Groan. A couple days off and I revert to my inner 13-year-old boy! Honestly, I left the USB cable for my camera in a hotel room, so I have no choice but to recycle stuff from my Facebook photo albums until I get a replacement. Which is actually perfect timing because I have a feeling there may be a few more posts like this in the upcoming weeks. I'm equal parts supremely pissed off/ignited and excited in an explosive, adolescent sort of way. There will be sobbing, throbbing, foul language and kicks in the balls. No fart jokes, though. I hate fart jokes. So gauche!
P.S. Photo taken at the M16 bus stop at Waterside Plaza.
I never realized until I started this blog how many Ramones LPs are on my inner turntable. Phew, good deal!
I thought this was a tripped-up, hipped-up cousin of a Blue Meanie until I counted the legs just now. Spider? Octopus? And why is there always a Ramones song for everything?!
It’s sort of ironic that the timing’s not right for this post. For one, it’s technically Meezer Monday, and secondly, who the heck is ever ready to write—or wants to read some shyster’s (scheister’s?) blabberings—about time? The topic’s so freakin’ big, no wonder people have to wear watches to make sense of it. But c’mon, people, are we that lame that we need to see the tick-tick-tick and the second hand all herky-jerkying like Buster Keaton in order to understand that we’re all moving over/under/sideways/down/all together now?
Honestly, I tried to write this post last night, but I was too tired after a) dancing for two hours, b) watching the Yankees beat the Mets, c) writing & editing, d) chanting and e) eating a size and a half too large piece of red velvet cake. Everything I wrote was even more stoopid than this is, but heck… that’s what blogs are for. Unripened cheese.
So yes, I meant to post this last week because it was then that I was reminded of my favorite Brian Wilson-ism, and my own dorky, quasi-poetic variation on it.
Brian’s: “Time is fine when it’s in cadence.” Pune’s: “Time is fine when it’s in candles.”
Of course, I agree with Brian. That’s a given. Anyone on the street plugged into an iPod and walking into various signage and other pedestrians because, hey, they’ve got the beat, would agree, too. Or do you even need a iPod? How many of us, I wonder, are constantly moving to and counting out an 8-count (is that too Western Civilization of me?)? Do you always have a song—or at least a rhythm—in your head, or is that just me? (And of course your heart’s your very own mini beatbox.)
You don’t have to have been around a long time to get it. Actually, longevity probably makes it worse. On Friday, one of my favorite students from the dance class I assist in was telling me how she feels when she dances. “You just hear the music, and I don’t know, you get all these butterflies in your stomach,” says this 9-year-old goddess. “You can't stop it--your feet have to move to the beat.” She’s clearly fine when she’s in cadence.
(In contrast: Taxi time is NOT in cadence. A polluted arrhythmic arithmetic of stop and start and no deodorant and pavement and worn-out shocks. Immotion sickness.)
Candle time, on the other hand, is so expansive. You can fill it with all sorts of things you wouldn’t say or do in the bug-zapping light of high-noon. Not necessarily THOSE sorts of things, you pre-verts! I mean thoughts that are a little kinder, broader…untied and diffuse and…defuse. (Um, is that a word? I guess it is now.) They're tall like exclamation marks, beginning and ends in themselves, with no record but our memory, measuring our prayers and rituals and kisses. It’s glow-as-you-go.
So, yeah, that’s Derrick last week, contemplating candle time. I love how he had to get up so close in order to figure the whole thing out. I open my eyes and he’s all cat-meditating, whipping my a$$ on that front like there’s no tomorrow.
Well, you know, maybe for him there isn’t. That big lout’s already staked his claim on the ever-present, and I can assure you he’s always got something to watch but doesn’t wear one.
You’d never believe me if I told you why my guys get along so well. It’s not like I did anything except answer Bing’s simple request, via the animal communicator: “Bring me my kitty!”
Oh, I brought him his kitty all right (or “alright” if you listen to mod-era Who), a big lug twice his size who stalks him and knocks him down at every opportunity.
It’s OK, I think little Bing could kick Derrick’s big honky a$$ if he really wanted to.
OK, so they don't really eat refried beans, but...
Is there a statute of limitations on secrets? And is there some sort of automatic half-life on this statute if the person who told the secret wasn't supposed to tell me in the first place? Irrelevant. Mum’s sooo not the word today…
I'm telling on you, blabbermouth high school teacher!
It was nearing the end of senior year, and a friend reported that a teacher—we’ll call her Mrs. Blah Blah—was talking trash to her about our fellow classmates. The teacher described one girl as a “poor dumb thing.” Another, and I’m proud to say one of my best friends, was labeled “smart, but a bitch.” (Were you high, Mrs. Blah Blah?! Heck, she’s definitely smart, but way too empathetic and trusting in the world to be bitchy. This is a girl who, late for work one summer morning, randomly threw on one of her boyfriend’s T-shirts, and noticed that people were especially friendly all day. She realized why when her boyfriend asked her to look at what was printed on the shirt: “No Muff Too Tough/We Dive at Five.” A bitch wouldn’t laugh at herself so heartily and easily, which is what my friend did.)
I’m almost insulted Mrs. Blah Blah didn’t call me a bitch, too, but I guess that’s because I was predominantly…
AFFECTED.
Yup, that’s right. Affected. I remember that I had to read the dictionary definition a couple of times, but she meant someone with affectations, someone who puts on airs and pretends to be something they’re not. Oh, most understanding Mrs. Blah Blah, let me apologize for DARING to be anything other than what I was. I’m sorry I didn’t want to accept my place at the bottom of that typical high-school heap, topped by that tool you so fondly described as “adorable.” I’m sorry the rest of my face hadn’t yet caught up with my nose, and I’m sorry I wanted to get the hell out of that town because gee, I don’t know, Mrs. Blah Blah, I had a very sick family member who thought he was Jesus and ran around town making citizens’ arrests …so sorry, Mrs. Blah Blah, that I was trying NOT to be that girl....
But yeah, you did totally call me on my survival tactics—and if wearing thrift-store clothes, finally finding a voice and giving yourself a new name defines someone as “affected,” then sign me up. And what 17-year-old knows who they are, anyway? If they do, what are they supposed to spend the rest of their lives learning and doing? That’s a diploma with a death sentence to me, Mrs. Blah Blah. Isn’t being all about becoming, anyway?
I think that’s why it bugs me so much when people don’t capitalize “Is” in headlines. (You capitalize verbs in headlines, you know. Did you teach me that?) And “Is” may be two lil’ letters, but to me it’s the most important verb of all. Life is “Is.”
What irks me most? I like you, Mrs. Blah Blah! And I learned a lot from you! It may not have been the greatest high school, but you cared enough to introduce us to stuff that might actually expand our brains. We read Plato, and I remember thinking, “What IS this?!” It was wild and exciting to me in the way that I guess kissing boys would have been if I weren’t a) socially inept and b) c’mon, do i have to bring up the nose thing again?
Anyway, it’s water under the bridge now, Mrs. Blah Blah. I went on to major in philosophy at college, so I really do have you to thank for that. And I’m happy to be thought of as someone who works hard to be who they’re not entirely, but just might become.
