Armistice

I have waited a long time to write about the most intense challenge in my life over the last several years. I may write about the specifics of that another time somewhere else, but it seems important to reflect on what happened while I was waiting for it to be over.

I have had three different jobs, have slept in at least four different houses, and have been on three different health insurance plans. Other things have happened, too – I have made or re-made three sterling friendships, gained confidence acquiring new skills, and rediscovered a cultural environment where I feel more at home. I found someone who cares about me like no one else ever has.

This last part is a key point that took a while to understand. As a passionately independent person, I have never had the feeling that I ever needed anyone. Often, this inclination has had negative consequences. Regardless, people around me could be there or not depending on their preference or mine, but I have never wanted to rely on anyone. I have heard from multiple people that this means I need counseling for, but to me it seems rather self-preservative. If you depend on someone emotionally, on some level, he or she always holds the key to your satisfaction. People are often disappointing each other, so why not operate on a level where you take the good with the bad but can always walk away clean.

The relationships I have built over the last two-plus years have consisted of mutual enjoyment, trust, community, and commiseration. Ironically different from the kind of community I sought in different church communities, my urban family has supported me through my changes, my extreme feelings of failure, minor tragedies, mistakes, and triumphs. We support each other and enjoy each other's diversity. It's not a centralized community, but rather like a social octopus, with a couple of stable legs that are often picking up new people and ideas.

The closest of these relationships, the one with my partner, significant other, co-captain (however one wants to define these things), becomes more secure, comforting, and loving as time goes on. I said at the beginning that I didn't believe in romantic love anymore, that the only relevant application of the word applied in a Gandhi-Buddha sense. Love of everyone, the Oversoul (thanks to Emerson for the concept). She changed my mind and has patiently stood aside while I went without sleep, got sick, ate too much fast food, argued too much, and forgot important errands.

My blood family has offered support and encouragement to me through the process as well. From sending messages of support and embracing me in a knowing way, to listening to me spin out the tale. In particular, my mother and father have demonstrated the patience of three Jobs and, more importantly, the ability to listen and understand someone with whom you don't immediately agree.

My three beautiful shooting stars have been by my side the whole time. True, sometimes adult concerns and debates needed an appropriate editing-out, but they have shown me joy, wonder, forgiveness, and belief that I sometimes forgot existed in the world. My beliefs about larger questions have changed significantly in the last two years, but they have been the root which I use to discern goodness and truth. I read several years ago that having a baby was like hiring a zen tutor for 18 years – one that can teach you patience, sacrifice, mystery, etc. They have not failed me in this regard, and they continue to be my strongest connection to something I can only describe as holy.

If you are wondering, no, this is not the speech I am offering upon completion of my Ph.D. That one is still a ways off. But the pen, above, was the instrument that closed this chapter of my life today. It was disorienting, exhausting, and pugilistic, but it is over.

Parental fragments

My recent priority of media digestion means that I skim, as fast as I can, any articles that (1) seem culturally aware and (2) mention my media triumvirate: debates on belief, parenting narratives, and independent music. Today, the Internet chefs produced a feast of parenting morsels including bad parents, boyhood studies, and the praises of being bored. Here are my parenting fragments for the day:

Time's most recent cover story, "The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting," is here.

I am reminded of a college-student acquaintance of mine who was recently expelled from his dorm for behavior un-befitting of a freshman in a drug-free zone. Now he was having to move all of his belongings back to his parents' house. Someone else close by said "That's not too bad. Maybe there really aren't any consequences for you!" He shot her a look. "Yes there are! I don't want to be there through all of both breaks! That's like torture." (I paraphrase; freshman men do not speak like this). Is it overparenting when you take your nearly-grown kids back after a mistake?

"The Puzzle of Boys," an academic review of gender-anxious psyche books in The Chronicle of Higher Education is here.

Yesterday on the phone my son was talking about how great the next couple of days would be. "I can be on the computer all day for, like, two days!" I was shocked. "Really? Doing what?" I asked.  He rattled of the names of the couple of games he was looking forward to playing. I thought: I give these guys, an hour of "screen time" on a weekend day, and we don't have a television feed. How does he think he is going to play on the computer all day? I realized how much time we spend playing cards, building Legos, drawing, and reading together, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, I inoculated myself for the free-time debates that might arise in the next five days.

My guide and commiserator in the adventure and tragedy of (half) single-parenthood, Sandra Tsing Loh's newest article in The Atlantic, "On Being a Bad Mother" is here. I adore her honest self-exposure and the portrait she draws of her girls.

