Man Martin's Blog, page 95

My Monkish Fantasy

The other day I told Nancy I thought I'd like to try out being a monk.

She gave me one of those looks of hers I have so much difficulty interpreting, where the eyebrows flex and straighten, one side of the mouth goes up, and one side goes down, like she's studying a very large, multi-segmented insect and can't decide whether she finds it comical or repulsive.  "Yes," she said.  "Become a monk.  That's exactly what you ought to do."

She was in the process of cleaning out the silverware drawer. Somehow every fork, knife, and spoon, as well as the inside of the drawer itself had become coated with melted butter-pecan ice cream.  I know it was butter-pecan because when she opened the drawer, she asked, "What is this?"  I dipped a finger in the liquid and tasted.

"Butter-pecan," I told her.  She had just returned from a business trip to Orlando and, as seems so frequently the case after coming home from such junkets, was not in the best of moods.  She did not acknowledge my helpfulness in identifying the liquid, and in fact seemed more displeased than otherwise, so I steered clear of her.

My monkish fantasy strikes me whenever Nancy is away on business.  There's a monastery somewhere nearby where laymen can check in for an extended stay to share the tranquil spirituality of the brothers.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  But then, why go to all the trouble of moving into a monastery when one can adopt the monkish lifestyle in one's own home?

Whenever Nancy's going to be gone for a week, I imagine myself falling into my role as Brother Man, a humble, godly monk, going about his daily routine with the humble godliness so characteristic of him.  I would start with a simple breakfast of oatmeal (I would not call it porridge, that would be overdoing it.) after which I would wash the bowl and pot with simple prayerful mindfulness of all the Lord's gifts, as I watched my neighbors, the birds, go after the suet treats I have hanging from the eaves outside the window.  Then, light exercise and tending my simple garden, until lunch, when I might have a leafy salad with berries, and on special occasions, chunks of wild-caught grilled chicken.  Again, I would clean after my repast, then journaling, reading, and meditation for supper, for which I would enjoy maybe a nice lean piece of fish, snow peas, and that little pasta that looks like rice.  Perhaps a single glass of picturesque red wine and one of those apples like Cezanne painted where you realize the apples in those days weren't as good as what we have now.  I would clean up a final time, give the floor a good sweep, return the broom to the broom closet, and read until "lights out," when I would pull the chain on my beside lamp (my beside lamp does not have a chain except in this fantasy) and sleep until my routine began again.

Somehow it never works out this way.  I get derailed.  I think it begins when I wake up.  I realize how foolish it is, and wasteful of time, to make the bed when I'm only going to unmake it by getting in a few hours from now, so I leave it as it is, as no doubt Jesus and Siddhartha once did themselves.  Then for breakfast, it seems equally silly to go to the trouble of oatmeal, when we have perfectly nutritious single-serve containers of yogurt in the fridge.  I eat a couple of these, fully intending to throw them away, but getting absorbed in Internet searches for important information and games of free cell, I somehow neglect this.  Lunch comes and I'm famished.  I don't have leafy greens, and actually don't care for that sort of thing, but it strikes me as almost as good to have a "walking salad," apple smeared with peanut butter and raisins.  I've already gotten out the peanut butter and had a sample tablespoonful, when I realize we don't have any apples.  Nor crackers.  Nor white bread.

Only an atheist will eat peanut butter on whole wheat.  So I eat the peanut butter straight from the jar along with handfuls of raisins.  A half-eaten jar of peanut butter with a spoon in it, a bag of raisins - some spilled onto the floor, where my office chair steamrolls them into large black dots - join the yogurt cups beside my computer while I hone my potentially-vital minesweeper skills.

For supper, I'm craving a good juicy rib-eye.  I've spent the last four hours watching reruns of the original Dark Shadows, from which I'm gathering additional research for an as yet unspecified future project.

I cook rib-eyes the way my mother did, thrown into the oven still frozen with the broiler set on high.  Knowing that dinner will be a while, I get out the box of butter-pecan ice cream.  Conscious that I still have not tidied my meager breakfast and lunch things, I decide to save dirtying a bowl by eating the ice cream straight from the box as my steak broils. 

