, gaining little altitude. We come to another water crossing where we meet two more guys in their mid twenties. They ask me what trail this is, and say the last half mile they came down was very poorly marked and maintained. I had come that same way only a few hours earlier, so I figured they were just a little green and having a tough go at reading trail sign - the odd branch laid across a misleading path, the occasional cairn when the path itself is hard to see. Stuff you need to be looking out for. I describe what lies ahead for the two fellows and take advantage of a brief pause in the shade. My thighs are already complaining, and I figure it's because I haven't had more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep for over a week. New babies will do that to you. No time to lament for more sleep, however, I have nearly 2000 feet to climb over less than two miles. It seems like a very little distance in my head, but I knew it was going to be hard work. I press on.
As it happens, within a few hundred yards I am utterly lost. I spend several minutes back tracking to the water crossing and looking for sign, but the path absolutely evaporates before my eyes. I see cairns and foot scuffs here and there and I follow each possibility into nothingness. Only rocks and trees and steep, steep ground. I know I am within a dozen yards of my salvation, but it eludes me still. I grow prematurely frustrated and curse the baffling circumstances I find myself in. What the hell! Without even realizing it, I am in the very last place I want to be - I am off trail. As I become aware of this fact, I start to think of alternate lines out of this wild place, this place so close and yet so far from something familiar. Somewhere in the distance, voices cry out. I cannot make sense of their words, but the tone seems casual.
I tell myself that I know the lay of this mountainside. I have climbed on Rappel Rock once before - four years back. Two old friends and I were on the second pitch of our ascent of a route called "Black Quacker" when a not so surprising summer storm turned our route into a sudden fury of falling water, driving us off the crag in a desperate soaking rappel. I knew I had hiked at least from the base of that crag back to the high ridge trail that would take me back to my truck. From my current position, the base of that crag was still about 1000 feet above me, up a fifty degree slope of loose rock, pine litter, and nasty thickets of extremely shitty undergrowth. A mile of very steep off trail bush-crashing to the base of Rappel Rock, then roughly another mile of the same to the ridge trail. That was one choice. Or I could try to follow the water up the gully to its source, a three inch pipe sticking out of the ground near a small tin shed on the ridge trail. I assume that shed covers, protects, and maintains a natural spring, but I am not certain. At any rate, this option involved climbing over a lot of loose rock on steep slabs, with heavy vegetation jealously guarding its precious water source. This was a pretty poor choice for me, even worse for the dog. The third, wiser option never even occurred to me. Go back and find the damn trail. In retrospect I know this is what I should have done. The line was there. I simply had not looked hard enough. Perhaps sleep deprivation muddled my thoughts - whatever the case, I broke a cardinal rule.
I chose option one.
At this point I was already off trail, so why waste more time? Easy to answer that one now. I could see a few less horrid looking stretches between the thickets, and I made for these weaknesses. I moved at a slow but steady pace, trying to conserve my energy reserves. As I gained altitude I remembered a survival tactic of back country orienteering. If I kept the towering hulk of Rappel Rock to my left and the drainage gully to my right I would eventually make enough elevation to suss out a contour path across the gully, inevitably intersecting the spur trail which I knew was to the right, or east of my position. Orienteering 101. I kept plodding upward. The pine litter was a slippery mess and I lost my footing frequently. Lucas fared a little better than me. It was very slow going, and I realized quickly what a horrible thing it would be to take a tumble and break an ankle, or worse. Getting found out here would be a stunning feat. There were countless hiding places under boulders and bushes, places a person could lay for days without being discovered. Now, more than ever, I had too much at stake to make such poor decisions, to behave with such selfish ignorance, to go off trail. On the other hand, this was not some vast tract of forbidding back country wilderness. This was our beloved Mt. Lemmon, and only a few steep square miles of it. In all likelihood, there was not one single bear within ten miles of my location. I had food, a water source, warm layers, a 250 lumen "Fenix" torch, pretty good legs and a very strong dog. Indeed, I could almost see my house from here. But the chance of a misstep was high, and a bad bump on the head could lead to a very unpleasant night. More than that I feared the idea of Melissa at home with the baby, not knowing what had become of me. I trust my durability to weather a mild night in mid summer, but what thoughts she could be dealing with... that just ain't right.
1:45 PM. The base of Rappel Rock. The granite behemoth towers up and over my head almost 500 feet. The first peoples to name this mountain called it Babat Do'ag, meaning "frog mountain." Looking at Rappel Rock from various distances I have noticed that it somewhat resembles a frog, crouching and preparing to leap. Either that, or the head and shoulders of an angry gorilla, scowling at the sky. It all depends on how you look at it. This was a sunny day. This day, the rock was a nimble frog for me. No angry apes, just me and the dog and a brief rest at the foot of an ancient friend. I took off my left shoe, pulled off the sock, and peeled away a flapper of skin from my Achilles tendon. I muttered something about how unprepared I am - no moleskin, not even a roll of climbing tape, something that I always carry. What was I thinking when I packed? Apparently I wasn't.
