Month: September 2019

Guess.What.Day.It.Is? (You can’t make this up Day)

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Notes:

  • Tiger Truck Stop’s Caspar the camel, one of the animal attractions at the truck stop, looks no worse for wear. Last week when a Florida truck driver and her husband crawled into a camel’s enclosure, the camel sat on the woman, who used her teeth to bite the camel’s testicles to escape. According to the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office, the woman’s husband threw doggy treats under Caspar the camel’s fence, which is about 6 feet hight. The lady encountered trouble after entering the enclosure to retrieve the dog. (The Advocate, Baton Rouge, LA, September 23, 2019“)
  • That’s a picture of Caspar above by Travis Spradling of the Advocate.
  • Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again

About right.

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Is this verbal violence, then, simply incompetence? Is it the verbal equivalent of someone who has not learned the piano sitting down and trying to play Rachmaninov’s Third? The rudeness of these public figures gives pleasure and relief, it is clear, to their audiences. Perhaps what they experience is not the possibility of actual violence but a sort of intellectual unbuttoning, a freedom from the constraint of language. Perhaps they have lived lives in which they have been continually outplayed in the field of articulation, but of this new skill – rudeness – they find that they are the masters.

~ Rachel Cusk, from “On Rudeness” in Coventry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. September 16, 2019)

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call…

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I take pride in professionalism. I am willing to do things that other people find ridiculous if I have agreed to appear at a certain festival or school. Once I say yes I don’t do otherwise. I will drive four hours to teach a class and then turn around and drive straight home… I will work under bad circumstances, and I will feel virtuous. Laurel sometimes puts it this way: Rick likes it when it sucks. I can’t address the origin of this particular way of being, the professionalism just is. It makes it easier for me to wake up in the morning, because I know what I have to do… I felt (and feel still) like showing up for class keeps me tethered to the world.

~ Rick Moody, The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony (August 6, 2019)

Photo of Rick Moody via Seven Days

Our kingdom’s gonna be this little patch of green

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Well, the sun’s not so hot in the sky today
And you know I can see summertime slipping on away
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed
So I’ll be king and you’ll be queen
Our kingdom’s gonna be this little patch of green

Won’t you lie down here right now
In this September grass
Won’t you lie down with me now
September grass.

Oh the memory is like the sweetest pain
Yeah, I kissed the girl at a football game
I can still smell the sweat and the grass stains
We walked home together. I was never the same.

But that was a long time ago
And where is she now? I don’t know

Won’t you lie down here right now
In this September grass
Won’t you lie down with me now
September grass…

~ James Taylor, from “September Grass” (Album “October Road” 2002)

JT Lyrics and post inspiration via The Hammock Papers

Driving I-95 S & N. Money For Nothing.

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Hasn’t happened. Ever.
50+ years.
Not a single time.

I’m stuck on I-95 S. Frustrated. I was up early, planned to be ahead of the morning rush, way ahead, and now, here I sit. Nasty traffic, snarled. Waze signals delays, and more delays.

Need a mind set shift. I type Dire Straits in search box. Because dire it is. That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it / Money for nothin,’ and chicks for free.

Nothing for Free. Stupidity is expensive.

Traffic is at a dead stop. I grab my briefcase from the backseat and rummage through it again. Nothing. What makes you think it will be there. You went through it twice at home. And your Suit jacket from yesterday and the day before. And your pant pockets, from three days. And the hamper. And the floor in the closet. And your other bag. And the kitchen counter. And the car. The trunk. The glove box. Under all seats, and between seats. And the side pockets. A sweat droplet glides down your back, your forehead glistens.  55° F and you’ve just about had it for the day. 

I inch forward in traffic.

I call the office: “Could you please check under my desk? In my drawers? Call lost and found? Call the restaurant hosting the work dinner Tuesday Night?”

I call home: “Could you check my Suit pockets again please? My desk drawer? My other bag? Under the cushions on the couch? The drawer in the night stand? The floor under the nightstand?”

I’m sure with two different sets of eyes, they will find it. I’m sure.

I sit in the cabin, in traffic, in silence, and wait. Nick Flynn: “We are made of waiting –…”

Traffic inches forward.  WTH. Is everyone in the State of Connecticut parked on I-95?

Both calls come back. Nothing.

I’m sitting in my first morning meeting. Mind is gone, Away. Replaying the last 2 days, hour by hour. Or was it three days ago? Forgetting many things of late. A harbinger of things to come?

Rattled. Continue reading “Driving I-95 S & N. Money For Nothing.” →