The fascinating thing about Dark Shadows, a show with many fascinating qualities, I have begun to realize, is just how many episodes there are.  Although it ran for only a short time, there was a new episode each day, so there are hundreds of them.  They had gotten past the part where Barnabas Collins attempts to cure his vampirism with blood transfusions, and into the episodes with the parallel universe when I notice a smokey haze filling the intervening distance between me and the TV screen.  I leap from the chair, realizing the delicious aroma of cooking steak has become the delicious aroma of burning steak.  

I turn off the oven and extinguish the flames, and enjoy my steak - carbonized on the outside with little bloody ice crystals at the core as I watch the further adventures of Colinwood.  The thing is, that the episodes move with such arduous, excruciating slowness; it's like watching an old man climb a flight of stairs: the cane goes on the first step, a pause for reflection, then the left foot joins it, another pause, then the right foot, a pause, then the cane goes to the second step.  Finally, I have to call it quits, as vital as this research is, because it's nearly midnight and we still haven't caught sight of the extraterrestrials the script writers have been hinting at and dancing around for the last three hours.

The next morning I arise, and knowing this is the day Nancy returns, make the bed.

I enter the living room, and then begins the tempest to my soul.  I think it's seeing it through her eyes that makes it so terrible.  Much of the wreckage I can account for, even if I don't remember it being quite as bad as it now appears, but some of it is frankly mysterious.  For example, what possessed me to leave all these clothes lying on the floor of the shower?  It's almost as if some evil and extremely messy vampire had visited and left his calling card.  

The greasy steak plate, the yogurt containers, the raisins, and peanut butter are easily taken care of.  The odor from scorched beef is harder to deal with, and expending an entire aerosol can of freshener - which upon studying the label more closely proves to be hairspray - does little to amend the problem.  This however pales in comparison to the sight of the gallon bucket of butter-pecan ice cream which I neglected to put in the refrigerator and is still sitting on the counter. 

Thank goodness, when I pick up the container, I discover it's empty.  It looks as if the good Lord is watching over me after all.

All of which makes me think of how pleasant it would be to be a monk for a little while.  I think I'd be good at it.

(Originally Posted 2012)

Caring About Characters (Originally Posted 2012)

Raindrop and Flea have a conversationI’m teaching my high school class The Great Gatsby. (In addition to being a world-famous and justly-beloved novelist, I teach high school. We all have little pet dreams, I suppose; mine has always been to be a high school English teacher; I just write novels to pay the bills until the teaching thing works out.) 

Anyway, you remember Gatsby, right? It was the book they assigned in high school only you just watched the movie and read the Cliff’s Notes. So we get to the part after Daisy, who is driving Gatsby’s car, runs down and kills Myrtle Wilson. Gatsby, who has been carrying a torch for Daisy for the last five years is naturally going to take the blame for the hit and run. And Daisy, that bitch – sorry, there’s no other word for it – is going to let him do it! She won’t tell a soul it was she, not he, behind the wheel, and she’s going to let him face, a legal expert tells me, five to twenty-five years hard time for a crime she committed.

The thing about it is, Daisy is nothing more than ink spots on a page, but when they’re arranged in certain configurations, it still outrages me.

This sort of thing happens all the time; we read about purely fictional creations – creations we know are fictional in a book with a big fat warning – “a novel” – and a disclaimer like, “Any resemblance between characters in this book and actual people living or dead is purely coincidental,” and in spite of all this, we still worry if Inspector Mudge will unmask the killer or Rodney and Darlene will find true love. That we care so much for people we know full-well aren’t real is like… Well, imagine a magician saying, “I’m going to reach through a hole in the top of this trick hat, through a hole in the top of this trick table where I have concealed a specially-trained rabbit which I will extract from the hat as if he had materialized from thin air.” And then the magician doing exactly that, and the rubes in the audience saying, “Gaw-lee…” as they rub their slackened jaws in stupefied amazement.

But stories get this sort of reaction all the time.

Have you ever shouted – or wanted to shout – a warning to a character in a movie. “Don’t hide under the bed! It’s the first place he’ll look!” Or been unable to sleep because you needed one more chapter to see if Bilbo was going to outsmart a dragon in a cave. News flash, Bubby. Movie characters can’t hear you. And in The Hobbit, there is no cave, and there is no dragon. There’s the word dragon. The word cave.

Humans have this weird, almost pathological, ability to empathize. We feel sad to hear a stranger has died in an earthquake, happy when some frumpy lump turns out to have the voice of an angel, concerned when a kid floats off in a runaway balloon. (Later we’re furious – but equally entertained – that the whole thing was a hoax.) At some point, we don’t even care if the people are real, so long as the events are interesting.