A friend-of-a-friend and a parent of a 9 year-old regularly watches The Family Guy with her daughter along with some other adult-themed programs. She purchased a book for her daughter attempting to introduce her to sex education, maybe something like this. Her daughter handed the book back to her, saying "Mom, this is inappropriate." Where have the permissive part and the authoritarian part of culture caught each other in the neck to produce this result?

Underployment, its misgivings, and the skin of my teeth

As an academic, or a critical thinker anywhere, it's important to define your terms (see recent post here). Recently I found a lengthy post on dealing with unemployment on Moose in the Kitchen, skimmed it, gave it a comment vote of confidence, and digested it later. Having been severely busy but underemployed for close to two years now, I have some seasoned reflections.

It is true that having a family makes you look at the possibility of poverty differently. When I was fresh out of undergrad working my first couple of jobs, being poor was nearly a point of pride. I am, on some days, a closet socialist. If that sounds too noble, I'm at least a material minimalist. I prefer experiences much more than things. However, being responsible for the success, happiness, and occasional enlightenment of beautiful, small, innocent creatures, makes you downright terrified about being without money.

More on single-parenthood, the divorce process, and academic paralysis in another post. Here are some ways I have been able to make (or imagine that I can make if I really need to) money since I voluntarily left my last post that included health benefits, seasonal vacation time, and the socially-frilly though confidence-inflating title of "real job".

Elance: I have looked hard at it for months. I don't do well jumping into things that I don't know; I have to build familiarity. However, it appears that someone who can write, edit, program, design, translate, or provide other corporately valuable skills, could make go of things there. I will be throwing my hat in the ring shortly. Currently they are hosting a competition themed around "The New Way to Work" that sounds pretty interesting.

New Media Consultant: For the last several months I have worked with the textbook company Bedford/St. Martin's on its online course space for composition instructors, CompClass. This has meant many things, but among them: providing curricular support for instructors new to using the tool at my university, promoting its use to new teachers, writing chapters for a "Best Practices" guide, and serving as a test user for the newest generation of the space. Because I bill consulting hours, I can complete the work more flexibly than if I were having to show up at a desk every day.

Scriptwriter: I have written about this briefly before, but I have been working with a co-author on a script, spanning half of the 20th century, about the bootlegging and outlaw culture of a small town in North Georgia. The meetings have reawakened a passion for script work that I developed years ago as a creative writing student and launched us both on an exciting project. I won't have any official news about marketing the script until it's finished next spring.

Freelance editor: I served as the editor for a self-help book being published next year through Author House. They appear to provide other freelance opportunities that I have yet to pursue.

In my memoir and culture writing, I am trying to stay flexible, relevant, and grounded in narrative. As a freelancer, I just want to keep the lights on, gas in the tank, and food in all our mouths. As far as my research, I just want to make a lightening rod argument about the place where art, religion, and history mingle.

Vocabulary. Definition.

Recession. Somehow, for most of the last month, I have been carving out a little time for narrative, media, photo, or "other" blog postings and, in the last two days, it just hasn't happened. So, today, we are experiencing, officially, a recession.

Blogdrawl. This is what happens when you have developed a habit of thinking, reading, doing, or taking a picture of something interesting and posting about it, and then, for a couple of days, you can't.

Illness. And not the hip-hop kind. Everyone is sick: 2/3 of my children, myself, my upstairs neighbor, and all those people I ran into at the health center (coincidence?).

Bills. I dread them, but then face them head on, like a kid throwing himself into waves at the beach. "Take me down," I yell, with a mouthful of salt water while I swirl in the aftermath and barely find my footing. "I dare you."

Google Analytics. Replacing my morning cup of coffee. How can you learn that much information about something so narrow for free? And where do all of the one page views from other countries come from? They really mess with a writer's sense of audience.

Work remotely. What I want to do, for an organization or company that values self-education, literary interpretation, parenting commentary, album and concert reviews, and facilitating cultural exchange.

Joho. The person whose band I listened to with my daughter today, with huge smiles on our faces.

Sleep. Period.

Telephone narrative, pt. II

On the phone tonight, my youngest recounted to me the expected events of the next couple of days. "Tomorrow, after pre-school, I go to . . . and then, I go to . . . and then I come to your house!" He often does this, and it illuminates another habit of his: stating questions as facts. His logic works like this: if I say something that is wrong, Dad will correct it; if I say what I think is going to happen, or what I want to happen, and he does not correct me, then I can expect that thing.

