I took Nate in to town today. We met Soo for lunch, picked her up at the office. As we were walking in, me carrying Nathan, two guys walked out, people who work with Soo. One looked at me and Nate and said, “You must be Mr. Moon.”
Uhh, yeah, that’s me, Mr. Moon.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Saturday, August 23, 2003
What Next?
What next? What next!? What next, indeed. I haven’t written here in awhile. I’ve been avoiding it, not to say I’ve been afraid of it, but I just haven’t known what to say. I can’t very well share this with people. I might just have to start over or do some editing. This last week has been rather odd. I’ve tried to keep busy and Nathan has been obliging. He’s reached a stage where he’s very demonstrative, there are words that he knows and he’ll say these on cue and they’re mostly identifiable, and then there are complete sentences of jibberish. He speaks so earnestly and looks at me with such gravitas, he can be quite intimidating. In his mind, he is saying something very important. I can only imagine what it is.
We’ve been going out a lot, meeting people in the park and I’ve even started taking him to an organized play group. We went yesterday and he had a great time playing with the other toddlers, flirting with the little girls, mooching snacks from whoever brought them. The play group is organized by the city and meets at a local school. There are toys and a small plastic slide, a rocking horse and seats for both parents and kids. Yesterday they brought in a counselor to talk to parents (all mothers except me) about dealing with stress. She said we should make time for ourselves, be sure to set aside some “You Time,” and also to try to go out with your mate alone, find a babysitter and get away. You Time. I liked that. The last thing I’ve wanted lately is time alone. As soon as Nate goes down for his nap, I’m outside mowing the lawn or pulling weeds, basically doing anything that keeps me occupied, that keeps my mind from wandering.
The counselor also talked about staying “in the moment.” Ironically, because of something I said. I forget how we got there, but I was talking about watching Nate and noticing the little things he does, how fascinating it is to see him identify small objects and learning the connections between things. This was basically a lie, or at best an exaggeration. I’m constantly NOT in the moment. He’ll be playing with something and I’ll be staring off into space and five minutes later I’ll tune back in and he’ll have rat poison in his mouth or he’ll be juggling steak knives. Yesterday he swung a 3-iron into our living room window (thank goodness for tempered glass, no harm done except for another near heart attack).
The easy way out of those moods is to get in the car. I have fought the temptation most days because if I go out in the morning he’ll invariably fall asleep and that steals time from his afternoon nap, which is (as I have probably mentioned) time for me (searching for a job, sending out resumes). Today, I really did need to go shopping (Soo’s parents are coming up and we needed sodas, beer, coffee, Hoody’s Unsalted Peanuts, you know, the staples), so I strapped him in and we were off to Silverdale (or Consumerdale as our mortgage broker calls it). Silverdale has a Costco, a Walmart, a Target, it’s home to the Kitsap Mall (with a Mervyn’s, a Bon Marche [which is Macy’s, as far as I can tell], and permutations of everything else in every other mall across America. To get to Silverdale you have to drive through Poulsbo. Poulsbo is fighting the arrival of its Walmart. To give you a fairly good idea of the progression of communities, Las Piedras Island would never (EVER) have a Walmart (McDonald’s snuck on the island just before a city ordinance was passed effectively banning chain stores). Driving through Poulsbo I saw a sign on a Real Estate office that read “Some View, Needs Work.” All the way to Silverdale I played with that in my head, until I was convinced it was there to describe me. Some View, Needs Work. Some view he needs work. He has some vision, but he still needs work. In Berkeley there was a guy that would set up a little Mr. Microphone on Bancroft right at the entrance to Sproul Plaza, probably the most trafficked area on campus (if not the whole city). He’d set up a handwritten sign that read, “The Rick Starr Show,” and he’d sing for hours, mostly old Frank Sinatra songs. He’d croon. He’d wail. His singing was unanimously considered crap. He did it for years, all the years I was there at least (slightly more than four). Finally, “The Daily Californian” did a story on him. He lived with his mother, who had always wanted him to be a performer like Sinatra. She paid for singing lessons. He practiced. He tried to find an agent. It never happened for him. And, yet, here he was looking well (really unwell) past 40, begging for recognition and spare change from people who mostly pitied him. Some View, Needs Work.
It makes me think of the signs the Nazis put over the entrances to the concentration camps: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” (Work sets you free). Forget your dreams, forget what you wanted to do, you probably weren’t that good at it anyway (Look at Rick Starr!) just do the work and you won’t have to think. Do what you’re told. That’s what I keep hearing in my head. Just do what you’re told. Ignore the distractions and just get a job. Take care of the kid and the family, get health benefits, don’t play golf north of Las Piedras Island, get a job.
But, I just can’t help but wonder. I mean, I’ve had other moments where I thought I’d seen things that I hadn’t. There was a time once when I couldn’t sleep and I heard noises outside (this was as a teenager at my parent’s house), and I thought I saw something in the yard. So, I went out to look and it was like a dull, glowing brown orb. It disappeared, floating away from me when I walked towards it trying to get a closer look. Another time, (again plagued by insomnia), I went for a late night walk while I was on vacation, and I could have sworn I saw stars in the sands of a beach, and not just a few flickering grains of sand, I’m talking a realistic representation of the Milky Way, deep multidimensional galaxy-in-a-dune sort of thing. And, these were the instances when I was stone cold sober. Granted, both were at night and the light could have just been playing tricks on me. They could easily be explained away as mere physical illusions. I have never imagined entire conversations with two people I’d never met before. Of course, I’d had conversations with people and walked away with an entirely different idea of what had been discussed than the person I had just spoken to, but then who hadn’t. There was that time I thought I was a modern day John the Baptist, but that could be written off as a garden variety (albeit in a mutated form) Christ complex (nothing twelve years of Catholic school couldn’t explain). Full blown paranoid delusion has to be more complex. This started me thinking on the way home from Silverdale about Sylvia Plath and “The Bell Jar.” If you really are clinically depressed is it possible to write such beautiful prose. And, if you can write that well (and be acknowledged for it) would you really off yourself? But then one can’t ALWAYS write that well. That is the rub.
When it’s all over
I feel I don’t exist
The visions desist
I’m left to subsist
On grist
And what’s leftover.
So then I started thinking, well, what do people do if they occasionally have odd experiences, or odd thoughts, or if they can on the off chance express those thoughts and experiences in an interesting way. I guess what I’m getting at is, what makes them an artist? What makes Sinatra an artist and Rick Starr a joke? A friend sent me an article on Blogging, web logs, where people chronicle what they do, oh, what the hell, I’ll just insert the whole email (skip it if you want, oh imagined reader):
“Blog article from my sister....
What ever happened to the Barbie diary with the little key? Why keep your private journal on the internet? The answer is obvious. You don't want it to be private. I'd warn anyone related to, involved with, or contemplating becoming involved with a blogger about the possibility of their personal life being opened up to the world. Yuk. Maybe I'm just getting old, but this concept makes me sick.”
************************************************************
May 18, 2003
Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It
By WARREN ST. JOHN
Rick Bruner's awakening to the power of the written word came by way of
A throwaway line, typed one afternoon in the cerulean glow of his I.B.M. ThinkPad. Mr. Bruner, a 37-year-old Manhattan marketing consultant, keeps a Web log, an online diary known as a blog. After coming in for some sporting abuse from a friend who told him blogging was a waste of time, Mr. Bruner wrote in his blog that the friend "was fat and runs like a girl," adding that he was sure the friend would not be offended "because he doesn't read blogs."
With a push of a button, the comment was published on Mr. Bruner's site, www.bruner.net/blog, and accessible to anyone with a computer. A few days later, though, that friend's curiosity about blogs was awakened after all. He quickly found Mr. Bruner's site and was "deeply aggrieved," Mr. Bruner said. Their friendship barely survived the episode. "It was a big wake-up call," Mr. Bruner said. "Sometimes it's good to have an editor."
Mr. Bruner's experience is typical of many who have waded into the
thrilling and sometimes perilous world of blogging, a once marginal activity of Internet enthusiasts that has become squarely mainstream, with an estimated three million active blogs online, according to Nick Denton, the head of Gawker Media, a blog publisher. While blogging journalists like Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus and Eric Alterman get a lot of attention, a vast majority of bloggers are average
citizens like Mr. Bruner, who draw from their personal experiences -
and often the personal experiences of relatives, friends and colleagues – to create a kind of memoir in motion that details breakups and work and family issues with sometimes startling candor.
While personal blogs have been around for years, their proliferation has caused a wrinkle in the social fabric among people in their teens, 20's and early 30's. Inundated with bloggers, they are finding that every clique now has its own Matt Drudge, someone capable of instantly turning details of their lives into saucy Internet fare.
"It's like all your friends are reporters now," said Douglas Rushkoff,
a blogger and author of "Media Virus" and other books about the impact of technology on society.
In the rush to publish, many bloggers are running headlong into some of the problems conventionally published memoirists know too well: hurt
feelings, newly wary friends and relatives, and the occasional inflamed employer.
"All writing is a form of negotiation between the reader and writer
over what constitutes responsibility," said David Weinberger, author of
"Small Pieces Loosely Joined," a book about the Internet. "Because blogs are a new form, the negotiation can easily go awry."
Mr. Weinberger said the confessional nature of many blogs had "redrawn the line between what's private and public."
