Keep Practicing

I've spent six months with my current cast of characters and one of them needs a different name. The current one is too similar to another character's. This should be easy, just pick something. But it's not because I've lived with the other one for so long. To change names is to change identities. I'm a little annoyed by this, though not in the sense that it's something of great consequence. Just annoying.

I'm also thinking of transitions. What was once important to me now seems trivial. It's odd to be reminded that things were otherwise, to see visual evidence that I used to care about something that hardly feels real. It's like trying to remember a dream after waking. I might recall certain specific events for a while, but eventually it's a giant fog full of nothing more than vague impressions.

In a painfully real sense, that's life. People sometimes talk about letting go as though it's something we can choose to do. No, letting go happens whether we want it to or not. The best we can do is accept it, not fight it so much. It's a physical law, like gravity, not the breakable sort that we create for ourselves.

On the bright side, such finiteness provides immutable parameters in which to function. Boundaries are lain and observed, no matter what. There is no room for doubt about how things begin or end. This should provide more comfort than it usually does. The world is so full of uncertainty, and this is a source of unease. But when we find something that is certain, it causes even greater unease.

This problem should be as easy to solve as renaming my character. And yet, neither is easy. It's like the difference between theory and practice. I dunno, keep practicing?

It Never Goes Away

Some days you sit and stare at the keyboard, then at the monitor, and hope for anything. You look outside and wonder where the birds are. Oh, there's one, on top of the pine tree. It's probably the same bird you always see on the top of that same pine tree.

“This is shit,” you think to yourself while struggling for more eloquent words or a better situation. Frustration sets in, but you keep typing because that's your job. You check and notice that you've only typed 80 words, which means you need 221 more to meet your quota, and then are happy because this sentence just used 34 words on its own.

You could, if so inclined, fill the remainder of your quota with sentences describing how much farther you have to go before reaching said quota. It would doubtless make for gripping drama.

You were thinking about grief when you started typing and then decided against focusing on something so heavy, although today is Memorial Day, so it wouldn't be entirely inappropriate. On the other hand, “memorial” relates to memory, so maybe you remember those you've lost and are filled with joy at knowing that you got to spend some amount of time with them in this world.

It's good to be connected. Good, but sometimes difficult.

You conjure the images of loved ones in your mind. And you contemplate the different kinds of loss. Some died, others just went away. Some you knew, others you really didn't.

As you grow older, you come to gain a greater understanding of bittersweet. And yet, you still have trouble finding the right words to describe it. There's a feeling whose essence you want to capture but which remains ever elusive.

Best get comfortable with that. It never goes away.

Unspeakably Large

I'm dreaming of Utah, of places I've never been, like Canyonlands and Arches. We were discussing beauty in the world and I felt limited, which I am, as are we all. Animal, vegetable, mineral... makes no difference in the end.

Roads traveled linger in my mind like atoms scattered across an ever-expanding universe. Those not traveled gnaw at me, call to me like the Sirens. I would go there if I could, perhaps even to my death.

The last thing I see might be magnificent, or it might be mundane. But then, there is magnificence in the mundane, even if we do not always recognize it. We just need to look more closely, pay attention to the right things (assuming we know what those right things are).

But we're dwelling too much on endings. Beginnings are also worth remembering, for they are our launch points into a larger world. They only hint at what lies ahead, when we may feel both excitement and fear at the unknown.

Then again, is there really a difference between beginnings and endings? If every journey is circular (from the universe, back to it... never having left, in fact), then points along the loop are arbitrary both in position and in sequence. They could easily be changed without consequence. Yes, minor differences would arise, but in the end (or beginning) there is only everything around us.

At this point I must mention that I'm completely sober as I write this. My mind wanders into weird areas of its own accord, without chemical assistance. It's a blessing and a curse.

Meanwhile, Utah continues to exist, largely unexplored by me. The same can be said of the entire planet or even universe. Space is unspeakably large, so I'm led to believe, though I can neither confirm nor deny.

Bad Case of Loving You

We had a regular gig at strip mall dive bar in Chula Vista, between a 99 cent Chinese restaurant and an all-night laundromat. Across the parking lot was a Denny's. We parked and loaded our stuff out back. About ten yards separated us from the retaining wall that kept drunks out of the adjoining apartment complex, which probably had enough drunks of its own.

The bartenders were cool, mostly women. At least one of them had done hard time and provided good anecdotal evidence that rehabilitation could work. The bouncer was a mountain of a man who rarely lost his cool, and for good reason. We made friends with him and the women serving drinks. You never know what will happen in a place like that, and you want as many people on your side as possible.