I think this surely must have started at the very dawn of man. Two cavemen – not Geico cavemen, the real thing – we’ll call them – oh, what’s a good caveman name? – Lamar and Loomis. They have been chasing this one mastodon across the tundra for the last week. Lamar got a good spear thrust in him, and he and Loomis left the rest of the tribe, trailing him, skirting the face of a retreating glacier. It has been a lean winter, and no opportunity for meat can be allowed to slip by.

Of course being cavemen, they have no concept of a “week,” they just know it’s been a long time since they’ve seen another human. They also know they lost sight of the mastodon two days ago, but they’ve been following its tracks. Loomis claims the footprints show signs that their prey is seriously wounded and weakening, but privately Lamar isn’t so sure. Loomis says you can tell a lot from an animal’s tracks, but Loomis says a lot of things.

To make matters worse, the spring rains come early and Lamar and Loomis take shelter under an outcropping. It is very cold, and they are wet. And it is dark of a darkness none of us in our light-polluted world can ever imagine. Shut yourself in a closet, put a bag over your head, and close your eyes. It’s darker than that.

The situation is desperate to say the least. So Loomis begins talking – just nonsense, anything to take their minds off themselves. Silly stuff, the first thing that pops in his head. There’s a guy named Raindrop, and he’s on his way down the side of someone’s face, and he runs into Flea. And Flea and Raindrop have a conversation, oh, about a far-off land neither has seen, called Big Toe, and the two of them decide to set off to find it.

And at first Lamar is just listening because you can’t help listening when it’s dark and raining and cold and you’re lost and your belly’s empty and you don’t know where your next mastodon is coming from, but little by little Loomis’ magic begins to take hold. Lamar begins to wonder, will they make it to Big Toe, and if they do, what will happen there? And Loomis – who, if you remember, is making the whole thing up – begins to wonder himself, and not that it makes their lives any better, not really, but in the cold, dark, lonely rain they find themselves wondering and caring about two products of their own imagination.

And that was how the whole thing started: the wonderment we have at a story.

Do Flea and Raindrop reach Big Toe? Do Lamar and Loomis get their mastodon?

Stop Me If You've Heard This One (Originally Posted 2012)

Fig 2 Fig. 1So there's these three guys in a plane, and one's a pediatrician, one's a doctor, and one's a lawyer, and the pilot comes back and says, wait a minute, the first one's an osteopath, it's funnier that way, and the pilot comes back and says they're going down and they'll have to jump except there's just one parachute, so the osteopath says, wait a minute, I think there have to be at least two parachutes because otherwise it wouldn't be as funny because, well, anyway, the pilot says there's two parachutes, but that doesn't make sense either, because the pilot needs a parachute, or he wouldn't be so calm, or maybe the pilot says there's three parachutes but he's wearing one of them - that's the ticket! - or he says there's three parachutes and the osteopath says well that should be plenty because that's the sort of thing an osteopath would point out, and the pilot says but I'm already wearing one of them, so it's pretty clear one of you will have to jump, and the osteopath says, one thing they taught us in osteopath school is I can't remember just what the osteopath says he learned in osteopath school, but it's just as well because he's been getting all the good lines anyway and it's not his joke, so just to recap, the pilot comes back and says he can't be bothered to count them right now, but however many parachutes there are, there's one too few, and the osteopath says something he learned in osteopath school about self-sacrifice and nobly jumps out of the plane to a certain death which I say good riddance because that osteopath was nothing but trouble and I should've gone with the pediatrician in the first place, but the pilot says we're still going down, and someone else is going to have to jump, and the lawyer says what the hell, I thought we were only one parachute short, and the pilot says, oh, by the way, when I say jump, I mean jump without a parachute, but the lawyer says I thought we had enough after the osteopath left, and the pilot says, no, I must've miscounted, because we're still one short, and the pediatrician says we're only talking about two or three parachutes here and it's not exactly long division, and the pilot says, look, make up your mind who's going jump because that's the whole point of the story, and the lawyer says this isn't going to work because the punchline is when I throw the doctor out, but we need one more person to voluntarily leap to his death after a making a noble sentiment so we can build suspense, and the doctor, who doesn't like where this is heading says, well, maybe there's another passenger around here, if you keep miscounting the parachutes, maybe you miscounted passengers too, so they look around and can't find any more passengers, and the doctor says to the pilot, take off your parachute for a second, I want to check something about the straps, and the pilot says I'm not falling for that one, and the lawyer says, we might as well get this over with, and says the one thing they taught me at the American Bar Association is, and hell I can't remember what it was, but it was really funny in context, maybe about putting other people first and he throws the doctor overboard which isn't nearly as surprising as I meant it to be and then the pilot looks around and says damn, I think we had enough parachutes after all, and come to think of it, the plane's not going down, and we'll be in Phoenix in an hour.

