Daily Themes

They are staring into their tupperware bowls. I don't have tupperware, but aluminum foil, and I'm looking at it and admiring the fact that it is both metal and flexible. Out the window, a flock of gray geese swoop down in sync, as if tethered together to a string in the sky. They land on the lake. "I thought the geese go South in the winter," I say.

Kris, a skinny British woman who talks often of tea time and her love of overcast weather, says, "Not all of them. And they're just an atrocious nuisance in the winter."

I ask her to elaborate, and she explains that their droppings harden and then melt with a brief thaw just like the snow. There's doo doo slush everywhere, all over the grass and the walkways.

Everyone but Lillian is looking out the window now. Lillian is my close colleague, and I like her. She's seventy-one, and I wonder if she's in the early stages of senile dementia. She tends to enter long periods of impenetrable silence, during which times she stares blankly at the wall. Today she's sitting across from me, which means I'm constantly wondering if she's staring at me. Sometimes I think, "Who knows?" Maybe she still has her full mind and just likes to brood on facts.

"Oh, look at those colors," Kathy says. Kathy is the clinic nurse. She's skinny, but not British, and is kind of kind and a super worker. She's 42, married, with three teenage boys who are active in sports. Every weeknight it seems she's off to some Detroit suburb to watch high schoolers run hard/jump on top of each other/bounce balls/fight.

Someone mentions how brilliant the colors must be up North. Kris promptly shuts this idea down, saying how it seems silly to drive six hours, glance at trees, then turn around and come back. The way she puts it, I tend to agree.

On the table is a box of donuts from Meijer that Kathy brought in to celebrate Gillian's recent engagement. Thinking that a Meijer donut couldn't be good, I take a bite of a glazed and am pleased by the familiar fatty sweetness. It leaves no film in the mouth. I eat the whole thing.

Gillian is a tech. She's a little bit husky and has a round face and pinchable cheeks. She blushes easily. She's been blushing all day today. We all take turns gazing at her ring, which sparkles enough that it makes my eyes hurt. Pat, a secretary, says, while looking directly at me, "See, you have to make sure that it sparkles." Pat is from Florida but has a New Jersey accent. For some reason, I'm not irritated by her comment. I laugh.

Pat starts talking about the Monday night lineup on NBC. She names all the shows. The only one I remember now is "King of Queens." Pat loves them. "I like to laugh on Mondays," she says. (cf Fellini, "There is nothing sadder than laughter...")

Suddenly, Kathy starts talking about horror movies. She's constantly filled with enormous energy and rattles through a series of scary films her sons like. "They loved 'The Ring Two,' she says. They thought it was scarier than 'The Ring One.'" And on she goes. Nightmare on Elm, Halloween, the entire Stephen King oeuvre, we get the entire list, and everyone except Lillian, who still is gazing at the wall, affirms their scariness. And then finally Lillian speaks up, "Those kinds of films never scare me. I have a way of detaching myself."

It's the only thing she's said all of lunch. A long silence follows, during which Kathy stares at her huge bottle of ranch dressing. I look at it too. I wonder if the bottle is actually white with black specks in it or if it's transparent and it's the dressing that gives it that color. I try to figure out what Kathy is looking at, and decide it's the label, which has "99% fat free" written on it as well as a cartoon depiction of rolling hills surrounded by fall trees. Realizing that that's the exact scene outside the window, I avert my gaze that way. And then Kathy joins my line of vision. Lillian is back to examining the wall.

I guess it's all a matter of vantage. I think these people are becoming my friends.

Is this guy boring you?

UNIVISION PRESENTS:
Una Escritura para Una Telenovela Existencial

SCENE 1

[Static-garbled Spanish pop facilitates the conversion from sleep to 2:55 in the morning, replaces the confusion of disturbed r.e.m. with the disorientation of half-received Latin pop.]

