How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Blog..

Memory:

I have just returned from a visit to Maine, staying in the saddest house I've ever been in, visiting my brothers, saying goodbye. My friend will not live much longer, and after seeing her I can only be thankful that this is the case. A nightmarish bit of poor planning, directly following my visit left me in an unexpected hostess-with-the-mostess position for a bunch of people and their screaming children. The school owner and I are still having communication problems, and I am barely there, approaching an emotional wasteland. She passed a week later, I was unprepared for how much I was moved, am still moved by this. We clear the parking lot on our way to lunch and he puts his arm around my shoulders. "It will be alright," he says, with a smile in his voice.

I believe him.

fun laughs good time.

I often wonder how it is that I know so many beautiful people.

They seem uncommonly frequent in my image bank of friendly memoirs.

I also wonder quite frequently how it is that I know so many superbly impressive people. Impressive people that are also beautiful.

There's an exotic scientist, a dashing physician, a beautiful painter, a brazen physical trainer, a dapper illustrator, a gorgeous ballerina, a striking artisan, an attractive baker, a lovely metaphysical advisor, a supercute graphic designer, a handsome engineer/musician, a charming philosopher.. the list goes on.. and on as I meet more of these gemlike specimens. All the fixings for a hyper-diverse soap opera.

I've been thinking a lot about what love actually is and I think it might tie in with what beauty is. Love is everywhere when everything is beautiful, usually. Someone who sees beauty everywhere is perhaps much more likely to love many things, or one thing quite intensely. I'm thinking of the world here, snow on a branch, sun on a telephone pole, the clouds and stars at night. These are your typical inanimate stargazer wonders of the world-- the way the subway bricks blur by on the train, the folds of a carelessly placed blanket. It's possible to see god in there sometimes.

Then there are the people. These sentient moving shapes and colors that talk to each other and accomplish great deeds.

You know how there are sounds that you feel more than hear? I learned the other day that there are also things you feel more than see. I may have always known that, but have most recently come up with an accurate sentence to describe the idea.

I'm a bumpkin, really, lucky enough to be pleased by many simple things. I grew up in a place where the door of local mom & pops shop was rigged to a full 2 liter on a pulley in order to get it to close all the way. There was a small arcade in the back room, featuring hot titles like "Street Fighter 2" and "Final Fight" and probably "Pac-Man" or one other having the word "fight" in the title. I daydreamed once of asking my dad to go there and hang out with me. In my imagination it seemed like a good idea- we would play these games, you see. It would have been a wonderful bonding experience, rife with high fives and fist pumps. There would have been a music montage. What actually happened, I think, was he fell asleep reading a book and I probably walked the dog or made a castle out of cards.

I used to make a lot of castles out of cards. I recall making one of particular size and majesty which took me all morning- it had gates and a couple different levels. This particular morning, my mother had got up on my bed to change a lightbulb, and the action of her getting down from her perch caused just the right amount of floor disturbance to collapse the thing. She felt so bad. I felt bad that she felt so bad.

I still feel bad that she felt so bad.

Bad probably isn't the right word. One of those things.

Also on being a bumpkin: I went to New York to visit a friend a few years ago and couldn't help but look up at all the tall buildings. Peter Parker was awfully lucky to have lived in New York instead of say.. Portland. Swinging from the Key Bank to the Time and Temp building would have gotten old fast. So I do the thing where I look up while I'm walking, and turn around sometimes when I go to these kinds of places. Having a spidey sense of my own, I tend not to run into people, so I think it's a fine practice (being at the perfect height to be elbowed in the boob or handbagged in the face will develop these things). I find I do that even in places that don't have tall buildings- one of the advantages of being short I suppose, you always look up. Me and Kurosawa, we look at the sky.

"I realized I was deliberately avoiding the eyes of those who were with me in the room, deliberately refraining from being too much aware of them. One was my wife, the other a man I respected and greatly liked; but both belonged to the world from which, for the moment, mescalin had delivered me-- the world of selves, of time, of moral judgements and utilitarian considerations, the world (and it was this aspect of human life which I wished, above all else, to forget) of self-assertion, of cocksureness, of overvalued words and idolatrously worshipped notions. " - Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

2010: Not at all like Arthur imagined.

I used to ask people if they could shoot something out of their hands what it would be. Like one thing out of one hand and something else out of the other. I got a lot of fun and interesting answers. I found that most of the manager/boss figures of this stage in my life would say something like "lightening" which seemed fitting- likening many of them, not unfairly, to Emperor Palpatine. My last manager, I don't think I asked this question to, I don't think she would have said lightening, though. I'm sure my current manager would say something different. I have decided that he's alright in my book- and later on I may tell you why.

I haven't asked anyone this question in a while, instead eventually inquiring of only my closest acquaintances what superhero power they would have if they were allowed to choose one. Any superhero power. Many people say flight or invisibility. Some vie for the domestic tasks made so simple in many of the Harry Potter books; "Ahlah-kah-make-dinner!!"

I'd probably want to fly.

I'd want to fly or be able to summon, as the magnificent Wile E. Coyote (Genius) is able, signs of varying size and content.

I can tell something weird is up at work when my manager uses my real name. I have earned the nickname (I would say "at no fault of my own" but I can't..) "crazy hands". I am also called, no more frequently, "ninja," both of these by my manager, who, it turns out, doesn't actually suck. Weird. This first name, I'm certain, comes from my herding dog tendencies of getting myself into trouble if I'm not given enough to do. Anyone who has worked with me/spent enough time with me will tend to agree.

Examples:

An envelope full of haikus about unpacking the shipping, poetry made by pocket charms with one or two words on them, drawings of dinosaurs done with my left hand secreted away at my previous job.

Man, made out of small pieces of meat and toothpicks at different previous job.

Pillow, dressed up as my friend Dantarr and left to sit on his couch to greet him when I woke up early to go home after staying the night during a snow storm.

To scale model of the Sphinx made out of sugar cubes at another previous job.

Finally, sometimes, when walking down the street with friends I like to play this game where I kick the persons feet in mid step so they walk funny. Dantarr thwarts these atempts by just slowing his gait and stopping when he suspects this is about to happen. This can be just as fun. Not Shawn gets around it by trying to aggressively step on my feet when I do it, I don't enjoy this. I lost myself once and almost tried it when walking down the street with Mr. F.. seeing my life flash before me, I opted not to.

..I realize that I am not a shining example of maturity.

The second name, "ninja" I'm guessing is because I fancy myself a martial artist sometimes. I'm also pretty good at hide and seek, which he has no real way of knowing. Also, once I made a dashing escape from my fathers basement using their laundry chute (I accidentally locked myself down there in a snow storm with no one home.. ).

So. "Crazy Hands" or "Ninja" is what I answer to at work. Sometimes its the "Crafty Ninja," but not always (it's a craft store, get it? hyuck hyuck.. ).

I heard my name from around the corner one day. My real name.

Squinty eyes.

"Mmmmyess..?"

"If we are still friends? Next Halloween?" he is speaking like a very excited child, "Can we go as Ren? and Stimpy?"

I give him a nod I reserve for "special" occasions.

This job is the "normal person" part of my day.

But what's normal?