A few years ago, I saw fiction writer Jen Weiner speak at the college I used to work at, and during the Q&A session that followed her reading, the inevitable Question All Fiction Writers Get Asked Eventually came her way: how much of what you write is literally true, and how do you disguise people you know and experiences you've had? Her answer was something along the lines of well, you know, there are many people who would say that all of our writing and fame is fleeting, and that in a hundred years, no one will remember either our work or the characters in it, so why not go for broke and just portray friends, enemies, relatives, co-workers, partners, lovers, exs, parents, siblings, offspring, and acquaintances as they really are.
Then she paused.
"I don't know where these people have Thanksgiving dinner, but I've gotta SEE my family, so..."
This hurdle doesn't present itself too often in my work and my life. I generally don't have any problem taking my experiences and my feelings and transferring them to my characters, to my story... fictionalizing them and disguising them, dressing them up, so that they're somewhat unrecognizable. If anything, I find I have the opposite problem: too often I project my experiences and feelings onto my fiction and fictitious characters, and (for lack of a better term) express my emotions and my experiences through them.
So, for instance, while I could complain about what I feel is shoddy treatment at the hands of a former employer, I find it easier to write about it in one of my characters' voices. I don't want to burn bridges, and complaining in my blog about the way this former employer handled management of her restaurant, the staff, the customers, the payroll, and so on, might be the literary equivalent... even though in many ways, the shaft I got feels like HER "burning bridges."
But I've gotta get it out... so I log into one of my characters' email accounts and, in 20-something Vermont waitress Maura Kelly's voice, complain that...
...what happened was, it took us FOREVER to close, our dinner hours are 5-9 and of course that doesn't mean "we kick you out at 8:59" it means "kitchen open." So we have RESERVATIONS THAT JILL TOOK COMING IN AT NINE!!!!!! Two of which ordered full dinners, one table (a couple) staying till 11:10!!!!! So we have basically everything done but have to wait till this couple clears out. They weren't my table but I was helping Bethany with them. And complaining about Jill the whole time. Jill as I have told you is a dingdong. She takes rezs up till 9, first of all, but then since she's the owner she thinks she has to stand there and HOST and she just doesn't seat people logically. Like if a couple comes in and there's a four top open, she doesn't get Matt to quick go over and break the fourtop down into a twotop (so we can seat a couple later), she seats the couple at the fourtop IMMEDIATELY, thus tying up two empty seats, and of course when it's busy like it was last night those two seats can get filled easily, we had people waiting at the bar most of the night. And she did this a bunch of times last night. And I said to Jenniphyr (who is now really showing baby bump) "is it me or could we break these fourtops down?" and she said "Good luck."
But most annoying of all aside from the rampant seating illogic is that she LEAVES AT 8 PM. She is the owner but leaves an hour before closing, creates this seating logjam and nightmare, leaves all these people waiting for tables that COULD BE OPEN IF SHE JUST THOUGHT LOGICALLY, and then leaves us to deal with it.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyotch
My complaining about the restaurant and its owner? Scary. Maura complaining about the restaurant and its owner? "Safe."
Or, when I get the news from my father about a medical condition he's facing right now, and I feel like I can't get it out, can't sort through it, all that, I find it easy to write about it through my characters. Even there, though, I found that I handled it obliquely: not really writing about it directly (ie, having either a character with the same condition or a character whose father has the same condition write about it), but having peripheral characters write about it... even going so far as to send sympathetic and comforting notes to the character whose father has the condition... "He'll be fine, don't worry, this is treatable."
Saying the things I want and need someone to say to me, in other words.
In many ways, fiction writing is daring and scary, but in some other ways, I'm learning, it can be a dangerous safety zone. One should always try to express truth in whatever one writes. And of course "I have to live with these people:" my family, my friends, the people in the small town I'm now calling home... acquaintances who, God knows, might well find this blog and see themselves in it.
But I've gotta get it out. And somehow, lately, writing about it obliquely seems less and less effective, safe, or wise.
I don't know the answer. All I know is, in creating fiction, I don't want my characters or my stories to assume ownership of my emotions. As one who has spent the better part of a decade feeling somewhat awash and emotionally numb, I'd like to hang onto those, thank you.
So if you read this blog and you see yourself, I hope it's in a good light. And I hope the bridge isn't aflame.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
"I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up that way..."
"...It makes me furious to be dumb because I don't like dumb people. And there I am, doing the dumbest things... I seem to do the things that I despise the most, almost. All of that to - what? - avoid being normal."
This is an excerpt from a June 1975 interview with John Lennon, conducted by Pete Hamill. In 1975, Lennon had just ended his year-and-a-half long separation from Yoko Ono and was about to take a five-year hiatus to "bake bread and look after the baby." Lennon was always painfully self-aware, but in this interview, he seems to have finally seen many of his blind spots.
There were a few short quotes from this excerpt that I thought about posting here, out of context, but I thought that quoting them in context would be better. He starts out talking about his music (obliquely referring to the overtly political and topical commercial bomb Some Time In New York City) but ends up reflecting not only on his role as an artist, but on the emotional and psychological traps and dodges that dogged him in his music, his relationship, and his life.
The entire interview is posted at a site entitled Listen to this Website.
Hamill: You went through a period of really heavy involvement in radical causes. Lately you seem to have gone back to your art in a more direct way. What happened?
Lennon: I'll tell you what happened literally. I got off the boat, only it was an airplane, and landed in New York, and the first people who got in touch with me was (sic) Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. It's as simple as that. It's those two famous guys from America who's callin': "Hey, yeah, what's happenin', what's goin' on? . . ." And the next thing you know, I'm doin' John Sinclair benefits and one thing and another. I'm pretty movable, as an artist, you know. They almost greeted me off the plane and the next minute I'm involved, you know.
Hamill: How did all of this affect your work?
Lennon: It almost ruined it, in a way. It became journalism and not poetry. And I basically feel that I'm a poet. Even if it does go ba-deeble, eedle, eedle, it, da-deedle, deedle, it. I'm not a formalized poet, I have no education, so I have to write in the simplest forms usually. And I realized that over a period of time - and not just 'cause I met Jerry Rubin off the plane - but that was like a culmination. I realized that we were poets but we were really folk poets, and rock & roll was folk poetry - I've always felt that. Rock & roll was folk music. Then I began to take it seriously on another level, saying, "Well, I am reflecting what is going on, right?" And then I was making an effort to reflect what was going on. Well, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work as pop music or what I want to do. It just doesn't make sense. You get into that bit where you can't talk about trees, 'cause, y'know, y'gotta talk about "Corruption on Fifty-fourth Street"! It's nothing to do with that. It's a bit larger than that. It's the usual lesson that I've learned in me little thirty-four years: As soon as you've clutched onto something, you think - you're always clutchin' at straws - this is what life is all about. I think artists are lucky because the straws are always blowin' out of their hands. But the unfortunate thing is that most people find the straw hat and hang on to it, like your best friend that got the job at the bank when he was fifteen and looked twenty-eight before he was twenty. "Oh, this is it! Now I know what I'm doing! Right? Down this road for the next hundred years" . . . and it ain't never that. Whether it's a religious hat or a political hat or a no-political hat: whatever hat is was, always looking for these straw hats. I think I found out it's a waste of time. There is no hat to wear. Just keep moving around and changing clothes is the best. That's all that goes on: change.
At one time I thought, well, I'm avoidin' that thing called the Age Thing, whether it hits you at twenty-one, when you take your first job - I always keep referrin' to that because it has nothing to do, virtually, with your physical age. I mean, we all know the guys who took the jobs when we left school, the straight jobs, they all look like old guys within six weeks. You'd meet them and they'd be lookin' like Well, I've Settled Down Now. So I never want to settle down, in that respect. I always want to be immature in that respect. But then I felt that if I keep bangin' my head on the wall it'll stop me from gettin' that kind of age in the head. By keeping creating, consciously or unconsciously, extraordinary situations which in the end you'd write about. But maybe it has nothin' to do with it. I'm still mullin' that over. Still mullin' over last year now. Maybe that was it. I was still trying to avoid somethin' but doin' it the wrong way 'round. Whether it's called age or whatever.
Hamill: Is it called growing up?
Lennon: I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up - that way. I'll find a different way of not growing up. There's a better way of doing it than torturing your body. And then your mind. The guilt! It's just so dumb. And it makes me furious to be dumb because I don't like dumb people. And there I am, doing the dumbest things . . . I seem to do the things that I despise the most, almost. All of that to - what? - avoid being normal.
I have this great fear of this normal thing. You know, the ones that passed their exams, the ones that went to their jobs, the ones that didn't become rock & rollers, the ones that settle for it, settled for it, settled for the deal! That's what I'm trying to avoid. But I'm sick of avoiding it with violence, you know? I've gotta do it some other way. I think I will. I think just the fact that I've realized it is a good step forward. Alive in '75 is my new motto. I've just made it up. That's the one. I've decided I want to live. I'd decided I wanted to live before, but I didn't know what it meant, really. It's taken however many years and I want to have a go at it.
This is an excerpt from a June 1975 interview with John Lennon, conducted by Pete Hamill. In 1975, Lennon had just ended his year-and-a-half long separation from Yoko Ono and was about to take a five-year hiatus to "bake bread and look after the baby." Lennon was always painfully self-aware, but in this interview, he seems to have finally seen many of his blind spots.
There were a few short quotes from this excerpt that I thought about posting here, out of context, but I thought that quoting them in context would be better. He starts out talking about his music (obliquely referring to the overtly political and topical commercial bomb Some Time In New York City) but ends up reflecting not only on his role as an artist, but on the emotional and psychological traps and dodges that dogged him in his music, his relationship, and his life.
The entire interview is posted at a site entitled Listen to this Website.
Hamill: You went through a period of really heavy involvement in radical causes. Lately you seem to have gone back to your art in a more direct way. What happened?
Lennon: I'll tell you what happened literally. I got off the boat, only it was an airplane, and landed in New York, and the first people who got in touch with me was (sic) Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. It's as simple as that. It's those two famous guys from America who's callin': "Hey, yeah, what's happenin', what's goin' on? . . ." And the next thing you know, I'm doin' John Sinclair benefits and one thing and another. I'm pretty movable, as an artist, you know. They almost greeted me off the plane and the next minute I'm involved, you know.
Hamill: How did all of this affect your work?
Lennon: It almost ruined it, in a way. It became journalism and not poetry. And I basically feel that I'm a poet. Even if it does go ba-deeble, eedle, eedle, it, da-deedle, deedle, it. I'm not a formalized poet, I have no education, so I have to write in the simplest forms usually. And I realized that over a period of time - and not just 'cause I met Jerry Rubin off the plane - but that was like a culmination. I realized that we were poets but we were really folk poets, and rock & roll was folk poetry - I've always felt that. Rock & roll was folk music. Then I began to take it seriously on another level, saying, "Well, I am reflecting what is going on, right?" And then I was making an effort to reflect what was going on. Well, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work as pop music or what I want to do. It just doesn't make sense. You get into that bit where you can't talk about trees, 'cause, y'know, y'gotta talk about "Corruption on Fifty-fourth Street"! It's nothing to do with that. It's a bit larger than that. It's the usual lesson that I've learned in me little thirty-four years: As soon as you've clutched onto something, you think - you're always clutchin' at straws - this is what life is all about. I think artists are lucky because the straws are always blowin' out of their hands. But the unfortunate thing is that most people find the straw hat and hang on to it, like your best friend that got the job at the bank when he was fifteen and looked twenty-eight before he was twenty. "Oh, this is it! Now I know what I'm doing! Right? Down this road for the next hundred years" . . . and it ain't never that. Whether it's a religious hat or a political hat or a no-political hat: whatever hat is was, always looking for these straw hats. I think I found out it's a waste of time. There is no hat to wear. Just keep moving around and changing clothes is the best. That's all that goes on: change.
At one time I thought, well, I'm avoidin' that thing called the Age Thing, whether it hits you at twenty-one, when you take your first job - I always keep referrin' to that because it has nothing to do, virtually, with your physical age. I mean, we all know the guys who took the jobs when we left school, the straight jobs, they all look like old guys within six weeks. You'd meet them and they'd be lookin' like Well, I've Settled Down Now. So I never want to settle down, in that respect. I always want to be immature in that respect. But then I felt that if I keep bangin' my head on the wall it'll stop me from gettin' that kind of age in the head. By keeping creating, consciously or unconsciously, extraordinary situations which in the end you'd write about. But maybe it has nothin' to do with it. I'm still mullin' that over. Still mullin' over last year now. Maybe that was it. I was still trying to avoid somethin' but doin' it the wrong way 'round. Whether it's called age or whatever.
Hamill: Is it called growing up?
Lennon: I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up - that way. I'll find a different way of not growing up. There's a better way of doing it than torturing your body. And then your mind. The guilt! It's just so dumb. And it makes me furious to be dumb because I don't like dumb people. And there I am, doing the dumbest things . . . I seem to do the things that I despise the most, almost. All of that to - what? - avoid being normal.
I have this great fear of this normal thing. You know, the ones that passed their exams, the ones that went to their jobs, the ones that didn't become rock & rollers, the ones that settle for it, settled for it, settled for the deal! That's what I'm trying to avoid. But I'm sick of avoiding it with violence, you know? I've gotta do it some other way. I think I will. I think just the fact that I've realized it is a good step forward. Alive in '75 is my new motto. I've just made it up. That's the one. I've decided I want to live. I'd decided I wanted to live before, but I didn't know what it meant, really. It's taken however many years and I want to have a go at it.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week
Granted it's only Wednesday evening, but I doubt we'll do any better than this one before Friday:
Why Don't Pregnant Women Topple Over?
Why Don't Pregnant Women Topple Over?
Sunday, December 09, 2007
It was 27 years ago today...
On Sunday, December 7, 1980, my family made one of our customary Sunday trips to Renninger's flea market, east of Carlisle on the Pennsylvania turnpike. Little did my parents realize (I think) that I spent most of my allowance that afternoon on a big stack of old copies of PENTHOUSE; I was only 16 years old, but looked older, and I figured out that while newsstands were a crapshoot, most flea market dealers would sell me as many back issues as I wanted... at 50 cents a piece. (There's a lot I could write about THAT habit, but I don't want to digress.)
After we went to the flea market, we stopped at a diner down the road, Zinn's , and when I finished with my dinner, I asked my dad if I could take the car keys and go out to the cold car and listen to the radio (and guard my stash). Mainly, though, I wanted to sit in the driver's seat and tune around.
Autumn 1980 was notable for two big things in my life: the Phillies not only made it to the World Series after years of getting close and falling short, but won the whole thing; and John Lennon was back on the radio with new music. I'd started buying records at age 11, summer 1975; this was shortly after John's most recent studio album, ROCK AND ROLL, came out... so, in other words, the whole five years I'd been conscious of rock and roll, buying new records and exploring old sounds, Lennon had been missing in action.
But earlier in 1980, rumors started circulating: Lennon was planning a comeback; recording new songs; the new songs would be a dialogue between him and his wife, Yoko Ono (a "heartplay"). Finally, in October, a single appeared, on a new label (Geffen Records): following the pattern of John's earliest solo singles, it was one of his songs on the a-side ("[Just Like] Starting Over") and one of Yoko's on the flip ("Kiss Kiss Kiss"). The artsy black and white picture cover showed the two of them face to face, kissing.
From the Geffen Records LP DOUBLE FANTASY, the label stated.
DOUBLE FANTASY. What did THAT mean?
A few weeks later, a new issue of PLAYBOY appeared, with a John Lennon interview as the centerpiece. (Actually, Karen Price was the centerpiece. But again, I don't want to digress.) I had to get that magazine... and on a Thanksgiving weekend shopping trip to Park City Mall in Lancaster, I snagged it. The interview was a revelation: Lennon, it seemed, had spent the last five years taking care of his and Yoko's son Sean, "baking bread and looking after the baby." More than that, Lennon seemed to have reconciled himself with his Beatles past, and with Paul. His affection for his former bandmates was as evident as was his disgust in the landmark LENNON REMEMBERS interview he'd given ROLLING STONE a decade earlier.
Not only were he and Paul on speaking terms, but Paul had actually come over to Lennon's New York apartment at the Dakota with his guitar... and the two of them were together at the Dakota when Lorne Michaels came on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and offered the Beatles $3,200 to reunite on his show. ("Four songs. 'She Loves You, Yeah, yeah, yeah.' That's $800 right there. Split it up any way you want. If you want to give Ringo less, it's up to you.") Lennon revealed that he and Paul almost hopped in a cab to the studio to take Michaels up on the offer, but "we were too tired." And even though it sounded like Lennon wanted to keep his distance ("Finally I said to him, 'Please call before you come over. It's not 1956 and turning up at the door isn't the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring.' He was upset by that, but I didn't mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day and some guy turns up at the door."), still, that they were talking at all made me think that maybe, just maybe, a Beatles reunion might be in the future.
Even if it wasn't, though, there was that new single: "Starting Over" was a rocker, but kind of smooth around the edges, relatively speaking. It was a more mature sounding Lennon; there didn't seem to be any angst; certainly the primal scream I'd heard on "Mother" was missing... nor was there any utopian idealism ala "Imagine" or "Mind Games." It was... well... slight. And it had GIRL BACKGROUND SINGERS. "Starting Over," I thought, teetered on the edge of being Lame... but given what he had to say in the interview about his life with Yoko and their relationship, it seemed honest.
"All we are saying," Lennon said, "is, 'This is what is happening to us.' We are sending postcards." "Starting Over," apparently, was a "postcard" from John to his fans.
Anyway, that Sunday evening, I sat in the cold car in the parking lot of Zinn's Diner, tuning around on AM, hoping to catch Lennon's new single on the radio. When I finally found it, I caught it towards the end. There's a moment, in "(Just Like) Starting Over," where Lennon sings
Although our love is still special
Let's take a chance and fly away
Somewhere...
and the record fades down into a couple beats of silence before a set of triplets on the tom toms brings the band back in full force, and Lennon goes into a falsetto, singing "Starting o-o-verrrrr" and wailing high as the record fades out.
That night, I found the song on a fading, distant AM station just as Lennon sang the line "Although our love is still special" and the signal faded slightly into the static as he sang "Somewhere...." In that moment, I thought I'd lost the signal...
... but as the tom toms played on the record, the station's signal came back loud and strong and clear, cutting through the static, and the song played through to the end.
Starting oh-oh-vahhhhh
Ooooooooooooo
Ah, ah, ah, ah...
It was one of my favorite radio moments ever.
Two mornings later, a Tuesday, I woke up for school around 6:30, same as usual: Pepper, our dog, came bursting in the room and jumped up on the bed, licking my face to wake me up. Meanwhile my dad was standing at the door, and I'll never forget what he said:
"John Lennon was shot last night."
Shot. Killed.
I think I said the word FUCK! in front of my parents three times that morning; it was the first time I'd ever said it in front of them, and they didn't call me on it. I felt sick, angry, stunned. I couldn't believe it; was he really dead? I turned on the radio to WTPA FM 104 ("Central PA's Best Rock"), which had been pretty much ignoring Lennon's new album, and was stunned --sickened-- to hear the Beatles song the DJ had chosen to play that morning:
"Happiness Is A Warm Gun."
(That station, I'm pretty sure, is still playing the same c 1977 album tracks they played back then, except now, instead of calling themselves an "album rock" station, they call themselves "classic rock.")
On the other album rock station, Starview 92, out of Hanover, the DJ was in tears. I can't remember what he said, can't remember what song he played. I couldn't listen. I had to go to school.
Fuck.