Heather Armstrong, a 27-year-old Web designer from Utah whose blog is at www.dooce.com, might be the ultimate example of blogging gone awry. Her parents are devout Mormons, she said, but because they are also technophobes, she felt perfectly comfortable publishing an entry on her site in which she harshly criticized her Mormon upbringing.
Unfortunately for Ms. Armstrong, her brother in Seattle stumbled across
her Web site that very day and alerted her parents to the entry. After
that, Ms. Armstrong said, "all hell broke loose." "Next to my parents getting divorced 20 years ago," Ms. Armstrong said, "it was the worst thing that ever happened to my family. It was shocking for everyone."
Ms. Armstrong's run-in with the perils of self-publishing did not end
there. She also wrote about her job and her co-workers in her blog, often hyperbolically. When her bosses were alerted that Ms. Armstrong was writing about her office life, they fired her, she said. She is now much more careful about what she publishes in her blog, and she had a word of caution for bloggers who write furtively about others. "If you're publishing under your own name, they'll find out," she said. "I was extremely naïve."
Being found out is no deterrent for 18-year-old Trisha Allen, a blogger
from Kentucky. She has been blogging for roughly a month, and spends most of her time reporting candidly on her friends and on her relationship with her boyfriend.
A recent entry reveals that the couple are not quite ready for children
- though "we have had two scares" - and that Ms. Allen's preferred form
of birth control is the pill, even though, she wrote, "I am starting to
hate it, because it has screwed up my menstrual cycle wickedly."
"There's not a lot I won't put on there," Ms. Allen said by telephone.
Ms. Allen said her mother was aware she keeps an online journal, but does not know how to find it, and added that she relied on a doctrine of security by obscurity, hoping that in the vast universe of personal Web sites known as the blogosphere, she will be able to preserve her anonymity behind all those other blogs.
Ms. Allen said her motivation for posting personal details was simple:
"I love to be the center of attention."
Indeed, for many bloggers being noticed seems to be the point. John M.
Grohol, a psychologist in the Boston area who has written about bloggers, said they often offered intimate details of their lives as a ploy to build readership.
"It's like, `How do I get people to read this?'" he said. "Then you
want them to keep reading it. It becomes a snowball rolling downhill that becomes very rewarding for the blogger because they're getting feedback from their friends and from random folks."
Deirdre Clemente, a blogger from Brooklyn who is now a a student at the
Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, frequently uses her
relationships as fodder for her blog, www.deirdreclemente.com.
That became an issue for a recent boyfriend of hers, a 34-year-old
Manhattan hedge-fund manager who feared that having his name in the blog could compromise his business relationships.
During his eight-month stint as a nameless regular on Ms. Clemente's
site, he said, "it was an odd feeling that there was a camera on me." Friends and relatives who knew about the site followed his relationship online, he said.
"On occasion my mother would send me an e-mail saying, `How was the
play?' or, `Sounds like you had a nice weekend away,' " he said.
But as a literary trope, the boyfriend worked well. Ms. Clemente said
she frequently received e-mail messages from strangers who followed the ups and downs of their relationship on her blog.
When the relationship ended, she said, "I had totally random people
e-mailing me saying they were sad we broke up." She described the
experience as "totally weird," but added, "As a writer, having anyone read your stuff is a compliment."
With so many self-publishing reporters out there, some say they feel a
need to watch themselves, for fear that casual comments made to friends
might make tomorrow morning's entry.
The proliferation of personal bloggers has led to a new social anxiety:
the fear of getting blogged.
"It's personal etiquette meets journalistic rules," Mr. Denton, the
blog publisher, said. "If you have a friend who's a blogger you have to say, `This is not for blogging.' It's the blogging equivalent of `This is off the record.'"
Jonathan Van Gieson, a 29-year-old theatrical producer from Brooklyn
who sometimes writes about friends on his site, www.jonathanvangieson.com, said he gave his friends pseudonyms "to
toe the line between simple harmless betrayal of trust and nasty
actionable libel." Before starting his blog, Mr. Van Gieson said he drew a comic strip based on his friends for his college newspaper, and in describing their predicament he summed up the current lot of many in the age of blogging.
"My close friends are used to having their lives plundered," he said.
************************************************
Do we all just think we have something remarkable to share? Or is it an evolution in publishing, ensuring a gem isn’t missed. Maybe they’ll find the next “A Confederacy of Dunces” before the author’s dead. Although, the Hope Diamond could be rolling around in the surf with a million common stones and no one would be able to find it. What compels us then to write this crap down? If I’m honest about my desire to just get a job, I’d walk away from this computer right now. Forget about “Agents” McMahon and Perry, forget about driving towards Kingston just to see what the truth is because, well, if I might paraphrase the words of Ken Kirsch and Ronald Miller as sung by Charlene, truth is “that little baby you’re holding, and it’s that (wo)man you fought with this morning, the same one you’re going to make love with tonight. That’s truth, that’s love.” Isn’t the Internet great. You just think of a song, type in a few words, and presto, you’ve found the complete lyrics and who wrote them. If only secret government agencies weren’t using it to spy on us.
We’ve been going out a lot, meeting people in the park and I’ve even started taking him to an organized play group. We went yesterday and he had a great time playing with the other toddlers, flirting with the little girls, mooching snacks from whoever brought them. The play group is organized by the city and meets at a local school. There are toys and a small plastic slide, a rocking horse and seats for both parents and kids. Yesterday they brought in a counselor to talk to parents (all mothers except me) about dealing with stress. She said we should make time for ourselves, be sure to set aside some “You Time,” and also to try to go out with your mate alone, find a babysitter and get away. You Time. I liked that. The last thing I’ve wanted lately is time alone. As soon as Nate goes down for his nap, I’m outside mowing the lawn or pulling weeds, basically doing anything that keeps me occupied, that keeps my mind from wandering.
The counselor also talked about staying “in the moment.” Ironically, because of something I said. I forget how we got there, but I was talking about watching Nate and noticing the little things he does, how fascinating it is to see him identify small objects and learning the connections between things. This was basically a lie, or at best an exaggeration. I’m constantly NOT in the moment. He’ll be playing with something and I’ll be staring off into space and five minutes later I’ll tune back in and he’ll have rat poison in his mouth or he’ll be juggling steak knives. Yesterday he swung a 3-iron into our living room window (thank goodness for tempered glass, no harm done except for another near heart attack).
The easy way out of those moods is to get in the car. I have fought the temptation most days because if I go out in the morning he’ll invariably fall asleep and that steals time from his afternoon nap, which is (as I have probably mentioned) time for me (searching for a job, sending out resumes). Today, I really did need to go shopping (Soo’s parents are coming up and we needed sodas, beer, coffee, Hoody’s Unsalted Peanuts, you know, the staples), so I strapped him in and we were off to Silverdale (or Consumerdale as our mortgage broker calls it). Silverdale has a Costco, a Walmart, a Target, it’s home to the Kitsap Mall (with a Mervyn’s, a Bon Marche [which is Macy’s, as far as I can tell], and permutations of everything else in every other mall across America. To get to Silverdale you have to drive through Poulsbo. Poulsbo is fighting the arrival of its Walmart. To give you a fairly good idea of the progression of communities, Las Piedras Island would never (EVER) have a Walmart (McDonald’s snuck on the island just before a city ordinance was passed effectively banning chain stores). Driving through Poulsbo I saw a sign on a Real Estate office that read “Some View, Needs Work.” All the way to Silverdale I played with that in my head, until I was convinced it was there to describe me. Some View, Needs Work. Some view he needs work. He has some vision, but he still needs work. In Berkeley there was a guy that would set up a little Mr. Microphone on Bancroft right at the entrance to Sproul Plaza, probably the most trafficked area on campus (if not the whole city). He’d set up a handwritten sign that read, “The Rick Starr Show,” and he’d sing for hours, mostly old Frank Sinatra songs. He’d croon. He’d wail. His singing was unanimously considered crap. He did it for years, all the years I was there at least (slightly more than four). Finally, “The Daily Californian” did a story on him. He lived with his mother, who had always wanted him to be a performer like Sinatra. She paid for singing lessons. He practiced. He tried to find an agent. It never happened for him. And, yet, here he was looking well (really unwell) past 40, begging for recognition and spare change from people who mostly pitied him. Some View, Needs Work.
It makes me think of the signs the Nazis put over the entrances to the concentration camps: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” (Work sets you free). Forget your dreams, forget what you wanted to do, you probably weren’t that good at it anyway (Look at Rick Starr!) just do the work and you won’t have to think. Do what you’re told. That’s what I keep hearing in my head. Just do what you’re told. Ignore the distractions and just get a job. Take care of the kid and the family, get health benefits, don’t play golf north of Las Piedras Island, get a job.
But, I just can’t help but wonder. I mean, I’ve had other moments where I thought I’d seen things that I hadn’t. There was a time once when I couldn’t sleep and I heard noises outside (this was as a teenager at my parent’s house), and I thought I saw something in the yard. So, I went out to look and it was like a dull, glowing brown orb. It disappeared, floating away from me when I walked towards it trying to get a closer look. Another time, (again plagued by insomnia), I went for a late night walk while I was on vacation, and I could have sworn I saw stars in the sands of a beach, and not just a few flickering grains of sand, I’m talking a realistic representation of the Milky Way, deep multidimensional galaxy-in-a-dune sort of thing. And, these were the instances when I was stone cold sober. Granted, both were at night and the light could have just been playing tricks on me. They could easily be explained away as mere physical illusions. I have never imagined entire conversations with two people I’d never met before. Of course, I’d had conversations with people and walked away with an entirely different idea of what had been discussed than the person I had just spoken to, but then who hadn’t. There was that time I thought I was a modern day John the Baptist, but that could be written off as a garden variety (albeit in a mutated form) Christ complex (nothing twelve years of Catholic school couldn’t explain). Full blown paranoid delusion has to be more complex. This started me thinking on the way home from Silverdale about Sylvia Plath and “The Bell Jar.” If you really are clinically depressed is it possible to write such beautiful prose. And, if you can write that well (and be acknowledged for it) would you really off yourself? But then one can’t ALWAYS write that well. That is the rub.
