It ain't all pizzas and cream

How you'll know me

Christmas Eve.  Strange that today would have been my father's 73rd birthday.  And this morning began by hearing our baby's heartbeat on the Doppler.  Strange this thing of departure and arrival.  I can only picture the old man's face at the news of a coming grandchild.  Of hearing those tiny butterfly wings the first time. 

And it started me thinking how my child might know the world in which I grew up, so many of its once familiar landmarks already gone...so much of it already foreign to me.

I want to wish all who read this the very best of holidays. 

* * *

How you'll know me
A father's poem

If you find a city of steel
mountains shading sleepy luncheonettes
Know that I walked here

If you find a night of neon
kisses in a garden of saxophones
Know that I loved here

If you find a river of iron
legs and a thousand wooden ladders
Know that I prayed here

And in that place
we all begin, under the Heartbeat-tree
Know that I too was held

And loved
     And was given sleep.

Why Nothing Gets Done -- A Shopper's Tale

Ever wonder why holiday shopping season is so hectic as to verge on insanity?  I used to think it was simply a question of volume...too many folks all scrambling around as quickly as possible to fill their baskets and cross names from their lists.  But now I think it's more complicated, and that the dynamics can best be explained in terms of water.  Any child can tell you that when water rushing downstream encounters an object, it must pass over or around it.  If the object is sufficiently large or stubborn, all forward progress stops, and the water pools.

In my shopping quest, I encountered such an immovable object the other day...a woman in the appliance section of a large department store.  She was shopping for a mixer.  Sounds simple enough.  She found the model she liked and now only needed to select a color.  The clerk cheerfully explained that this model came in three colors: red, black, and white.  The woman said she wanted one that was "licorice."  The black mixer was labeled "onyx." 

And here is where all motion stopped.

I won't recount the exact exchange...in part because I don't remember it verbatim, and in part because torture is (at least for now) not condoned in the U.S.  But I will tell you that it went on...and on...and on.  Among the issues at hand:

Is onyx darker than licorice?
Isn't licorice really a gray-black?
Why did someone tell her the mixer came in "licorice" when it only came in "onyx"?
Maybe if the clerk called around to other stores, she could find one in "licorice."

You'd think they were negotiating a hostage release. 

Now I'll go ahead and say what I wanted to say at that moment...and what some of you are doubtless already thinking...

LADY, IT'S A FUCKING MIXER!!!   THEY COME IN RED, BLACK, AND WHITE!  ONYX...LICORICE...WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!  PAY FOR THE FUCKING THING AND GO HOME!!!

Ah, that's better.

Well, I didn't say any of those things.  And ultimately the woman went home WITHOUT buying the mixer.  Because the box said "onyx" and not "licorice.'  She didn't even open the box and look at it. 

After some shared eye-rolling among myself, Cecily, and the entire appliance department staff, I had to wonder....How spectacularly fucked-up are we as a society, that something like this can bring everything to a standstill?  Have we been spoiled by SUVs that have different "climate control zones" in the FRONT SEAT?  Do we think that being difficult makes us "smart shoppers"?  Did that woman go home secretly pleased that she'd NOT bought the object of her quest?  Or maybe that was her plan all along.  She didn't want the mixer at all.  It was an experiment in human nature. 

And by not clubbing her to death with that onyx mixer, we had all failed. 

Miserably and utterly.

* * *

Happy Holidays to all and to all a Good Night.

Where, but here?

For me, December is a strange time.  Endings, beginnings, drama.  My father was born on Christmas Eve, and the September he died, less than 47 years later, my mother and I had no idea how hard the coming Christmas would be.  I was 17 then. 

Shortly afterward, I got drunk.  For 15 years.

Then, one December, I got sober.  On the darkest day of the year.  For Cecily and I both.  There were critics.  Those who said two people cannot start on this road together and hope to succeed.  And yet, here we are.  Nearly 10 years later.

Then last December, having so recently lost our dear boys, we found ourselves trying to make it thru, to scratch at hope the way squirrels dig for the seeds buried in wamer times.

And now, this year, hope again, a new pregnancy.  There is so much words do not say.  But sitting here, the early snows already closing in, I cannot help but take a moment and look back along the trail. 

So, bear with me, and excuse another poem...they don't come often anymore.

* * *

Where, but here?

It is this way sometimes on winter nights,
when ears expect the rhythmic crunch
of homebound walkers in the sugar-crust
of snow.  You think you know the footfalls. 

Those of your father as he once returned
nightly from work, with a soldier’s weariness,
his topcoat a flag of tobacco dreams.  Is this
senility?  When all time’s bridges are retreats. 

The footfalls approach, pass, and fade.  Someone
is going home to be kissed, to be fed, or to sit
in the company of family.  It is not your business.
These nights have their own wings, their own prayers.

A cigarette is your candle. 
Sleep, your father…and your sons.

First word...sounds like...

Given the overwhelming success of the last post,  I thought it best to continue the theme by asking for the most misunderstood (i.e., mis-heard) lyrics in pop music.  I think we all know that "there's a bathroom on the right"  is really "there's a bad moon on the rise."  But what about some others? Or ones you just made up.

* * *

In the responses to my last post, somebody mentioned Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer,"  which gave us such mis-heard lines as:
    "Take my hand / we're naked ice wear."

* * *

Another reader mentioned Sting's "Every Breath You Take."  When that was released, my friends and I spent alot of time adding our own verses...   

     Every clam you bake
     Every milk you shake
     Every lawn you rake
     Every Quisp you Quake (anyone old enough to get that one?)
...and so on.

* * *

And what about Aerosmith's "What it Takes"?  For years I'd misheard the line...
     "Girl, before I met you, I was F-I-N-E fine."
as
     "Girl, before I met you, I was F-I-N-G-Y."
And couldn't imagine what "fingy" meant. 

* * *

I'll let you add the rest.

Un-ringing the bell

If you could "unwrite" any one pop song, what would it be and why?  This may sound like a trivial exercise, but the last several decades have produced songs so insidiously mind-flattening that I believe some have literally made us dumber as a species.  Songs so bad they should be erased from the cultural mind.

So I'll start the list of "shoulda never been writtens" with my first choice...

"Longfellow Serenade" by Neil Diamond.

This song fails on so many levels, but none greater than its pretention.  Few other songs have aimed so high...or hit so low.  One night, about 20 years ago, back when I was still drinking, I went to an Upper West Side bar with a coupla pals, one of whom (as a joke) played this song on the jukebox.  Nineteen times.  Needless to say, the bartender unplugged the juke, then threw us out.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  I think if he'd had a shotgun, he'd have used it.  In any case, the song should be added to the Geneva Convention's definition of "cruel and inhuman punishment."

I've showed you mine... Now you show me yours.