On one of our trips to Renninger's, I'd bought an authentic 1964 Beatles "flasher" button: when you flicked the button a little, the picture on the front switched between a group photo and a close-up of John Lennon, with I LOVE JOHN in type around the perimeter. If ever there was a day to wear that button to school, it was that day. I went to school in a daze; can't remember if I saw any of my friends (I sort of remember seeing my friend Greg and exchanging "I can't believe its" with him)... can't really remember anything except going to homeroom and sitting there in a daze... one of the first times I can really remember feeling so overwhelmed with emotion that I was numb, wondering where the tears were.
That feeling, more than any other, stuck with me that week: I saw video of Beatles fans at tributes, singing "Give Peace A Chance" and "Imagine," holding each other, in tears. In tears.
Where were my tears?
The only thing I really remember from that schoolday is homeroom that morning: sitting in Mr. Hemminger's homeroom at Carlisle High School and, after the announcements, looking across at a girl who I later found out had a secret crush on me. She looked at my button.
"John," she said. "Wasn't he the weird one?"
What a stupid fucking thing to say, I thought as I sat there silent.
(I imagine now that she probably said the same thing to herself for the rest of the day!)
That weekend, there was a candlelight vigil at the square in Carlisle, part of the worldwide "moments of silence" that Yoko requested in her husband's honor. It was a windy, bitingly cold winter afternoon, one of the kind which have long since abandoned central Pennsylvania in December. I went with my friend Greg. The vigil was held near a monument on the grounds of the old county courthouse; the sky was overcast, grey, and ugly tired dirty snow lay on the ground and in the gutters, clinging to the curbs, forming filthy slushy puddles. The small group at the memorial was mostly Dickinson College students; except for Greg, I didn't see anyone I recognized from the high school. We stood there with our candles, cupping our hands around the flames to keep them from going out in the breeze, and I'll never forget a college student stepping up, tears streaming down his cheeks and choking his voice, as he proclaimed "Just as a generation was defined by John F. Kennedy's assassination, so will our generation be defined by this..."
I thought this was a little over the top... still...
Where are my tears?
Twenty-seven years later, when I think of John Lennon and the way he died (shot in front of his wife) and the age he died (three years younger than I am now, as I write this) and the life he missed (his son was only five at the time) and was robbed of... when I hear "Starting Over," or any of the songs from DOUBLE FANTASY (which I couldn't stand to buy a copy of, and didn't add to my collection, until 15 years after he died), or read his optimistic and mature remarks in the PLAYBOY interview... or see pictures of him, circa 1980, confident, a survivor... as I sit here typing this, thinking about all these things, guess what? I've found a couple tears. 27 years later, there they are.
As his "estranged fiance" Paul sang in his song "Here Today," a few years after John died...
But as for me
I still remember how it was before
And I am holding back the tears no more
I love you...
God bless your spirit, John, and may we someday live up to all of your ideals... not just your utopian ideals of peace and brotherhood, but the little ideals, too: finding joy in the eyes of your spouse and your son, fulfillment in your art, and ultimately, the realization that (to paraphrase Captain B.J.Honeycutt) you don't need to change the whole world.
Just your little corner of it.
After we went to the flea market, we stopped at a diner down the road, Zinn's , and when I finished with my dinner, I asked my dad if I could take the car keys and go out to the cold car and listen to the radio (and guard my stash). Mainly, though, I wanted to sit in the driver's seat and tune around.
Autumn 1980 was notable for two big things in my life: the Phillies not only made it to the World Series after years of getting close and falling short, but won the whole thing; and John Lennon was back on the radio with new music. I'd started buying records at age 11, summer 1975; this was shortly after John's most recent studio album, ROCK AND ROLL, came out... so, in other words, the whole five years I'd been conscious of rock and roll, buying new records and exploring old sounds, Lennon had been missing in action.
But earlier in 1980, rumors started circulating: Lennon was planning a comeback; recording new songs; the new songs would be a dialogue between him and his wife, Yoko Ono (a "heartplay"). Finally, in October, a single appeared, on a new label (Geffen Records): following the pattern of John's earliest solo singles, it was one of his songs on the a-side ("[Just Like] Starting Over") and one of Yoko's on the flip ("Kiss Kiss Kiss"). The artsy black and white picture cover showed the two of them face to face, kissing.
From the Geffen Records LP DOUBLE FANTASY, the label stated.
DOUBLE FANTASY. What did THAT mean?
A few weeks later, a new issue of PLAYBOY appeared, with a John Lennon interview as the centerpiece. (Actually, Karen Price was the centerpiece. But again, I don't want to digress.) I had to get that magazine... and on a Thanksgiving weekend shopping trip to Park City Mall in Lancaster, I snagged it. The interview was a revelation: Lennon, it seemed, had spent the last five years taking care of his and Yoko's son Sean, "baking bread and looking after the baby." More than that, Lennon seemed to have reconciled himself with his Beatles past, and with Paul. His affection for his former bandmates was as evident as was his disgust in the landmark LENNON REMEMBERS interview he'd given ROLLING STONE a decade earlier.
Not only were he and Paul on speaking terms, but Paul had actually come over to Lennon's New York apartment at the Dakota with his guitar... and the two of them were together at the Dakota when Lorne Michaels came on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and offered the Beatles $3,200 to reunite on his show. ("Four songs. 'She Loves You, Yeah, yeah, yeah.' That's $800 right there. Split it up any way you want. If you want to give Ringo less, it's up to you.") Lennon revealed that he and Paul almost hopped in a cab to the studio to take Michaels up on the offer, but "we were too tired." And even though it sounded like Lennon wanted to keep his distance ("Finally I said to him, 'Please call before you come over. It's not 1956 and turning up at the door isn't the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring.' He was upset by that, but I didn't mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day and some guy turns up at the door."), still, that they were talking at all made me think that maybe, just maybe, a Beatles reunion might be in the future.
Even if it wasn't, though, there was that new single: "Starting Over" was a rocker, but kind of smooth around the edges, relatively speaking. It was a more mature sounding Lennon; there didn't seem to be any angst; certainly the primal scream I'd heard on "Mother" was missing... nor was there any utopian idealism ala "Imagine" or "Mind Games." It was... well... slight. And it had GIRL BACKGROUND SINGERS. "Starting Over," I thought, teetered on the edge of being Lame... but given what he had to say in the interview about his life with Yoko and their relationship, it seemed honest.
"All we are saying," Lennon said, "is, 'This is what is happening to us.' We are sending postcards." "Starting Over," apparently, was a "postcard" from John to his fans.
Anyway, that Sunday evening, I sat in the cold car in the parking lot of Zinn's Diner, tuning around on AM, hoping to catch Lennon's new single on the radio. When I finally found it, I caught it towards the end. There's a moment, in "(Just Like) Starting Over," where Lennon sings
Although our love is still special
Let's take a chance and fly away
Somewhere...
and the record fades down into a couple beats of silence before a set of triplets on the tom toms brings the band back in full force, and Lennon goes into a falsetto, singing "Starting o-o-verrrrr" and wailing high as the record fades out.
That night, I found the song on a fading, distant AM station just as Lennon sang the line "Although our love is still special" and the signal faded slightly into the static as he sang "Somewhere...." In that moment, I thought I'd lost the signal...
... but as the tom toms played on the record, the station's signal came back loud and strong and clear, cutting through the static, and the song played through to the end.
Starting oh-oh-vahhhhh
Ooooooooooooo
Ah, ah, ah, ah...
It was one of my favorite radio moments ever.
Two mornings later, a Tuesday, I woke up for school around 6:30, same as usual: Pepper, our dog, came bursting in the room and jumped up on the bed, licking my face to wake me up. Meanwhile my dad was standing at the door, and I'll never forget what he said:
"John Lennon was shot last night."
Shot. Killed.
I think I said the word FUCK! in front of my parents three times that morning; it was the first time I'd ever said it in front of them, and they didn't call me on it. I felt sick, angry, stunned. I couldn't believe it; was he really dead? I turned on the radio to WTPA FM 104 ("Central PA's Best Rock"), which had been pretty much ignoring Lennon's new album, and was stunned --sickened-- to hear the Beatles song the DJ had chosen to play that morning:
"Happiness Is A Warm Gun."
(That station, I'm pretty sure, is still playing the same c 1977 album tracks they played back then, except now, instead of calling themselves an "album rock" station, they call themselves "classic rock.")
On the other album rock station, Starview 92, out of Hanover, the DJ was in tears. I can't remember what he said, can't remember what song he played. I couldn't listen. I had to go to school.
Fuck.
On one of our trips to Renninger's, I'd bought an authentic 1964 Beatles "flasher" button: when you flicked the button a little, the picture on the front switched between a group photo and a close-up of John Lennon, with I LOVE JOHN in type around the perimeter. If ever there was a day to wear that button to school, it was that day. I went to school in a daze; can't remember if I saw any of my friends (I sort of remember seeing my friend Greg and exchanging "I can't believe its" with him)... can't really remember anything except going to homeroom and sitting there in a daze... one of the first times I can really remember feeling so overwhelmed with emotion that I was numb, wondering where the tears were.
That feeling, more than any other, stuck with me that week: I saw video of Beatles fans at tributes, singing "Give Peace A Chance" and "Imagine," holding each other, in tears. In tears.
Where were my tears?
The only thing I really remember from that schoolday is homeroom that morning: sitting in Mr. Hemminger's homeroom at Carlisle High School and, after the announcements, looking across at a girl who I later found out had a secret crush on me. She looked at my button.
"John," she said. "Wasn't he the weird one?"
What a stupid fucking thing to say, I thought as I sat there silent.
(I imagine now that she probably said the same thing to herself for the rest of the day!)
That weekend, there was a candlelight vigil at the square in Carlisle, part of the worldwide "moments of silence" that Yoko requested in her husband's honor. It was a windy, bitingly cold winter afternoon, one of the kind which have long since abandoned central Pennsylvania in December. I went with my friend Greg. The vigil was held near a monument on the grounds of the old county courthouse; the sky was overcast, grey, and ugly tired dirty snow lay on the ground and in the gutters, clinging to the curbs, forming filthy slushy puddles. The small group at the memorial was mostly Dickinson College students; except for Greg, I didn't see anyone I recognized from the high school. We stood there with our candles, cupping our hands around the flames to keep them from going out in the breeze, and I'll never forget a college student stepping up, tears streaming down his cheeks and choking his voice, as he proclaimed "Just as a generation was defined by John F. Kennedy's assassination, so will our generation be defined by this..."
I thought this was a little over the top... still...
Where are my tears?
Twenty-seven years later, when I think of John Lennon and the way he died (shot in front of his wife) and the age he died (three years younger than I am now, as I write this) and the life he missed (his son was only five at the time) and was robbed of... when I hear "Starting Over," or any of the songs from DOUBLE FANTASY (which I couldn't stand to buy a copy of, and didn't add to my collection, until 15 years after he died), or read his optimistic and mature remarks in the PLAYBOY interview... or see pictures of him, circa 1980, confident, a survivor... as I sit here typing this, thinking about all these things, guess what? I've found a couple tears. 27 years later, there they are.
As his "estranged fiance" Paul sang in his song "Here Today," a few years after John died...
But as for me
I still remember how it was before
And I am holding back the tears no more
I love you...
God bless your spirit, John, and may we someday live up to all of your ideals... not just your utopian ideals of peace and brotherhood, but the little ideals, too: finding joy in the eyes of your spouse and your son, fulfillment in your art, and ultimately, the realization that (to paraphrase Captain B.J.Honeycutt) you don't need to change the whole world.
Just your little corner of it.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
A turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee
One Christmas when I was a kid, my parents gave me a book called Who's On First? by Richard Anobile. It was a compendium of some of Abbott and Costello's most famous routines, transcribed from their films and illustrated with stills from the movies themselves. It's amazing how well some of their very animated shtick transferred to still photos... but the best thing about the routines was the rhythm of the writing and the interplay between the two characters: the tall, thinks-he's-tough-but-not-quite-so-savvy-as-he-thinks Abbott and the short, rotund (I was going to say "fat" but I realize that he probably weighed about as much as I do!) gullible-but-not-quite-as-dumb- as-he-looks Costello. The voices of the characters literally jumped off the page; add in the stills, and, really, you almost didn't need to see the movies.
I'm still not even sure if I ever actually saw the Turkey Sandwich And Cup Of Coffee routine, but it was in the book, and I almost memorized it from the stills and dialogue balloons. It's probably my favorite routine of theirs.
All I know is, ever since age 12 or so, whenever someone utters the phrase "share a turkey sandwich," I think of this sketch and can hear Costello muttering "I don't care for nothin'..."
Abbott and Costello performed this routine originally in the movie Keep 'Em Flying, although I'm sure it was recycled and used on radio, TV, and maybe even other movies. This slightly edited transcript is posted on a website called Clown Ministry:
Blackie (Bud Abbott) and Heathcliff (Lou Costello), having been unsuccessful at entering through the gates of the Cal-Aero, Army Air Corps flight training academy, enter the U.S.O. club and approach the lunch counter with only one quarter between them and take their seats. Gloria (Martha Raye, playing the parts of twin sisters Gloria and Barbara) waits on them from behind the counter.
Blackie (Bud Abbott) : I beg your pardon. Can you tell me where the administration building is?
Gloria (Martha Raye) : Over there inside the gate.
Blackie : Yes? So how do you get in there to get a pass?
Gloria : Well... you can’t get inside the gate without a pass, to get a pass to get inside the gate.
Heathcliff (Lou Costello) : Very interesting and tricky. Come on.
Blackie : Yeah. (Blackie and Heathcliff begin to leave.)
Gloria : Won’t you boys have something to eat?
(The boys turn back and take their seats.)
Heathcliff : Yes ma’am. I would like a--
(Blackie gabs Heathcliff by the lapel and speaks to him in an aside.)
Blackie : Please. Please. What do you mean, "yes ma’am"? We’ve only got a quarter, you know that! Do you understand? What’s wrong with you? What’s happened to you?
Heathcliff : Well, a quarter… we can get something to eat.
Blackie : All right... well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll order a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee. See? And I’ll give you half. But if she asks you if you want anything you just say "no, I don’t care for anything."
Heathcliff : Even if she asks me if I care for anything? I say I don’t want nothing.
Blackie : That’s right.
Heathcliff : You mean we’re going to put something over on her?
Blackie : No. No. No. We’re not putting anything over.
Heathcliff : We’re going to sucker her.
Blackie : That’s all we have, is a quarter.
Heathcliff : She’ll think we’re a couple of big shots.
Blackie : That’s'a boy.
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : That’s right.
(The boys turn back and face the counter.)
Blackie : Give me a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, please.
Gloria : And what will you have?
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : Oh, go ahead! Have something!
Heathcliff : Give me a turkey sandwich.
(Blackie spins around pulling both himself and Heathcliff off their stools and they speak in another aside.)
Blackie : What did I just get through telling you?
Heathcliff : I refused once. Didn’t I? That’s enough?
Blackie : I know. But we only got a quarter.
Heathcliff : I mean, but the waitress says to have something. I say I don’t care for nothing. Then you say, go ahead, have--
Blackie : --Never mind that! You can’t order! Never mind what I say!
Heathcliff : No matter how much you coax me?
Blackie : No matter how much I coax you. You just say "I don’t want anything."
Heathcliff : I’ll say I’m filled up that’s all.
Blackie : That’s all. We only got a quarter.
(Heathcliff pulls Blackie closer as if revealing the truth to him.)
Heathcliff : I ain’t. But I’ll say, I will...
Blackie : Well, say that.
Heathcliff : O.K..
Blackie : And I‘ll give you half my sandwich.
Heathcliff : O.K.. I don’t care for nothing.
(And the boys return to their seats at the counter.)
Blackie : That turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, please.
Gloria : And what will you have?
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : Ohhh, go ahead... have something. Go on, have something. Come on! You're in here to eat. Right?
Heathcliff : Yeah.
Blackie : Go ahead... order something.
Heathcliff : Give me some ham and eggs.
(Blackie grabs Heathcliff by the lapels again and whisks them both off the stools for another aside.)
Blackie : What did I just get through telling you?
Heathcliff : What do you keep coaxing me for?
Blackie : Just a minute. We’ve only got a quarter!
Heathcliff : I know! But don’t keep saying "go ahead take something." I say "I don’t care for nothing." You say "go ahead take--
Blackie : --Never mind! Never mind what I say. Just don’t order anything! How were you going to pay for it?
Heathcliff : I’m filled up. I don’t know from nothing. That’s all.
Blackie : That’s different. No matter how much I coax you, you don’t want anything.
Heathcliff : I’m deaf. I don’t say another word.
Blackie : Now keep quiet. You want a sandwich. You can’t pay for two turkey sandwiches. Now come on.
(The boys begin to retake their seats at the counter.)
Heathcliff : I don’t want nothing.
Blackie : You don’t want anything.
(They turn towards the counter and speak to Gloria.)
Blackie : That turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, please.
Gloria : And you?
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : Oh, sure you do.
Heathcliff : Stop asking me! I don’t care for nothing. That’s all. I’m not in the mood to eat.
Blackie : You told me you were hungry!
Heathcliff : I know. I told you a lot of things. But I ain’t going to eat.
Blackie : Well, are you hungry?
Heathcliff : I beg your pardon, miss, but I’m not going to eat.
Blackie : You are hungry? Now look. You're in a restaurant. What do people go to a restaurant for?
Heathcliff : Not me. I’m just--
Blackie : --What do people go to a restaurant for?
Heathcliff : Sometimes I wonder...
Blackie : They go there to eat.
Heathcliff : Yeah.
Blackie : Well, that’s what you’re here for.
Heathcliff : That’s a wonderful word, "eat."
Blackie : Well, all right. Order something.
Heathcliff : I’m not hungry.
Blackie : Now listen. You want people to think I’m a cheapskate around here? Go on, order something! Order something small.
Heathcliff : Give me a small steak.
(Blackie slaps Heathcliff in the face, grabs him by the lapels, and off the stools they go again for another aside.)
Blackie : What did I just… What did I just get through telling you?
Heathcliff : What do you keep coaxing me for?
Blackie : Never mind that coaxing! No matter how much I coax you, you don’t want anything! Now sit down there and behave yourself.
(The boys sit down again and speak to Gloria.)
Blackie : Turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Gloria : Turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee? Yes?
(Heathcliff has both hands over his mouth. And with a questioning glance, Gloria looks his way.)
Blackie : He don’t care for anything.
I'm still not even sure if I ever actually saw the Turkey Sandwich And Cup Of Coffee routine, but it was in the book, and I almost memorized it from the stills and dialogue balloons. It's probably my favorite routine of theirs.
All I know is, ever since age 12 or so, whenever someone utters the phrase "share a turkey sandwich," I think of this sketch and can hear Costello muttering "I don't care for nothin'..."
Abbott and Costello performed this routine originally in the movie Keep 'Em Flying, although I'm sure it was recycled and used on radio, TV, and maybe even other movies. This slightly edited transcript is posted on a website called Clown Ministry:
Blackie (Bud Abbott) and Heathcliff (Lou Costello), having been unsuccessful at entering through the gates of the Cal-Aero, Army Air Corps flight training academy, enter the U.S.O. club and approach the lunch counter with only one quarter between them and take their seats. Gloria (Martha Raye, playing the parts of twin sisters Gloria and Barbara) waits on them from behind the counter.
Blackie (Bud Abbott) : I beg your pardon. Can you tell me where the administration building is?
Gloria (Martha Raye) : Over there inside the gate.
Blackie : Yes? So how do you get in there to get a pass?
Gloria : Well... you can’t get inside the gate without a pass, to get a pass to get inside the gate.
Heathcliff (Lou Costello) : Very interesting and tricky. Come on.
Blackie : Yeah. (Blackie and Heathcliff begin to leave.)
Gloria : Won’t you boys have something to eat?
(The boys turn back and take their seats.)
Heathcliff : Yes ma’am. I would like a--
(Blackie gabs Heathcliff by the lapel and speaks to him in an aside.)