When it’s all over
I feel I don’t exist
The visions desist
I’m left to subsist
On grist
And what’s leftover.
So then I started thinking, well, what do people do if they occasionally have odd experiences, or odd thoughts, or if they can on the off chance express those thoughts and experiences in an interesting way. I guess what I’m getting at is, what makes them an artist? What makes Sinatra an artist and Rick Starr a joke? A friend sent me an article on Blogging, web logs, where people chronicle what they do, oh, what the hell, I’ll just insert the whole email (skip it if you want, oh imagined reader):
“Blog article from my sister....
What ever happened to the Barbie diary with the little key? Why keep your private journal on the internet? The answer is obvious. You don't want it to be private. I'd warn anyone related to, involved with, or contemplating becoming involved with a blogger about the possibility of their personal life being opened up to the world. Yuk. Maybe I'm just getting old, but this concept makes me sick.”
************************************************************
May 18, 2003
Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It
By WARREN ST. JOHN
Rick Bruner's awakening to the power of the written word came by way of
A throwaway line, typed one afternoon in the cerulean glow of his I.B.M. ThinkPad. Mr. Bruner, a 37-year-old Manhattan marketing consultant, keeps a Web log, an online diary known as a blog. After coming in for some sporting abuse from a friend who told him blogging was a waste of time, Mr. Bruner wrote in his blog that the friend "was fat and runs like a girl," adding that he was sure the friend would not be offended "because he doesn't read blogs."
With a push of a button, the comment was published on Mr. Bruner's site, www.bruner.net/blog, and accessible to anyone with a computer. A few days later, though, that friend's curiosity about blogs was awakened after all. He quickly found Mr. Bruner's site and was "deeply aggrieved," Mr. Bruner said. Their friendship barely survived the episode. "It was a big wake-up call," Mr. Bruner said. "Sometimes it's good to have an editor."
Mr. Bruner's experience is typical of many who have waded into the
thrilling and sometimes perilous world of blogging, a once marginal activity of Internet enthusiasts that has become squarely mainstream, with an estimated three million active blogs online, according to Nick Denton, the head of Gawker Media, a blog publisher. While blogging journalists like Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus and Eric Alterman get a lot of attention, a vast majority of bloggers are average
citizens like Mr. Bruner, who draw from their personal experiences -
and often the personal experiences of relatives, friends and colleagues – to create a kind of memoir in motion that details breakups and work and family issues with sometimes startling candor.
While personal blogs have been around for years, their proliferation has caused a wrinkle in the social fabric among people in their teens, 20's and early 30's. Inundated with bloggers, they are finding that every clique now has its own Matt Drudge, someone capable of instantly turning details of their lives into saucy Internet fare.
"It's like all your friends are reporters now," said Douglas Rushkoff,
a blogger and author of "Media Virus" and other books about the impact of technology on society.
In the rush to publish, many bloggers are running headlong into some of the problems conventionally published memoirists know too well: hurt
feelings, newly wary friends and relatives, and the occasional inflamed employer.
"All writing is a form of negotiation between the reader and writer
over what constitutes responsibility," said David Weinberger, author of
"Small Pieces Loosely Joined," a book about the Internet. "Because blogs are a new form, the negotiation can easily go awry."
Mr. Weinberger said the confessional nature of many blogs had "redrawn the line between what's private and public."
Heather Armstrong, a 27-year-old Web designer from Utah whose blog is at www.dooce.com, might be the ultimate example of blogging gone awry. Her parents are devout Mormons, she said, but because they are also technophobes, she felt perfectly comfortable publishing an entry on her site in which she harshly criticized her Mormon upbringing.
Unfortunately for Ms. Armstrong, her brother in Seattle stumbled across
her Web site that very day and alerted her parents to the entry. After
that, Ms. Armstrong said, "all hell broke loose." "Next to my parents getting divorced 20 years ago," Ms. Armstrong said, "it was the worst thing that ever happened to my family. It was shocking for everyone."
Ms. Armstrong's run-in with the perils of self-publishing did not end
there. She also wrote about her job and her co-workers in her blog, often hyperbolically. When her bosses were alerted that Ms. Armstrong was writing about her office life, they fired her, she said. She is now much more careful about what she publishes in her blog, and she had a word of caution for bloggers who write furtively about others. "If you're publishing under your own name, they'll find out," she said. "I was extremely naïve."
Being found out is no deterrent for 18-year-old Trisha Allen, a blogger
from Kentucky. She has been blogging for roughly a month, and spends most of her time reporting candidly on her friends and on her relationship with her boyfriend.
A recent entry reveals that the couple are not quite ready for children
- though "we have had two scares" - and that Ms. Allen's preferred form
of birth control is the pill, even though, she wrote, "I am starting to
hate it, because it has screwed up my menstrual cycle wickedly."
"There's not a lot I won't put on there," Ms. Allen said by telephone.
Ms. Allen said her mother was aware she keeps an online journal, but does not know how to find it, and added that she relied on a doctrine of security by obscurity, hoping that in the vast universe of personal Web sites known as the blogosphere, she will be able to preserve her anonymity behind all those other blogs.
Ms. Allen said her motivation for posting personal details was simple:
"I love to be the center of attention."
Indeed, for many bloggers being noticed seems to be the point. John M.
Grohol, a psychologist in the Boston area who has written about bloggers, said they often offered intimate details of their lives as a ploy to build readership.
"It's like, `How do I get people to read this?'" he said. "Then you
want them to keep reading it. It becomes a snowball rolling downhill that becomes very rewarding for the blogger because they're getting feedback from their friends and from random folks."
Deirdre Clemente, a blogger from Brooklyn who is now a a student at the
Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, frequently uses her
relationships as fodder for her blog, www.deirdreclemente.com.
That became an issue for a recent boyfriend of hers, a 34-year-old
Manhattan hedge-fund manager who feared that having his name in the blog could compromise his business relationships.
During his eight-month stint as a nameless regular on Ms. Clemente's
site, he said, "it was an odd feeling that there was a camera on me." Friends and relatives who knew about the site followed his relationship online, he said.
"On occasion my mother would send me an e-mail saying, `How was the
play?' or, `Sounds like you had a nice weekend away,' " he said.
But as a literary trope, the boyfriend worked well. Ms. Clemente said
she frequently received e-mail messages from strangers who followed the ups and downs of their relationship on her blog.
When the relationship ended, she said, "I had totally random people
e-mailing me saying they were sad we broke up." She described the
experience as "totally weird," but added, "As a writer, having anyone read your stuff is a compliment."
With so many self-publishing reporters out there, some say they feel a
need to watch themselves, for fear that casual comments made to friends
might make tomorrow morning's entry.
The proliferation of personal bloggers has led to a new social anxiety:
the fear of getting blogged.
"It's personal etiquette meets journalistic rules," Mr. Denton, the
blog publisher, said. "If you have a friend who's a blogger you have to say, `This is not for blogging.' It's the blogging equivalent of `This is off the record.'"
Jonathan Van Gieson, a 29-year-old theatrical producer from Brooklyn
who sometimes writes about friends on his site, www.jonathanvangieson.com, said he gave his friends pseudonyms "to
toe the line between simple harmless betrayal of trust and nasty
actionable libel." Before starting his blog, Mr. Van Gieson said he drew a comic strip based on his friends for his college newspaper, and in describing their predicament he summed up the current lot of many in the age of blogging.
"My close friends are used to having their lives plundered," he said.
************************************************
Do we all just think we have something remarkable to share? Or is it an evolution in publishing, ensuring a gem isn’t missed. Maybe they’ll find the next “A Confederacy of Dunces” before the author’s dead. Although, the Hope Diamond could be rolling around in the surf with a million common stones and no one would be able to find it. What compels us then to write this crap down? If I’m honest about my desire to just get a job, I’d walk away from this computer right now. Forget about “Agents” McMahon and Perry, forget about driving towards Kingston just to see what the truth is because, well, if I might paraphrase the words of Ken Kirsch and Ronald Miller as sung by Charlene, truth is “that little baby you’re holding, and it’s that (wo)man you fought with this morning, the same one you’re going to make love with tonight. That’s truth, that’s love.” Isn’t the Internet great. You just think of a song, type in a few words, and presto, you’ve found the complete lyrics and who wrote them. If only secret government agencies weren’t using it to spy on us.
Thursday, June 26, 2003
A Sleeping Baby
Is there anything more wonderful in the world than a sleeping baby. There’s not a trace of worry, just peaceful bliss, rosy cheeks, maybe moist hair (not the disturbing nightsweats that have been plaguing me, waking up in drenched sheets), relaxed rhythmic breathing. It’s downright therapeutic to watch. If not for the fear that he could wake up screaming at any second. So, I quietly stepped away and silently shut the door behind me. To come down here and do what? Figure out what the hell just happened.