Who Doesn't Love Waffle House? (Originally Posted 2012)

A Waffle House menu featuring The All Star Breakfast
(upper left).  I was unable to find visual documentation
of a sight that is actually quite common:
a view of a Waffle House from the front door
of another Waffle House.The other day Nancy told me the most astounding thing: she has a friend who does not like Waffle House!

Nancy had mentioned to her that we were traveling over the Memorial Day weekend, and how we looked forward to glutting ourselves on a stupendous Waffle House breakfast - a treat we can only allow ourselves on special occasions lest we balloon up like unto the hippopatomi that diet not and neither can they see their toes.  Well Nancy's friend made a comment like, "Feh."  ("Feh" was her actual word unless I mistake.)  "Who likes Waffle House?"

At the time Nancy revealed this astonishing news we were seated in the booth having just been served our four plates apiece of breakfast.  The All Star Breakfast - waffles, eggs, bacon, toast, hash-browns - requires at least three plates to serve.

In my opinion, a person who doesn't like Waffle House is the same sort of person who's too snooty to consider stepping into a Wal-Mart or eating cold pizza for breakfast.  The sort of person who's never - even for one minute - watched roller derby or will admit to being licked on the face by a golden retriever.  This is not a person who'll pull and eat fresh crackling from a smoked pig sitting in a wheelbarrow, as I have done.  In short, a snob.

Waffle Houses are more plentiful in the southeast than Baptist Churches and in fact, I've thought churches could shore up flagging membership by offering waffles and syrup at communion instead of bread and wine, but for some reason, around north Tennessee, they begin to peter out, and disappear entirely at the Mason-Dixon.  This is a mystery and one of the things that makes me suspiscious of northerners.

People who don't like Waffle House are the sort of people who can't enjoy their food if their waitress calls them "darlin" or smokes Marlboro Lights on breaks.  They don't like it if the men in the next booth have baseball caps but not shirt sleeves and have just come from a construction site and are discussing NASCAR.  They don't like ordering from a menu with pictures, although really, nothing could be handier or simpler; the bashful teen mother en route to a court hearing for smashing out the headlights of her boyfriend's pickup need not speak the words but can just point to the desired items. 

There are some things, of course, the man of discernment won't eat at a Waffle House.  The posters on the walls announced that the t-bone steak was bidding adieu.  I have never eaten a Waffle House steak, and the news that soon I would lose the opportunity forever left me unmoved.  But I love Waffle House and I don't give a damn who knows it.  I just love it.

Mopiness (Originally Posted 2012)

Okay, I'll admit.  Last week I was moping.  I'm over it now, but I was moping pretty hot and heavy for a while there.  The reason was because I learned I'd torn my ACL for the second time, and now over the summer, instead of running a triathalon sprint with my daughter like I planned, I'm going to have surgery and physical therapy.  So I moped.

I'm over it now, and I apologize to everyone, especially my wife and my friend Mike Burr to whom I subjected the intensest bombardment of mopiness radiation.

At this point I will digress to tell a seemingly unrelated story from my childhood, which at the end of, I will tie together in a way that will not only return to the theme of my torn ACL and my erstwhile mopiness, but touch on some universal of the human condition and give the reader a thought to ponder.

Here goes.

One Christmas I got a lunchbox.  Those were simpler days, of course, but I don't want the reader to infer that was all I got; I got a host of other goodies; nevertheless, it's the box I recall.  It was black with two chrome snaps, exactly like the one used by Ralph Cramden on the Honeymooners.  Better yet, it had a matching thermos with a twist-off cup and lid which I imagined carrying tomato soup.  