Blackie : Please. Please. What do you mean, "yes ma’am"? We’ve only got a quarter, you know that! Do you understand? What’s wrong with you? What’s happened to you?
Heathcliff : Well, a quarter… we can get something to eat.
Blackie : All right... well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll order a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee. See? And I’ll give you half. But if she asks you if you want anything you just say "no, I don’t care for anything."
Heathcliff : Even if she asks me if I care for anything? I say I don’t want nothing.
Blackie : That’s right.
Heathcliff : You mean we’re going to put something over on her?
Blackie : No. No. No. We’re not putting anything over.
Heathcliff : We’re going to sucker her.
Blackie : That’s all we have, is a quarter.
Heathcliff : She’ll think we’re a couple of big shots.
Blackie : That’s'a boy.
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : That’s right.
(The boys turn back and face the counter.)
Blackie : Give me a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, please.
Gloria : And what will you have?
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : Oh, go ahead! Have something!
Heathcliff : Give me a turkey sandwich.
(Blackie spins around pulling both himself and Heathcliff off their stools and they speak in another aside.)
Blackie : What did I just get through telling you?
Heathcliff : I refused once. Didn’t I? That’s enough?
Blackie : I know. But we only got a quarter.
Heathcliff : I mean, but the waitress says to have something. I say I don’t care for nothing. Then you say, go ahead, have--
Blackie : --Never mind that! You can’t order! Never mind what I say!
Heathcliff : No matter how much you coax me?
Blackie : No matter how much I coax you. You just say "I don’t want anything."
Heathcliff : I’ll say I’m filled up that’s all.
Blackie : That’s all. We only got a quarter.
(Heathcliff pulls Blackie closer as if revealing the truth to him.)
Heathcliff : I ain’t. But I’ll say, I will...
Blackie : Well, say that.
Heathcliff : O.K..
Blackie : And I‘ll give you half my sandwich.
Heathcliff : O.K.. I don’t care for nothing.
(And the boys return to their seats at the counter.)
Blackie : That turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, please.
Gloria : And what will you have?
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : Ohhh, go ahead... have something. Go on, have something. Come on! You're in here to eat. Right?
Heathcliff : Yeah.
Blackie : Go ahead... order something.
Heathcliff : Give me some ham and eggs.
(Blackie grabs Heathcliff by the lapels again and whisks them both off the stools for another aside.)
Blackie : What did I just get through telling you?
Heathcliff : What do you keep coaxing me for?
Blackie : Just a minute. We’ve only got a quarter!
Heathcliff : I know! But don’t keep saying "go ahead take something." I say "I don’t care for nothing." You say "go ahead take--
Blackie : --Never mind! Never mind what I say. Just don’t order anything! How were you going to pay for it?
Heathcliff : I’m filled up. I don’t know from nothing. That’s all.
Blackie : That’s different. No matter how much I coax you, you don’t want anything.
Heathcliff : I’m deaf. I don’t say another word.
Blackie : Now keep quiet. You want a sandwich. You can’t pay for two turkey sandwiches. Now come on.
(The boys begin to retake their seats at the counter.)
Heathcliff : I don’t want nothing.
Blackie : You don’t want anything.
(They turn towards the counter and speak to Gloria.)
Blackie : That turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, please.
Gloria : And you?
Heathcliff : I don’t care for nothing.
Blackie : Oh, sure you do.
Heathcliff : Stop asking me! I don’t care for nothing. That’s all. I’m not in the mood to eat.
Blackie : You told me you were hungry!
Heathcliff : I know. I told you a lot of things. But I ain’t going to eat.
Blackie : Well, are you hungry?
Heathcliff : I beg your pardon, miss, but I’m not going to eat.
Blackie : You are hungry? Now look. You're in a restaurant. What do people go to a restaurant for?
Heathcliff : Not me. I’m just--
Blackie : --What do people go to a restaurant for?
Heathcliff : Sometimes I wonder...
Blackie : They go there to eat.
Heathcliff : Yeah.
Blackie : Well, that’s what you’re here for.
Heathcliff : That’s a wonderful word, "eat."
Blackie : Well, all right. Order something.
Heathcliff : I’m not hungry.
Blackie : Now listen. You want people to think I’m a cheapskate around here? Go on, order something! Order something small.
Heathcliff : Give me a small steak.
(Blackie slaps Heathcliff in the face, grabs him by the lapels, and off the stools they go again for another aside.)
Blackie : What did I just… What did I just get through telling you?
Heathcliff : What do you keep coaxing me for?
Blackie : Never mind that coaxing! No matter how much I coax you, you don’t want anything! Now sit down there and behave yourself.
(The boys sit down again and speak to Gloria.)
Blackie : Turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Gloria : Turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee? Yes?
(Heathcliff has both hands over his mouth. And with a questioning glance, Gloria looks his way.)
Blackie : He don’t care for anything.
Monday, November 19, 2007
AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week
This gem, from today (Monday, November 19), should probably be filed under ABOUT FORTY YEARS TOO LATE:
China Joins Race to Moon
China Joins Race to Moon
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Problems and difficulties, and solutions...
This is a passage from Jacques Barzun's book of education essays, Begin Here, in an essay entitled "Television and the Child -- But Not What You Think" (p. 46). His essay was about how true-false/multiple choice exams are a poor tool to test learning, but this passage, from a discussion of John Dewey, goes a lot deeper than mere pegagogy:
...the greater part of thought does not deal with problems. We have all got into the habit of calling every purpose or difficulty a problem... A problem is a definable difficulty; it falls within certain limits and the right answer gets it. But the difficulty --not the problem-- the difficulty of making a living, finding a mate, keeping a friend who has a jealous, cantankerous disposition, cannot be dealt with in the same way -- it has no solution. It calls for endless improvisation, some would say "creativity." So we come to the conclusion that the mind at its best thinks not like (a) scientist, but like an artist. Art is achieved not by problem-solving, but by invention, trial and error, and compromise among desired ends."
...the greater part of thought does not deal with problems. We have all got into the habit of calling every purpose or difficulty a problem... A problem is a definable difficulty; it falls within certain limits and the right answer gets it. But the difficulty --not the problem-- the difficulty of making a living, finding a mate, keeping a friend who has a jealous, cantankerous disposition, cannot be dealt with in the same way -- it has no solution. It calls for endless improvisation, some would say "creativity." So we come to the conclusion that the mind at its best thinks not like (a) scientist, but like an artist. Art is achieved not by problem-solving, but by invention, trial and error, and compromise among desired ends."
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
A lovely thought from Thomas Merton
I always love when I open a book to a random passage and it turns out to be exactly what I needed to read, when I needed to read it. This happened yesterday, when I opened Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island to this passage on page 53:
"God's will is not an abstraction, not a machine, not an esoteric system. It is a living concrete reality in the lives of men, and our souls are created to burn as flames within His flame. The will of the Lord is not a static center drawing our souls blindly toward itself. It is a creative power, working everywhere, giving life and being and direction to all things, and above all forming and creating, in the midst of an old creation, a whole new world which is called the Kingdom of God. What we call 'the will of God' is the movement of His love and wisdom, ordering and governing all free and necessary agents, moving movers and causing causes, driving drivers and ruling those who rule, so that even those who resist Him carry out his will without realizing that they are doing so..."
Part of me is tempted to argue semantics, but another part of me --perhaps that flame burning within the flame-- is just tempted to shout AMEN!
So AMEN!
"God's will is not an abstraction, not a machine, not an esoteric system. It is a living concrete reality in the lives of men, and our souls are created to burn as flames within His flame. The will of the Lord is not a static center drawing our souls blindly toward itself. It is a creative power, working everywhere, giving life and being and direction to all things, and above all forming and creating, in the midst of an old creation, a whole new world which is called the Kingdom of God. What we call 'the will of God' is the movement of His love and wisdom, ordering and governing all free and necessary agents, moving movers and causing causes, driving drivers and ruling those who rule, so that even those who resist Him carry out his will without realizing that they are doing so..."
Part of me is tempted to argue semantics, but another part of me --perhaps that flame burning within the flame-- is just tempted to shout AMEN!
So AMEN!
AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week
The best AOL Welcome Screen Headlines give us not only a glimpse at the news; they give us a perspective on the day's pertinent stories that we might not have otherwise considered. This week's winner, about the California wildfires which have displaced over a half million residents and destroyed untolled amounts of property, is no exception. While I'm sure that many homes, schools, churches, businesses, farms, woodlands, and historic landmarks lie in the path and in the smoldering wake of the fires, this headline (the only link to a wildfire story on their main page) really drove home (in my eyes, anyway) exactly why we all should care about the disaster:
Fire Shuts Down Many TV Shows
Fire Shuts Down Many TV Shows
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
So... Stowe.
Except for my little item about the garbage collectors, when last you heard from me, I was in Burlington, griping about the futility of my job search in a new city.
Well... as I write this, I am at my friend Shawn and Chantal's bed and breakfast in Stowe, Vermont, about 40 miles southeast (mostly east) of Burlington. Shawn is at work till 11:30 this morning; Chantal is at a meeting till 12:30; their two boys just told me about 15 minutes ago that they were going out to play in the back yard... yet as I look out the back window of the inn, the yard is Astoundingly Devoid Of Boys.
Uh-oh.
So... how did I get HERE?
From the beginning...
When I moved to Burlington, I moved into a sublet on Elmwood Avenue, in a section of the city called the Old North End. Tina, the woman whose name was on the lease, found a new place starting on September 1, but her old lease didn't end until October 1, so she wanted a subletter for her room in this two-bedroom apartment so it wouldn't be a total loss. We emailed, then talked, and sight unseen I decided to move in: I paid her $250 for three weeks and slept on an air mattress, the whole time with the understanding that I would have to move out once October first came.
Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to find the next place... at least not a next place in the city. I came up to Vermont on Amtrak, sans car, and while there were plenty of places in the "suburbs" of Burlington and beyond, I'd seen during my job hunt that living outside of the city really limits your work options. Plus, I liked being within walking distance of the downtown: I'd started attending Quaker Meeting every week and the meeting house was within walking distance; all of the bookstores and cafes and record stores and grocery stores were within a short walk. I really didn't want to leave the gravity of downtown and have to rely of the bus (which only runs until about 9 pm; most of the routes have no Sunday service).
However, I'd been in touch with Pat, a woman with a room for rent in South Burlington, on and off for about five weeks... before I firmed things up with Tina, I'd actually considered just moving into her place. As I explored Burlington, I found myself glad that I hadn't taken her place, because of all the reasons enumerated above. I really really really didn't want to live out in South Burlington.
But as the first of October ticked closer, and I hit wall after wall finding a place in the city, I got a little more desperate, and I made sure I stayed in touch with Pat as a backup plan, just in case I didn't find anything else. We played phone- and email-tag... and when it became clear that I wasn't going to find a place in the city, I called her, and asked her if she still had a room for rent (she did), and could I come out and see it (not only could I come see it, but she offered to drive into the city, pick me up, drive me out so I could see the place, and then drive me back "home."
So I rode out with her to see the place, near the Burlington airport... saw the house, met her family, looked at the room. I have to admit: I wasn't thrilled. Not only was the room kind of crummy (an unfinished room in an unfinished basement), but I had an inexplicable bad feeling about it.
Something here isn't right, but I don't know what.
I consoled myself (talked myself out of my bad feeling) by telling myself that Pat's daughter had an 18-month-old daughter (her grown son, daughter and granddaughter lived there) and that the granddaughter was now in daycare, which was $160 a week. So the $100 I'd be paying for my room would help them out.
So... I told Pat that I'd take the room; we shook hands, agreed that I'd pay her $200 to move in (two weeks' rent), and that I'd be out there sometime around 5:30 pm Monday to move in. She said fine, good. I didn't give her any money.
Good thing, too.
On Monday I was sitting at the Burlington library, working on my writing... and at 1:30 I felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket... I couldn't answer, since I was inside the library... so I went outside and checked my messages.
This is the message she left:
"Hi, Max... this is Pat. We spoke yesterday. I had a long discussion with my son last night after you looked at the place. He is very hesitant to have someone moving in here and renting. I'm sorry about the short notice, but he's really hesitant to have someone move in, so I'm afraid I can't rent the room out. Please call me to let me know you've gotten this message. Bye."
Four hours before I was ready to move in.
I was sorry about the short notice too... seeing as I'd packed up everything I had at the sublet, and it was all sitting in Tina's car, waiting for me to meet her at 5 so I could make the move.
So... I called Pat back. I said "I got your message" and then "Are you serious?"
She said yes, she was, and "sorry about the inconvenience, but my son really doesn't want to do it, and I have to live with him, so..."
Sorry for the "inconvenience." She's telling me I don't have a place to stay, and that's an "inconvenience."
I said "Well, you realize that I'm all packed and ready to move in. I'm moved OUT of the old place. My friend's car is packed. Your room was where I was going to move next. I don't have anyplace else to go."
"Well, I'm sorry, but... I've gotta live with my son, so..."
So... I was evicted before I even moved in. I guess you could say I was homeless.
Fortunately... I'd been going to Quaker Meeting pretty regularly since I'd come up to Burlington, and had put a call out to the meeting that I was looking for a "next place to live" and could anyone help out? Zed, a person from the meeting, told me that if I didn't find a place, I could sleep on his couch for a couple nights... which is what I ended up doing for two nights. Meanwhile, I emailed my friend Shawn, he of Goddard's MFA program, Name The Boy, and Auberge de Stowe, and told him what had happened. Right before I got the HEAVE HO phone call, he had emailed me about a place in South Burlington (aptly named The Pour House), near Pat's house, where I could go get a beer and cheap food and watch the Phillies in the playoffs.
I told him what happened... and he wrote back...
Well, forget about the Pour House then. You're on your own for the ballgame.
But seriously, Max, you're scaring me. Just tell me when and I'll come get you and you can sleep on the futon downstairs and get a job here for a while.
Which I felt hesitant to do, for a lot of reasons: mainly, that Shawn and Chantal have a family and run an inn, and it's BUSY SEASON RIGHT NOW (tourists, fall foliage). The last thing I wanted to do is go down there and be underfoot.
So... I was just kind of praying that I find some sort of answer.. and then I went out walking for breakfast and it hit me...
What kind of job would I get in Stowe? Inn work? Working a front desk, cleaning rooms, cooking, etc....
And... what kind of help could Shawn and Chantal possibly need during their busy season, and which I might actually be able to swap to them in exchange for a place to stay? Working a front desk, cleaning rooms, cooking etc
Hmmmmm....
So... I wrote Shawn back and told him I'd be hesitant to take him up on his offer if I was just staying there underfoot... BUT... I knew that it was their busy season... so in exchange for a place to stay, I'd give him part-time help at the inn: cleaning rooms, handyman help, front desk, answering the phone, running for groceries, etc.
He wrote back and said Yes, that'd be great.
So that's what I'm doing and where I am. I'm at Shawn and Chantal's in Stowe, helping them with the inn (the boys are back, by the way... making griled cheez sammiches... phew) and sleeping on the futon in the basement.
As an aside related to my job hunting post of a couple weeks ago: I spent three weeks in Burlington, applying and interviewing for jobs, and I'd barely made a dent... I had leads and interviews but no firm prospects... yet one afternoon in Stowe and Chantal made two phone calls, and the next evening, I had a job: bussing tables at a restaurant down in the village. It's a different kind of work than I'm used to: instead of sitting in front of a computer, surfing the net and basically being ON CALL, I'm actually BUSY. It pays $6.50 an hour plus tips, which doesn't sound like it'd be a lot, but if you saw this place's menu, you'd understand how I was able to take home $130 in cash for about six hours of work last Saturday night
Couchsurfing is a nice romanticized fun-sounding Vermont name for what I did, but homeless is homeless.
And yet, the whole time it was happening, I didn't feel any panic or fear. I thought "OK, this is what needs to be done... this is who I need to call... this is what I have to do next." And I did it... and now here I am in Stowe. I don't know if I'm going to stay here longterm, but for now, it works.
Burlington may yet be in my future, but if I try it again, I'm going to make sure I have a signed lease in hand before I make the move.
Mainly, though, when I have a bad feeling about something, I'm not going to talk myself into going the other way, which is basically what I did with the room in South Burlington.
Well... as I write this, I am at my friend Shawn and Chantal's bed and breakfast in Stowe, Vermont, about 40 miles southeast (mostly east) of Burlington. Shawn is at work till 11:30 this morning; Chantal is at a meeting till 12:30; their two boys just told me about 15 minutes ago that they were going out to play in the back yard... yet as I look out the back window of the inn, the yard is Astoundingly Devoid Of Boys.
Uh-oh.
So... how did I get HERE?
From the beginning...
When I moved to Burlington, I moved into a sublet on Elmwood Avenue, in a section of the city called the Old North End. Tina, the woman whose name was on the lease, found a new place starting on September 1, but her old lease didn't end until October 1, so she wanted a subletter for her room in this two-bedroom apartment so it wouldn't be a total loss. We emailed, then talked, and sight unseen I decided to move in: I paid her $250 for three weeks and slept on an air mattress, the whole time with the understanding that I would have to move out once October first came.
Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to find the next place... at least not a next place in the city. I came up to Vermont on Amtrak, sans car, and while there were plenty of places in the "suburbs" of Burlington and beyond, I'd seen during my job hunt that living outside of the city really limits your work options. Plus, I liked being within walking distance of the downtown: I'd started attending Quaker Meeting every week and the meeting house was within walking distance; all of the bookstores and cafes and record stores and grocery stores were within a short walk. I really didn't want to leave the gravity of downtown and have to rely of the bus (which only runs until about 9 pm; most of the routes have no Sunday service).
However, I'd been in touch with Pat, a woman with a room for rent in South Burlington, on and off for about five weeks... before I firmed things up with Tina, I'd actually considered just moving into her place. As I explored Burlington, I found myself glad that I hadn't taken her place, because of all the reasons enumerated above. I really really really didn't want to live out in South Burlington.
But as the first of October ticked closer, and I hit wall after wall finding a place in the city, I got a little more desperate, and I made sure I stayed in touch with Pat as a backup plan, just in case I didn't find anything else. We played phone- and email-tag... and when it became clear that I wasn't going to find a place in the city, I called her, and asked her if she still had a room for rent (she did), and could I come out and see it (not only could I come see it, but she offered to drive into the city, pick me up, drive me out so I could see the place, and then drive me back "home."
So I rode out with her to see the place, near the Burlington airport... saw the house, met her family, looked at the room. I have to admit: I wasn't thrilled. Not only was the room kind of crummy (an unfinished room in an unfinished basement), but I had an inexplicable bad feeling about it.
Something here isn't right, but I don't know what.
I consoled myself (talked myself out of my bad feeling) by telling myself that Pat's daughter had an 18-month-old daughter (her grown son, daughter and granddaughter lived there) and that the granddaughter was now in daycare, which was $160 a week. So the $100 I'd be paying for my room would help them out.
So... I told Pat that I'd take the room; we shook hands, agreed that I'd pay her $200 to move in (two weeks' rent), and that I'd be out there sometime around 5:30 pm Monday to move in. She said fine, good. I didn't give her any money.
Good thing, too.
On Monday I was sitting at the Burlington library, working on my writing... and at 1:30 I felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket... I couldn't answer, since I was inside the library... so I went outside and checked my messages.
This is the message she left:
"Hi, Max... this is Pat. We spoke yesterday. I had a long discussion with my son last night after you looked at the place. He is very hesitant to have someone moving in here and renting. I'm sorry about the short notice, but he's really hesitant to have someone move in, so I'm afraid I can't rent the room out. Please call me to let me know you've gotten this message. Bye."
Four hours before I was ready to move in.
I was sorry about the short notice too... seeing as I'd packed up everything I had at the sublet, and it was all sitting in Tina's car, waiting for me to meet her at 5 so I could make the move.