Or did it happen? I am a bit out of sorts. Could I have been napping? But I was typing, or was I? Was that some sort of Russell Crowe moment from “A Beautiful Mind”? Or have I just seen too many movies? Would someone drifting into dementia who had seen too many movies (or read too many books) recognize that they were imagining things, or am I giving lunatics too much credit. Maybe “lunatic” isn’t the proper word anymore, I should be careful about what I call the nuts of the world. I just might be one.
OK, so I just went outside to look at our gravel driveway to see if I could see tire tracks from a late model Lincoln Town Car, and I felt like a complete idiot, squatting down examining little rocks and traipsing about trying to see tracks that are different from our cars’. Maybe I could ask the neighbors if they saw the car. Except we’ve had almost no interaction with our neighbors so far and me walking over there to ask if they’d seen a couple of FBI agents driving past because I’m not sure if I just hallucinated an interrogation (sorry, “conversation”) might not be the best introduction. Do crazy people recognize they’re going crazy? Maybe I shouldn’t tell Soo about this. And, maybe I should stop sharing this little journal with people.
Hey, maybe that’s how they know what I’ve been emailing to people! I have sent this to who…lots of people, I guess. But who would have contact with the FBI?
Stop! Just STOP! I’m going to operate under the assumption that this just did not happen until somebody else, somebody not claiming to be with a government agency tells me it did. OK, I’m forgetting about it. Not even thinking about it. Think about what’s important. Think about getting a job. Think about Nathan. Loving wife and child. He leaves behind a loving wife and child.
Maybe I need some fresh air, or some greasy food. Man, I’m hungover. I can’t drink like I used to, this is awful. Give me some pork product, STAT!
Alright, nothing a little sausage and scrambled eggs couldn’t fix. Breakfast served any time. It reminds me of that Steven Wright line, “I’d like pancakes served in the Renaissance, please.” Focus.
Nate will be waking up soon, and we can go to the park. Everything’s going to be fine.
Or did it happen? I am a bit out of sorts. Could I have been napping? But I was typing, or was I? Was that some sort of Russell Crowe moment from “A Beautiful Mind”? Or have I just seen too many movies? Would someone drifting into dementia who had seen too many movies (or read too many books) recognize that they were imagining things, or am I giving lunatics too much credit. Maybe “lunatic” isn’t the proper word anymore, I should be careful about what I call the nuts of the world. I just might be one.
OK, so I just went outside to look at our gravel driveway to see if I could see tire tracks from a late model Lincoln Town Car, and I felt like a complete idiot, squatting down examining little rocks and traipsing about trying to see tracks that are different from our cars’. Maybe I could ask the neighbors if they saw the car. Except we’ve had almost no interaction with our neighbors so far and me walking over there to ask if they’d seen a couple of FBI agents driving past because I’m not sure if I just hallucinated an interrogation (sorry, “conversation”) might not be the best introduction. Do crazy people recognize they’re going crazy? Maybe I shouldn’t tell Soo about this. And, maybe I should stop sharing this little journal with people.
Hey, maybe that’s how they know what I’ve been emailing to people! I have sent this to who…lots of people, I guess. But who would have contact with the FBI?
Stop! Just STOP! I’m going to operate under the assumption that this just did not happen until somebody else, somebody not claiming to be with a government agency tells me it did. OK, I’m forgetting about it. Not even thinking about it. Think about what’s important. Think about getting a job. Think about Nathan. Loving wife and child. He leaves behind a loving wife and child.
Maybe I need some fresh air, or some greasy food. Man, I’m hungover. I can’t drink like I used to, this is awful. Give me some pork product, STAT!
Alright, nothing a little sausage and scrambled eggs couldn’t fix. Breakfast served any time. It reminds me of that Steven Wright line, “I’d like pancakes served in the Renaissance, please.” Focus.
Nate will be waking up soon, and we can go to the park. Everything’s going to be fine.
Monday, June 23, 2003
What the Hell Was That?
Nate’s still asleep and I’m a bit shook up, so I’m just going to take a moment to write this down here to try to make sense of things. We live at the end of a long dirt road. There are seven other houses along the road, but we haven’t had too much interaction with any of our neighbors. They’ve never driven or walked over to say “hello” which is fine by us. In fact I can count the number of people who have driven up to our house since we’ve been here on one hand: my cousin, the mailman, the FedEx truck and the UPS truck. That’s it. We’ve had other visitors, but we’ve gone to get them at the ferry terminal or met them at the airport. So, I was more than shocked just now to see a car, an official looking car, not a cop car, but a cop car, if you know what I mean. A Lincoln Town Car, I think it was. It just rolled up our driveway, and I sat here and watched two men in bad jackets get out, adjust themselves, and then come walking up to our front door.
To say I was shocked would be understatement. I’m still shaking a bit. For one, I look (and feel) like shit. Did I mention I’m hungover? I haven’t showered, I’ve had too much coffee, I’m wearing sweats, an old T-shirt and my slippers, and two fucking cops are about to ring my doorbell. “I had to stop them,” was the first thing that my booze-addled brain could come up with. This was nap time, the most precious time of the day, the entire morning is spent getting to this time, preparing, feeding, tiring out the boy and going through those familiar motions so he’ll sleep for his allotted time. I didn’t care if these guys were J. Edgar Hoover and his homosexual lover, they weren’t going to ring that bell and wake up Nate. We have a small covered deck that leads up to our front door. Windows open onto that deck, so I could see these clowns more closely as they approached the bell. One was fit, youngish, mid to late thirties, close cut brown hair. The other was older, maybe early-forties, a slight paunch, but not your stereotypical Brian Dennehy cop, dark hair graying at the temples. I opened the door as the younger guy was about to push the doorbell. I must have impressed them.
“Mr. Shakes?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Bill Shakes?”
“You can call me Billy,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Would it be alright if we came in?” the older one asked kindly.
“Would it be alright if you told me who you are?” I said.
“Oh, yes, certainly. Sorry. I’m Agent McMahon, and this is Agent Perry.”
“Agents? You’re not with the William Morris Agency,” I said. (OK, not really. You always think of the really funny things to say after it’s all over and you’ve had time to think).
“Agents?” I said stupidly.
“We’re with the 10th district office of the Bureau operating out of Seattle in cooperation with the department of Homeland Defense,” or some such collection of words from McMahon. I can’t remember exactly what he said, and goddamit I didn’t get their cards. Soo’s never going to believe me, unless, unless she’s done this as a joke. But, no, she couldn’t have, these guys would have had to have been professional actors and she wouldn’t go to the trouble, not to mention the cost. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but I just want to jot down what I recall to try to make sense of this.
“I’ve got a toddler asleep,” I told them.
“We’ll be as quiet as possible,” said Perry and I wondered what they could possibly want as I led them into our cluttered living room.
Stepping around Elmo in a chicken suit they sat down on our black leather couch strafed as it is by years of cat clawings. I sat slightly to the side of them in our love seat, equally clawed (fucking cats).
“So, how can I help you?” I asked.
McMahon looked around sheepishly, appearing rather embarrassed to have to bring up what he was about to say in this clearly innocuous home. “Well, to be perfectly frank, Mr. Shakes, we’ve been sent to ask you a few questions because a group affiliated with the Bureau has identified the words ‘al-Qaeda operative’ in materials we believe you’ve written and have been transmitting over the Internet.”
“Transmitting over the Internet,” I thought to myself, and it conjured up images of German spies in ramshackle London flats sending secret radio signals back to Berlin. “Are you joking?” I finally said after pausing to look at the both of them sitting there on that couch. I just turned to look at the couch again as if to make sure it’s possible that two people like this could have just been sitting there with a package of diaper wipes at their feet speaking these words to me.
“Mr. Shakes, we do not joke about matters of National Security,” Perry said the words with such gravity that I figured they needed to be capitalized.
I stared at the man in utter disbelief. There had been no other time in my life when that term was more true, and I’ve seen some things that were pretty hard to believe. I watched nearly every episode of “The Bachelor.” I looked closely at their faces and saw the familiar absence of a sense of humor I’d seen in law enforcement officials before. McMahon appeared slightly bored, but not amused. He seemed to know this was a fool’s errand, and at his age, saw this as beneath him. This is all speculation, of course, with all of a half hour’s perspective.
“Don’t you think if I were an al Qaeda operative I would expressly NOT use the words ‘al Qaeda operative’ specifically to avoid an interview such as this.”
“This is just a conversation, Mr. Shakes,” Perry clarified.
“Yes,” McMahon broke in, “Merely a formality.”
“OK, whatever,” I started, frustrated and baffled at the stupidity of my own country, “But, don’t you think the people you’re trying to find would be a little more, I don’t know, careful, secretive.”
“Yes. Unless they knew that we would be thinking that way, so they could ‘hide out in the open’ as it were and use those words to fall into the general clutter of conversation going on in the general populace.” This was McMahon.
I looked at him with new found respect. Clearly this was a different kind of cop.
“So, by that logic you’d have to interview…I mean ‘have conversations with’ what, thousands of people every day.”
“Well, no,” started McMahon, “All searches, each individual reference from the search is cross-referenced against a predefined set of parameters.”
“What parameters?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me, but you can just show up at my house and accuse me of being an al Qaeda operative.”
“Nobody’s ‘accusing’ anybody of anything,” broke in Perry.
“Well, then I’m just a little unclear on why the hell you’re here,” I might not have said “hell.”