School was out, but I played with my lunchbox all morning.  Actually, "played with" is too strong a phrase; the lunchbox was a passive though crucial part of my game.  I stowed it in my tricycle's back basket of and pedaled like wild around the carport.  I was heading to work!  I was running late!  I'd nearly left my lunchbox with its thermos of tomato soup!  In short, I was playing Ralph Cramden, or if not him, an amalgam of mildly comical adults in the midst of their busy lives with places to go and things to do, unlike me who had no better use for his time than pedaling a tricycle with an empty lunchbox around the carport .

I took a sharp turn and tipped over.  I was unhurt, but from the direction of the lunchbox, I heard an unexpected tinkling.  I unscrewed the thermos and discovered that in addition to its screw-on cup and lid it had another, unsuspected chamber which unscrewed as well.  When I did this, out issued a rain of little silver mirrors.  I understood nothing of the the principle by which a thermos maintains the temperature of liquids, yet I knew without needing an adult to explain, that in some way I had broken it, completely and irreparably, and that while it might appear a thermos to the outward and casual eye, it was a thermos in fact, no longer.

Nothing can match the matchless shame of a five year-old.  I told no one.  I picked up each silver shard and threw it in the garbage can, something in my throat and stomach as dark and heavy as the thunderclouds that rolled in just then to cover the sun.  I came in with my mutilated lunchbox and concealed it in a way that would appear I was only neatly putting it away, useless now and lighter by the weight of its missing inner chamber, and yet as heavy and joyless as the sky and my sinking stomach.

Even had I dared to share this crime with an adult, I could not have articulated my emotions, and I'm not sure I can now, but what so upset me was not just the thermos itself, but the news, which was still news to my five year-old heart, is that I lived in a world in which things got broken, and when they did, often as not, the guilt for breaking them would fall on me.  The adult world, I foresaw, was more than a mildly comical rush to important destinations: it was a world in which loss and shame were integral and increasingly frequent themes.

I think that's why I moped about my ACL (See, I told you we'd end up back here.)  Just the same news, still capable of disheartening me now that I'm older by a factor of ten.  Things break and tear.  Nothing lasts forever.

I'm heading to the Y today to do some weights.  I'll swim and ride my bike, and next year, by golly, I'll do my triathalon.  I'm fifty-three and a torn ACL can't keep me down long.  You get over an ACL. 

It's that first broken lunchbox you never get over.

Open Letter to Vickie Thompson in Ms Hussein's Third-Grade Class (Originally Posted 2012)

Young Digestive Systems Are Already
Prone to GaseousnessDear Vickie:

I do not know if you will see this letter, or if you do, if you will remember me. Part of me earnestly hopes you do neither. I sat one seat to the right and rear of you in Miss Hussein’s third grade class in Ft Pierce, Florida; I moved the following year to Georgia, and you had entered school in March, so our paths crossed only briefly. Nevertheless, I remember you well.

If you have our class photo, I’m in the red bow-tie second from the back, third from the left. I am smiling broadly, which means the picture was taken before the April Ho-Down. Next to me is Darren, my best friend, or rather the boy who had inserted himself into that slot without asking; I was drawn to Grady, the gregarious red-haired hooligan, second from the right in the front row, but once during recess Darren struck up a friendship out of the blue, which I was too polite to rebuff. 

I knew letting Darren glom onto me ruined any chance for a real friend at Ft Pierce Elementary; because of his body odor that suggested he’d had an accident in his pants, others would naturally assume that either I had a bad smell myself, or that I liked people who did – just as unforgivable – or – nearly as unforgivable – that I didn’t know the difference.

Please don’t think me callous and shallow for this, just the opposite; I accepted Darren as my sort-of best friend in spite of the social handicap entailed. My vegetarian mother raised me to be unusually sensitive of others; when passing the second graders en route to lunch, we traditionally chanted, “Second grader babies, second grader babies,” to the nasal tune of “Yanner-nanner-nanner.” When returning, fourth graders passed us, who likewise chanted, “Third grader babies, third grader babies.” 