So... I called Pat back. I said "I got your message" and then "Are you serious?"
She said yes, she was, and "sorry about the inconvenience, but my son really doesn't want to do it, and I have to live with him, so..."
Sorry for the "inconvenience." She's telling me I don't have a place to stay, and that's an "inconvenience."
I said "Well, you realize that I'm all packed and ready to move in. I'm moved OUT of the old place. My friend's car is packed. Your room was where I was going to move next. I don't have anyplace else to go."
"Well, I'm sorry, but... I've gotta live with my son, so..."
So... I was evicted before I even moved in. I guess you could say I was homeless.
Fortunately... I'd been going to Quaker Meeting pretty regularly since I'd come up to Burlington, and had put a call out to the meeting that I was looking for a "next place to live" and could anyone help out? Zed, a person from the meeting, told me that if I didn't find a place, I could sleep on his couch for a couple nights... which is what I ended up doing for two nights. Meanwhile, I emailed my friend Shawn, he of Goddard's MFA program, Name The Boy, and Auberge de Stowe, and told him what had happened. Right before I got the HEAVE HO phone call, he had emailed me about a place in South Burlington (aptly named The Pour House), near Pat's house, where I could go get a beer and cheap food and watch the Phillies in the playoffs.
I told him what happened... and he wrote back...
Well, forget about the Pour House then. You're on your own for the ballgame.
But seriously, Max, you're scaring me. Just tell me when and I'll come get you and you can sleep on the futon downstairs and get a job here for a while.
Which I felt hesitant to do, for a lot of reasons: mainly, that Shawn and Chantal have a family and run an inn, and it's BUSY SEASON RIGHT NOW (tourists, fall foliage). The last thing I wanted to do is go down there and be underfoot.
So... I was just kind of praying that I find some sort of answer.. and then I went out walking for breakfast and it hit me...
What kind of job would I get in Stowe? Inn work? Working a front desk, cleaning rooms, cooking, etc....
And... what kind of help could Shawn and Chantal possibly need during their busy season, and which I might actually be able to swap to them in exchange for a place to stay? Working a front desk, cleaning rooms, cooking etc
Hmmmmm....
So... I wrote Shawn back and told him I'd be hesitant to take him up on his offer if I was just staying there underfoot... BUT... I knew that it was their busy season... so in exchange for a place to stay, I'd give him part-time help at the inn: cleaning rooms, handyman help, front desk, answering the phone, running for groceries, etc.
He wrote back and said Yes, that'd be great.
So that's what I'm doing and where I am. I'm at Shawn and Chantal's in Stowe, helping them with the inn (the boys are back, by the way... making griled cheez sammiches... phew) and sleeping on the futon in the basement.
As an aside related to my job hunting post of a couple weeks ago: I spent three weeks in Burlington, applying and interviewing for jobs, and I'd barely made a dent... I had leads and interviews but no firm prospects... yet one afternoon in Stowe and Chantal made two phone calls, and the next evening, I had a job: bussing tables at a restaurant down in the village. It's a different kind of work than I'm used to: instead of sitting in front of a computer, surfing the net and basically being ON CALL, I'm actually BUSY. It pays $6.50 an hour plus tips, which doesn't sound like it'd be a lot, but if you saw this place's menu, you'd understand how I was able to take home $130 in cash for about six hours of work last Saturday night
Couchsurfing is a nice romanticized fun-sounding Vermont name for what I did, but homeless is homeless.
And yet, the whole time it was happening, I didn't feel any panic or fear. I thought "OK, this is what needs to be done... this is who I need to call... this is what I have to do next." And I did it... and now here I am in Stowe. I don't know if I'm going to stay here longterm, but for now, it works.
Burlington may yet be in my future, but if I try it again, I'm going to make sure I have a signed lease in hand before I make the move.
Mainly, though, when I have a bad feeling about something, I'm not going to talk myself into going the other way, which is basically what I did with the room in South Burlington.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Of course, nothing against garbage collectors, mind you...
I loved this... from an article in today's (Tues October 7 2007) PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER about how a couple who was wed by a minister in the Universal Life Church (which does some online ordinations) had their marriage declared invalid because of the online ordination:
...Adam Johnston...had been ordained online just so he could perform the Aug. 24, 2006, ceremony. And the judge ruled that as an online officiant, Johnston did not have "a regularly established church or congregation" as the law requires. Therefore, he was unauthorized and the marriage invalid.
It was the first time that legal argument had been made in Pennsylvania, according to David Cleaver, solicitor for the statewide Association of Registers of Wills and Clerks of Orphans Court...
...There is growing discontent among those who think online ordinations make a mockery of marriage. "The problem with Internet ordinations," Cleaver says, "is that you don't know who you are ordaining. You open the door for convicted pedophiles, rapists, even your garbage collector, to officiate at weddings."
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Interview
I moved up to Vermont 15 days ago, and since then, have put in at least a dozen (and probably more) job applications for every sort of work ranging from newspaper copy editor to grocery store stockperson; from substitute teacher to deli counterperson. I've attached a resume with some of these applications, and have tried to be as honest as possible about my current situation:
Just moved to Burlington from Pennsylvania. Came up here to write and to do whatever work I need to do to support my writing until my writing supports me. Looking for full-time or part-time work. Available immediately.
I've tried to state these facts without sounding desperate (which I've bordered on at times the last two weeks, as I've watched my available cash slowly dwindle) or uninterested in a long-term full-time job doing something that, given my writing and my master's degree (and the possibility that I'll be teaching someplace in the spring), probably wouldn't constitute much more than a temporary fix, a way to bring in money right now, until I can do what I REALLY want to do.
The first interview I had (with a temporary agency) didn't really surprise me. It's the nature of a temp agency to place qualified (and sometimes OVER-qualified) people in jobs they might not take otherwise with the understanding that it's not gonna be forever, because, after all, that's why they're a TEMP agency, and not a job placement service. I had no qualms about telling the recruiter at this agency that I might be teaching in the spring, etc etc etc, and she certainly didn't seem surprised to hear it.
The only sticking point was that I couldn't begin work immediately, not until I furnished them with a copy of my social security card (proof of my eligibility to work), which I lost LONG ago. I went straight from the agency to the library to print out a couple Important Supporting Documents, and then walked to the Social Security Administration offices over on Pearl Street to get a duplicate card. I was prepared for an hour-long or more wait, followed by a Gubmint Song-n-Dance routine, but the whole thing, including the wait, took maybe ten minutes.
With my proof of eligibility to work in hand, I called the agency and told them I had my documentation and that I could take the bus out there and drop it off with them that afternoon. And the woman's response kind of took me aback: "There's no hurry on that. You don't need to drop that off right away." I said no, it's no problem, I'll bring it right out, and I hung up.
Her response struck me as odd as soon as she said it. If the only way I can start working is to drop this documentation off to them, I thought, then why are they telling me there's "no hurry?"
I DID tell them I wanted to get working right away, right?
Perhaps NOT surprisingly, it's been over a week and I haven't gotten a callback from this agency since.
The second interview I had was at a grocery store downtown. Since one of the biggest priorities wherever you live is to EAT, one of the first things I did two weeks ago today when I awoke was FIND A GROCERY STORE. I liked this co-op from the moment I stepped inside. As I wrote in an earlier post, this move north has felt like the closing of a cycle that, in some ways, started in 1992 when my first wife left, but in other ways in 1997, when I decided to leave Gettysburg and move back to the Philly burbs... thus, in a cool piece of cyclical synchronicity of the type that has seemed to accompany my every step on this move, I noticed outside of this market on my second visit that some produce was stacked on overturned crates from HOLLABAUGH BROTHERS ORCHARD, in Adams County, right outside of Gettysburg. Seeing those crates felt right and good.
More than that, though, the market seemed to embody my affinity for locally owned non-chain stores. That was why I liked Henning's so much. I knew that even if the prices were a little higher at this co-op, I'd be doing most of my shopping there, and more than that, it seemed like it'd be a cool place to work. Thus, when I saw a posting for open positions, I applied... and a few days later, got a call from the grocery manager, telling me she was interested in interviewing me. I called back and the woman seemed to be enthusiastic --"I'm REALLY interested in interviewing you"--and so we set an interview up.
The interview itself went well. I liked the woman I interviewed with; I tried to be candid about my long-term plans and immediate availability, and what hours I could work (there were overnight shifts available; a lot, I told her, was contingent on where I'd be living come October 1; if I was living in town within walking distance or relying on the bus). None of my candor seemed to bother the woman; she expressed some concerns regarding my lack of grocery store experience, but all in all, I left with a good feeling about the store and about my prospects. She told me I could possibly start work the next day; "I just need to check your references."
O.K.
Never... heard... another... word... back.
Not even after I called her and left a voicemail message telling her that I appreciated talking to her, and that she should call me if she had trouble getting hold of any of my references, or if she had any questions... leaving her ample opportunity and excuse to CALL ME BACK. I've heard nothing. For a while, I wondered what had happened between her telling me I could start the next day and NOW. Had one of my references dissed me?
As Marty McFly said in Back To The Future, "What happened, Doc? Did we turn into assholes?"
The third interview was at a big chain book-and-music-store-and-cafe down on Church Street. (Not to give you too many clues, but anyone who knows Burlington will know where this was.) On one of my many walks past the store that weekend, I spotted a BARRISTA WANTED sign in the window, and when I went into the store to inquire, I got Bad Sign Number One. "Here," the clerk said, handing me a card with a URL printed on it. "This is all done online."
I went online to fill out an application, and after the requisite requests for previous work experience, education, etc, I was channeled into (what was at least) a 10-page, multiple-choice psychological profile that was probably one of the most ridiculous pre-employment screening activities I'd ever undertaken. Each question was actually a statement with four choices of response--Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly disagree-- and really, some of the statements were literally one step removed in tone from I think killing babies is really cool or It's OK to steal from an employer if you don't get caught.
I mean, really.
For a fucking BARRISTA position.
I need work, I thought, and so I filled out the form and hit SUBMIT.
A few days later, I got a call from the store's manager (or one of the store's managers) asking me to come in for an interview, which I did on Tuesday. Again, I tried to be forthright and candid about my availability and the reasons I wanted to work there. I had library experience and I liked the environment of the store... liked being around books... liked being in a position where I could help people. I told her I could work at any position in the store, and she said that the cafe positions were the ones that need filled; I said OK, fine. I stumbled a little bit when she asked me what my holiday availability would be (I told her I wanted a week off at Christmas, since my family's in PA), but then told her that if I had to take limited time off on holiday weekends, that would be no problem, I understood how retail worked, I'd work around it.
She then asked me what the best part of working at the library was (I told her the people I worked with, and helping the students) and what the WORST part was (I told her that the short-staffing at my last job was stressful, distracting and exhausting). Everything seemed to be going well...
...and then... I don't remember what I said to elicit this response, but she said "Well, I certainly appreciate your honesty."
I don't know what unseemly truth made her say that, but it was then that I knew I was screwed.
What, I thought, did she expect I'd be DIShonest? Does she figure that people are going to LIE and say things that she wants to hear just to get a great eight dollar an hour job in her cafe or bookstore??
I realized, as I left the interview, that it probably wasn't going to happen; that she said "she'd call me" but I'd better not hold my breath.
I also realized, as I walked home, that really, there was no job that would ever be worth lying to get.
Which brings me to interview four, this morning, at a cafe on one of the downtown side streets that feeds Church Street. I'd found this place the second day that I'd been in town; saw the sign in the front door that said FULL TIME COUNTER HELP NEEDED; and stopped in. One of the owners of the place told me that they had someone in mind for the position, but that they weren't sure that the person was going to accept, and could I stop back after Tuesday? If the job was still open then, we could talk.
Sounded good to me. I kept this cafe in the back of my mind, and in the middle of last week, passed by and saw that the sign was indeed still in the door. I stopped in, and was told that they were busy, but could I stop in to talk to the owner the next day before 10 am. Unfortunately, I couldn't get down there the next day... I thought I'd blown it... but yesterday, when I walked past again, the sign was still there, and I went in and asked, and got the same response: Stop in tomorrow before 10.
Which I did this morning. After waiting a few minutes, one of the owners came out and talked to me. I could tell that he was very involved and serious about filling his position, and again, I was forthright with him about my short-term and long term plans, and my availability (evenings might be problematic because of transportation). He asked me some great questions, including "Why should I want to hire you?" I told him I thought I had the kind of personality that would be good for his place; I'd get along well with the staff and the customers; I was outgoing and friendly without being pushy.
And then he said "Do you have any questions for me?" I asked him what time I would be there to open, was he the owner or a manager... and then I asked him the big one, the one I've wanted to ask three other prospective employers the last fourteen days:
"What would make you NOT want to hire me?"
He looked a little surprised, not unpleasantly so, and then he took a breath. "Well, honesty can sometimes be a little hard to take. I think you'd be great. You've got a nice face, a good personality, I think you'd get along well with the customers. But..." He took a breath. "Something about you scares me."
He said that he knew that my writing was my passion and that I would probably be most passionate about THAT... which didn't seem to be a problem... but then he said he needed to bring someone in that he knew wouldn't be "just short term." And I said "Well, I'd be lying if I said that I was going to be here long term. I mean, I'm already looking for teaching jobs for the spring." Hell, for this fall: the one interview and job thing that has seemed to proceed without a hitch is my application to substitute teach for the Burlington School District.
It was probably the best interview I've ever had, because I felt like I knew what he was thinking... his answer eliminated the post-interview non-callback second-guessing. I knew why, even though he probably COULD hire me, he probably wasn't going to take the risk. He needed someone full-time, long-term. I wasn't that person. We both knew it. It felt refreshing to know, to have it out in the open.
When I shook his hand and said I was glad to have talked to him, I didn't mean it the way I said "Nice to meet you" at the temp agency or the grocery store or the bookstore. I sincerely meant it.
When I left the cafe, I walked to a diner and got breakfast, and as I waited for my order, I wrote him the following note:
Dear (not gonna put his name in here),
It feels odd to write a THANK YOU note to someone who's interviewed me for a job I'm probably not going to get, but nonetheless, I wanted to write you and say THANK YOU for talking to me this morning about the position at your cafe.
I've noticed, in a few of the interviews I've had, that I got a feeling from the interviewer that something wasn't quite clicking... and then, when I got no callback. found myself wondering what I did or said ("Was my body language wrong? Did I need to wipe something off my nose or the corner of my mouth?" etc etc) or didn't do or didn't say. Talking to you, though, gave me a lot of insight.
I am certain, as I told you, that I'd be a good counterperson there; certain that the other staff would enjoy working with me, and that the customers would enjoy seeing me and dealing with me; confident that I could handle the schedule, the pay, the hours, and whatever skills I needed to pick up to do the job well.
What I am not confident or certain of is that I could come into a full-time position knowing that I was ultimately going to be a short-timer. But I'm looking for teaching positions and other writing work, and since that's my passion, as you observed, that will come first.
So a full-time position would not work out for either of us, unless I took it with the shared understanding that eventually, I'd be leaving for something else.
Anyway, when I asked you why you might not hire me, I'm glad you answered the way you did, and I wanted to let you know that I really appreciated it. To me, anything but my writing will be "just something to earn money until my writing can support me." To you, though, your restaurant is much more than that, and I totally understand your wariness (fear) of hiring someone who's ultimately "not that invested."
So, again, thank you.
If you should find that you need part-time help of any kind on evenings or Saturdays, let me know. As with Burlington at large, I got a good feeling from your place and from our talk, and I would be happy to give you a few hours a week if needed.
Take care and best of luck!
In reading over this, I am reminded (as I often am) of a passage from Walden, where Thoreau writes...
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off - that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed - he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy...
In some ways, I've approached my job search in much the same way this apocryphal Indian approached his baskets. I've assumed that since I am here and want to get whatever job I can get as soon as I can, that someone will just accommodate me.
Talking to the cafe owner reminded me that I need to take a little bit more of a balanced view of this whole process.
In that sense, it was another typically Vermont experience for me. I went into this whole thing looking for a job, and in that interview, got something quite a bit more valuable.
Insight.
Just moved to Burlington from Pennsylvania. Came up here to write and to do whatever work I need to do to support my writing until my writing supports me. Looking for full-time or part-time work. Available immediately.
I've tried to state these facts without sounding desperate (which I've bordered on at times the last two weeks, as I've watched my available cash slowly dwindle) or uninterested in a long-term full-time job doing something that, given my writing and my master's degree (and the possibility that I'll be teaching someplace in the spring), probably wouldn't constitute much more than a temporary fix, a way to bring in money right now, until I can do what I REALLY want to do.
The first interview I had (with a temporary agency) didn't really surprise me. It's the nature of a temp agency to place qualified (and sometimes OVER-qualified) people in jobs they might not take otherwise with the understanding that it's not gonna be forever, because, after all, that's why they're a TEMP agency, and not a job placement service. I had no qualms about telling the recruiter at this agency that I might be teaching in the spring, etc etc etc, and she certainly didn't seem surprised to hear it.
The only sticking point was that I couldn't begin work immediately, not until I furnished them with a copy of my social security card (proof of my eligibility to work), which I lost LONG ago. I went straight from the agency to the library to print out a couple Important Supporting Documents, and then walked to the Social Security Administration offices over on Pearl Street to get a duplicate card. I was prepared for an hour-long or more wait, followed by a Gubmint Song-n-Dance routine, but the whole thing, including the wait, took maybe ten minutes.
With my proof of eligibility to work in hand, I called the agency and told them I had my documentation and that I could take the bus out there and drop it off with them that afternoon. And the woman's response kind of took me aback: "There's no hurry on that. You don't need to drop that off right away." I said no, it's no problem, I'll bring it right out, and I hung up.
Her response struck me as odd as soon as she said it. If the only way I can start working is to drop this documentation off to them, I thought, then why are they telling me there's "no hurry?"
I DID tell them I wanted to get working right away, right?
Perhaps NOT surprisingly, it's been over a week and I haven't gotten a callback from this agency since.
The second interview I had was at a grocery store downtown. Since one of the biggest priorities wherever you live is to EAT, one of the first things I did two weeks ago today when I awoke was FIND A GROCERY STORE. I liked this co-op from the moment I stepped inside. As I wrote in an earlier post, this move north has felt like the closing of a cycle that, in some ways, started in 1992 when my first wife left, but in other ways in 1997, when I decided to leave Gettysburg and move back to the Philly burbs... thus, in a cool piece of cyclical synchronicity of the type that has seemed to accompany my every step on this move, I noticed outside of this market on my second visit that some produce was stacked on overturned crates from HOLLABAUGH BROTHERS ORCHARD, in Adams County, right outside of Gettysburg. Seeing those crates felt right and good.
More than that, though, the market seemed to embody my affinity for locally owned non-chain stores. That was why I liked Henning's so much. I knew that even if the prices were a little higher at this co-op, I'd be doing most of my shopping there, and more than that, it seemed like it'd be a cool place to work. Thus, when I saw a posting for open positions, I applied... and a few days later, got a call from the grocery manager, telling me she was interested in interviewing me. I called back and the woman seemed to be enthusiastic --"I'm REALLY interested in interviewing you"--and so we set an interview up.
The interview itself went well. I liked the woman I interviewed with; I tried to be candid about my long-term plans and immediate availability, and what hours I could work (there were overnight shifts available; a lot, I told her, was contingent on where I'd be living come October 1; if I was living in town within walking distance or relying on the bus). None of my candor seemed to bother the woman; she expressed some concerns regarding my lack of grocery store experience, but all in all, I left with a good feeling about the store and about my prospects. She told me I could possibly start work the next day; "I just need to check your references."
O.K.
Never... heard... another... word... back.
Not even after I called her and left a voicemail message telling her that I appreciated talking to her, and that she should call me if she had trouble getting hold of any of my references, or if she had any questions... leaving her ample opportunity and excuse to CALL ME BACK. I've heard nothing. For a while, I wondered what had happened between her telling me I could start the next day and NOW. Had one of my references dissed me?