It keeps me on my toes because I can't let a statement slip by that has an unplanned or incorrect event without negotiating with it. Here's another example: after dinner, I will have ice cream and candy for dessert. False. You will have one or the other. Crisis averted; because he is fine with amendments in the planning stage. It's just that when he thinks he knows how something is going to go down, he does not adapt well to being disappointed. Just like teaching, it's all in the planning.

Here's another beautiful linguistic trick he has developed, in addition to the several words that we have made up over the years for a various things (na-na for milk; babababika for a really serious tickle session). I call it the mathematical equation: tomorrow(x)=event. If something will happen tomorrow, he says "tomorrow." If it will happen the day after tomorrow, he says "tomorrow-tomorrow." We can go on like this through most of the week, because, to him "tomorrow-tomorrow-tomorrow" can mean much more than "that happens on Saturday."

Five for Friday: accidents, gratitude, the Loh-Down, time travel, and some more flags

Five unexpected things that happened this week:

 

1.  My youngest son's potty accident as we were walking out the door to school this morning. That may not seem like a big deal (and really, isn't; he's 4), except that our school mornings are like a finely-oiled military machine. From 6am to our 7.24am departure, all four of us have jobs and every job is important; even if the job is "eating bananas." And from 7.24am until drop-off #2 forty miles away  at 9am, there's not much room for flexibility. Coming back to the apartment for a quick change threw me off. I ended up leaving a couple of important things inside in the ensuing costume reconstitution. Ultimately, not a big deal, just a slice of life item.

2.  The help I was able to give a friend in need this morning. Refreshing! It's hard to ask for help; it would have been hard for me if the roles had been reversed (and believe me, tomorrow they could be). In that human moment , I was grateful for being in the right place at the right time.

3.  Being overcome by Sandra Tsing Loh's article in The Atlantic (my original post here). The more I think about it, the more it feels like no one else can understand exactly what Loh's writing about except me. I don't like article's sub-headline ("The author is ending her marriage. Isn't it about time you did the same?"), but the realizations she presents on her own identity, parenting, and other people's marriages, are markedly similar to ones I have had over the last two years.

4. My oldest son's new story idea. It's about an orphan who lives in or near a cemetery and his three companions spread around the globe who are enlisted in an ancient struggle to save the world. It involves elemental powers, time travel with keys, and a gristled old Asian sensai who directs the action. Killer stuff.

5. Picking up a reader each from Guatemala and New Zealand. Again, I am blissfully ignorant about how these counter statistics  work, but don't think I don't geek on that kind of connectivity.

Dreams, The Road, and a poor, shivering version of myself

Last night, I had a dream: I was so poor and hungry that I scoped out a grocery store and hid inside when it closed so that I could eat at night. Yes, I became a nocturnal-grocery store pilferer out of poverty. I think it looked a lot like the Whole Foods in Buckhead.

Another dream in another head, featuring me last night: I just took all of my stuff and disappeared. Went away. Forever. That would be weird, and a lot like giving up, considering recent circumstances.

Apparently, in more than one head, there's a concern that I will fall to ruin, starve, freeze, and/or disappear. Now, am I terrified recently of poverty, hitting the streets, and complete national and international economic catastrophe and cataclysm? Yes (bring on The Road!), for sure. But the real-world me will live.

Thanks for the inspiration Lacunae. 

The poor, dream-world me. I hope someone is going to take care of him. Am I supposed to?

Music Monday brings you . . . The Clash: Sandanista

My Five for Friday list last week inspired the idea of Music: Monday. Problem was . . . I was so busy yesterday.

Over the last several weeks, I have been re-digesting The Clash's 1980 uberalbum Sandanista!. When I was initiating myself into Clash-cultdom as a high school sophomore, I ran all of their albums through the processor and loved this one. While London Calling is The Clash's best rock album, Sandanista! is like the poor bespeckled cousin in the corner whom no one understands . . . but has the deepest reggae in his heart. When I downloaded the album (who knows where my cassette dub from 1989 went to?) three weeks ago, I did myself a favor. By the way, do you know that eMusic has some of its catalog set to download at reduced rates? There are 36 songs on the album, but it only cost 12 song credits. eMusic is the jam.
 