I saw through the hollowness of this, and while not enlightening my peers about mindless perpetuation of pointless cruelty down the generations, I did not participate in the chanting either, which I think indicates my good character. Moreover, for Valentine’s Day, I deliberately selected my largest and nicest Valentine for Jackie, the fat girl whom everyone picked on. To be strictly truthful, I don’t recall anyone ever actually picking on her, but I believe many had planned on doing it, and I’m sure in the fullness of time, they did. I also admit that Valentine-giving in Ms Hussein’s class was anonymous so Jackie never knew whence the card came, but I’m sure it cheered her to receive what was clearly a very large and nice Valentine. In the spirit of perfect candor, I will go on to say I may have taken part in chanting “Second grader babies” one time, but I stopped after that first occasion, and I think my honesty in coming forward with this now, when I don’t have to, speaks very well for me.

I was too shy to talk to you, and if you had a crush on anyone, it would have been Grady, for which I don’t blame you. He was a swaggering rascal with a sense of rough justice for which he was universally admired. My one fond fantasy was taking your hand at the April Ho-Down and dose-e-doeing you across the gym floor, flanked by clapping third-graders. That was all I wanted or hoped, that I could hold your hand, which I knew would be cool and soft and fit in mine like a small tame bird. All week our class fashioned bandannas and cowboy hats out of construction paper, and festooned the gym with gaudy construction-paper chains. Ms. Hussein put on an album of grade-appropriate Ho-Down music, “Turkey in the Straw” and “Froggy Went a’Courting.” Your first dances, of course, were for Grady, but Grady was a rover, as we all knew, and soon his attention was elsewhere. Darren was dancing with a partner of his own, and I was alone. This was my moment. You were sitting at the sidelines, raising a paper cup of Hawaiian Punch to your pink lips, and I went over. I bowed in facetious formality and offered my hand. I believe you were on the cusp of accepting it, and the record, which had finished “Coming Round the Mountain” fell silent except for a sibilant hiss.

I have mentioned my mother was a vegetarian, these days quite common, but in the late ‘60’s still considered eccentric, one of the drawbacks to a diet of beans and rice being the associated flatulence, especially in young digestive systems already prone to gaseouness, especially at times of anxiety or social pressure.

Vegetarian farts have no smell; this is not just my opinion or wishful thinking, but a generally acknowledged truth. The report however, amplified by my standing slightly bent over and the echoing gym walls as well as the silence between songs, ruined whatever tender memory I might have treasured. For a few beats there was a lull, and then the record broke in with “Oh, Susanna!” which seemed an ironic commentary on what had just occurred, and then the gym burst into gales of laughter as I turned heel and slunk hot-faced to the punchbowl.

The class construed this catastrophe as a daring jest on my part, that I had been “saving up” and waiting for just the right moment to let fly in gallant mockery of all the sham pretense of April Ho-Down, and also in mockery and contempt of you, Vickie Anderson, the prettiest girl in third grade, and I was coward enough to let them do so. For this I am ashamed, not for the fart, which I couldn’t help, but for letting you and the others believe that I was making fun of you. My mother got a job in Georgia, and we moved away that summer, which came as both a relief and an additional burden, that I never got to mend fences with you or explain my actions.

Forgive me now, Vickie. Forgive me now.

– Man

Lordy, I Love My Wife (Originally Posted 2012)

Nancy and I own a two-bedroom, one-bath condo we rent out.  In typical brilliant Martin timing, we purchased this investment property right before the real estate market went ker-thud.  

Recently, the old tenant moved out, and Nancy and I had to repaint and rehab it a bit before renting it again.  In truth, the old tenants left it in reasonably good shape, but no matter what, there's always work to be done.  And it's always a lot more work than you anticipate.  Since we both have full-time jobs, this neccessitates going over after work to paint, clean, and repair.  A good word for the experience would be "fatiguing."  There are lots of other good words for the experience, but I can't use them in a family-friendly blog.

I'd arrive after school - Nancy would be there first and already at work - change into my painting duds, and work as long as I could stand, and then a little bit longer.  And then we'd go home and pass out.  The next day we'd do it again.

I wish I could claim to be some sort of work-ethic superman with a hand for any fate, but the truth is, I'm just following Nancy's lead.  It's not like she doesn't get tired - she gets exhausted - but she keeps on going.  It's like that Kipling poem, "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew, to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

Corny, I know, but that's Nancy to a T.  I'd feel myself flagging and be just on the point of suggesting we throw a lighted kerosene-soaked rag in a corner and file for insurance, and I'd see her plugging away, still at work, uncomplaining.  I'd run out of things to do, but she always had a task at hand.  She never bitched or said I wasn't doing enough, just worked as hard and steady as she knew how.

