Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Unmuffled Machineries of Joy

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“Did you enjoy your time off?” asked one of them.

“You owe me sixteen hours,” said the boss. It would be easier to hear this sort of shit if I’d made some shinier memories, or accepted that the day after Thanksgiving is a work day at this place, or felt that Thanksgiving was still my favorite holiday.

It used to be, when I was little (and also when I was as tall as I am now, but thinner and with zits) and we went to my grandparents’ for five days in a row. Looking back I imagine that my parents must have dreaded those visits. So many days in close quarters, and nights in a lousy bed with your son in another, in the same room. At least we got a room with a door, and not just a pullout sofa; my grandfather and uncles all snored like walruses.

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On Catching Up On Putting Up With

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“Did you get my prescription”

“Not ready”

“OK”

“For what again”

“The usual”

“OK so they say you never called in”

“I didnt I thought you said it was ready? Otehr day. Nvrmd lets get lunch”

“Meet you there”

“Wait where we never said!” And I’ll spare you the rest, as here I gave up on both texting and automated refills, and fucking called her already.

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‘The Customer Puts the Dollars in Your Paycheck’

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“Umm, there’s a hearse out front,” I said to my wife and son a few Wednesdays ago. We were in my kid’s upstairs room, and I could just see a black vinyl top that had appeared out his window. I was only puzzled for a moment, and then I ran down the stairs and yelled, “Dad!”

No, nothing bad had happened – I knew he was driving!

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I Do I Mean It’s Fine I Just I Am

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“Communitive. Ta-tive? No, it’s communitive.”

“Commutative, the commutative property,” I said. “I think. I mean, what do I know, consider the source.”

“No, communitive,” my co-worker Dan said. “The one that says A+B is the same as B+A.”

“Right, I got it. Because I was working on the thing for Scott, and I know you don’t care which of us gives it to you as long as – “

“Oh I care!” He looked at me with his chin down, eyes lifted up under his brow as if to say, how dare you accuse me of not caring. He was kidding in his caring, and I laughed, and so did he. It was after 7 pm on a Wednesday.

“I get it!” I said, “YOU need the thing WE’RE doing, and you don’t care what order –“

“Commutative?!” He smiled at me and then went back to the serious chin-down face, and picked up the phone.

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On the Outskirts of Consequence

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“It’s clear, we could probably see from the back yard,” I said to my son, about tonight’s eclipse.

“Except for the trees,” he said.

“Okay, the front yard? We could use the telescope.”

“Really we need to go up to Estabrook where it’s open and dark,” he said, walking away from what he’s left me to do.

“Yeah sure great,” I said, not really wanting to do that, and wondering how we went from planning to stand on the porch together, to me having to lug a heavy thing a couple miles. Now he was in his room, where he’d stay for the duration if I didn’t remember to suggest that he come down and let me lug a heavy thing for him. He’s my son. I did the same to my Dad, with different things, in another house in a similar suburb where we heard the ocean, not the highway, like we do here.

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Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, Slowly

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On the first day of my commute to this job, I’d started the loud music way too soon, before I even saw the on-ramp. Then I sped, shouting, into being stopped. Now I know better. I don’t even start my speakers or shouter until I’ve already fired up the sneaker-slider. I sneak and slide over two lanes, at ease with all the cars and trucks holding me in a very tight slow march.

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On (and Off) the Swing of Things

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August 20, 2012

All of us spend some of our lives doing things we don’t enjoy and aren’t very good at. The less time we spend doing such things, the happier we are. You could telegraph your life’s discontent by blacking out squares on a calendar, dot dot dash, for tasks done joylessly and badly.

This is not an unqualified endorsement of the fun and easy. Chips and salsa are easier and more fun than boneless chicken breast, mashed potatoes and canned peas, but you could live on the latter, though doing so might make you wish you were dead. And there are jobs that look like work that we do for fun.

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Introducing The Perseverant

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Since I was 13, I’ve had the feeling, one I can’t shake or name, that it is immoral for someone as fortunate as I am to be so frequently unhappy. This feeling is the ghost that animates this blog. I have learned to live with this feeling, its thrashing and reveling, in public and private, its phases of virulence and remission, as a kind of soul-work for my un-religious self.

The religious person, I imagine, has made peace with the morality of his moods in a way that I never have. I could say, defensively, that I don’t choose to feel rotten and resentful, the way people choose to steal cars or cheat on their taxes, so I shouldn’t feel bad about my feelings. But I suspect that my resenting of life, and then my guilty and earnest and futile effort to stop, has warped my choices and actions; that a spiritual exhaustion from all this may have let me steal from and cheat the people I’ve known.

Now I see this person, this person of faith hearing me, responding in two ways. The first is through a television screen, an old bulbous glass one with dust I can see in the afternoon glare, and he says to another character, “One of the people you’ve cheated, [pause], is you.”

I’m sorry to write that, but like most of us, I’ve wasted too much of my life watching television.

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