“There’s no reason to get upset, Mr. Shakes,” said Perry.
I blinked at one then the other, “Why are you here?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“We’re simply here to make a friendly recommendation,” Perry said in a tone and with a manner that felt to me decidedly unfriendly.
“What’s that?”
“You matched a certain number of our parameters, but there was nothing in your background to suggest you posed a security risk.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” I said thinking there was absolutely nothing reassuring about matching an unspecified number of unspecified parameters.
“However,” Perry continued, “During the course of an unrelated investigation being conducted by another agency you were seen talking with people who may or may not be involved in something we think you’d rather not be involved in.”
There were so many things disturbing about that sentence I didn’t notice it ended in a preposition until now. My mind started racing, who had I been talking to that could be under investigation by an unnamed government agency. And, AND, how the hell do they know what I’ve been emailing to people?!?! This is nuts.
So, then Perry reaches into the breast pocket of his bad blazer and pulls out an envelope filled with fuzzy black and white photos of me at the South Kingston range talking with Jake. I was stunned.
“We don’t have anything concrete,” said Perry, “But, we just think it would be in your best interest if you stayed away from this person.”
They talked some more and I sat there and mostly just nodded and agreed. Then they left. I need to go check on Nate.
To say I was shocked would be understatement. I’m still shaking a bit. For one, I look (and feel) like shit. Did I mention I’m hungover? I haven’t showered, I’ve had too much coffee, I’m wearing sweats, an old T-shirt and my slippers, and two fucking cops are about to ring my doorbell. “I had to stop them,” was the first thing that my booze-addled brain could come up with. This was nap time, the most precious time of the day, the entire morning is spent getting to this time, preparing, feeding, tiring out the boy and going through those familiar motions so he’ll sleep for his allotted time. I didn’t care if these guys were J. Edgar Hoover and his homosexual lover, they weren’t going to ring that bell and wake up Nate. We have a small covered deck that leads up to our front door. Windows open onto that deck, so I could see these clowns more closely as they approached the bell. One was fit, youngish, mid to late thirties, close cut brown hair. The other was older, maybe early-forties, a slight paunch, but not your stereotypical Brian Dennehy cop, dark hair graying at the temples. I opened the door as the younger guy was about to push the doorbell. I must have impressed them.
“Mr. Shakes?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Bill Shakes?”
“You can call me Billy,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Would it be alright if we came in?” the older one asked kindly.
“Would it be alright if you told me who you are?” I said.
“Oh, yes, certainly. Sorry. I’m Agent McMahon, and this is Agent Perry.”
“Agents? You’re not with the William Morris Agency,” I said. (OK, not really. You always think of the really funny things to say after it’s all over and you’ve had time to think).
“Agents?” I said stupidly.
“We’re with the 10th district office of the Bureau operating out of Seattle in cooperation with the department of Homeland Defense,” or some such collection of words from McMahon. I can’t remember exactly what he said, and goddamit I didn’t get their cards. Soo’s never going to believe me, unless, unless she’s done this as a joke. But, no, she couldn’t have, these guys would have had to have been professional actors and she wouldn’t go to the trouble, not to mention the cost. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but I just want to jot down what I recall to try to make sense of this.
“I’ve got a toddler asleep,” I told them.
“We’ll be as quiet as possible,” said Perry and I wondered what they could possibly want as I led them into our cluttered living room.
Stepping around Elmo in a chicken suit they sat down on our black leather couch strafed as it is by years of cat clawings. I sat slightly to the side of them in our love seat, equally clawed (fucking cats).
“So, how can I help you?” I asked.
McMahon looked around sheepishly, appearing rather embarrassed to have to bring up what he was about to say in this clearly innocuous home. “Well, to be perfectly frank, Mr. Shakes, we’ve been sent to ask you a few questions because a group affiliated with the Bureau has identified the words ‘al-Qaeda operative’ in materials we believe you’ve written and have been transmitting over the Internet.”
“Transmitting over the Internet,” I thought to myself, and it conjured up images of German spies in ramshackle London flats sending secret radio signals back to Berlin. “Are you joking?” I finally said after pausing to look at the both of them sitting there on that couch. I just turned to look at the couch again as if to make sure it’s possible that two people like this could have just been sitting there with a package of diaper wipes at their feet speaking these words to me.
“Mr. Shakes, we do not joke about matters of National Security,” Perry said the words with such gravity that I figured they needed to be capitalized.
I stared at the man in utter disbelief. There had been no other time in my life when that term was more true, and I’ve seen some things that were pretty hard to believe. I watched nearly every episode of “The Bachelor.” I looked closely at their faces and saw the familiar absence of a sense of humor I’d seen in law enforcement officials before. McMahon appeared slightly bored, but not amused. He seemed to know this was a fool’s errand, and at his age, saw this as beneath him. This is all speculation, of course, with all of a half hour’s perspective.
“Don’t you think if I were an al Qaeda operative I would expressly NOT use the words ‘al Qaeda operative’ specifically to avoid an interview such as this.”
“This is just a conversation, Mr. Shakes,” Perry clarified.
“Yes,” McMahon broke in, “Merely a formality.”
“OK, whatever,” I started, frustrated and baffled at the stupidity of my own country, “But, don’t you think the people you’re trying to find would be a little more, I don’t know, careful, secretive.”
“Yes. Unless they knew that we would be thinking that way, so they could ‘hide out in the open’ as it were and use those words to fall into the general clutter of conversation going on in the general populace.” This was McMahon.
I looked at him with new found respect. Clearly this was a different kind of cop.
“So, by that logic you’d have to interview…I mean ‘have conversations with’ what, thousands of people every day.”
“Well, no,” started McMahon, “All searches, each individual reference from the search is cross-referenced against a predefined set of parameters.”
“What parameters?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me, but you can just show up at my house and accuse me of being an al Qaeda operative.”
“Nobody’s ‘accusing’ anybody of anything,” broke in Perry.
“Well, then I’m just a little unclear on why the hell you’re here,” I might not have said “hell.”
“There’s no reason to get upset, Mr. Shakes,” said Perry.
I blinked at one then the other, “Why are you here?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“We’re simply here to make a friendly recommendation,” Perry said in a tone and with a manner that felt to me decidedly unfriendly.
“What’s that?”
“You matched a certain number of our parameters, but there was nothing in your background to suggest you posed a security risk.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” I said thinking there was absolutely nothing reassuring about matching an unspecified number of unspecified parameters.
“However,” Perry continued, “During the course of an unrelated investigation being conducted by another agency you were seen talking with people who may or may not be involved in something we think you’d rather not be involved in.”
There were so many things disturbing about that sentence I didn’t notice it ended in a preposition until now. My mind started racing, who had I been talking to that could be under investigation by an unnamed government agency. And, AND, how the hell do they know what I’ve been emailing to people?!?! This is nuts.
So, then Perry reaches into the breast pocket of his bad blazer and pulls out an envelope filled with fuzzy black and white photos of me at the South Kingston range talking with Jake. I was stunned.
“We don’t have anything concrete,” said Perry, “But, we just think it would be in your best interest if you stayed away from this person.”
They talked some more and I sat there and mostly just nodded and agreed. Then they left. I need to go check on Nate.
The Child’s Television Workshop
Kid’s TV can rot your brain. All TV can rot your brain, but children’s television does it in an insidious Pollyannic fashion that slowly eats away at what is real until you actually start believing there’s a magical place where black people and Hispanics and whites live together in peaceful harmony, and bad guys wear masks and all you have to do to make them stop being bad guys is shout, “Swiper, no swiping!” Our television sits behind me as I type. We have a laptop set up in the corner of our little living room. I can look out the window at our driveway and a corner of our lawn. I frequently try to type here while Nate watches TV. I’m getting him in the habit. He watches Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues, Bob the Builder and Gulla Gulla Island, not in that order.
I fix him lunch and then we sit down and watch a little TV before he drowses off and we do our nap ritual. Sometimes he’ll be fixated by the TV and I can creep over here to check email or write some of this crap. It usually doesn’t last long. He’ll come over and just drag me away, or he’ll insert his head between my left elbow and the edge of the desk, often resulting in him bumping his head. He’s not above hurting himself to get attention. I’ve set up an old Mac of mine so he’s got something like what Daddy plays with to play with.
Today, hungover as I am, kid’s TV was welcome rot. I just sat on the couch and vegetated with him. It’s educational, I tell myself. For him, maybe. For me, I frighten myself by singing along, by actually enjoying the lessons that are being taught in their surreptitious way. Listen to your parents, do what you’re told and you’ll be rewarded, problems can be solved in three easy steps and in less than half an hour. It’s infectious.
Wait a second…someone just pulled into our driveway…
I fix him lunch and then we sit down and watch a little TV before he drowses off and we do our nap ritual. Sometimes he’ll be fixated by the TV and I can creep over here to check email or write some of this crap. It usually doesn’t last long. He’ll come over and just drag me away, or he’ll insert his head between my left elbow and the edge of the desk, often resulting in him bumping his head. He’s not above hurting himself to get attention. I’ve set up an old Mac of mine so he’s got something like what Daddy plays with to play with.
Today, hungover as I am, kid’s TV was welcome rot. I just sat on the couch and vegetated with him. It’s educational, I tell myself. For him, maybe. For me, I frighten myself by singing along, by actually enjoying the lessons that are being taught in their surreptitious way. Listen to your parents, do what you’re told and you’ll be rewarded, problems can be solved in three easy steps and in less than half an hour. It’s infectious.