As Marty McFly said in Back To The Future, "What happened, Doc? Did we turn into assholes?"
The third interview was at a big chain book-and-music-store-and-cafe down on Church Street. (Not to give you too many clues, but anyone who knows Burlington will know where this was.) On one of my many walks past the store that weekend, I spotted a BARRISTA WANTED sign in the window, and when I went into the store to inquire, I got Bad Sign Number One. "Here," the clerk said, handing me a card with a URL printed on it. "This is all done online."
I went online to fill out an application, and after the requisite requests for previous work experience, education, etc, I was channeled into (what was at least) a 10-page, multiple-choice psychological profile that was probably one of the most ridiculous pre-employment screening activities I'd ever undertaken. Each question was actually a statement with four choices of response--Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly disagree-- and really, some of the statements were literally one step removed in tone from I think killing babies is really cool or It's OK to steal from an employer if you don't get caught.
I mean, really.
For a fucking BARRISTA position.
I need work, I thought, and so I filled out the form and hit SUBMIT.
A few days later, I got a call from the store's manager (or one of the store's managers) asking me to come in for an interview, which I did on Tuesday. Again, I tried to be forthright and candid about my availability and the reasons I wanted to work there. I had library experience and I liked the environment of the store... liked being around books... liked being in a position where I could help people. I told her I could work at any position in the store, and she said that the cafe positions were the ones that need filled; I said OK, fine. I stumbled a little bit when she asked me what my holiday availability would be (I told her I wanted a week off at Christmas, since my family's in PA), but then told her that if I had to take limited time off on holiday weekends, that would be no problem, I understood how retail worked, I'd work around it.
She then asked me what the best part of working at the library was (I told her the people I worked with, and helping the students) and what the WORST part was (I told her that the short-staffing at my last job was stressful, distracting and exhausting). Everything seemed to be going well...
...and then... I don't remember what I said to elicit this response, but she said "Well, I certainly appreciate your honesty."
I don't know what unseemly truth made her say that, but it was then that I knew I was screwed.
What, I thought, did she expect I'd be DIShonest? Does she figure that people are going to LIE and say things that she wants to hear just to get a great eight dollar an hour job in her cafe or bookstore??
I realized, as I left the interview, that it probably wasn't going to happen; that she said "she'd call me" but I'd better not hold my breath.
I also realized, as I walked home, that really, there was no job that would ever be worth lying to get.
Which brings me to interview four, this morning, at a cafe on one of the downtown side streets that feeds Church Street. I'd found this place the second day that I'd been in town; saw the sign in the front door that said FULL TIME COUNTER HELP NEEDED; and stopped in. One of the owners of the place told me that they had someone in mind for the position, but that they weren't sure that the person was going to accept, and could I stop back after Tuesday? If the job was still open then, we could talk.
Sounded good to me. I kept this cafe in the back of my mind, and in the middle of last week, passed by and saw that the sign was indeed still in the door. I stopped in, and was told that they were busy, but could I stop in to talk to the owner the next day before 10 am. Unfortunately, I couldn't get down there the next day... I thought I'd blown it... but yesterday, when I walked past again, the sign was still there, and I went in and asked, and got the same response: Stop in tomorrow before 10.
Which I did this morning. After waiting a few minutes, one of the owners came out and talked to me. I could tell that he was very involved and serious about filling his position, and again, I was forthright with him about my short-term and long term plans, and my availability (evenings might be problematic because of transportation). He asked me some great questions, including "Why should I want to hire you?" I told him I thought I had the kind of personality that would be good for his place; I'd get along well with the staff and the customers; I was outgoing and friendly without being pushy.
And then he said "Do you have any questions for me?" I asked him what time I would be there to open, was he the owner or a manager... and then I asked him the big one, the one I've wanted to ask three other prospective employers the last fourteen days:
"What would make you NOT want to hire me?"
He looked a little surprised, not unpleasantly so, and then he took a breath. "Well, honesty can sometimes be a little hard to take. I think you'd be great. You've got a nice face, a good personality, I think you'd get along well with the customers. But..." He took a breath. "Something about you scares me."
He said that he knew that my writing was my passion and that I would probably be most passionate about THAT... which didn't seem to be a problem... but then he said he needed to bring someone in that he knew wouldn't be "just short term." And I said "Well, I'd be lying if I said that I was going to be here long term. I mean, I'm already looking for teaching jobs for the spring." Hell, for this fall: the one interview and job thing that has seemed to proceed without a hitch is my application to substitute teach for the Burlington School District.
It was probably the best interview I've ever had, because I felt like I knew what he was thinking... his answer eliminated the post-interview non-callback second-guessing. I knew why, even though he probably COULD hire me, he probably wasn't going to take the risk. He needed someone full-time, long-term. I wasn't that person. We both knew it. It felt refreshing to know, to have it out in the open.
When I shook his hand and said I was glad to have talked to him, I didn't mean it the way I said "Nice to meet you" at the temp agency or the grocery store or the bookstore. I sincerely meant it.
When I left the cafe, I walked to a diner and got breakfast, and as I waited for my order, I wrote him the following note:
Dear (not gonna put his name in here),
It feels odd to write a THANK YOU note to someone who's interviewed me for a job I'm probably not going to get, but nonetheless, I wanted to write you and say THANK YOU for talking to me this morning about the position at your cafe.
I've noticed, in a few of the interviews I've had, that I got a feeling from the interviewer that something wasn't quite clicking... and then, when I got no callback. found myself wondering what I did or said ("Was my body language wrong? Did I need to wipe something off my nose or the corner of my mouth?" etc etc) or didn't do or didn't say. Talking to you, though, gave me a lot of insight.
I am certain, as I told you, that I'd be a good counterperson there; certain that the other staff would enjoy working with me, and that the customers would enjoy seeing me and dealing with me; confident that I could handle the schedule, the pay, the hours, and whatever skills I needed to pick up to do the job well.
What I am not confident or certain of is that I could come into a full-time position knowing that I was ultimately going to be a short-timer. But I'm looking for teaching positions and other writing work, and since that's my passion, as you observed, that will come first.
So a full-time position would not work out for either of us, unless I took it with the shared understanding that eventually, I'd be leaving for something else.
Anyway, when I asked you why you might not hire me, I'm glad you answered the way you did, and I wanted to let you know that I really appreciated it. To me, anything but my writing will be "just something to earn money until my writing can support me." To you, though, your restaurant is much more than that, and I totally understand your wariness (fear) of hiring someone who's ultimately "not that invested."
So, again, thank you.
If you should find that you need part-time help of any kind on evenings or Saturdays, let me know. As with Burlington at large, I got a good feeling from your place and from our talk, and I would be happy to give you a few hours a week if needed.
Take care and best of luck!
In reading over this, I am reminded (as I often am) of a passage from Walden, where Thoreau writes...
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off - that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed - he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy...
In some ways, I've approached my job search in much the same way this apocryphal Indian approached his baskets. I've assumed that since I am here and want to get whatever job I can get as soon as I can, that someone will just accommodate me.
Talking to the cafe owner reminded me that I need to take a little bit more of a balanced view of this whole process.
In that sense, it was another typically Vermont experience for me. I went into this whole thing looking for a job, and in that interview, got something quite a bit more valuable.
Insight.
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Railrodder
On the same day that I signed out a beautiful photobiography of Buster Keaton from the Burlington Library, I found this clip (or, rather, these three clips) on YOUTUBE.
According to that book (Buster Keaton Remembered by Eleanor Keaton, who was Keaton's third wife, and Jeffrey Vance), The Railrodder was made in 1965. Eleanor Keaton writes that her husband "had a ball making The Railrodder. It was directed by Gerald Potterton, who had asked Buster to go to Canada to make the short film for the National Film Board of Canada. Buster agreed, and for six weeks in the autumn of 1964 we traveled more than four thousand miles across Canada from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver, British Columbia. The plot of the film is simple: Buster stumbles upon a 'speeder' (a small, motorized rail car) and drives it across the country.
"At one point in the film, there is a scene where Buster's little speeder travels across a very high trestle bridge. At that moment, the large map Buster has been reading blows up into his face, completely enveloping him. It is a great gag-- but very dangerous. Gerry Potterton and buster argued about it for over an hour. Gerry did not want Buster to put himself in danger, but Buster was stubborn and would not give in. Finally, they did the gag the way Buster wanted it, and it is one of the best scenes in the film. Buster never had an ego, but in moments like this, he just knew what he was doing -- it was as simple as that.
"Although The Railrodder would not be Buster's last film, it proved to be his last film in the classic silent style of filmmaking. Indeed, The Railrodder, completed at the twilight of Buster's career, plays much like one of his early two-reelers (silent comedy shorts from the 20s--mhs)... Only three months after The Railrodder was released, Buster Keaton, who began his career as a knockabout child prop and completed it on the harrowing high rail, was finally at peace. Yet, as long as the films of Buster Keaton endure and new generations continue to embrace his genius, the great Keaton, once and forever silent, shall never be stilled."
Here is The Railrodder in three parts: part one...
...part two...
...and part three.
According to that book (Buster Keaton Remembered by Eleanor Keaton, who was Keaton's third wife, and Jeffrey Vance), The Railrodder was made in 1965. Eleanor Keaton writes that her husband "had a ball making The Railrodder. It was directed by Gerald Potterton, who had asked Buster to go to Canada to make the short film for the National Film Board of Canada. Buster agreed, and for six weeks in the autumn of 1964 we traveled more than four thousand miles across Canada from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver, British Columbia. The plot of the film is simple: Buster stumbles upon a 'speeder' (a small, motorized rail car) and drives it across the country.
"At one point in the film, there is a scene where Buster's little speeder travels across a very high trestle bridge. At that moment, the large map Buster has been reading blows up into his face, completely enveloping him. It is a great gag-- but very dangerous. Gerry Potterton and buster argued about it for over an hour. Gerry did not want Buster to put himself in danger, but Buster was stubborn and would not give in. Finally, they did the gag the way Buster wanted it, and it is one of the best scenes in the film. Buster never had an ego, but in moments like this, he just knew what he was doing -- it was as simple as that.
"Although The Railrodder would not be Buster's last film, it proved to be his last film in the classic silent style of filmmaking. Indeed, The Railrodder, completed at the twilight of Buster's career, plays much like one of his early two-reelers (silent comedy shorts from the 20s--mhs)... Only three months after The Railrodder was released, Buster Keaton, who began his career as a knockabout child prop and completed it on the harrowing high rail, was finally at peace. Yet, as long as the films of Buster Keaton endure and new generations continue to embrace his genius, the great Keaton, once and forever silent, shall never be stilled."
Here is The Railrodder in three parts: part one...
...part two...
...and part three.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Love, Brian
O.K., enough pissing and moaning, weeping and wailing about the move and the logistics and where am I gonna work, what am I gonna do? It's Thursday, September 20, 2007, and Brian Wilson is not only alive and well... he has a new song out. Somehow, he always comes along with a sublime new piece of beauty at the very moment I need to hear it, and his music lifts me out of myself. Click click here for a link to the stream:
Brian Wilson's new song: "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl"
Coaxed a tear out of me this morning as I listened. Yes, life is good indeed.
And in case you missed the one before this one, here's a link to the stream for that one. It's a track from his forthcoming suite based on Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, a collaboration with Van Dyke Parks: That Lucky Old Sun.
Brian Wilson: "Midnight's Another Day"
As one who's been following the Beach Boys since 1975, and has seen all of the group's (and Brian's) ups and downs, peaks and valleys, all I can say is: there were a couple times in the 70s and 80s where it really looked like Brian was going to be the next Elvis. So to hear great, artistically relevant and challenging NEW material coming from Brian Wilson in 2007 is indeed a blessing.
Wow.
Brian Wilson's new song: "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl"
Coaxed a tear out of me this morning as I listened. Yes, life is good indeed.
And in case you missed the one before this one, here's a link to the stream for that one. It's a track from his forthcoming suite based on Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, a collaboration with Van Dyke Parks: That Lucky Old Sun.
Brian Wilson: "Midnight's Another Day"
As one who's been following the Beach Boys since 1975, and has seen all of the group's (and Brian's) ups and downs, peaks and valleys, all I can say is: there were a couple times in the 70s and 80s where it really looked like Brian was going to be the next Elvis. So to hear great, artistically relevant and challenging NEW material coming from Brian Wilson in 2007 is indeed a blessing.
Wow.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Cleaning out a wallet...
Until this morning, my wallet was about three inches thick, stuffed with photos, loose papers, receipts, and (mainly) cards of practically every type you can imagine: grocery store discount club cards, credit cards, debit cards, membership cards...
...until this morning. This morning, as I searched in vain for my social security card (which the Social Security Administration recommends you NOT keep in your wallet, incidentally), I decided to sort through all the junk in my wallet, which is now deflated to a limp, more manageable one inch thick. I may even be able to follow my mother's advice and PUT IT IN MY POCKET.
("That's a worry, Max... you carrying your wallet around in your hand like that.")
So... since I know you're dying to know, and since I know you'd ask if you, uh, CARED... here's what was in my wallet.
First, what I got rid of, in no particular order:
* Two PC reservation receipt slips from the Fletcher Library in Burlington.
(Seeing as I just moved to Burlington last Wednesday and first visited the library here last Thursday, these are obviously recent additions to the effluvia. But when I yanked the stack out of the envelope, they were on top, so...)
* Ticket stub from the Monday, July 31, 2006 showing of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT at the Ambler Theater.
(That was a great night. Ignoring for a second that I went to the movie ALONE, nonetheless it was a revival showing of the Beatles' first movie on a big screen. But the coolest thing about it was that the audience was about evenly divided between aging yuppies, first generation Beatlemaniacs and boomers, and KIDS... junior high and high school kids who were obviously as into the Beatles as I was at that age. Heartening. And a great movie, one that could just as easily have been made on July 30, 2006 as in 1964.)
* Two yellow DRIVER'S LICENSE UPDATE cards from Pennsylvania, both from long-ago moves, both long-since-expired.
* An ACME SuperCard Preferred Customer keychain card.
(Somehow these supermarket club keychain cards never made it onto my keychain. Just like I never really made it into Acme when I lived in Lansdale, even though there was one less than six blocks from my home. Reference Hennings Card below.)
* A 2006 Ambler Savings Bank wallet calendar, which I apparently picked up before my account was closed due to too-frequent overdrafts.
* The companion to the ACME Supercard Preferred Customer keychain card: the actual full-sized ACME Supercard Preferred Customer card.
* An expired Pennsylvania driver's license.
* Another ACME card.
(Sheez, you'd think I was Wile E. Coyote, the number of ACME cards I had. And again, like I said, I seldom shopped at the place. But when I did, I could always find a freakin' Supercard!)
* Another supermarket card, this one for Genuardi's.
(Genuardi's used to be a nice, small, family-owned supermarket chain in the Philly 'burbs... then Safeway bought them out, and they got all... how can I put it... customer service-y? Someone in Safeway Corporate wanted Genuardi's to look less like Safeway East and more like Your Friendly Hometown Market, and so they instructed the cashiers to call their customers by name, tell them how much they'd saved with their club card, and as a courtesy, ask if they needed help carrying their bags to their car.)
(Thus, I'd stop in after work for a salad and a few pieces of fried chicken, and as the cashier handed me my change, he would look down at the receipt, check how much I'd saved with my club card, get my name from the printout, and then say something like "You saved... 24 cents today, Mr... Sheck." Never pronounced my name right, not once. Now, what's worse "customer service:" stumbling over someone's name in an artificial attempt to Appear Friendly, or just being kind?)
(Of course, every now and then they'd add"Do you need help carrying that to the car, Mr. Sheck?")
(Oh, yeah... these two fried chicken thighs and four ounces of lettuce and shredded carrot are fucking BREAKING MY BACK, MAN!!!!!)
(At first, I felt afraid to go in... then I thought "I'll shop there; I just won't use my club card. That way they won't know who I am.")
(Then I finally realized: I DIDN'T HAVE TO SHOP THERE! And I never went back.)
(Henning's had better fried chicken anyway. See below.)
* A Giant Bonus Card.
(I always had a soft spot in my heart for Giant. Even though they were long ago bought out by a Swiss conglomerate, they started out as the Carlisle Food Market in my hometown, and their offices are still based there. Mom shops at Giant, so I did, too, for a while.)
* A business card from a guy who dated a girl I once had a crush on.
(All is forgiven, you prick. Ha, ha.)
* An Amtrak ticket stub from either November 6, 2005, or November 5, 2006. I think it might be 2005. Harrisburg to Philly. It must have been a trip to remember. I don't, though.
* An expired Hosteling International membership card.
("You saved... forty dollars on lodging today, Mr.... Sheek.")
* ANOTHER expired Hosteling International membership card.
* My expired and long-since-overdrawn Ambler Savings Debit Mastercard.
* An expired Paypal debit Mastercard.
* My Lansdale Public Library card. I think I returned everything that was due before I left town. It'd be totally in character, though, if I hadn't.
* An expired AAA card.
* My Guardian Dental Guard Preferred Network Plan ID card from my old job.
(Uh... about these pus-y gums...)
* Two ATM receipts
(One so old and faded that I can't even read the type; a second from a Visa gift card where I withdrew all of the available funds, apparently: $60.00 withdrawal, plus $2.00 "ATM Owner Fee" [that's always a cute one, isn't it? I am reminded of a Dead Kennedys lyric: "They just want your money/ They just want your consciousness/ They're a bunch of liars!" But I digress.] and under the $62.00 total, the cryptic line ACCOUNT ENDS. Indeed, it does.)
* An ID card from Keystone Health Plan East.
(Never used it, not once. Seriously, at least my ex- got her money's worth out of my insurance. One of us had to.)
* An Enterprise Rent-a-car card from Enterprise in Carlisle, given to me by the Chevy dealership in Carlisle after they pronounced my car dead last week.
(Funny: they always make these rental cars sound like such great deals... and then you get to the fine print. The best part of trying to rent a car last week was my call to Avis. "Thank you for calling Avis," the college kid on the other end of the line said, "where there are always cars available.")
("Yeah, I'm in Carlisle, and I need a one-way rental to Burlington, Vermont for tomorrow.")
(Long pause.)
("Uhhhh... could you please hold?")
(Another even longer pause.)
("Uh... hello... sir... we... actually... we have a shortage of cars today...")
(And that was the final word from the land where There Are Always Cars Available. And the next day, I was riding Amtrak.)
* The backing from my Keystone Health Plan East card, which I never read.
* Another freakin' Keystone Health Plan East card.
(If it had been as easy to get a referral as it had been to get a card, I might have used the card once or twice.)
* Two more health insurance cards: Personal Choice (why, thank you) and Blue Cross Prescription Program.
(Never... used... either... one. Do I get any money back?)
(Didn't think so.)
* Another business card from Enterprise, this one from Fort Washington, PA.
(This card has apparently been in my wallet for five years, because I remember when I rented a car from Enterprise... or tried to: my twentieth high school reunion, back in 2002. I had a debit card and they wouldn't rent a car to me. Apparently, when you try to rent a car with a debit card, they place a hold on your card for an amount that is more than any sane person would pay for a rental car.)
(But at least they always have cars available.)
* My handwritten instructions for accessing the voicemail on some long-ago phone number, written in pencil on half of a catalog card from the library.
* My dentist's business card. Think it's too late to call for an appointment?
* A laminated Ambler Savings account information card.
* A ticket stub from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, for a show called "American Sublime."
(I swear I remember nothing about this show, except that I went with my friend Greg. We also went to the Mutter Museum, which, sadly, I remember vividly.)
* A 3x5 index card, folded in half, with the following written on the unruled side:
Hacksaw
Olive oil
Motown discs
------------
Edwin Starr?