When I married her, I thought of her as a "girl."  I never thought of her as a "lady."  But I realize what I have on my hands - oh, lord what a marvel!- is a woman, and what a woman!
Nancy and I own a two-bedroom, one-bath condo we rent out.  In typical brilliant Martin timing, we purchased this investment property right before the real estate market went ker-thud.  Recently, the old tenant moved out, and Nancy and I had to repaint and rehab it a bit before renting it again.  In truth, the old tenants left it in reasonably good shape, but no matter what, there's always work to be done.  And it's always a lot more work than you anticipate.  Since we both have full-time jobs, this neccessitates going over after work to paint, clean, and repair.  A good word for the experience would be "fatiguing."  There are lots of other good words for the experience, but I can't use them in a family-friendly blog.
I'd arrive after school - Nancy would have gotten there first and already be at work - change into my painting duds, and work as long as I could stand, and then a little bit longer.  And then we'd go home and pass out.  The next day we'd do it again.
I wish I could claim to be some sort of work-ethic superman with a hand for any fate, but the truth is, I'm just following Nancy's lead.  It's not like she doesn't get tired, she gets exhausted, but she keeps on going.  It's like that Kipling poem, "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew, to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
Corny, I know, but that's Nancy to a T.  I'd feel myself flagging and be just on the point of suggesting we pile some kerosene-soaked rags in a corner, hold a match to them, and file for insurance, and I'd see her plugging away, still at work, uncomplaining.  I'd run out of things to do, but she always had a task at hand.  She never bitched or said I wasn't doing enough, just worked as hard and steady as she knew how.

When I married her, I thought of her as a "girl."  I never thought of her as a "lady."  But I realize what I have on my hands - oh, lord what a marvel!- is a woman, and what a woman!

The other night she showed me her hands.  She had literally rubbed her fingerprints off with cleaning - all she had on the pads of her fingers were red blisters.  How can anyone be so tough, and at the same time so beautiful, kind, and good?  Oh, Nancy, I love you.

Thinking of Chris

As my sister prepares to start a new job in New York, I re-post this blog from 2012:


Whenever we talk about our childhood, Chris recalls the various tortures she inflicted on me.  I do not deny these occurred, but they do not form as prominent a feature in my memory as they seem to in hers.  Perhaps part of the reason these incidents loom so large is because my now-defunct comic strip, "Sibling Revelry," featured a brother and sister, not unlike ourselves, and I frequently drew from childhood experience.  Let's face it, bad stuff makes better entertainment than good stuff.

But sitting in the doctor's office waiting to have some fluid drawn from my knee, the classical radio station played an organ piece, and a scene from my childhood flashed back.  I do not know its name, but it was ponderous and turgid and you could almost see Lon Chaney's skeletal delight as he leans back, elbows locked, pressing down the keys with heavily-veined hands.  It was a piece Chris and I used as intro music when we recorded vampire melodramas on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.  We'd start off with a good creepy blast of organ music, then ad lib an encounter in an old castle replete with plenty of squeaky doors and crashing thunder (the latter of which required a good mouthful of spit to do properly, not unlike machine-gun fire.)

Another thing we liked to do was put on little skits for my mother.  I can't think of why Mur tolerated this, but she'd sit there acting for all the world as if this were the best entertainment you could hope for, as Chris and I improvised goofy rambling scenes about desert islands or detectives or whatever.  Maybe part of the reason was because Mur set us up to perform for Meemaw and Great Aunt Bessie whenever we went down to visit.  We'd have to sing "Senor Don Gato" or "The Bold Fisherman," which at first we dreaded, but later secretly looked forward to.  Mur was an early contributor to our love of being in the spotlight.

We were both avidly interested in drawing, and once Chris challenged me to see who could draw a better hand.  Our maid was to be the judge.  I labored putting in the parenthetic wrinkles on the knuckles and the little white scallops at the base of the fingernails.  Chris drew four aces and a king.  Chris won.

Chris began drawing these gorgeously funky words in the shapes of what they were describing, so that "bird" for example, looked like a bird, where the letters were so puffy and interlocked, all the negative space closed up.  You've seen the sort of thing, I'm sure, but in Sandersville, Georgia, 1970, it was the coolest thing since Sesame Street. 