Wait a second…someone just pulled into our driveway…
Sunday, June 22, 2003
Spring-Loaded
Yesterday I went into Seattle to meet up with an old friend. There are at least three people living in the area that went to college with me. I’m certain there are more (about 100,000 people went to college with me), but those three are the only ones I know here. I told myself it would be good to get out of the house, and he might know people who might know people, but the truth is he’s a doctor and the people he knows don’t really know the people who could connect me to a job in my field, and I knew that going into town.
The plan was I’d take care of Nate until 11:15 and then meet Soo at work to do the switcheroo. She’d take the boy and drop me off to catch the 11:30 ferry. Nate and I spent most of the morning in my car, he likes climbing over the seats, fiddling with the radio and, like all kids, loves to play with keys. Soo and I both have Volkswagens with those stubby black keychains, they include remote locks and have a long rectangular key hidden inside released by pushing a shiny chrome button. I spent hours (well, a lot of time anyway) with Nate as he learned to push that button to make the key appear. It was harder to load up the keychain. Holding down the button and pushing the key back into its hiding place. Its fun to watch kids figure things out (fun for the first hour anyway). Whether he’s climbing stairs or putting together a puzzle, opening a door or just recognizing familiar things in books, the look of concentration on his face is priceless (does this word now sound cheaper to you, too?). He’ll get frustrated, and sometimes he’ll start to cry, but eventually (after much trial and error) he gets it. The parental patience required is immense. Leaning over to hold his hands as he climbs up some stairs is cute the first hundred times, the 101st time hurts your back, you remember other things you need to do. I’m not complaining, honestly, I write this as a tribute to parents everywhere (the ones who resist the temptation to smack the little buggers around).
There are moments when I get more frustrated than Nate, and I want to stop and scream at the world. We’re alike in so many ways, I see myself in him constantly. I don’t know if that means I have the mentality of a toddler or if that’s just a normal parental reflection. Maybe we’re all just toddlers stuck in adult bodies. We want to crap our pants whenever the bowels move us. We want more and goddamn it we’ll cry if we don’t get it. We want to go outside now, NOW, not in five minutes, not when we get our shoes on, NOW. As adults we either have the power to get what we want or the knowledge that we will have to live with disappointment. Nathan hasn’t learned to accept this, and maybe we shouldn’t either.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of acceptance, believe that you are diminished, smoke the opiate of the masses (or swill the Budweiser of the buffoonery) and tell yourself you’re happy with what you’ve got, with who you are. I went out with a girl once who said she never wanted to be content. That’s pretty easy to say when you’re seventeen (don’t worry I was seventeen, too). At some point you just want to be left alone. Take your wife and kids and tuck them away in a gated community and forget about the rest of the world. Except if you successfully block out the rest of the world, the only input you’re left with comes from the internal you or those nearest you and, of course, TV. In most cases a perfectly satisfactory situation. I keep seeing horrific stories on the news, though, where this isn’t the case, where seemingly content domesticity has turned terrible. A man accused of killing his pregnant wife. A mother of three kills her two oldest boys, almost kills an infant, and calls the police to report herself. A young mother murdered by her husband (who is in the military) and then when the man dies (suspected suicide), HIS family receives death benefits (this story is disturbing on many levels). Maybe it’s just the way news is reported. These stories get repeated over and over again until it seems that the world is filled with such horrors, the anomalousness of them gets lost. We forget what a miniscule percentage of the population this is, the ones who snap. Or maybe we’re fascinated by them because we all secretly imagine ourselves snapping, as well. We feign disgust, but deep down inside we know we are capable of it, too. To admit such is taboo, it would pull down the veil, shatter the lie that we are all content, that we are happy and never have those bad thoughts or imagine those horrific acts. If the veil comes down you run the risk of being thrown into the camp that is “them” – the others, the failed.
I’m not entirely sure where this is coming from. To be honest, I’m wickedly hungover. I went into Seattle to meet my friend for lunch, but I knew it was just an excuse to get out and get loaded. Now, it’s early in the morning, I’m here hacking away staring at the gray mist of morning feeling about as cogent as a cloud. Do I need to do so every so often? Does everyone? Should I be concerned about it? I look at it as pruning. You snip off the old dead branches to let the new growth come in. Our shrubbery has been getting a good whacking lately, we go out and snip away, preparing for the burst of life. Spring-loaded shrubbery, a spring-loaded brain, a spring-loaded key, waiting to be opened, inserted into a keyhole to elicit new vistas. Too much? Have I overdone this one, gone too far? Maybe it was that last beer at La Piedra Cantina here on the island. I didn’t know the large was going to be THAT large, I thought your name had to be Helga to deliver a stein like that. I had met my friend at the bar at McCormick & Schmicks, or rather he met me. I was running through their beer list, literally, from top to bottom as it was written out in colored chalk on the board above the bar. I had a good head start by the time my friend showed up. He ordered a water and a bloody mary. He’d just woken up. He works those crazy 24 hour doctor shifts and had the next 48 hours off. We drank and ate and went to Fremont (which sucks now, according to the bumper stickers and regular patrons of the Buckeroo, a two pool table Fremont bar) for some low-impact recreating and continued frothy beverage consumption. By the time we needed to get back to the ferry, I had both a fairly good understanding of Fremont’s political factions and a good buzz going. I made the ferry and gave Soo a ring. Nate was still napping. The ferries are wonderful. People say Las Piedras Island residents grow to hate the ferries, restricted as they are by the schedule, forced to wait in line during peak hours, and otherwise just plain dependent upon it to get to civilization. I think that’s a bunch of rubbish. Any large floating vessel that has incredible views in all directions and five beers on tap is OK by me. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a lush. Yesterday was a bit of a binge and I’m paying for it this morning, but it’s a rare (and getting rarer) occasion when I’ve got my liberty, so I was going for broke. Besides, I didn’t have to drive anywhere, Soo was going to pick me up. She was home with Nate and had basically relieved me of my duties for the day. While relieving myself I realized how relieved I was to be relieved. It had been a long time since I’d been at large. The constant, albeit mostly low-level, stress of watching a small child wears on a man. All the near misses and odd direct hits accumulate in a reservoir of distraction, somewhere north of the bladder. Without a good flushing of the system every so often a person could get all clogged up. Forgive me, it’s early and my head feels like a lump of lead.
When I was about to arrive on Las Piedras, I called Soo again, but the boy was still asleep. “I could wake him,” she said.
“No just give me a ring when he’s up.” She couldn’t very well leave him napping to come pick me up.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, poke around,” I told her. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought I might go to the book store or just walk down Winslow (the almost touristy main drag), but my feet seemed to take me of their own accord to La Piedra Cantina, where I encountered that really large beer. I’d always thought the cantina was much smaller, we’d been to La Piedra for dinner once and lunch once in our first two months, but had never ventured into the attached drinking portion of the establishment. It was downright spacious, and, AND, it had a pool table, a fact I filed away for future reference. I recognized the proprietress of our local diner holding court at a table of talkative cohorts. I eavesdropped a bit, but mostly I just worked on that beer and waited for the phone to ring. Some guy walked in and sat down next to me at the bar. He said not a word. The bartender brought him his drink. A few minutes later the phone rang. The bartender answered and then handed the phone to the man sitting next to me, again without a word. I wanted to listen in on his conversation, but just then my phone rang.
“He’s up,” Soo said.
“OK, I’ll meet you in the supermarket parking lot.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m at La Piedra Cantina,” I told her, carefully pronouncing each word.
Slight pause. “Will you see us?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll see you.”
“OK.”
I figured I had about 10 minutes to finish the beer and settle up. By the time Soo picked me up I was good and loaded.
“Hanging out in the local bar at 3:30 in the afternoon. You’ll get a reputation as the town drunk,” she jokingly chided me.
“I think I’d have to stand in line.”
“Really. A few regulars in there?”
“There wasn’t a shortage of people who appeared familiar with the place,” I said perhaps too sloppily.
“You’re drunk.”
“Yeah, well, maybe,” I offered.
“Do you see this, Nathan,” she looked in the rear view mirror and spoke to our boy. “Your father is a drunk.”
“An unemployed drunk,” I added.
“What are we going to do?”
“What ARE we going to do?”
What are we going to do?
Drink more coffee and watch “Bob the Builder,” that’s what Nate and I are going to do.
The plan was I’d take care of Nate until 11:15 and then meet Soo at work to do the switcheroo. She’d take the boy and drop me off to catch the 11:30 ferry. Nate and I spent most of the morning in my car, he likes climbing over the seats, fiddling with the radio and, like all kids, loves to play with keys. Soo and I both have Volkswagens with those stubby black keychains, they include remote locks and have a long rectangular key hidden inside released by pushing a shiny chrome button. I spent hours (well, a lot of time anyway) with Nate as he learned to push that button to make the key appear. It was harder to load up the keychain. Holding down the button and pushing the key back into its hiding place. Its fun to watch kids figure things out (fun for the first hour anyway). Whether he’s climbing stairs or putting together a puzzle, opening a door or just recognizing familiar things in books, the look of concentration on his face is priceless (does this word now sound cheaper to you, too?). He’ll get frustrated, and sometimes he’ll start to cry, but eventually (after much trial and error) he gets it. The parental patience required is immense. Leaning over to hold his hands as he climbs up some stairs is cute the first hundred times, the 101st time hurts your back, you remember other things you need to do. I’m not complaining, honestly, I write this as a tribute to parents everywhere (the ones who resist the temptation to smack the little buggers around).