Dustbuster plus
filter
Eureka Boss 402
filter
(Believe it or not, I know exactly what this note is: it's a shopping list for the Q-mart... the Quakertown Farmer's Market. I remember the rude woman at the vacuum repair stand as I tried to explain, with the EXACT MAKE AND MODEL NUMBER OF MY TWO VACUUMS, what I needed and she insisted no, this would work instead. After which I actually drove to WALMART to find what I needed.)
* An expired Amoco-BP credit card.
(I got six or seven fillups out of this one before I maxed it out.)
(That's a pun: Maxed it out. Ha, ha, ha.)
(BP-Amoco didn't think it was funny, either.)
* A Blockbuster membership card, from back when I had a working VCR.
* A Free Library Of Philadelphia card.
(When I was cleaning out boxes of books from my storage space, I came across a few long overdue library books from the Free Library, with due dates of 1993! I can't imagine they want them back, but I'll send them along anyway.)
* A Working Assets phone card.
(I think that this is the phone card for which I wrote down the voice mail instructions. This was yet another service that Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Then the bills came; they were more than I expected, and as happened so often the last fifteen years, it came down to a choice: pay the bill or eat. So I ate. I haven't been able to get long distance on my phone bill since. Another piece of karma that I hope to eradicate with this move.)
* My Bucks County Free Library Card.
(I worked at the library in Doylestown for close to four years, left for my job at Montgomery County Community College, always meant to go back and see all my old co-workers, but never did. Still feel bad about it... also feel bad about the two CDs from Doylestown I never returned: Merle Haggard's LAND OF MANY CHURCHES and Brian Wilson's eponymous 1988 debut solo album.)
O.K.... so that's what I pulled from my wallet and trashed... now, here's what stayed IN the wallet:
* My current Pennsylvania driver's license. The car is dead, but I'm still alive. This proves I am who I say I am, somehow.
* A small red paper heart that someone gave to me.
* The access phone number, PIN (which you should never write down) and instructions for my current long distance phone card (eKit, through AYH).
* My Borders Rewards card
(...which I always seemed to forget whenever I was buying books or CDs... and there it was, in my wallet the whole time, hiding between 8 different grocery store cards.)
(Which leads me to...)
* Henning's Market Preferred Customer Card and keychain card.
(I will probably never shop at Henning's again, and it breaks my heart. Henning's was my favorite grocery store in the Philly 'burbs. It's a family-owned, single-store-only supermarket in Harleysville, PA, and the selection and quality are better than any other local market, even if the prices are sometimes a little higher. I would sooner have driven 15 minutes to Henning's and paid a few cents more, knowing that my money was going into a truly local business, than walked six blocks to chainstore Acme and paid less for the same item. Which, incidentally, was never really "the same item," since Acme's quality was, in my experience, far inferior to Henning's.)
(Henning's also has a great buffet for breakfast, with UNLIMITED BACON, and great fried chicken and other comfort foods for supper. And fantastic coffee with unlimited refills. I spent many, many hours writing and revising while sitting on the mezzanine of their cafe. I daresay I wouldn't have finished my master's if it hadn't been for Henning's.)
(So, even though I will probably never shop there again, I am keeping their card in my wallet, as a reminder of one thing and place I will miss from the Philly burbs, even if the rest of my time there was, to quote Charles Emerson Winchester, "No memories; I blot it out as it happens.")
* Two stubs from Cardinal Camera in Lansdale.
(I dropped off two rolls of black and white film there about a month ago. Obviously, I won't be picking it up any time soon, but once I start working here and get some cash rolling in, I can send these slips to someone and have them pick up the pics for me.)
* A Tennessee Driver's License for Elvis A. Presley, address 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, TN 38116. Expires 8-16-77.
(Why, the signature alone on this thing is probably worth a fortune!)
(And in a weird quirk of iTunes synchronicity, who came on my iTunes shuffle as I typed this paragraph? Elvis, singing "Paralyzed." What else?)
* Three baseball cards, in the wallet's photo protector sleeves: a 1992 Topps Stadium Club Cal Ripken, and 1982 Kellogg's 3D Phillies cards of Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt.
(Pete's gambling problems got him banned from the Hall of Fame, but he'll always have a place in my wallet.)
* More Amtrak ticket stubs, these from a train trip to Montreal in September 2002.
(I missed these; they should go on the other pile. No point in carrying them around with me everywhere.)
* The combination for the lock on my storage space at Carlisle Rent A Space.
(Which reminds me: I need to make a copy of my driver's license and mail it to them.)
* A card from artist Leo Sewell, www.leosewell.net, who makes the coolest sculptures out of found objects. I donated some junk to him; I hope he was able to use it.
* My shrink's card from Fort Washington.
(Margaret, I never told you this, but since I'm not seeing you anymore, I guess I can say it now: I loved you. You struck me as kind of a ditzball sometimes, yet every time I'd leave our appointments, at least one thing you said and often many, many more would resonate and I'd be transformed. I felt like we connected on a level that I really needed. [Plus, you're a hottie. There, I said it.] May our paths cross again someday. Without you, I would have never made this move.)
* Another photo protector with the following pictures and cards in it:
A picture of John Lennon standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, flashing the peace sign.
My ASCAP member card.
AGHHHHH! TWO MORE INSURANCE CARDS!! HOW'D THEY GET IN HERE??? TRASH!!
A picture of my Dad, my Grandpa and I, at my first wedding. Of all the pictures I own, this is the one I'm fondest of.
A picture of my friend Meg and her two daughters. Sigh. If only...
A picture of my part-Terrier, part-Lhasa Apso Pepper, may he rest in peace; a black and white shot I took of him for a summer photography class in high school. He's sitting on the wicker couch on the back porch, looking at a bird or squirrel or something in the yard.
A picture from my first wedding, of Stephanie and I walking down the aisle. From there, it was all downhill. Hate to sound like that, but even our honeymoon sucked. I should have known.
A picture of June, bathed in golden light. This picture was taken on a vacation in the Adirondacks.
Another picture of Meg, this one of her driving, taken by me in the shotgun seat.
* A 2006 wallet calendar reading ELECT BRAD M. DOLL MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT JUDGE. (But wait! There's more! Turn it over and it's TEST YOUR EYESIGHT. Two charts: "Hold this card at arm's length- 2 feet in front of your eyes. Test each eye separately.")
(This card is one reason I never used any of those insurance cards.)
* My current ATM and credit cards.
* Red Cross Blood Donor card
* Red Cross CPR and First Aid Certification, both expired.
* Baseball Hall of Fame membership card, with Bob Feller on the face. Free admission and ten percent off museum shop purchases.
* My current AAA card.
* A computer user card for Fletcher Free Library in Burlington. Since I can't get a library card yet (no permanent address), I have this.
* Perhaps the coolest item in my wallet is this next thing, but it's kind of a long story:
On the weekend of my 25th high school reunion, my friend Cris stayed with her family ("the time suckers") at a friend's apartment in Carlisle. The night of the reunion dinner, I walked over to the apartment to meet her and her husband so we could walk to the dinner... but they weren't ready yet. Her son (five years old) and daughter (12) answered the door, and the whole time I stood there listening to Cris explain that they'd be a little late, go ahead without them, they'd be over in about 45 minutes, her kids were EYING me...
When Cris and her husband finally made it to the dinner, Cris said, "Well, first of all, I had to explain to my son that no, you WEREN'T my date, and yes, I was still going to the dance with Daddy, we were still married... and then my daughter said 'Well, if he's going alone, he'll need to meet someone... and she's either going to be a wicked witch or a beautiful princess."
Which brings me to the Coolest Thing In My Wallet: a two-sided drawing, encased in a plastic baseball-card sleeve protector, that Cris' daughter drew for me, with a beautiful princess on one side, wide-eyed, surrounded by hearts, a flower clutched behind her back, and a wicked she-devil on the reverse, finger pointed scoldingly, forked tail and horns, scowling, surrounded by the fires of hell.
It reminds me of my friend and her family, true, but is also a tangible connection to her daughter, who is a writer. And, to get a little deeper, it also reminds me that much as I love my friends, they have identities and roles beyond being my friend. They need to be there for more people than just me. I keep that in mind any time I'm feeling neglected.
I wouldn't sell or trade this drawing for the world... and I can't wait for the next reunion, at which Cris' daughter will be 17, and this drawing may well be a valuable tool for embarrassment.
* My Temple University General Alumni association card. No expiration date on this one.
* My Goddard student ID.
* A Lifestyles condom. Hey, I can dream, can't I?
* The gift tag from the Christmas package that my sister wrapped this wallet in.
* An affirmation from an old (Monday, April 15, 2000-something) Louise Hay page-a-day calendar:
I let go of anything and everything that could delay my good in any way.
Like all the old useless shit in my wallet.
...until this morning. This morning, as I searched in vain for my social security card (which the Social Security Administration recommends you NOT keep in your wallet, incidentally), I decided to sort through all the junk in my wallet, which is now deflated to a limp, more manageable one inch thick. I may even be able to follow my mother's advice and PUT IT IN MY POCKET.
("That's a worry, Max... you carrying your wallet around in your hand like that.")
So... since I know you're dying to know, and since I know you'd ask if you, uh, CARED... here's what was in my wallet.
First, what I got rid of, in no particular order:
* Two PC reservation receipt slips from the Fletcher Library in Burlington.
(Seeing as I just moved to Burlington last Wednesday and first visited the library here last Thursday, these are obviously recent additions to the effluvia. But when I yanked the stack out of the envelope, they were on top, so...)
* Ticket stub from the Monday, July 31, 2006 showing of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT at the Ambler Theater.
(That was a great night. Ignoring for a second that I went to the movie ALONE, nonetheless it was a revival showing of the Beatles' first movie on a big screen. But the coolest thing about it was that the audience was about evenly divided between aging yuppies, first generation Beatlemaniacs and boomers, and KIDS... junior high and high school kids who were obviously as into the Beatles as I was at that age. Heartening. And a great movie, one that could just as easily have been made on July 30, 2006 as in 1964.)
* Two yellow DRIVER'S LICENSE UPDATE cards from Pennsylvania, both from long-ago moves, both long-since-expired.
* An ACME SuperCard Preferred Customer keychain card.
(Somehow these supermarket club keychain cards never made it onto my keychain. Just like I never really made it into Acme when I lived in Lansdale, even though there was one less than six blocks from my home. Reference Hennings Card below.)
* A 2006 Ambler Savings Bank wallet calendar, which I apparently picked up before my account was closed due to too-frequent overdrafts.
* The companion to the ACME Supercard Preferred Customer keychain card: the actual full-sized ACME Supercard Preferred Customer card.
* An expired Pennsylvania driver's license.
* Another ACME card.
(Sheez, you'd think I was Wile E. Coyote, the number of ACME cards I had. And again, like I said, I seldom shopped at the place. But when I did, I could always find a freakin' Supercard!)
* Another supermarket card, this one for Genuardi's.
(Genuardi's used to be a nice, small, family-owned supermarket chain in the Philly 'burbs... then Safeway bought them out, and they got all... how can I put it... customer service-y? Someone in Safeway Corporate wanted Genuardi's to look less like Safeway East and more like Your Friendly Hometown Market, and so they instructed the cashiers to call their customers by name, tell them how much they'd saved with their club card, and as a courtesy, ask if they needed help carrying their bags to their car.)
(Thus, I'd stop in after work for a salad and a few pieces of fried chicken, and as the cashier handed me my change, he would look down at the receipt, check how much I'd saved with my club card, get my name from the printout, and then say something like "You saved... 24 cents today, Mr... Sheck." Never pronounced my name right, not once. Now, what's worse "customer service:" stumbling over someone's name in an artificial attempt to Appear Friendly, or just being kind?)
(Of course, every now and then they'd add"Do you need help carrying that to the car, Mr. Sheck?")
(Oh, yeah... these two fried chicken thighs and four ounces of lettuce and shredded carrot are fucking BREAKING MY BACK, MAN!!!!!)
(At first, I felt afraid to go in... then I thought "I'll shop there; I just won't use my club card. That way they won't know who I am.")
(Then I finally realized: I DIDN'T HAVE TO SHOP THERE! And I never went back.)
(Henning's had better fried chicken anyway. See below.)
* A Giant Bonus Card.
(I always had a soft spot in my heart for Giant. Even though they were long ago bought out by a Swiss conglomerate, they started out as the Carlisle Food Market in my hometown, and their offices are still based there. Mom shops at Giant, so I did, too, for a while.)
* A business card from a guy who dated a girl I once had a crush on.
(All is forgiven, you prick. Ha, ha.)
* An Amtrak ticket stub from either November 6, 2005, or November 5, 2006. I think it might be 2005. Harrisburg to Philly. It must have been a trip to remember. I don't, though.
* An expired Hosteling International membership card.
("You saved... forty dollars on lodging today, Mr.... Sheek.")
* ANOTHER expired Hosteling International membership card.
* My expired and long-since-overdrawn Ambler Savings Debit Mastercard.
* An expired Paypal debit Mastercard.
* My Lansdale Public Library card. I think I returned everything that was due before I left town. It'd be totally in character, though, if I hadn't.
* An expired AAA card.
* My Guardian Dental Guard Preferred Network Plan ID card from my old job.
(Uh... about these pus-y gums...)
* Two ATM receipts
(One so old and faded that I can't even read the type; a second from a Visa gift card where I withdrew all of the available funds, apparently: $60.00 withdrawal, plus $2.00 "ATM Owner Fee" [that's always a cute one, isn't it? I am reminded of a Dead Kennedys lyric: "They just want your money/ They just want your consciousness/ They're a bunch of liars!" But I digress.] and under the $62.00 total, the cryptic line ACCOUNT ENDS. Indeed, it does.)
* An ID card from Keystone Health Plan East.
(Never used it, not once. Seriously, at least my ex- got her money's worth out of my insurance. One of us had to.)
* An Enterprise Rent-a-car card from Enterprise in Carlisle, given to me by the Chevy dealership in Carlisle after they pronounced my car dead last week.
(Funny: they always make these rental cars sound like such great deals... and then you get to the fine print. The best part of trying to rent a car last week was my call to Avis. "Thank you for calling Avis," the college kid on the other end of the line said, "where there are always cars available.")
("Yeah, I'm in Carlisle, and I need a one-way rental to Burlington, Vermont for tomorrow.")
(Long pause.)
("Uhhhh... could you please hold?")
(Another even longer pause.)
("Uh... hello... sir... we... actually... we have a shortage of cars today...")
(And that was the final word from the land where There Are Always Cars Available. And the next day, I was riding Amtrak.)
* The backing from my Keystone Health Plan East card, which I never read.
* Another freakin' Keystone Health Plan East card.
(If it had been as easy to get a referral as it had been to get a card, I might have used the card once or twice.)
* Two more health insurance cards: Personal Choice (why, thank you) and Blue Cross Prescription Program.
(Never... used... either... one. Do I get any money back?)
(Didn't think so.)
* Another business card from Enterprise, this one from Fort Washington, PA.
(This card has apparently been in my wallet for five years, because I remember when I rented a car from Enterprise... or tried to: my twentieth high school reunion, back in 2002. I had a debit card and they wouldn't rent a car to me. Apparently, when you try to rent a car with a debit card, they place a hold on your card for an amount that is more than any sane person would pay for a rental car.)
(But at least they always have cars available.)
* My handwritten instructions for accessing the voicemail on some long-ago phone number, written in pencil on half of a catalog card from the library.
* My dentist's business card. Think it's too late to call for an appointment?
* A laminated Ambler Savings account information card.
* A ticket stub from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, for a show called "American Sublime."
(I swear I remember nothing about this show, except that I went with my friend Greg. We also went to the Mutter Museum, which, sadly, I remember vividly.)
* A 3x5 index card, folded in half, with the following written on the unruled side:
Hacksaw
Olive oil
Motown discs
------------
Edwin Starr?
Dustbuster plus
filter
Eureka Boss 402
filter
(Believe it or not, I know exactly what this note is: it's a shopping list for the Q-mart... the Quakertown Farmer's Market. I remember the rude woman at the vacuum repair stand as I tried to explain, with the EXACT MAKE AND MODEL NUMBER OF MY TWO VACUUMS, what I needed and she insisted no, this would work instead. After which I actually drove to WALMART to find what I needed.)
* An expired Amoco-BP credit card.
(I got six or seven fillups out of this one before I maxed it out.)
(That's a pun: Maxed it out. Ha, ha, ha.)
(BP-Amoco didn't think it was funny, either.)
* A Blockbuster membership card, from back when I had a working VCR.
* A Free Library Of Philadelphia card.
(When I was cleaning out boxes of books from my storage space, I came across a few long overdue library books from the Free Library, with due dates of 1993! I can't imagine they want them back, but I'll send them along anyway.)
* A Working Assets phone card.
(I think that this is the phone card for which I wrote down the voice mail instructions. This was yet another service that Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Then the bills came; they were more than I expected, and as happened so often the last fifteen years, it came down to a choice: pay the bill or eat. So I ate. I haven't been able to get long distance on my phone bill since. Another piece of karma that I hope to eradicate with this move.)
* My Bucks County Free Library Card.
(I worked at the library in Doylestown for close to four years, left for my job at Montgomery County Community College, always meant to go back and see all my old co-workers, but never did. Still feel bad about it... also feel bad about the two CDs from Doylestown I never returned: Merle Haggard's LAND OF MANY CHURCHES and Brian Wilson's eponymous 1988 debut solo album.)
O.K.... so that's what I pulled from my wallet and trashed... now, here's what stayed IN the wallet:
* My current Pennsylvania driver's license. The car is dead, but I'm still alive. This proves I am who I say I am, somehow.
* A small red paper heart that someone gave to me.
* The access phone number, PIN (which you should never write down) and instructions for my current long distance phone card (eKit, through AYH).
* My Borders Rewards card
(...which I always seemed to forget whenever I was buying books or CDs... and there it was, in my wallet the whole time, hiding between 8 different grocery store cards.)
(Which leads me to...)
* Henning's Market Preferred Customer Card and keychain card.
(I will probably never shop at Henning's again, and it breaks my heart. Henning's was my favorite grocery store in the Philly 'burbs. It's a family-owned, single-store-only supermarket in Harleysville, PA, and the selection and quality are better than any other local market, even if the prices are sometimes a little higher. I would sooner have driven 15 minutes to Henning's and paid a few cents more, knowing that my money was going into a truly local business, than walked six blocks to chainstore Acme and paid less for the same item. Which, incidentally, was never really "the same item," since Acme's quality was, in my experience, far inferior to Henning's.)
(Henning's also has a great buffet for breakfast, with UNLIMITED BACON, and great fried chicken and other comfort foods for supper. And fantastic coffee with unlimited refills. I spent many, many hours writing and revising while sitting on the mezzanine of their cafe. I daresay I wouldn't have finished my master's if it hadn't been for Henning's.)
(So, even though I will probably never shop there again, I am keeping their card in my wallet, as a reminder of one thing and place I will miss from the Philly burbs, even if the rest of my time there was, to quote Charles Emerson Winchester, "No memories; I blot it out as it happens.")
* Two stubs from Cardinal Camera in Lansdale.
(I dropped off two rolls of black and white film there about a month ago. Obviously, I won't be picking it up any time soon, but once I start working here and get some cash rolling in, I can send these slips to someone and have them pick up the pics for me.)
* A Tennessee Driver's License for Elvis A. Presley, address 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, TN 38116. Expires 8-16-77.
(Why, the signature alone on this thing is probably worth a fortune!)
(And in a weird quirk of iTunes synchronicity, who came on my iTunes shuffle as I typed this paragraph? Elvis, singing "Paralyzed." What else?)
* Three baseball cards, in the wallet's photo protector sleeves: a 1992 Topps Stadium Club Cal Ripken, and 1982 Kellogg's 3D Phillies cards of Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt.