Paco Pico Piedra: [Confused, tumbles from the bed and finds the ground, his Gap carpenter pants with the stylish hammer loop, a rumpled long sleeve T-shirt. He struggles into the clothes on autopilot and lurches out the door and down the stairs with sack-of-potato grace. He coughs, then faces the camera and speaks.] Outside, the moon pierces through rippled clouds, waifish vapors seeded by exhaust from thousands of airplanes braving the city smog to deliver millions of haggard businessmen and tired tourists from various Asian countries into this teeming, sleepless, cliché-ridden metropolis. How poetically the light dimly reveals the paisley sofa sitting squat in the college quad. The couch should be lonely, here amongst the sad palm trees and scrawny grass that would wither up and die without constant watering and attention from teams of Mexican gardeners, but it is not, thanks to the comfort provided by a Mr. Coffee machine that burbles happily to itself on an equally misplaced endtable. Strewn about are donut boxes, at this hour containing only those pastries with unidentifiable jelly fillings.

Paisley Sofa (played by midget actor): [sighs contentedly]

Paco: [Eats too many peculiar donuts and excitedly whispers three-in-the-morning delusions.] Occasionally we abandon our assumptions (gestures towards paisley sofa) to saunter about the dormitory buildings, stumbling drunkenly with early morning inebriation. Campus is quiet but the raccoons are noisy, seven little babies and two large parents as big as Rottweilers but of indeterminate ferocity. We crumple bits of cake into #4 unbleached cone coffee filters and feed the raccoons pastry, which they appear to enjoy. On past evenings we have made offerings of lime-flavored Tostitos, but icing seems more to their liking.

Raccoon Chorus (animated, a la Mary Poppins): [pensively] We live in a big hole under the “annex,” which is really a trailer but can’t be called such because of the negative connotations. Only a single family of raccoons can survive in this particular isolated area of Southern California, so a great deal of inbreeding occurs amongst our folk, giving credence to trailer stereotypes.

(Camera pans up from animated raccoons towards heavens, where stars shine brightly as they slowly arc across the sky. Occasionally stars veer off of arc and can be seen doing the "hokey-pokey.")

[By four, giddiness has subsided into exhaustion, and those who cannot find a place on the midget's lap curl up into fetal positions on the concrete.]

Time: [sludges by]

Consciousness: [retreats upon itself]

Rosa: [raising her head from the concrete and looking alarmed] Wayward sofas are irrelevant in the witching hours, and the donuts are obsolete. Five o’clock oozes forth like cold honey, finally relenting and letting us stumble back upstairs to warm beds or creaking sofas or hard floors to sleep with no time for dreams.

[Fade to black]

SCENE 2

[Raccoon chorus stands on each others' shoulders to make the shape of a “2,” then scamper off past the coffee-stained reception desk of a dirty Travelodge]

Travelodge Receptionist: [Peering at Paco and Rosa over the top of half-glasses on a chain of the type popularized by grandmas and librarians] Even during the day, Tijuana is not Mexico; at night, Tijuana is barely Tijuana. You will pass through the clanging turnstiles with no small trepidation, the act feeling illegal and somehow dirty. Silent streets greet the border-crossers, not completely empty, but apocalyptically quiet. Here and there individual males trudge in ebbs, coming and going from somewhere unspecified in the night. Fearless Americans will pursue the human trickle towards its source, passing the occasional locked cage with a fearsome mechanical bull, a gyroscope with boots attached for strapping in those who have had too much to drink and agree to be strapped into a gyroscope.

[Paco and Rosa wave farewell to the Travelodge Receptionist, turn their backs to the reception desk, and cross a concrete bridge over the Rio Tijuana, an unglorified drainage-ditch channel replete with stagnant, unpleasant smelling water.]

Paco: [to Rosa] See how the tide of strangers grows as we walk through the deserted streets. Like raccoons after a tortilla chip we follow unthinking, the dull thump of nightclub music slowly seeping into our ears, whispering against our ear drums.

Downtown: [in a swirl of neon and drunk pedestrians] No cover! Half-price and topless! [Gives Paco and Rosa a sour look, less empty but no more wholesome.]

Teasers: [bad suits, bad english] No cover, half-price, topless...