Sharing the music with my kids has been a blast. You may know by now that I see one of my jobs as a parent insuring that my children grow up to have "good taste" in media rather than "pop taste." I have had them on a steady diet of important cultural digestion from the 80's for about two years now (more on that later). I introduced them to London Calling several months ago and my 11 yr. old son, in particular, loves it; some of the tracks went on his birthday CD, which is high praise. As we have been listening to Sandanista!, I have pointed out how extreme of a transformation the band went through from LC in 1979 to S! in 1980. My youngest just likes it when Joe Strummer mutters little words at the ends of choruses in "Hitsville," like "remember".

Finally, I came across a "Exploring Rock's Cliche's: Sandanista! as single LP" from Setting the Woods on Fire (thanks for the JPG above, Paul!), an interesting looking blog that's apparently on hiatus. Paul's idea in the post is that, for posterity, we could trim down Sandanista!'s enormous six-album size to one digestible LP by threshing out the lesser creations. I like his choices and the idea in general; it's super listy, a la High Fidelity. However, the album's experimentation was so extreme and important that I just feel bad skipping a track, almost sacrilegious.

Bootlegger body count, Celtx, and Javier Bardem

Today is Script Day; I spend most of every Tuesday contract-writing on a movie script that my co-writer hopes to sell or produce when we are finished. Later I will post a photoblog from her pawn shop where we have our meetings. When my German pal Joho was in town, he almost shifted around his schedule one day just to accompany me to a Tuesday meeting. "Are you really that interested in our script?" I asked. (He was.) He shrugged a bit and said, "Well, yes, PLUS I want to see the inside of a real American pawn shop!"

The script explores the lives of whiskey bootleggers, hoodlums, and, later, drug dealers in the North Georgia mountains from the 1930s to the 1980s. Every piece of the script has its seed in a story that my co-writer was told as a child growing up there. It begins in 1934 with a young whiskey maker's murder-suicide of his family in protest against being sent to federal prison.

I fell into the project accidentally, but the confidence that my co-writer maintains over the work we have produced is contagious. Several months ago, the only thing I could offer were writing talents and an organizational framework. However, I found an online program called Celtx, which facilitates the writing and planning of several audio-visual media forms -- radio play, film, stage play, comic book. It's free online and comes with a script sharing component and access to an online independent film community.

I may write more technically about Celtx and how it works in another post. Suffice it to say that it has made our process more efficient. Less time formatting the script (one of the things Celtx does) and more time writing the gritty dialog. In our film, we want to capture the structure of The Godfather, the language of Sling Blade, and the tone of No Country for Old Men. Just getting the ultra-creepy-sexiness of Javier Bardem in one scene would be an additional success.

Yes, we are shooting high.

In which I try to determine what I am doing and why

Keeping a blog is new to me, but not to the rest of the world. I have probably spent as much time critically reviewing blogs over the last two weeks as I have writing. Why am I doing it? As I approach my 50th post in two weeks, here are some answers.

1. My understanding of blogs has developed considerably. I used to think about them as the online version of the journal I used to keep next to my bed. Good blogs are not like that, for three reasons: digital media, audience, and narrative. Digital Media: To this forum, I can link to anything on the Internets; that does not just change what I write, but how I think about writing and what I do while I am writing. Audience: No one reads those old black and white comp books of mine, or they shouldn't. In theory, someone is reading this (you are, maybe) and that  impacts composition. Narrative: All good blogs build the frame of a larger story or at least an ethos.
   
2. I am picking up freelance writing and editing jobs lately and having a blog allows me to showcase the range of my writing proficiency easily.
   
3. Stories swirl around in my head like that cotton candy machine at the fair. I just have to put a stick in the opening, and they start coalescing, clumping, and changing. I knew from the beginning that taking one of my favorite lines from my favorite novel (Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing) would be fruitful, but after a couple of days of writing and talking about writing with friends, I realized that I really need a place to capture these stories in my head. There are lots to come: like when I cut myself with a razor while shaving, on purpose, and how I got paid, as a child, to protect a spy in the Smithsonian museum.  Or about the three girls whose footprints always stay in the sandbox together and take on a life of their own.  Or friends I have lost or shucked. Or how I think my life is, by an accident of metaphysics, connected to the life of Ben Folds. Some are true all the way through and some, by only being thought, are even truer.
4. I need to write my dissertation. I will tell you what it's about later; I promise. Have you ever read any Lyotard? My dissertation might become the metanarrative of the blog. In that case, let's hope postmodernism never happened, because, according to Lyotard, metanarratives go away. If there's a "totalizing metanarrative" I want to keep, it's completing my Ph.D. Maybe writing every day, even informally, will help the formal stuff along. See my first post about completing my diss. Update: no writing since then.
5. Whether it's a good one or not, the details of my life make up an unusual story. My interests and experiences connect me to other groups of people (music and movie fans, parents, academics, the religiously curious, urbanites, naturalists), but no big dotted-line surrounds them all. Some of my experiences might be helpful or entertaining to an eclectic variety.
6. I learned how Google enables me to take a picture with my cell phone, textualize it, and immediately post it to the blog without sitting down at a computer. I adore this feature and use it frequently. My photoblog entries are like eyeball postcards.