(Pete's gambling problems got him banned from the Hall of Fame, but he'll always have a place in my wallet.)
* More Amtrak ticket stubs, these from a train trip to Montreal in September 2002.
(I missed these; they should go on the other pile. No point in carrying them around with me everywhere.)
* The combination for the lock on my storage space at Carlisle Rent A Space.
(Which reminds me: I need to make a copy of my driver's license and mail it to them.)
* A card from artist Leo Sewell, www.leosewell.net, who makes the coolest sculptures out of found objects. I donated some junk to him; I hope he was able to use it.
* My shrink's card from Fort Washington.
(Margaret, I never told you this, but since I'm not seeing you anymore, I guess I can say it now: I loved you. You struck me as kind of a ditzball sometimes, yet every time I'd leave our appointments, at least one thing you said and often many, many more would resonate and I'd be transformed. I felt like we connected on a level that I really needed. [Plus, you're a hottie. There, I said it.] May our paths cross again someday. Without you, I would have never made this move.)
* Another photo protector with the following pictures and cards in it:
A picture of John Lennon standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, flashing the peace sign.
My ASCAP member card.
AGHHHHH! TWO MORE INSURANCE CARDS!! HOW'D THEY GET IN HERE??? TRASH!!
A picture of my Dad, my Grandpa and I, at my first wedding. Of all the pictures I own, this is the one I'm fondest of.
A picture of my friend Meg and her two daughters. Sigh. If only...
A picture of my part-Terrier, part-Lhasa Apso Pepper, may he rest in peace; a black and white shot I took of him for a summer photography class in high school. He's sitting on the wicker couch on the back porch, looking at a bird or squirrel or something in the yard.
A picture from my first wedding, of Stephanie and I walking down the aisle. From there, it was all downhill. Hate to sound like that, but even our honeymoon sucked. I should have known.
A picture of June, bathed in golden light. This picture was taken on a vacation in the Adirondacks.
Another picture of Meg, this one of her driving, taken by me in the shotgun seat.
* A 2006 wallet calendar reading ELECT BRAD M. DOLL MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT JUDGE. (But wait! There's more! Turn it over and it's TEST YOUR EYESIGHT. Two charts: "Hold this card at arm's length- 2 feet in front of your eyes. Test each eye separately.")
(This card is one reason I never used any of those insurance cards.)
* My current ATM and credit cards.
* Red Cross Blood Donor card
* Red Cross CPR and First Aid Certification, both expired.
* Baseball Hall of Fame membership card, with Bob Feller on the face. Free admission and ten percent off museum shop purchases.
* My current AAA card.
* A computer user card for Fletcher Free Library in Burlington. Since I can't get a library card yet (no permanent address), I have this.
* Perhaps the coolest item in my wallet is this next thing, but it's kind of a long story:
On the weekend of my 25th high school reunion, my friend Cris stayed with her family ("the time suckers") at a friend's apartment in Carlisle. The night of the reunion dinner, I walked over to the apartment to meet her and her husband so we could walk to the dinner... but they weren't ready yet. Her son (five years old) and daughter (12) answered the door, and the whole time I stood there listening to Cris explain that they'd be a little late, go ahead without them, they'd be over in about 45 minutes, her kids were EYING me...
When Cris and her husband finally made it to the dinner, Cris said, "Well, first of all, I had to explain to my son that no, you WEREN'T my date, and yes, I was still going to the dance with Daddy, we were still married... and then my daughter said 'Well, if he's going alone, he'll need to meet someone... and she's either going to be a wicked witch or a beautiful princess."
Which brings me to the Coolest Thing In My Wallet: a two-sided drawing, encased in a plastic baseball-card sleeve protector, that Cris' daughter drew for me, with a beautiful princess on one side, wide-eyed, surrounded by hearts, a flower clutched behind her back, and a wicked she-devil on the reverse, finger pointed scoldingly, forked tail and horns, scowling, surrounded by the fires of hell.
It reminds me of my friend and her family, true, but is also a tangible connection to her daughter, who is a writer. And, to get a little deeper, it also reminds me that much as I love my friends, they have identities and roles beyond being my friend. They need to be there for more people than just me. I keep that in mind any time I'm feeling neglected.
I wouldn't sell or trade this drawing for the world... and I can't wait for the next reunion, at which Cris' daughter will be 17, and this drawing may well be a valuable tool for embarrassment.
* My Temple University General Alumni association card. No expiration date on this one.
* My Goddard student ID.
* A Lifestyles condom. Hey, I can dream, can't I?
* The gift tag from the Christmas package that my sister wrapped this wallet in.
* An affirmation from an old (Monday, April 15, 2000-something) Louise Hay page-a-day calendar:
I let go of anything and everything that could delay my good in any way.
Like all the old useless shit in my wallet.
Monday, September 17, 2007
"It swells"
Well, I made it. I'm in Burlington... currently sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of an apartment at 227 Elmwood Avenue (stop by and see me sometime, why don'tcha?), looking for work, writing...
It feels good to be here. Feels right. I feel like I belong here. All I need to do is walk down Pearl Street to Battery Park and stand above Lake Champlain, and see the Adirondacks in the distance, and I know I'm where I should be.
I don't want to say it was tough getting here, but...
First of all, there was just the rigor of packing up an apartment's worth of belongings: boxing everything up to go into storage and moving it out, then cleaning the old place. As my ex- put it, "It swells. The longer you go, it swells." She was right; it did. As I posted on a message board I frequent, it seemed like for every box I filled, there were TWO boxes worth of stuff I didn't know what to do with, or where it came from. And it all had to go.
Then, added into the mix was that I had a storage space worth of things (mainly books and records, but also about 10 boxes of unsorted junk from previous moves) that needed consolidated, organized, thrown out, etc etc. I'd gone through 15 years of panic moveouts, starting with my escape from DC with Stephanie... and during nearly every one of those moveouts, when "it swelled," I found myself just tossing everything into boxes and just shutting the lids. "I'll deal with this later," I told myself.
I decided that before I left Pennsylvania for Vermont, later would be now. No more boxes of Stuff To Go Through Later. I went through all those boxes in storage and filled 15 trash bags with junk that I didn't need anymore; weeded through books and other belongings and had a yard sale; with the help of my parents and brother, packed it all into a U-haul and moved it into a storage space in Carlisle, PA; then came back and cleaned, filled the car with everything that was left (WAY too much), and drove back to Carlisle to put THAT stuff into storage and figure out what I needed to take along north with me.
Here was where it got fun.
I knew when I packed the car for my escape run from Lansdale that I had WAY too much in the car. Every inch of space was packed. I felt like an astronaut, literally shoehorned into the cabin. Before I left for Burlington, I'd need to narrow down what I really needed.
I thought I did a pretty good job, but when I got ready to leave on Monday, September 10th (my brother's birthday), I was once again shoehorned into the car. But I couldn't think of what I needed to leave behind. The underside of the car scraped as I pulled out of my parents' driveway, but as I drove north on I81, I felt like I'd escaped and was on my way north. I stopped at a rest stop north of Harrisburg and had lunch (a chicken sandwich that my Mom made for me), and as I got back on the highway, all seemed well: I had George Harrison's All Things Must Pass playing on the CD player, the engine was purring (I'd added two quarts of oil the night before) and the sun was shining bright.
Now let's go to my journal...
Well, it's about 1:30 on Monday and I am sitting on the side of the road in my car on I-81 northbound. I seemed to be purring along all right and the engine started to sputter and the oil light came on, so I pulled over. Called AAA- not sure what to do except go back to Carlisle. The car is packed- I mean PACKED...
Then, at the top of the next page, are three phone numbers. I'm not sure what the first one is, but the second one is Carlisle Auto Salvage, and the third is the phone number for the loan shark company that holds a lien on my car.
Back to my journal:
So... I packed the car full of my stuff and hit the road for Burlington at about 11 am yesterday (Monday)... stopped at a rest stop and had yunch (a chicked sandwich Mom packed for me) and then got back on the road... drove about 30 more miles and as I was coming up over a rise near exit 104, the engine kind of sputtered and then the OIL light came on... I pulled over onto the side of the road (because one thing I remember the CAR TALK guys saying was "when you see the OIL light come on, it means PULL OVER AND STOP THE ENGINE IMMEDIATELY. Which I did. And it stopped... and it will not be starting again. I didn't want to have the car towed back to Carlisle, but it's a good thing I did. According to the mechanic at Rufe (the Chevy dealership where Dad bought the car) the labor-cost involved in repairing it would be too great... and if a mechanic is saying that, you know it's a big job. Basically, because of the transverse mounted engine, in order to check and see what it is, they'd have to remove the engine... "and we could try one thing and it could be something else." So they said "Sell it for salvage."
So my car is dead.
So I'm renting a car.
Later. No, I'm not, apparently. I'm taking Amtrak. I am taking only what I need immediately. Once I start working up there and move into a more permanent place,
I didn't finish that sentence.
I'm pretty sure that what happened with my car was that I overloaded it and gave it the automotive equivalent of a heart attack! And while it was no great joy to sit broken down on the side of the road on I-81 on a downhill curve while 18-wheelers sped by me, or to have the car towed back to Carlisle and have the mechanic tell me "He's dead, Jim," or realize that whatever I'd be doing up north, I wouldn't be DRIVING, it was probably better for it to have broken down within the 100-miles-one-way-to-Carlisle-for-free-AAA-towing radius than somewhere further north, or once I'd gotten up here.
Things were lousy, but they could have been much, much, much worse. I had my family; Dad offered to pay for a rental car (too expensive) and I thought "Why not Amtrak?" So... Amtrak. God bless him and Mom: they helped pay for my moving van, DROVE the moving van to Lansdale from Carlisle and then BACK... then paid for my Amtrak ticket.
I wouldn't be up here if it hadn't been for their help.
So... the next day (Tuesday, September 11, a rainy day), I consolidated my belongings again: I had to take everything that I'd packed into the car and squeeze it down into four bags. I could only take along what I could carry on the train. And the next morning, Mom and Dad drove me to Harrisburg and dropped me off at the Amtrak station, where I caught a 5 am train to Philly to make connections with a later train north from 30th Street Station to Burlington.
One reason I felt like I needed to make the move was that, living in close proximity to home, I felt like it was too easy to be dependent on my parents for "help." And unfortunately, the last few years, I've needed a lot of "help," more than I felt a 43-year-old man should need. I love my parents, and I want to be in a position to help them. But I knew that if I stayed in Pennsylvania, within shouting distance, and tried to switch careers, they, of course, would be more than willing to offer help, and I would be more than willing to accept it. Something had to change.
Really, I feel like I had to move north to grow the rest of the way up. Whether or not that's what happens is another question entirely. But I no longer wanted to NEED them or EXPECT them to take care of me. I know that they probably will always want to, and I know that when I get to the point where I can take care of them (they're in their 70s, so it's coming soon), they probably will not want to accept. But it feels like that is the way it needs to be.
As I got on the train, I felt like a strand in the web of dependence was being cut. I love my Mom and Dad, but I've never really "left home." A lot of what I did since I graduated from college in 1986 was "for them." Moving to Vermont is for me... and, in the end, for them.
Back to my journal: after a few pages of notes and lists and phone numbers, there's a boxed-in note at the top of a fresh page, scrawled after I turned out the light on Tuesday night, and remembered something I'd forgotten to pack and didn't want to be without up north... I remember turing the light on and leaning over to the nightstand, reaching for a pen, and opening my notebook to the first clean page. Get one cup coffeemaker from box in basement.
And then, right below, the narrative picks up again:
OK... well, I got the one cup coffeemaker from the basement... and I'm sitting on the train... Mom + Dad, God bless 'em, drove me to Harrisburg to catch the 5 am to Philly so I can comfortably make connections in Philly. It's 455... the train leaves at 5... they're sitting on the platform. They kept offering to do things, carry things... Mom is fretting about everything, which is, I suppose, the way she handles things. Worrying gives her a handle on things that feel out of control to her, and my move north, I think, definitely feels "out of control" to both of them.
I wonder why I didn't adopt that way of doing things. I've got my own way.
The train just started moving. I'm on my way north. This time it feels real. Somehow on Monday when I was driving, it felt tentative. This time, I know I'm going to get there.
Elizabethtown. Still dark out.
It's so funny. When I left on Monday, I found myself thinking "It seems strange to leave Carlisle and not be going back east to Philly." And now, on the train, I'm going north through Philly.
Really didn't expect to be heading north quite like this. But in a big way, it's good. I need to have a minimum of stuff with me up there when I start out. Mobility is key. The car was packed full-- as full, really, as it was on my escape run from Lansdale. Going north now, I have five bags: a duffel with most of my clothing, a suitcase with my bedding,my computer backpack (stuffed with other things) and my "briefcase." (The fifth bag is a lunch that Mom packed!)
Mount Joy. Still dark out, although with the interior lights on, it's hard to tell, really. It's 5:25.
Anyway, taking the train, knowing that I really could only take along what I could carry, really forced me to think about what I needed. I couldn't take much that wasn't essential. And I didn't.
Symbolism, as I ponder the train heading east in the pre-dawn dark: I am heading out of darkness, leaving that life behind me.
Lancaster. 5:35. Lots of people boarding here. I'd guess that this is sort of the far western frontier for people who take Amtrak into Philly for work.
I wonder if there is any job that I'd take that could ever be worth a 90 minute commute twice a day? Or if my sense of home would ever be so strong that I'd rather do that than move closer to where I worked? The conundrum to me has always been: a lot of people who do that say that they love the area they live in, but then they spend so much time commuting and at work... do they get to enjoy it? But what constitutes "enjoyment"? Sometimes it's just the best feeling, when you've got one of those jobs, to feel like you've ESCAPED it... living in a remote (relatively speaking) area must feel like an anchor, a lifeline.
OK. Enough deep insights. It is 5:45- Mom made me three ham + cheese sandwiches, and I am now eating sandwich number one. Good, like a Mom Sandwich always is, with mustard and yellow American and butter on a grainy whole wheat kaiser roll.
This train is COLD.
Parkesburg. Sky is getting light.
I just looked at my tickets. Train arrives in Philly at 6:45; train for Vermont is scheduled to leave at 9:58! I didn't read the schedule carefully enough, apparently.
No, I did. I took the earlier train because I knew if I took a later train, I'd have only a half hour to make connections (and who knows what could happen with Amtrak); I figured better to have extra time than maybe run late and miss my connection north. Also, I didn't want to wrestle with four heavy bags on a later (rush hour) train.
Back to my journal...
Exton. 6:10 AM. In the southeast sky, there's a bright morning star. Venus? Mars?
Before I got into the car in Carlisle, I stepped out front of the house and took a look up at the stars. I felt like I'd be back someday.
It's weird how I feel like I need to do this in order to do that (come back eventually).
Paoli. 6:20.
I will miss having a car. I wouldn't have made it the last five years without one. I'm grateful and glad that I had it. But I wonder how much longer it would have lasted if it'd made it up there. There were other problems with it- it needed new shocks; there was an inexplicable ringing rattle coming from the rear driver's side every time I hit a bump; Dave (my mechanic--m) told me there was some kind of joint in the front wheels that needed replaced; he also said that when I got it inspected, it'd need a new catalytic converter to pass the emissions test... Again, it forces me to move up there and be (relatively) mobile, starting out. If I'd taken everything I had in that car, I'd be saddled... and if the car broke down after I'd made it up there with all that stuff, what then?
What I have is heavy and it's a lot to carry, but I can carry it.
Passing, but not stopping at, Rosemont. The train just crossed over the Blue Route a few minutes ago. It's 6:35; the sky is almost all the way bright.
Ardmore. The temperature on a Citizen's Bank sign we just passed read 65 degrees.
Cutting through West Philly now. The sky in the east is bright orange. It's 6:40. Five minutes to 30th Street.
O.K... it's around 7:15. I got a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts and I'm sitting at one of the tables off the concourse in the station.
Now it's around 9:10: two cups of decaf, a corn muffin, two newspapers a walk to the bathroom and around the concourse, a stop at the post office, and a long letter to June later, it's just about time to go get my bags from the baggage storage counter.
And now I am officially leaving. I am on the train to Vermont, heading north... leaving Philadelphia on the same tracks that I would sometimes take out of the city (when I lived here)... Running parallel to I-95, and just crossed Rt. 73... Cottman Avenue down here, but Skippack Pike where I was.
It is a beautiful bright clear blue day. Sunlight is shimmering off the surface of the Delaware- gorgeous. We are approaching Trenton.
A perfect day for new beginnings... and yet as I sit here plotting what will happen next, I find my mind thinking "OK, well, if I don't have my security deposit in hand by the end of the month, I'll just ask Mom and Dad for an advance against it..." NO! That is exactly the thinking and pattern I am moving up here to break. That I must let go now. There will be no calling home for money. I need to start bringing in money to take care of myself right away, as in this weekend. That will make me feel better.
The universe wants me to succeed at this, I am convinced. But my part is to release and bless the past, and follow my faith in good, not my fear of lack.
11 am. Coming up on Newark. In the distance, I can see the Empire State Building and the NYC skyline. Pretty, in its way.
God bless Mom and the lunch she packed me. Those whole wheat rolls are awesome. It's 11:05 and I'm eating sammich #2 now.
11;12. Secaucus.
The Empire State Building being the tallest, most dominant bulding in the New York skyline... that is as it should be.
Now in a tunnel, probably pasing under the Hudson.
12:15. The sunlight on the NYC skyline was gorgeous as we left NYC. Now in Connecticut: Greenwich... Cos Cob... Stamford is next.
12:40. The train is parallelling US Rt. 1... where I started out, a few hundred miles south and a few hundred years ago, with Steph in Alexandria, VA.
Pulling into Bridgeport (CT) now. I wish I had a map to chart my progress north.
Stratford CT now. I wonder how far inland we are. There are a lot of rivers that look like tidal inlets.
When I step back for a moment and really look at what I'm doing, I kind of can't believe that I'm doing it.
1:05. New Haven, CT. A brief layover; I ran down into the station to get a Coke and get Joe a birthday card.
Wallingford - Chris' Bar next to the RR tracks... one of the four neons in the windows is a "Yankees Game Time" Budweiser sign, with a colorful neon Yankees logo, and the other three are a Coors light, Miller Lite, and another Budweiser neon with, of all things, a Steelers logo in neon. In Connecticut.
I'm reading Shawn's Name The Boy. Wow.
2:05; Berlin, CT. Lovely old restored red brick train station.
2:20. Hartford. Another lovely old train station, this one red cut stone.
I'm four stories into Name The Boy. I really liked "Foolish Fire"... and the voices in "Clam Alley." Love the way he pieces the narrative together from the different characters' perspectives; love his sense of humor and his use of humor to pull the reader into the story. Some passages made me laugh out loud, and then a couple pages later, I've been hooked into this deep, serious scene. He doesn't sustain humor throughout, but kind of uses it as a device to soften the reader up and make his characters worthy of sympathy and empathy.
Themes and devices: drinking, men as soldiers. Characters are gritty but not in a charming way. Flawed.
Springfield, MA. Just passed the basketball hall of fame. Why here?
The tracks are running between I-91 and some river.
3:55. Had to switch seats; the train switched tracks and reversed direction, so I was going backwards. Kind of disorienting, so I crossed the aisle.
5:00. Crossed the aisle again, so now I'm back on the side I started on, but facing the sun. On the sunset side. Wow.
The train is going to be delayed at least an hour.
7:50. Just pulled out of White River Junction.
Reading a collection of letters of Thoreau's entitled Letters To A Spiritual Seeker. Why I love Thoreau: he writes this long passage which begins "Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely obtained," after which is a paragraph-long discourse on the "laws of earth" vs. "the laws of heaven." "Happy the man," he wraps up the paragraph, "who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial law in just proportion; whose every faculty, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, obeys the law of its level; who neither stoops nor goes on tiptoe, but lives a balanced life, acceptable to nature and to God."