I tried my hand at it, but wasn't much good, so instead Chris and I started drawing mazes.  We'd fill an entire sheet of notebook paper with narrow twisting corridors, no wider than a pencil shaft, and present them to each other to solve.  What generosity that was!  An hour toiling on a labyrinth of coils and serpentines, that would be ruined once the triumphant pencil stroke found its way from the little bubble of "start" to the pirate x of "end."

All this is pretty random, and if you've read this far, you're a better audience than I deserve.  But it's the sort of thing that goes through your mind when you hear a snatch of music you haven't heard in years.  What would childhood have been like without my sister?  I cannot imagine.  She is in every corner and nook of my past.

A Few Random Tweets

Cardinal @redbird                                     1m
Whoit cheer, whoit cheer, cheer-cheer-cheer


Catbird @kittybrd1                                      1m
mew, mew, cack



Brown Thrasher @thsh101                      2m 
Smack, churr

Cardinal @redbird                                      2m
whoit cheer, cheer-cheer-cheer


Mourning Dove @sadbird                        2m
Coo-coo.  Coo-coo-coo-coo

Cuckoo @kookoo                                      2m@sadbird  Cuckoo?

Mourning Dove @sadbird                        2m
@kookoo Coo-coo.  Cooo.  Coo-coo-coo.


Ostrich @ausieos                                       2mMook.  Mook.  Moo.

Cardinal @redbird                                     2m
Whoit cheer, cheer-cheer

(Originally posted 2012)

The Mirror Crisis (Originally Posted 2012)

Something very strange is going on with mirrors.  I haven't mentioned it up to now, because at first it was only a slight change, and then when it began to become noticeable, I hoped I was only imagining it, or that the phenomenon was only temporary.  Later, I hesitated saying anything because I feared people would doubt my sanity because what I have to say is so bizarre, I myself have difficulty believing it.  But no matter the consequences, I must speak up; what's going on with mirrors suggests something is going radically wrong with the space-time-continuum, something inexplicable that may threaten the very universe.

First, let me describe myself. 

I am five-foot ten inches tall, with green eyes, brown hair, and a 32-inch waist.  I mention my waist size because this will illustrate the puzzling and dreadful change that has come over mirrors.  I am not muscular by any means, but I'm reasonably fit.

When I look in the mirror instead of myself, there's a strange man.  He offers no threat and seems good-natured enough.  When I raise my arm, he raises his just as if he were my actual reflection, but he is clearly not.  For one thing, he's bald.  I, as I have mentioned, have brown hair.  What hair he does have, has a little brownish to it, but it's mostly gray.  I have nothing against bald men; long ago I resolved that if in the fullness of time, I lost my hair I would accept it gracefully, but I decided I would never go bald with two side-walls of hair over each ear and a shiny dome with a few stray hairs clinging to the top, like Larry from the Three Stooges.  And this is precisely the way the man in the mirror is bald, so you can see, it is clearly not me.

Moreover, his face has an unearthly puffiness.  It's almost - not quite, but almost - like my own face, only filled out, as if I'd gained twenty or thirty pounds.  It is not a face that would cause people on the street to run in terror, but studying it closely, as I have had opportunity to do, reveals a multitude of little horrors.  At the corners of the mouth, for example, are these marks in the skin - not tattoos, but little trenches or grooves.  One might almost call them lines.  My actual face is very smooth, almost babyish in fact, so unless a maniacal surgeon has been at work on me while I slept, there is no accounting for this.  Then there is this strange lose tissue joining his jaw and neck.  I do not know what this is, but it looks scarcely human, and leads me to suspect mirrors may have become visual portals to another planet, if not a parallel universe in another dimension.

When I take off my shirt, the result is even more startling.  Again, I am no Adonis, but I am reasonably fit.  In Romeo and Juliet, the nurse describes the handsome Count Paris, as a "man of wax."  The man in the mirror, however, resembles Count Paris if he'd been left in a hot car for several hours on a July afternoon.  There is sort of a melted look around the chest and torso, whereas the middle is thickened, and somewhat jiggly as if a semi-liquid substance were stored there.

If this had only occurred in one mirror, perhaps I might treat it as a harmless, if mystifying novelty: but it is not.  It is all reflective surfaces.  Even digital cameras have been affected.  I come forward with this now, hoping that others who have noticed similar alarming phenomena will speak up.  I don't know what, if anything, can be done, but I do know that we can no longer remain silent.