Maybe that's it. If you are reading, at least now you know what I am trying to do. Compelling blogs are like comic books . . . serialized with good art and cliffhangers. However, that does not make me a hero. I'm not an innocent bystander, either.

Let the wild rumpus start!

Those may be the most memorable words I have ever read aloud as a parent.

That is Max Records, who plays Max in everyone's favorite story about a boy who dreams he is a king.

Tomorrow I am headed to Where the Wild Things Are with my two oldest (9 and 11). I already saw the movie -- on opening night. I am that kind of fan of an assortment of things (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Cormac McCarthy, lots of musicians). I was really excited about the film. For once, I thought, an indie-kids movie.

I was disappointed. In Spike Jonze's adaptation, Max ceases being "Everykid" and becomes something darker. As much as I support exploring alternatives to cinematic "stability", Where the Wild Things Are wanders too far into the forest and does not really want to come home.

As a literature and writing teacher, I have used Sendak's book in conversation and in class to discuss  psychoanalytic criticism. Most of the psychological world recognizes that large bodies of water represent an unconscious or mystical experience. This is probably because of the unfathomable (sorry, I know this is painful) depth under the ocean that we know exists but cannot access. The ocean, in a dream, is like the closet that we shove all of the emotions we need to keep but can't find room for. Eventually we know we are going to have to clean that place out. In both the story and the film, just such a body of water separates the real world from the wilder one.

Max, the story's young protagonist, has plenty that needs cleaning. In the film he has a new backstory, immersed in the pathos of abandonment, isolation, anger, and gender confusion. In the book (do you remember?) he was just a kid who chased his dog around with a fork. Movie Max has a lot more on his plate and, subsequently, a lot more to deal with when he crosses the water.

Spike Jonze and crew have done an effective job reminding fans of the book about detail: Max's name carved in the boat, some key quotations, and the final supper scene. However, the fact that Max needs some serious therapy before, during, and after his trip disturbs the film for me. Here is the central question: is it easier to think that Max's destructive and dictatorial urges hide inside all of us, or to diagnose the Wild Things dream as the ramblings of a semi-neglected and borderline schizophrenic kid? The book leans more toward the former,  and the movie toward the latter.

It reminds me of the quandary that the movie Falling Down created for me. At the end of that Michael Douglas modern dystopian classic, the protagonist is colored as a mental patient who needs his meds. Ok, fine. But didn't I sit through the whole film relishing his destructive break-down? Didn't I want to have the same experiences too? It just made it too easy when the film made him "crazy"; it would have been better if he were just like one of us, making the choices that most of us only dream about.

Wild Things's Max is a solitary figure, and rightly so. He has to become isolated to give us the terrible beauty of his vision. I just wish that the film left us with the feeling that we are all Max, battling those demons and keeping those voices (mostly) quiet in our heads. Crazy-ing up Max is a scapegoating move.

Still, my oldest two want to see it. They are old enough, and we are going, if just to have something to talk about. Exploring the effects of art is one my favorite things about parenting. They always teach me something; most people who want to have a serious conversation about anything do, as well.

Five for Friday: Google, Singents, Bridget vs. Max, scary aliens, QVC

Funny this week . . .

1.While playing Spades at night with my kids and Clo-Show, I was looking up something Internetishly on my phone. My daughter says, "What are you doing Dad? Play a card." Without looking up from his hand, Clo-Show mutters "He's googling how to count."

2. My shower idea that someone who is a single parent, but half of the time, is a Singent.

3. My youngest son's fascination with the part of Bridget and the Gray Wolves, in which the little girl commands her pack of wolves to find their trees and have a pee before bed ("they obediantly found their pee trees").

• N.B. Bridget and the Gray Wolves is an interesting feminine version of Where the Wild Things Are. She may be a little bit cooler than Max. At least less destructive and a better imaginary parent.

4. My oldest son's question at the costume store: "Is this alien too scary?" It was; but awesomely so.

5. My mom's comment, while donating a QVC faux animal-skin coat to Halloween costuming, "would you wear this?"

Picking fights with words

Specifically, for Kinkos from a Wikipedia entry on weird plurals in English:

The plural deers is listed in some dictionaries, but is widely considered to be an error.