[Paco and Rosa accept an invitation, slap Teaser on back, climb dimly lit stairs into a throbbing inferno. Rosa is asked for ID despite being sixty-seven years old, Paco is briefly frisked. They drink two-dollar Coronas and tip the waiter after he demands to be tipped. Bad dance music penetrates the skull and bounces about in the sinuses, the head convulses against the beat and the hideous lyrics. The tequila bouncer lurks menacingly in the shadows, pouncing on each table in turn. He stings from behind, wrapping a towel around the neck with the left arm and thrusting a putrid bottle of tequila with his right. Physical force is needed to rebut his advances, but at last he withdraws.]

Paco (holding aloft a skull, to which he speaks): That man there is as a wasp in the room. I keep my right eye on his whereabouts at all times, but my left eye roves across the dance floor to ponder a lone, rotund lady sitting at a bar stool and jiggling up and down to the music. She looks like she would enjoy being asked to dance, but I decline. [Paco becomes uncomfortable from having each of his eyes looking in different directions.]

Paco and Rosa: [singing, each to a different tune] We leave and wander, no cover, half-price, topless, eventually passing through vinyl curtains into a little yellow bar. We crowd into a confused, circular booth, the unevenly round chair threatening to tip us plunging into the small table, drowning us in rounds of Coronas. Movies dubbed in Spanish play silently on yellowed TV screens overhead. We ask the bartender for directions to Senor Frog’s, a club we have seen advertised on billboards, T-shirts. He gives us directions but we speak Spanish badly. The bartender fetches a taxi-driver friend of his, who informs the bar is too far to walk but he could drive us for cheap. We decline because we fear being murdered.

Taxi Driver: [proudly, undeterred by Americans’ refusal to ride in his taxi] You like cocaina? Best cocaina en Mexico. You come right here si want coke.

Paco’s Nose: I must agree the yellow bar would definitely be my first choice for future coke needs.

SCENE 3

[Paco’s Nose appears and grows larger and larger, until the camera is snorted up into the left nostril… hairs hanging from the nostril roof brush against the camera lens like greasy stalactites, leaving little trails of snot. A little further inside the cavernous nostril, we see all of Tijuana laid out before us as if we were approaching by hot-air balloon.]

Tijuana and Time: [slipping in and out of little pieces of consciousness, they perform a dance resembling the Tango, but occasionally utilizing the “pinkie swing” from a basic square dance. Time leads, Tijuana sometimes follows.]

[Somewhere inside Tijuana's dancing streets, Paco wanders into an ornate church, where a high school graduation appears to be taking place. Avoiding the crowds of Mexican teenagers in paperboard hats and their anxious mothers, he staggers into the confessional box at the rear of the church and kneels.]

Paco: Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Father: No eres Catolico, verdad?

Paco: I have seen unspeakable things, Father.

Father: Lo siento, mi nino, pero no hablo Ingles.

Paco: The horror! The horror!

Loud voice: ¿Qué hizo Paco? ¿Hacen cuántos "Avemarías" él tiene que hacer? Averigüe el próximo tiempo... aquí mismo en Univision!