First set is always “oldies” (Beatles, Eagles, softer stuff from the '60s and '70s). Second set is AOR (Tom Petty, .38 Special, etc.). Third is dance tunes (“You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Play That Funky Music,” “Brick House,” etc.). Fourth is straight-up shitkicker music (Steppenwolf, Judas Priest, Bush, White Stripes, anything aggressive).

There's grandmas, bikers, gangbangers, tweakers in the joint on any given night. Some folks fall into more than one category, and most get along well enough, even after a few too many.

One night we're playing as usual and this couple at the corner of the bar nearest me (stage right) starts getting into it, just yelling at each other. It gets physical as we're wrapping up a song. They're right in front of me as we start the next song, which I sing: “Bad Case of Loving You.”

Doorman jumps in, hauls them away. I eventually stop laughing long enough to blurt out the first line.

Insufferable Bore

Another thing that pisses me off about the book I'm currently reading is the quality of research. It's bad enough that the author displays an almost limitless lack of adventure and the same amount of self-pity. Never mind her strange obsessions with coffee and food, and the fact that she belittles her more interesting travel companion at every opportunity. Forget her didactic tone, her purple prose.

Even aside from all that, she just plain gets her facts wrong, which maybe isn't too surprising given that she takes the time to complain about how she once spent eight whole hours researching something. While looking for more information on her subject matter, about whom I am now genuinely curious, I've discovered that she has probably gotten the nationality of her subject wrong. I'm in no position to confirm or deny this, but here are some other gaffes:

• At one point she decries an event as being “archetypically American,” which would be fine except that the event in question occurs in Canada. She actually repeats the error later in the same paragraph. The author is from Australia. Or New Zealand, whatever.
  
• I flipped to the back of the book to see how much more there is to read and stumbled across a familiar line: “Isn't it pretty to think so.” I immediately recognized it as Hemingway and thought it was from The Sun Also Rises (it is). She even mentions the sunrise in her sentence leading up to that quote, which she then attributes to Fitzgerald.
  

So yeah, if you complain about doing research and can't tell the difference between the United States and Canada or between Hemingway and Fitzgerald, I have to assume you're making shit up.

She got a government grant for this. And she's an insufferable bore.

There's Always Stuff to Do

The question becomes one of how much you can cut out of a thing and still have it be that thing. Or in a perfect world, a better version of that thing. What is needed, what isn't? Signal or noise, wheat or chaff.

So you keep cutting, and the thing may get worse before it gets better, but you trust that you'll end up with what you want. Sometimes you get lucky and it actually works that way.

Other times you end up with a mess. Okay, then. Make something else out of that mess. In which case it doesn't become a better version of the thing, but rather a different thing altogether. Hopefully a better thing than what you originally had.

If not? Well, try again. Keep trying. Add, subtract, change. Probably swear a lot. If you're like me, anyway, maybe shake your fist at the world. That always helps. Make a mean face, show the world who's boss, or at least who you like to believe the boss is.

Get it out of your system, get back to work. Read a book. Play with your dog. Go for a walk. Do stuff. There's always stuff to do.

* * *

Speaking of books, I'm reading a travel memoir written by a woman who has chosen to give herself the most unsympathetic narrative voice imaginable. She whines about everything: the eight whole hours it took her to research something, the coffee she drinks, the food she eats, her less boring companion who drives her crazy by not being a complete stick in the mud.

It reads like parody in parts, but she's dead serious, which makes it even more amusing. I have a feeling the companion will not survive the trip, and we'll be stuck with the narrator by herself.

You Got My Order Wrong

I ordered a chef's salad and the waitress came back with shrimp salad and an admonition from the chef that they don't make shrimp salad on weekends. First, you got my order wrong. Second, your chef's instructions to you have nothing to do with me. Third, you are the restaurant owner's stepdaughter so ignore those first two points.

* * *

The parking garage was crowded, as mall garages often are. A woman waiting for a spot was taking up too much of the lane and I couldn't get around her, so I stopped to wait for her to take the spot. When it opened up she kept looking at me but wouldn't move.

I pointed at her and at the spot, to let her know that she should go ahead. She kept looking at me but wouldn't move. Finally she threw up her hands and drove past me, leaving the spot empty. With her out of the way, I could continue forward. Presumably someone else took the spot she'd wanted.

* * *

In a different parking garage, in a different mall, in a different city, I pulled over to let a woman pass so I could turn around and go back the way I'd come. Instead of passing, she decided to sit and watch me. Then she honked her horn and yelled, “You don't suppose to park there!”

First, I know that, which is why I'm not parking here. Second, you're not the police. Third, go around me like a normal person would.

She didn't go around me, so I couldn't come back they way I'd come. Instead I had to go all the way around the garage and head out the other side, which is not where I wanted to be.

Where did I want to be?