We began to make our way up and around the flanks of the crag. I was looking for climber sign, as I knew this rock was a popular place for multi-pitch trad routes. My timing was no good, however, as this crag had also been closed to climbing for several months due to raptor nesting. Any recent tracks had been washed away or overgrown. Plenty of small game trails came and went through the dense thickets, however, and after coming to a vertical wall of granite some twenty feet high, the only choice left was to follow one of these scant pathways. Of course they only seemed scant to me - to Lucas they were the shining paths, and so I told him to lead on. Time and again he located passages between the brambles that I would not have seen. I followed the dog as he cut a rough contour to the east - exactly the direction I wanted us to go. I could only hope we would not encounter any large and ornery mammals - or rattlers.
2:00 PM. I take the lead back from Lucas as we finally emerge from several hundred yards of the nasty undergrowth. More than once while in the thick of it I snagged a foot, stumbled and fell hard into the vegetation. I swear the thickets were set like crude snares intending to drag me down. Dead branches suddenly sprang out with malice aforethought. I managed to deflect most of these with my face. My shins were soon bloodied by the clawing brambles. My feet raged but stamped on at my stubborn behest to fight the inexorable tug of gravity. At last the thicket thinned. Small aspen stands gave way to open slabs as we drew near to the water course, a series of stepped falls , ten to twenty feet on average. We pushed on to a ledge where one shorter fall landed, splashing merrily on its search for a lower point. Lucas drank long and deep and I knelt beside him, letting the water soak my head and shoulders. I splashed water on my face and chest, I filled my hat with water and put it on my head. This water was among the finest I had ever worn.
Refreshed but still weary, I took a vantage point atop a large boulder and looked at the shape of the slope across the gully. I estimated another few hundred yards of traversing and bush whacking along this contour line. Then, as if waiting for me to take this particular point of observation, a family of hikers appeared on the spur trail, about a half a mile away, and then vanished into the woods again. Now, for the first time, I knew for certain that we were very close to being on our way out. Standing still on the boulder I felt my quads seize up like cinder blocks again. They protested further use, but I gingerly stretched them out and hopped off the boulder. We were close to the real trail.
Indeed only a quarter mile past the drainage, my theory proved sound. Cresting a small rise over pleasantly clear ground, I saw the wide and well worn track of the spur trail. I thanked Lucas and took a brief pause. From here it was just one step after another on auto-pilot. None of this orienteering nonsense, no more bush crashing insanity. No thinking required from here. The trail head was only about a mile away now. After a few minutes I paused again in a nice shady spot and took a long sip from my drinking tube. Not much water left, but enough. I gave some to Lucas. Voices rose up from the trail below. I waited, and soon the three hikers I had seen about three hours earlier appeared, moving slowly together up the trail. When they saw me they stopped in the shade, and we discussed our various adventures. According to them, the trail was never an easy find, and they foundered in roughly the same place as me. Their saving grace was a GPS device that allowed them to backtrack along their own errant path, eventually taking them to the spur trail near the point at which they first lost it on the way down. We continued on up the trail, and they gradually moved ahead of us.
I found out later from Jeff that he had crossed paths with all three of those other hikers, but they made no mention of meeting me. Nor did they tell me they had seen anyone else on the trail that day. Apparently, Jeff and I had missed each other while I was off trail. That made perfect sense. Of course. By the time I finished my staggering march back to the truck, my blister was screaming and Lucas was lagging about ten feet behind me. The big shiny machine never looked so inviting - not since last summer's unintentional fifteen mile rain soaked tramp with Melissa and a couple other friends - maybe you have read that blog post already...
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Volunteerorism
One hour to go in my first shift as a volunteer for The Nature Conservancy. I think I am going to make it through this thing. So far in the past three hours I have answered the phone seven times, received three parcels, and watched the wind move leaves across a gravel parking lot outside the window. Totally birching.
Last night I told Melissa that I am a fool for volunteering to do anything that did not pertain to the imminent arrival of our baby. Now I am not so sure. This is okay. This is worth it. This is boring as hell.
When I first walked in the door two weeks ago to apply as a volunteer, I figured front desk duty might be on the task list. I had, and still do have, a much keener interest in doing actual nature conservation work, whatever that entails. Dressing like a newt and sneaking around marshlands to assay rodent leavings, or jumping out of clean energy airplanes to rescue endangered raptors mid-flight. I really have no idea how these things work. I just want to help out a little, since I love nature and spend a lot of time out in it and from time to time dig a hole and leave a trace of myself behind. There is virtually no way to literally "leave no trace" unless you just don't go there in the first place. Like me today. Anyway, the point is that we have got to take care of the places we love, it is just that simple.