END SCENE

Autumn Meditation

The trees were yellow and red. The leaves on the trees were of a yellow hue dotted with black rot, but the red was initially brilliant and remained so until the papery leaves, the papery, silky, shining, greasy leaves fell as leaves tend to fall to the ground --- that is, reluctantly, bobbing, cradling in the wind as if the real comfort were not in the tree or on the cold, soft ground but rather in that insubstantial middle, that place where words and notes go, dreams possibly go, and all the things invisible but existing, and so somehow meaningful. Surely, the drama is in the chasm. And then that is not the lesson. No, the lesson is in the leaves, the jagged, shimmering, silent, dull leaves hanging like heavy, inutile hands on the end of the bodies of silent, skeletal ghosts, in a world haunted by the dim memories of previous losses, in a world cold and then warm, in a universe endless and incomprehensible in its black, blazing continuity, in its persistent, perfect-fifth hum, its speed. And that incomprehensibility is the lesson. And, surely, then, it is not. No, the lesson is in the bark on the trees that holds the yellow and red leaves, the bark rotten and indigestible and dry and hard and cold, the bark the dry, thin, filmy covering over the rings of the years inside the massive diameter of the unhuggable tree, the years that circle each other in perfect order. But then the distance between each line begins to lessen as each year goes by until the lines have become indistinct and inseparable, have in fact become one continuous line going around and around, forgetting the hops and leaps, the poignant peaks, the memorable trinkets, the things a tree holds onto because there are not many other things to hold onto and so each one can be accounted for and glanced at on occasion and even loved. Painful, profound, the tree digs deep, its roots descending steeply at first and then gradually, because a tall structure needs a wide base. And storm after storm blasts its husky frame. Over and over the needling rains impinge upon its leaves, and the leaves fall and turn downwards and the tree sways and bucks, and the branches snap and splinter and fall on houses, on cars, on the ground, on dogs, on people, and the gray sky looks peaceful despite the water flooding it, the wind pursuing it, the shocks of light speeding through it. And then there are the deep cries after, as if somewhere in that roiling sky there is a sad person, face contorted in a mask of grief, indeed a grief large enough that it can only be manifested in this way, as if the storm, and the tree falling to the ground and destroying the mud and the house on top of the mud, and the floor in the house, and the beds and pianos and sofas and tables on the floor, as if the storm that crawls over our landscape is all of the pain of the world come together. All of it. Every tear and moan. Seeing it in this light, it is not at all unsurprising that the next day everything is on the ground, that the leaves, rot red and yellow, flattened and two-dimensional, are on the ground, next to everything big and small. And now everything is still and quiet, indeed almost comfortable, as if this is where it all belonged, as if this is the way things were supposed to be, as you look out over the miles and miles of disorder, as you pick up something small, like a pendant, or a wedding ring, or a music box, or a record or book, or a picture of, say, lovers, or a family, or a dead son, and look, yay, stare, yay, glare, at everything that could have come of it if not for all this pain --- this hulking, huffing-and-puffing, obese and snorting pain --- and everything that still could, despite all this death, despite the night that is coming although the sun has just risen.

Oh? Oh.

That man is not an astronaut...

He thinks the falling stars, are falling to the ground.

He prefers the seedy bars, there's no beer in space.

He's been around the world and he, he, he, he can't find his baby.

He's kind of short and smug, he's got real greasy hair.

He's way too commonplace, his jacuzzi is lukewarm.

He was born on a farm, he wants to milk the cows, to till the fields, to hack the oats, to gather the corn, kill the cows, play in the hay.

It's not as dark in the bar, as it is in space.

His feet stay on the ground, his steps are very small (allusion to giant steps on the moon).

He's not hip to the Buzz, nor aware of Neil.

In 1969, he was taking a crap.

Who? Me? What? Ohhhhhh!

That man is not an astronaut. He prefers to catch the stars, in empty pickle jars.

That man is not an astronaut. He doesn't drive a car, his mailbox is too far.

" " There's so much shit on land, he doesn't understand.

" " He's lazier than me, and I'm no astronaut.

He's lazier than me, his leisure gives him glee.

He's lazier than me, he's happy with TV.

He's lazier than me, the choice is wide and never free.

He's got no initiative, sometimes he's downright plaintive.

He's got a lot a girth, he can't get off the Earth.

He's not so into that, he's not a fan o' that.

Though fifty years from now, he'll have his own space cow.

In many ways he is, he doesn't realize it.

If only he would see, all the things that he could be.

His own small vehicle, is plenty powerful.

He doesn't want to be, all the things he wants to be.

He's got a spaceship head, it's keeping him in bed.

contributions

Friends,

As it turns out, Mars is currently as close to us as it will ever be during our lifetime. You can see it burning red in the southeastern sky, early in the cold night. Clearly, the juxtaposition of the God of War upon my return to the United States can only be a heavenly portent, a celestial dictum requiring me to write and record the ethereal song "That Man is Not An Astronaut." To do so, your assistance is needed.

As you wander through these gray days, please take some time to think about potential verses for this still-gestating song. Examples will be given below. Submit your suggestions via email or the blog.

Verses are remarkably short, so short that some might question whether they are truly verses. Examples include:

1) "That man is not an astronaut- He's too afraid of heights, he's sick on Ferris wheels"
2) "That man is not an astronaut- He never drinks his Tang, he's got no Velcro shoes"
3) "That man is not an astronaut- He can't do calculus, Spacemen need their calculus"
4) "That man is not an astronaut- He's never been to Mars, I've never seen him there"

Thank you.