Like Bill Murray said in Rushmore:

Take dead aim on the rich ones, get them in your cross hairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything, but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget.

Created twice, Elaine Pagels, and some help from you

I had a debate last night and now can't for the life of me find a resource that I like to peg to either side. Can you help?

The meat of it is this: there are two different creation story frames in Genesis, one taking place mostly in Chapter 1 and the other in parts of Chapter 2. The order if events is different, as are the tone and conclusion of each story. Either this is significant, from the perspective of belief, or it is not a big deal, so went the conversation.

Elaine Pagels has plenty to say in her books (specifically Adam, Eve, and the Serpent) and so, interestingly enough, does Wikipedia (see here). However, I was surprised at how few credible, academic treatments I could find on either side in a couple of Google searches.

I need to burrow into the library databases now, but I would prefer to link to something everyone can see, access, and debate.

Internal vs. external

Today was a Dad-day: rhythmic, energetic, scheduled, and extroverted.

From drop-off one at 8am to drop-off two at 9am; from pick-up one at noon to pick-up two at 3.30; from breakfast to lunch to dinner; from playing kickball outside to playing cards before bed, parenting is my tether to concrete and simple beauty. And real work, not the theoretical kind.

The bedside, M. Ward, and the triumph of robots

I talked to my Dad and youngest cousin (who is maybe the most mature of all of us) today who are both at my Grandpa's bedside. Everyone's up there, really. It's hard to be away. I keep telling people close to me who ask how he is, that he is good, peaceful, and getting ready to go. It's not really him that we have to worry about, it seems. Like with Grandma before him, it's the quiet and profound aftermath that descends on the still-earthly folks.

Recently I played a song for my mom that has reminded me of Grandpa for years. It's only just appropriate now, because it's about the passing of an awesome old guy. I have been an M. Ward fan for years and recently saw him play live. Here's a link to his song, "Requiem". The video is interesting, but not that relevant. Just give it a listen if you have time.

Speaking of songs, I love how a song, played once in the car on the way to or from school, can become an anthem for a day or two. My older two have been huge fans of verbal hand-me-down stories and YouTube clips of the Flight of the Conchords guys. Yesterday, their tune "Robot" (video here) jumped onto my youngest's radar. We had to hear it three times this morning (yes, I edit it; sheesh). For a little while, we always had to say "affirmative" in place of "yes".

I'm telling you something: those three people are the funniest people I know.

Manno, gifting like a magus

For belated birthdays and for .. just because .. Manno brought a Star Wars computer game, a first-stage laptop, and some awesome art supplies. Thanks, ET!

Screws, sand, Delta Force, and a pain in my chest

When something really bothers me, I feel a burning pain somewhere between my throat and my stomach. In fact, the place is right under my sternum. Is that what people call heartburn or heartache? It's got nothing to do with my heart -- at least not in relations to "heart" as it relates to love, emotion, longing, and Valentine's Day.

No. This is just a plain 'ole physiological pain in the chest brought on by a release of some sticky or seeping chemical in some gland somewhere. Maybe in my right ear lobe.

It just serves as a reminder that things I think can create things I feel. Abstract to concrete.

Either way, I've been through a divorce for close to two years, and I know plenty of times the experience has generated an emotional mass that I just know someone could cut out like a tumor. They could mount it, like one of those prize fish in a doctor's office or display it in a clear jar of formaldehyde. "Here is an emotional tumor" -- the sign would say.

Instead, I carry it around. Sometimes it shrinks, and I think it's going away; sometimes I think that IT thinks it has a 36-year-old guy tumor attached to it. Maybe it wants to put me in a jar. But if it tries, I will assert squatter's rights. Or the unalienable rights of the creator. It came from me, not me from it. That should count for something.

I had a tire plugged today, and the repair professional took out a tiny screw from the tread. It looked like this . . .


This thing was threatening to bring all of my paternal duties to a halt in the emergency lane on the interstate. I wanted to nod victoriously against it. Or hurl something crude and instigating at its clean spiral tines (tines?).

Instead, I decided to chuck it, but not before thinking about how little items, real concrete stuff, can dismantle elaborate theories, complicated plans, and ornamental abstractions. You know what was one of the causes of the aborted Delta Force rescue mission in Iran in 1979? Sand. How small and concrete can you get?

I am telling you something, though: this tightness in my chest is not going to take me down.