Having sat here on my ass thus far, I can safely conclude that I don't want to volunteer to do much more than sit here on my ass. If they want my mad skills out in the big old world, they can pay for it. I do have enough of my own work to do out there, unpaid, uninsured, at times un-legal I'll bet. How big of a pile of debris can one leave in one's backyard before it represents a public nuisance, by the way? Should I instead make several smaller piles of debris around my property? Perhaps there is a "white trash" clause which I can skate through by chucking a couple old tires and some baby shoes up on the roof. Then maybe I will strip down a 1986 Dodge Diplomat and leave it on blocks in the front yard. I know I am getting off topic - not very nature conservationistical of me. My mind wanders these days. There is a lot on it.
Last night I told Melissa that I am a fool for volunteering to do anything that did not pertain to the imminent arrival of our baby. Now I am not so sure. This is okay. This is worth it. This is boring as hell.
When I first walked in the door two weeks ago to apply as a volunteer, I figured front desk duty might be on the task list. I had, and still do have, a much keener interest in doing actual nature conservation work, whatever that entails. Dressing like a newt and sneaking around marshlands to assay rodent leavings, or jumping out of clean energy airplanes to rescue endangered raptors mid-flight. I really have no idea how these things work. I just want to help out a little, since I love nature and spend a lot of time out in it and from time to time dig a hole and leave a trace of myself behind. There is virtually no way to literally "leave no trace" unless you just don't go there in the first place. Like me today. Anyway, the point is that we have got to take care of the places we love, it is just that simple.
Having sat here on my ass thus far, I can safely conclude that I don't want to volunteer to do much more than sit here on my ass. If they want my mad skills out in the big old world, they can pay for it. I do have enough of my own work to do out there, unpaid, uninsured, at times un-legal I'll bet. How big of a pile of debris can one leave in one's backyard before it represents a public nuisance, by the way? Should I instead make several smaller piles of debris around my property? Perhaps there is a "white trash" clause which I can skate through by chucking a couple old tires and some baby shoes up on the roof. Then maybe I will strip down a 1986 Dodge Diplomat and leave it on blocks in the front yard. I know I am getting off topic - not very nature conservationistical of me. My mind wanders these days. There is a lot on it.
Concession as an afterthought.
I regretfully neglected to post any follow up information on the presidential bid by the Dog and Bird. They are both out. The dog has been photograped in a compromising situation invloving several rabbits, and the bird is desperately addicted to cheese. Not necessarily a bad thing until you take into consideration the fact that if cheese is made visible to the bird, he will stare at it and shriek until it is given to him. Alternative and/or future positions in government and political service are not currently under consideration. Vote Obama.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
My Wife is an Animal
It is mildly terrifying to be a mammal. Sometimes I think it would be way easier to be a robot. Or a paramecium. But then again, this whole ability to create another sentient life form is pretty great. In the sense of continuation, I mean. The scariness is in the mechanics. Now, more than ever, my wife is an animal. A thriving, primal, essential member of the cohort Placentalia. I guess I am too, but right now that seems utterly irrelevant.
I am amazed on a daily basis by what she is going through. Yes, I am a dude, so I have no real grasp of this experience, but I am with it enough to understand those fearful mechanics and realize that any fear is irrational here. Granted, one can apply as much or as little internal distress as they want to the situation based on a little research or a lot of hearsay regarding potential unpleasantness, but I have a mind in part inspired by certain heroes. In this case I'll take a page from the great cosmologist Carl Sagan. All else being equal, just look at the numbers. The odds are well in our favor that my wife and our baby will pass through this transition without harm. When the reasons for fear are demonstrated to be irrational, the fear is made distant and meaningless, like a Christmas snow globe for sale in July.
We have chosen to have a natural birth, away from the hospital, away from doctors, away from needless pharmaceutical interventions. I am perplexed by the increasingly common practice of choosing those other options. As if it were a simple decision, chocolate versus vanilla. Sure, the option is there for us should complications arise, but I know we will not go down that path. My wife is an animal. So am I. Our Class have been doing it this way for countless eons. So long, in fact, that we have refined our engineering to the point that we can completely bypass the natural way of things and use wholly unnatural techniques to deliver our progeny into the world. Yes, this is necessary at times. But I can't rationalize the choice to do so without a reasonable attempt at the old school style. Neither can my love. This is her choice, after all.
All I can say is that the choice to schedule unnecessary surgery to extract your baby from your body with drugs and knives is baffling to this dude. It also seems terribly selfish, if you look at what is really happening to your baby, who is another human and not a tumor, after all. This egocentricity would be in keeping with the mode that American's seem to have chosen, if you read the numbers, but I don't believe that is what we really want as a nation of individuals. I believe that we are much more alike than the town criers would have us think. Again, all things being equal... Events that drastically alter the state of the world are not likely to happen to you in your life time. Unless you have a child. Now this is mere speculation on my part. I have a strange feeling that my life is about to change in a very profound way. Parents, you just might understand.
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