There are moments when I get more frustrated than Nate, and I want to stop and scream at the world. We’re alike in so many ways, I see myself in him constantly. I don’t know if that means I have the mentality of a toddler or if that’s just a normal parental reflection. Maybe we’re all just toddlers stuck in adult bodies. We want to crap our pants whenever the bowels move us. We want more and goddamn it we’ll cry if we don’t get it. We want to go outside now, NOW, not in five minutes, not when we get our shoes on, NOW. As adults we either have the power to get what we want or the knowledge that we will have to live with disappointment. Nathan hasn’t learned to accept this, and maybe we shouldn’t either.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of acceptance, believe that you are diminished, smoke the opiate of the masses (or swill the Budweiser of the buffoonery) and tell yourself you’re happy with what you’ve got, with who you are. I went out with a girl once who said she never wanted to be content. That’s pretty easy to say when you’re seventeen (don’t worry I was seventeen, too). At some point you just want to be left alone. Take your wife and kids and tuck them away in a gated community and forget about the rest of the world. Except if you successfully block out the rest of the world, the only input you’re left with comes from the internal you or those nearest you and, of course, TV. In most cases a perfectly satisfactory situation. I keep seeing horrific stories on the news, though, where this isn’t the case, where seemingly content domesticity has turned terrible. A man accused of killing his pregnant wife. A mother of three kills her two oldest boys, almost kills an infant, and calls the police to report herself. A young mother murdered by her husband (who is in the military) and then when the man dies (suspected suicide), HIS family receives death benefits (this story is disturbing on many levels). Maybe it’s just the way news is reported. These stories get repeated over and over again until it seems that the world is filled with such horrors, the anomalousness of them gets lost. We forget what a miniscule percentage of the population this is, the ones who snap. Or maybe we’re fascinated by them because we all secretly imagine ourselves snapping, as well. We feign disgust, but deep down inside we know we are capable of it, too. To admit such is taboo, it would pull down the veil, shatter the lie that we are all content, that we are happy and never have those bad thoughts or imagine those horrific acts. If the veil comes down you run the risk of being thrown into the camp that is “them” – the others, the failed.
I’m not entirely sure where this is coming from. To be honest, I’m wickedly hungover. I went into Seattle to meet my friend for lunch, but I knew it was just an excuse to get out and get loaded. Now, it’s early in the morning, I’m here hacking away staring at the gray mist of morning feeling about as cogent as a cloud. Do I need to do so every so often? Does everyone? Should I be concerned about it? I look at it as pruning. You snip off the old dead branches to let the new growth come in. Our shrubbery has been getting a good whacking lately, we go out and snip away, preparing for the burst of life. Spring-loaded shrubbery, a spring-loaded brain, a spring-loaded key, waiting to be opened, inserted into a keyhole to elicit new vistas. Too much? Have I overdone this one, gone too far? Maybe it was that last beer at La Piedra Cantina here on the island. I didn’t know the large was going to be THAT large, I thought your name had to be Helga to deliver a stein like that. I had met my friend at the bar at McCormick & Schmicks, or rather he met me. I was running through their beer list, literally, from top to bottom as it was written out in colored chalk on the board above the bar. I had a good head start by the time my friend showed up. He ordered a water and a bloody mary. He’d just woken up. He works those crazy 24 hour doctor shifts and had the next 48 hours off. We drank and ate and went to Fremont (which sucks now, according to the bumper stickers and regular patrons of the Buckeroo, a two pool table Fremont bar) for some low-impact recreating and continued frothy beverage consumption. By the time we needed to get back to the ferry, I had both a fairly good understanding of Fremont’s political factions and a good buzz going. I made the ferry and gave Soo a ring. Nate was still napping. The ferries are wonderful. People say Las Piedras Island residents grow to hate the ferries, restricted as they are by the schedule, forced to wait in line during peak hours, and otherwise just plain dependent upon it to get to civilization. I think that’s a bunch of rubbish. Any large floating vessel that has incredible views in all directions and five beers on tap is OK by me. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a lush. Yesterday was a bit of a binge and I’m paying for it this morning, but it’s a rare (and getting rarer) occasion when I’ve got my liberty, so I was going for broke. Besides, I didn’t have to drive anywhere, Soo was going to pick me up. She was home with Nate and had basically relieved me of my duties for the day. While relieving myself I realized how relieved I was to be relieved. It had been a long time since I’d been at large. The constant, albeit mostly low-level, stress of watching a small child wears on a man. All the near misses and odd direct hits accumulate in a reservoir of distraction, somewhere north of the bladder. Without a good flushing of the system every so often a person could get all clogged up. Forgive me, it’s early and my head feels like a lump of lead.
When I was about to arrive on Las Piedras, I called Soo again, but the boy was still asleep. “I could wake him,” she said.
“No just give me a ring when he’s up.” She couldn’t very well leave him napping to come pick me up.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, poke around,” I told her. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought I might go to the book store or just walk down Winslow (the almost touristy main drag), but my feet seemed to take me of their own accord to La Piedra Cantina, where I encountered that really large beer. I’d always thought the cantina was much smaller, we’d been to La Piedra for dinner once and lunch once in our first two months, but had never ventured into the attached drinking portion of the establishment. It was downright spacious, and, AND, it had a pool table, a fact I filed away for future reference. I recognized the proprietress of our local diner holding court at a table of talkative cohorts. I eavesdropped a bit, but mostly I just worked on that beer and waited for the phone to ring. Some guy walked in and sat down next to me at the bar. He said not a word. The bartender brought him his drink. A few minutes later the phone rang. The bartender answered and then handed the phone to the man sitting next to me, again without a word. I wanted to listen in on his conversation, but just then my phone rang.
“He’s up,” Soo said.
“OK, I’ll meet you in the supermarket parking lot.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m at La Piedra Cantina,” I told her, carefully pronouncing each word.
Slight pause. “Will you see us?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll see you.”
“OK.”
I figured I had about 10 minutes to finish the beer and settle up. By the time Soo picked me up I was good and loaded.
“Hanging out in the local bar at 3:30 in the afternoon. You’ll get a reputation as the town drunk,” she jokingly chided me.
“I think I’d have to stand in line.”
“Really. A few regulars in there?”
“There wasn’t a shortage of people who appeared familiar with the place,” I said perhaps too sloppily.
“You’re drunk.”
“Yeah, well, maybe,” I offered.
“Do you see this, Nathan,” she looked in the rear view mirror and spoke to our boy. “Your father is a drunk.”
“An unemployed drunk,” I added.
“What are we going to do?”
“What ARE we going to do?”
What are we going to do?
Drink more coffee and watch “Bob the Builder,” that’s what Nate and I are going to do.
Sunday, June 15, 2003
Plagued by Poetry
Writing paragraphs, complete sentences and all that can be hard when you’ve got your eye on a miniature drunkard intent on bashing his head. So, I’ve taken to scribbling notations on scraps of paper, rhymes, sometimes.
Like this:
plausible reality
facts lackadaisically
applied
he tried
refried
Reagan's deniability
Another casualty
To the slow
persistent
show
consistent
force fed
unread
superficiality
defenseless
to relentless
televised
banality
a reckless
and witless
despised
majority
observes
and believes
deserves
new thieves
instead
gets the first bush
and an ill-bred
chaser of tush
don't stop
think about tomorrow
a culture pop
bedtime for bonzo
maria conchito alonzo
edgardo alfonzo
fictionalized sport
diluted news report
the world goes on
ever anon
we eat and drink
but do we think
35 years
countless beers
nuclear fears
a nation in arrears
fiscally
culturally
morally
irretrievably
inconceivably
egocentric
the pony's one trick
militaristic
born in violence
shorn of innocence
no resistence
a soft existence
atrophies
enemies
on their knees
subjects to
a shallow rule
people who
learned in school
resistance
futile
existence
feudal
lord or vassal
you can choose
weigh the hassle
against the blues
purest American art
or one of those lies
a class apart
marginalize
here's the spin
if i could get a word in
minority faction
affirm this action
not color of skin
but cash in the bank
right district may win
private, based on rank?
or the endowment daddy secures
that spot at Andover then ensures
you're going to Yale
and just try to fail
brilliant white male
classes to flunk
beer to be drunk
choose the right drugs
mischievous lugs
crack on the street
you're certain to meet
police officers
for career counselors
affirmative primogeniture
is what we have
so follow that lure
smoke in the lav
that's all they need
to call you bad seed
then try to apply
to Cal State LA
requests to deny?
all those that say:
convicted
restricted
evicted
from the halls of learning
still have a yearning
to increase your earning
don't look to the state
to change your fate
if you had the dough
or could hit a three
you could always go
to UNLV
No Harvard
but not very hard
to get a degree
not as a handout
as a standout
a scouting report
not Supreme Court
your initiative
money to give
die or live
wait and see
a guarantee
more budget's spent on
incarceration
than education
in this nation.
alternative
just give
largesse
will show success
elysian
keynesian
not necessarily
if you see a problem
approach warily
think about them
that have to receive
believe
in possibilities
like a disease
we're all in collusion
collective delusion
deniability
reality
wait and see
another administration
restating the nation
earnings
burnings
discernings
of truth
uncouth
no ruth
look to the past
it's happened before
just change the cast
find a new whore
wool over eyes
what a surprise
grab that prize
manufacture alibis
insanity
conspiracy
theory
wait and see
wait and see.
Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but something like that. You can say, “Give me a break, you wrote all that down while you were making lunch and changing diapers and doing laundry and contemplating the infinite, gimme a break…”
To which I’d reply, “You’re right.” I just write snippets, which is actually a great way to write poetry because whenever I try to write too much at once I find I force it. So, I think about a few lines, play with them in my head while watching Dora the Explorer, pull out the pen and paper tucked away in my pocket and jot them down. I do that 40 or 50 times a day and lo, I’ve got myself a poem. The problem is now I can’t stop. I’m rhyming in my sleep. Soo calls and we rhyme our phone conversation, or at least I do, making sure my response to her last phrase is in iambic pentameter, the right diameter, busted catheter, word urine like Yuri Gagarin falls, enthralls, great balls, of fire, taking me higher and higher until, well, you get the idea…
And sometimes, Nathan gives me ideas by the way he behaves. For example, we like to play with Legos (I was going to say “He likes to play with Legos,” but we’re friends I can admit it, I like playing with Legos. There I’ve said it, a grown man, darn near 36 years old, unemployed for more than a year, in debt up to his eyeballs, enjoying playing Legos. Shoot me). However, Nate hasn’t quite mastered the whole put these things together thing. He’s very good at the ripping these things apart thing, which started me thinking. Next thing you know:
Primogeniture
Rocking horse winner
Original sinner
Children destroy
Because they can’t build.
But if man is boy
He justifies how he’s killed
Saying: “They did it first.”
First or last, best or worst
What does it matter?
The fat get fatter
The Haves keep having
And the Nots get nothing
Just promises from a false leader.
Think carefully, dear reader
And ask what you’d do
If your hopes and dreams were delivered to you
As only achievable
Only believable
If they happened after you’re dead.
As early as you remember
Clerics and teachers have said:
“You’ll live forever,
see the end of strife
attain that magical life…
only after you’re dead.”
Let that sink in
And I think you’ll begin
To see what we have to choose.
When winners don’t win and losers don’t lose
The game is no fun to play
A bit cavalier you may say
Since lives are already lost,
“Someone must pay.” But at what cost?
No special powers of deduction
Are needed to see more destruction
Will result in more isolation
For one proud nation
Must still know its station.
We can’t live in a world
Where rocks are hurled
And we’re greeted with fear and frustration
Hate, indignation, abomination
Whenever our flag is unfurled
Just thinking we’re great
And working for good
Carries more weight
Than it probably should.
In order to build
We must be strong-willed.
Any selfish boy
Has time to destroy
It takes longer to heal
Whatever you feel
Whatever you believe
When once you practice to bereave
You weave a tangled web of sighs
Your lost one will never rise
Regardless of alibis
You or I
Live or die
I say latter and former
I’m no performer
No mind reading tricks
A voice from the sticks
Predicts
You’d say former, too
Edicts
Won’t do
We just have to stop
Playing world cop
Those addicted to killing
Are clearly not willing
To forgo a fix
Without intervention
But one day in that mix
Is beyond comprehension
Feel the tension
It’s another dimension
The slightest mention
Evokes condemnation
The only solution
Is to shun
The gun
One
Day
at a
time
Rhyme
Simplistic?
Altruistic?
No, nothing mystic
Just words from someone who’s intentions are good
Please (lord) don’t let me be misunderstood.
You do what you should
I’ll do what I can
If only you could
Go from boy to man.
So, one thing leads to another.
Like this:
plausible reality
facts lackadaisically
applied
he tried
refried
Reagan's deniability
Another casualty
To the slow
persistent
show
consistent
force fed
unread
superficiality
defenseless
to relentless
televised
banality
a reckless
and witless
despised
majority
observes
and believes
deserves
new thieves
instead
gets the first bush
and an ill-bred
chaser of tush
don't stop
think about tomorrow
a culture pop
bedtime for bonzo
maria conchito alonzo
edgardo alfonzo
fictionalized sport
diluted news report
the world goes on
ever anon
we eat and drink
but do we think
35 years
countless beers
nuclear fears
a nation in arrears
fiscally
culturally
morally
irretrievably
inconceivably
egocentric
the pony's one trick
militaristic
born in violence
shorn of innocence
no resistence
a soft existence
atrophies
enemies
on their knees
subjects to
a shallow rule
people who
learned in school
resistance
futile
existence
feudal
lord or vassal
you can choose
weigh the hassle
against the blues
purest American art
or one of those lies
a class apart
marginalize
here's the spin
if i could get a word in
minority faction
affirm this action
not color of skin
but cash in the bank
right district may win
private, based on rank?
or the endowment daddy secures
that spot at Andover then ensures
you're going to Yale
and just try to fail
brilliant white male
classes to flunk
beer to be drunk
choose the right drugs
mischievous lugs
crack on the street
you're certain to meet
police officers
for career counselors
affirmative primogeniture
is what we have
so follow that lure
smoke in the lav
that's all they need
to call you bad seed
then try to apply
to Cal State LA
requests to deny?
all those that say:
convicted
restricted
evicted
from the halls of learning
still have a yearning
to increase your earning
don't look to the state
to change your fate
if you had the dough
or could hit a three
you could always go
to UNLV
No Harvard
but not very hard
to get a degree
not as a handout
as a standout
a scouting report
not Supreme Court
your initiative
money to give
die or live
wait and see
a guarantee
more budget's spent on
incarceration
than education
in this nation.
alternative
just give
largesse
will show success
elysian
keynesian
not necessarily
if you see a problem
approach warily
think about them
that have to receive
believe
in possibilities
like a disease
we're all in collusion
collective delusion
deniability
reality
wait and see
another administration
restating the nation
earnings
burnings
discernings
of truth
uncouth
no ruth
look to the past
it's happened before
just change the cast
find a new whore
wool over eyes
what a surprise
grab that prize
manufacture alibis
insanity
conspiracy
theory
wait and see
wait and see.
Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but something like that. You can say, “Give me a break, you wrote all that down while you were making lunch and changing diapers and doing laundry and contemplating the infinite, gimme a break…”
To which I’d reply, “You’re right.” I just write snippets, which is actually a great way to write poetry because whenever I try to write too much at once I find I force it. So, I think about a few lines, play with them in my head while watching Dora the Explorer, pull out the pen and paper tucked away in my pocket and jot them down. I do that 40 or 50 times a day and lo, I’ve got myself a poem. The problem is now I can’t stop. I’m rhyming in my sleep. Soo calls and we rhyme our phone conversation, or at least I do, making sure my response to her last phrase is in iambic pentameter, the right diameter, busted catheter, word urine like Yuri Gagarin falls, enthralls, great balls, of fire, taking me higher and higher until, well, you get the idea…
And sometimes, Nathan gives me ideas by the way he behaves. For example, we like to play with Legos (I was going to say “He likes to play with Legos,” but we’re friends I can admit it, I like playing with Legos. There I’ve said it, a grown man, darn near 36 years old, unemployed for more than a year, in debt up to his eyeballs, enjoying playing Legos. Shoot me). However, Nate hasn’t quite mastered the whole put these things together thing. He’s very good at the ripping these things apart thing, which started me thinking. Next thing you know:
Primogeniture
Rocking horse winner
Original sinner
Children destroy
Because they can’t build.
But if man is boy
He justifies how he’s killed
Saying: “They did it first.”
First or last, best or worst
What does it matter?
The fat get fatter
The Haves keep having
And the Nots get nothing
Just promises from a false leader.
Think carefully, dear reader
And ask what you’d do
If your hopes and dreams were delivered to you
As only achievable
Only believable
If they happened after you’re dead.
As early as you remember
Clerics and teachers have said:
“You’ll live forever,
see the end of strife
attain that magical life…
only after you’re dead.”
Let that sink in
And I think you’ll begin
To see what we have to choose.
When winners don’t win and losers don’t lose
The game is no fun to play
A bit cavalier you may say
Since lives are already lost,
“Someone must pay.” But at what cost?
No special powers of deduction
Are needed to see more destruction
Will result in more isolation
For one proud nation
Must still know its station.
We can’t live in a world
Where rocks are hurled
And we’re greeted with fear and frustration
Hate, indignation, abomination
Whenever our flag is unfurled
Just thinking we’re great
And working for good
Carries more weight
Than it probably should.
In order to build
We must be strong-willed.
Any selfish boy
Has time to destroy
It takes longer to heal
Whatever you feel
Whatever you believe
When once you practice to bereave
You weave a tangled web of sighs
Your lost one will never rise
Regardless of alibis
You or I
Live or die
I say latter and former
I’m no performer
No mind reading tricks
A voice from the sticks
Predicts
You’d say former, too
Edicts
Won’t do
We just have to stop
Playing world cop
Those addicted to killing
Are clearly not willing
To forgo a fix
Without intervention
But one day in that mix
Is beyond comprehension
Feel the tension
It’s another dimension
The slightest mention
Evokes condemnation
The only solution
Is to shun
The gun
One
Day
at a
time
Rhyme
Simplistic?
Altruistic?
No, nothing mystic
Just words from someone who’s intentions are good
Please (lord) don’t let me be misunderstood.
You do what you should
I’ll do what I can
If only you could
Go from boy to man.
So, one thing leads to another.
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