Right?
But then the next line in the letter is this:
"These things I say; other things I do."
HA! THAT is why I love Thoreau.
9:05. Approaching Montpelier.
You know what's funny? Right before the engine died on Monday, I was thinking about my phone call to (WRTI DJ) Harrison Ridley, Jr. last Sunday. Sunday, Sept 2, the last Sunday I was in Lansdale, I went out for a ride in the car and was listening to Harrison Ridley while I rode. He was featuring Max Roach- great be-bop stuff. Anyway, I thought "Man, this is the last night I'm gonna be local... I need to call him." So I did... he answered in that voice, and I said "Harrison Ridley, I've been listening to your show for years and I'm finally calling in. I'm moving to Vermont and I won't be able to listen anymore." And he said, "Well, we gon' have to stoip that movement!" And we bantered back and forth a little bit... he said "You'll have to write or call from up there and let us know how it goes," and how he hated to lose a loyal listener.
Anyway... like I said, right before the engine sputtered and the OIL light came on, just a minute or so before the car's engine went into the automotive equivalent of cardiac arrest, I swear I was thinking of him saying that, and may in fact have said it aloud: "Well, we gon' have to stop that movement."
Coincidence? Some would say.
Curse? Highly unlikely.
Synchronicity? Definitely.
An act of creative thought in action? Could be.
All I know is, I don't take shit like that lightly, and am considering it a cautionary episode.
Just have to add in here that, no, I don't believe for a second that Harrison Ridley put a hex on my move. What I'm saying is, I repeated it just before the car broke down. That's all. Nothing but a big Hmmmmmm.
Anyway...
9:27. Just pulled out of Waterbury. The conductor said 27 minutes to Essex Junction, which is... the end of the line for me. My new home. Wow.
Now I am really getting nervous. As in: I'm really doing it. "I am moving to Burlington" actually becomes "I am in Burlington" in less than a half an hour.
God bless my new life and my new way of doing things. I let go of my past failures and past successes, and I move forward with joy, love, faith and awareness.
Wow.
O.K. I'm here. The air mattress is inflated. Time to sleep. More tomorrow.
I have arrived.
And now, six days later, here I sit, at the Fletcher Library on College Street in Burlington, ready to resume my job hunt, ready to hunker down and write. I feel like I know what Henry Miller meant when he said "I have no money, no job, no prospects. I am the happiest man alive."
More later. I have to go get lunch and make some phone calls.
It feels good to be here. Feels right. I feel like I belong here. All I need to do is walk down Pearl Street to Battery Park and stand above Lake Champlain, and see the Adirondacks in the distance, and I know I'm where I should be.
I don't want to say it was tough getting here, but...
First of all, there was just the rigor of packing up an apartment's worth of belongings: boxing everything up to go into storage and moving it out, then cleaning the old place. As my ex- put it, "It swells. The longer you go, it swells." She was right; it did. As I posted on a message board I frequent, it seemed like for every box I filled, there were TWO boxes worth of stuff I didn't know what to do with, or where it came from. And it all had to go.
Then, added into the mix was that I had a storage space worth of things (mainly books and records, but also about 10 boxes of unsorted junk from previous moves) that needed consolidated, organized, thrown out, etc etc. I'd gone through 15 years of panic moveouts, starting with my escape from DC with Stephanie... and during nearly every one of those moveouts, when "it swelled," I found myself just tossing everything into boxes and just shutting the lids. "I'll deal with this later," I told myself.
I decided that before I left Pennsylvania for Vermont, later would be now. No more boxes of Stuff To Go Through Later. I went through all those boxes in storage and filled 15 trash bags with junk that I didn't need anymore; weeded through books and other belongings and had a yard sale; with the help of my parents and brother, packed it all into a U-haul and moved it into a storage space in Carlisle, PA; then came back and cleaned, filled the car with everything that was left (WAY too much), and drove back to Carlisle to put THAT stuff into storage and figure out what I needed to take along north with me.
Here was where it got fun.
I knew when I packed the car for my escape run from Lansdale that I had WAY too much in the car. Every inch of space was packed. I felt like an astronaut, literally shoehorned into the cabin. Before I left for Burlington, I'd need to narrow down what I really needed.
I thought I did a pretty good job, but when I got ready to leave on Monday, September 10th (my brother's birthday), I was once again shoehorned into the car. But I couldn't think of what I needed to leave behind. The underside of the car scraped as I pulled out of my parents' driveway, but as I drove north on I81, I felt like I'd escaped and was on my way north. I stopped at a rest stop north of Harrisburg and had lunch (a chicken sandwich that my Mom made for me), and as I got back on the highway, all seemed well: I had George Harrison's All Things Must Pass playing on the CD player, the engine was purring (I'd added two quarts of oil the night before) and the sun was shining bright.
Now let's go to my journal...
Well, it's about 1:30 on Monday and I am sitting on the side of the road in my car on I-81 northbound. I seemed to be purring along all right and the engine started to sputter and the oil light came on, so I pulled over. Called AAA- not sure what to do except go back to Carlisle. The car is packed- I mean PACKED...
Then, at the top of the next page, are three phone numbers. I'm not sure what the first one is, but the second one is Carlisle Auto Salvage, and the third is the phone number for the loan shark company that holds a lien on my car.
Back to my journal:
So... I packed the car full of my stuff and hit the road for Burlington at about 11 am yesterday (Monday)... stopped at a rest stop and had yunch (a chicked sandwich Mom packed for me) and then got back on the road... drove about 30 more miles and as I was coming up over a rise near exit 104, the engine kind of sputtered and then the OIL light came on... I pulled over onto the side of the road (because one thing I remember the CAR TALK guys saying was "when you see the OIL light come on, it means PULL OVER AND STOP THE ENGINE IMMEDIATELY. Which I did. And it stopped... and it will not be starting again. I didn't want to have the car towed back to Carlisle, but it's a good thing I did. According to the mechanic at Rufe (the Chevy dealership where Dad bought the car) the labor-cost involved in repairing it would be too great... and if a mechanic is saying that, you know it's a big job. Basically, because of the transverse mounted engine, in order to check and see what it is, they'd have to remove the engine... "and we could try one thing and it could be something else." So they said "Sell it for salvage."
So my car is dead.
So I'm renting a car.
Later. No, I'm not, apparently. I'm taking Amtrak. I am taking only what I need immediately. Once I start working up there and move into a more permanent place,
I didn't finish that sentence.
I'm pretty sure that what happened with my car was that I overloaded it and gave it the automotive equivalent of a heart attack! And while it was no great joy to sit broken down on the side of the road on I-81 on a downhill curve while 18-wheelers sped by me, or to have the car towed back to Carlisle and have the mechanic tell me "He's dead, Jim," or realize that whatever I'd be doing up north, I wouldn't be DRIVING, it was probably better for it to have broken down within the 100-miles-one-way-to-Carlisle-for-free-AAA-towing radius than somewhere further north, or once I'd gotten up here.
Things were lousy, but they could have been much, much, much worse. I had my family; Dad offered to pay for a rental car (too expensive) and I thought "Why not Amtrak?" So... Amtrak. God bless him and Mom: they helped pay for my moving van, DROVE the moving van to Lansdale from Carlisle and then BACK... then paid for my Amtrak ticket.
I wouldn't be up here if it hadn't been for their help.
So... the next day (Tuesday, September 11, a rainy day), I consolidated my belongings again: I had to take everything that I'd packed into the car and squeeze it down into four bags. I could only take along what I could carry on the train. And the next morning, Mom and Dad drove me to Harrisburg and dropped me off at the Amtrak station, where I caught a 5 am train to Philly to make connections with a later train north from 30th Street Station to Burlington.
One reason I felt like I needed to make the move was that, living in close proximity to home, I felt like it was too easy to be dependent on my parents for "help." And unfortunately, the last few years, I've needed a lot of "help," more than I felt a 43-year-old man should need. I love my parents, and I want to be in a position to help them. But I knew that if I stayed in Pennsylvania, within shouting distance, and tried to switch careers, they, of course, would be more than willing to offer help, and I would be more than willing to accept it. Something had to change.
Really, I feel like I had to move north to grow the rest of the way up. Whether or not that's what happens is another question entirely. But I no longer wanted to NEED them or EXPECT them to take care of me. I know that they probably will always want to, and I know that when I get to the point where I can take care of them (they're in their 70s, so it's coming soon), they probably will not want to accept. But it feels like that is the way it needs to be.
As I got on the train, I felt like a strand in the web of dependence was being cut. I love my Mom and Dad, but I've never really "left home." A lot of what I did since I graduated from college in 1986 was "for them." Moving to Vermont is for me... and, in the end, for them.
Back to my journal: after a few pages of notes and lists and phone numbers, there's a boxed-in note at the top of a fresh page, scrawled after I turned out the light on Tuesday night, and remembered something I'd forgotten to pack and didn't want to be without up north... I remember turing the light on and leaning over to the nightstand, reaching for a pen, and opening my notebook to the first clean page. Get one cup coffeemaker from box in basement.
And then, right below, the narrative picks up again:
OK... well, I got the one cup coffeemaker from the basement... and I'm sitting on the train... Mom + Dad, God bless 'em, drove me to Harrisburg to catch the 5 am to Philly so I can comfortably make connections in Philly. It's 455... the train leaves at 5... they're sitting on the platform. They kept offering to do things, carry things... Mom is fretting about everything, which is, I suppose, the way she handles things. Worrying gives her a handle on things that feel out of control to her, and my move north, I think, definitely feels "out of control" to both of them.
I wonder why I didn't adopt that way of doing things. I've got my own way.
The train just started moving. I'm on my way north. This time it feels real. Somehow on Monday when I was driving, it felt tentative. This time, I know I'm going to get there.
Elizabethtown. Still dark out.
It's so funny. When I left on Monday, I found myself thinking "It seems strange to leave Carlisle and not be going back east to Philly." And now, on the train, I'm going north through Philly.
Really didn't expect to be heading north quite like this. But in a big way, it's good. I need to have a minimum of stuff with me up there when I start out. Mobility is key. The car was packed full-- as full, really, as it was on my escape run from Lansdale. Going north now, I have five bags: a duffel with most of my clothing, a suitcase with my bedding,my computer backpack (stuffed with other things) and my "briefcase." (The fifth bag is a lunch that Mom packed!)
Mount Joy. Still dark out, although with the interior lights on, it's hard to tell, really. It's 5:25.
Anyway, taking the train, knowing that I really could only take along what I could carry, really forced me to think about what I needed. I couldn't take much that wasn't essential. And I didn't.
Symbolism, as I ponder the train heading east in the pre-dawn dark: I am heading out of darkness, leaving that life behind me.
Lancaster. 5:35. Lots of people boarding here. I'd guess that this is sort of the far western frontier for people who take Amtrak into Philly for work.
I wonder if there is any job that I'd take that could ever be worth a 90 minute commute twice a day? Or if my sense of home would ever be so strong that I'd rather do that than move closer to where I worked? The conundrum to me has always been: a lot of people who do that say that they love the area they live in, but then they spend so much time commuting and at work... do they get to enjoy it? But what constitutes "enjoyment"? Sometimes it's just the best feeling, when you've got one of those jobs, to feel like you've ESCAPED it... living in a remote (relatively speaking) area must feel like an anchor, a lifeline.
OK. Enough deep insights. It is 5:45- Mom made me three ham + cheese sandwiches, and I am now eating sandwich number one. Good, like a Mom Sandwich always is, with mustard and yellow American and butter on a grainy whole wheat kaiser roll.
This train is COLD.
Parkesburg. Sky is getting light.
I just looked at my tickets. Train arrives in Philly at 6:45; train for Vermont is scheduled to leave at 9:58! I didn't read the schedule carefully enough, apparently.
No, I did. I took the earlier train because I knew if I took a later train, I'd have only a half hour to make connections (and who knows what could happen with Amtrak); I figured better to have extra time than maybe run late and miss my connection north. Also, I didn't want to wrestle with four heavy bags on a later (rush hour) train.
Back to my journal...
Exton. 6:10 AM. In the southeast sky, there's a bright morning star. Venus? Mars?
Before I got into the car in Carlisle, I stepped out front of the house and took a look up at the stars. I felt like I'd be back someday.
It's weird how I feel like I need to do this in order to do that (come back eventually).
Paoli. 6:20.
I will miss having a car. I wouldn't have made it the last five years without one. I'm grateful and glad that I had it. But I wonder how much longer it would have lasted if it'd made it up there. There were other problems with it- it needed new shocks; there was an inexplicable ringing rattle coming from the rear driver's side every time I hit a bump; Dave (my mechanic--m) told me there was some kind of joint in the front wheels that needed replaced; he also said that when I got it inspected, it'd need a new catalytic converter to pass the emissions test... Again, it forces me to move up there and be (relatively) mobile, starting out. If I'd taken everything I had in that car, I'd be saddled... and if the car broke down after I'd made it up there with all that stuff, what then?
What I have is heavy and it's a lot to carry, but I can carry it.
Passing, but not stopping at, Rosemont. The train just crossed over the Blue Route a few minutes ago. It's 6:35; the sky is almost all the way bright.
Ardmore. The temperature on a Citizen's Bank sign we just passed read 65 degrees.
Cutting through West Philly now. The sky in the east is bright orange. It's 6:40. Five minutes to 30th Street.
O.K... it's around 7:15. I got a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts and I'm sitting at one of the tables off the concourse in the station.
Now it's around 9:10: two cups of decaf, a corn muffin, two newspapers a walk to the bathroom and around the concourse, a stop at the post office, and a long letter to June later, it's just about time to go get my bags from the baggage storage counter.
And now I am officially leaving. I am on the train to Vermont, heading north... leaving Philadelphia on the same tracks that I would sometimes take out of the city (when I lived here)... Running parallel to I-95, and just crossed Rt. 73... Cottman Avenue down here, but Skippack Pike where I was.
It is a beautiful bright clear blue day. Sunlight is shimmering off the surface of the Delaware- gorgeous. We are approaching Trenton.
A perfect day for new beginnings... and yet as I sit here plotting what will happen next, I find my mind thinking "OK, well, if I don't have my security deposit in hand by the end of the month, I'll just ask Mom and Dad for an advance against it..." NO! That is exactly the thinking and pattern I am moving up here to break. That I must let go now. There will be no calling home for money. I need to start bringing in money to take care of myself right away, as in this weekend. That will make me feel better.
The universe wants me to succeed at this, I am convinced. But my part is to release and bless the past, and follow my faith in good, not my fear of lack.
11 am. Coming up on Newark. In the distance, I can see the Empire State Building and the NYC skyline. Pretty, in its way.
God bless Mom and the lunch she packed me. Those whole wheat rolls are awesome. It's 11:05 and I'm eating sammich #2 now.
11;12. Secaucus.
The Empire State Building being the tallest, most dominant bulding in the New York skyline... that is as it should be.
Now in a tunnel, probably pasing under the Hudson.
12:15. The sunlight on the NYC skyline was gorgeous as we left NYC. Now in Connecticut: Greenwich... Cos Cob... Stamford is next.
12:40. The train is parallelling US Rt. 1... where I started out, a few hundred miles south and a few hundred years ago, with Steph in Alexandria, VA.
Pulling into Bridgeport (CT) now. I wish I had a map to chart my progress north.
Stratford CT now. I wonder how far inland we are. There are a lot of rivers that look like tidal inlets.
When I step back for a moment and really look at what I'm doing, I kind of can't believe that I'm doing it.
1:05. New Haven, CT. A brief layover; I ran down into the station to get a Coke and get Joe a birthday card.
Wallingford - Chris' Bar next to the RR tracks... one of the four neons in the windows is a "Yankees Game Time" Budweiser sign, with a colorful neon Yankees logo, and the other three are a Coors light, Miller Lite, and another Budweiser neon with, of all things, a Steelers logo in neon. In Connecticut.
I'm reading Shawn's Name The Boy. Wow.
2:05; Berlin, CT. Lovely old restored red brick train station.
2:20. Hartford. Another lovely old train station, this one red cut stone.
I'm four stories into Name The Boy. I really liked "Foolish Fire"... and the voices in "Clam Alley." Love the way he pieces the narrative together from the different characters' perspectives; love his sense of humor and his use of humor to pull the reader into the story. Some passages made me laugh out loud, and then a couple pages later, I've been hooked into this deep, serious scene. He doesn't sustain humor throughout, but kind of uses it as a device to soften the reader up and make his characters worthy of sympathy and empathy.
Themes and devices: drinking, men as soldiers. Characters are gritty but not in a charming way. Flawed.
Springfield, MA. Just passed the basketball hall of fame. Why here?
The tracks are running between I-91 and some river.
3:55. Had to switch seats; the train switched tracks and reversed direction, so I was going backwards. Kind of disorienting, so I crossed the aisle.
5:00. Crossed the aisle again, so now I'm back on the side I started on, but facing the sun. On the sunset side. Wow.
The train is going to be delayed at least an hour.
7:50. Just pulled out of White River Junction.
Reading a collection of letters of Thoreau's entitled Letters To A Spiritual Seeker. Why I love Thoreau: he writes this long passage which begins "Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely obtained," after which is a paragraph-long discourse on the "laws of earth" vs. "the laws of heaven." "Happy the man," he wraps up the paragraph, "who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial law in just proportion; whose every faculty, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, obeys the law of its level; who neither stoops nor goes on tiptoe, but lives a balanced life, acceptable to nature and to God."
Right?
But then the next line in the letter is this:
"These things I say; other things I do."
HA! THAT is why I love Thoreau.
9:05. Approaching Montpelier.
You know what's funny? Right before the engine died on Monday, I was thinking about my phone call to (WRTI DJ) Harrison Ridley, Jr. last Sunday. Sunday, Sept 2, the last Sunday I was in Lansdale, I went out for a ride in the car and was listening to Harrison Ridley while I rode. He was featuring Max Roach- great be-bop stuff. Anyway, I thought "Man, this is the last night I'm gonna be local... I need to call him." So I did... he answered in that voice, and I said "Harrison Ridley, I've been listening to your show for years and I'm finally calling in. I'm moving to Vermont and I won't be able to listen anymore." And he said, "Well, we gon' have to stoip that movement!" And we bantered back and forth a little bit... he said "You'll have to write or call from up there and let us know how it goes," and how he hated to lose a loyal listener.
Anyway... like I said, right before the engine sputtered and the OIL light came on, just a minute or so before the car's engine went into the automotive equivalent of cardiac arrest, I swear I was thinking of him saying that, and may in fact have said it aloud: "Well, we gon' have to stop that movement."
Coincidence? Some would say.
Curse? Highly unlikely.
Synchronicity? Definitely.
An act of creative thought in action? Could be.
All I know is, I don't take shit like that lightly, and am considering it a cautionary episode.
Just have to add in here that, no, I don't believe for a second that Harrison Ridley put a hex on my move. What I'm saying is, I repeated it just before the car broke down. That's all. Nothing but a big Hmmmmmm.
Anyway...
9:27. Just pulled out of Waterbury. The conductor said 27 minutes to Essex Junction, which is... the end of the line for me. My new home. Wow.
Now I am really getting nervous. As in: I'm really doing it. "I am moving to Burlington" actually becomes "I am in Burlington" in less than a half an hour.
God bless my new life and my new way of doing things. I let go of my past failures and past successes, and I move forward with joy, love, faith and awareness.
Wow.
O.K. I'm here. The air mattress is inflated. Time to sleep. More tomorrow.
I have arrived.
And now, six days later, here I sit, at the Fletcher Library on College Street in Burlington, ready to resume my job hunt, ready to hunker down and write. I feel like I know what Henry Miller meant when he said "I have no money, no job, no prospects. I am the happiest man alive."
More later. I have to go get lunch and make some phone calls.
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