My contribution to Friday catblogging

Since I am currently cat-free, I couldn't use an original photo but I figured why let Fermicat have all the fun. So here is my humble contribution. I figure his name should be Headley.

What makes you angry?

I've decided that stupid people make me angrier than almost anything. I'm talking about the kind of stupid that they shoulda known better, or they're too lazy to think. People whose view of the world is no wider than the distance from the couch to the TV. People who don't take the time or effort to imagine anything outside themselves and their petty concerns. This is a willful kind of stupid I'm talking about, not the kind of uneducated stupidity that can be cured by, well, education. The really pernicious stupidity is the the kind that shuts its eyes and ears and doesn't see and doesn't listen. There's nothing in particular that has ticked me off; I'm just thinking in the abstract right now. And I just felt like being angry about something. Mostly though I'm in a great mood.

Brilliant!

This is one of those movies that reminds me why I love movies. As far as sheer beauty, genius and daring, it's right up there with Angels In America, Pulp Fiction and Across The Universe.

To me, storytelling is one of the most important things there is. It's us interpreting our world and sharing it with one another. It's how we try and make sense of it all. The beauty of storytelling in movies is that you're free of the constraints of time, place, even reality. The film is not merely the method by which you tell the story, the way the story unfolds becomes part of the story.

If you're a Dylan fan, this film has a special resonance. But you don't have to be one to be blown away by the film. Dylan has had so many different personas and so many different periods in his career that they can seem like separate people, and what Todd Haynes has done is used 6 different actors to play the different parts of his life. None of them are meant to be Dylan -- they all have other names, but they represent that part of Dylan. The story jumps back and forth in time and place. All the details are right, all the markers are there. It is not in any sense a true biography but I think you get a much richer sense of who he is, which is someone filled with contradictions, flights of fantasy and missing pieces. Hey, he's a genius artist, he's entitled.

And Cate Blanchett is beyond awesome. Whoever had the idea to cast her in this had the inspiration of the century.

My start to the new year: SPLAT!

Last Thursday, after doing some errands across the river in New Jersey, we were heading home across the bridge. I had slipped into the EZPass land and was maybe 50 feet from the tollbooth. Suddenly the 18-wheeler on my left decided he really wanted to be in my lane. What transpired then was an extended slow-motion mashing of the driver's side of my car. The guy realized he had hit something and stopped. But he was kind of stuck to me so he had to keep going to get free. We were only going about 1 mile an hour so there was not even the possibility of injury, which is always a good thing. Fortunately there was a police station at the bridge plaza so we just pulled over. The guy was very nice and apologetic. He obviously didn't see me. But that didn't do anything to mitigate the fact that the left side of my car looked like someone had used a giant can opener along the length of it. I just got the estimate from the insurance adjuster - $2664.58. It's the 58 cents that gets me. I will eventually get my money back but I am still out the deductible unti Geico recovers it from the guy's insurance company, which experience says is about 10-12 weeks. Happy New Year.

A matter of perspective

One of the very few perks of working where I do is that I have a pass that lets me and a guest into just about any museum in New York City for free. I took advantage of it yesterday and went to the Planetarium, formally known as the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. Big mouthful. To me, it's simply the Planetarium and always will be. Some years ago it got a humongous do-over and I'm ashamed to say that yesterday was the first time that I visited the new space. Well, better late than never.

Anyway...one of the permanent installations is this immense...I don't know what to call it...exhibit, I guess called (I think) Cosmic Scales, or something like that. What's so cool about it is that it provides visual references for the size of things relative to other things in the universe. I starts with the universe as a whole entity and moves in powers of 10 down to a proton. It keeps using the same massive sphere you see in front of you at the exhibit (which is actually the outside of a small amphitheater) as the reference point. In other words: "if the universe is as big as this sphere, then the Virgo supercluster is as big as (the small half-meter sized football of a model in front of you). And so on, down to a proton. The last step is, "if a hydrogen atom is as big as the sphere, then a proton is as big as (a dot do tiny you can barely see it)."

It's a spectacular exhibit. Seriously, if you wantor need a reality check, this is the place to come. It's a wonderful antidote both to hubris and also to despair. It tells you in as gentle as way as possible, don't go thinking that you're all that special, or that your woes are all-consuming. Take a look at where you stand in the cosmic scheme of things. It's okay. Don't freak out, don't fret, don't beat yourself up. And conversely, don't go thinking you're all that and a bag of chips. There's more than you can imagine that goes on in dimensions greater and smaller than you. You've got your part to play, but it's only a part.

For me, it was a serendipitous visit. It put me in exactly the right frame of mind to greet the new year. Yes, it's all out there, waiting. Yes, it's an opportunity to jettison all the old crap and embark on something new. But it's important to be mindful that the universe does not live or die by our choices. If I screw up again (as I'm sure I will from time to time), it really is of no lasting consequence. And if I achieve great things, well, they're only great because I say they are. Out in the Virgo supercluster, nobody is paying any attention. And that's as it should be.

The most bestest holiday in forever

Well, I'm about as happy as I could be right now. I got the biggest, most wonderful holiday surprise on Friday. My son Peter, who lives in China, showed up unannounced. His brother was in on the surprise but nobody else knew. I was speechless. Needless to say, I am thrilled to have him around, even if it's only for a week.

I hope everyone has as good a holiday as I am having.

An injection of holiday spirit, more or less

You might think I'm referring to the bottle of pinot grigio that I enjoyed yesterday while the sleet pattered against my windows and I was inside being toasty warm and baking ginger cookies. Well, yes, maybe I am. It was a very nice wine. But I mean just in general. I enhanced my festive state further by putting up some holiday decorations. I managed to snurch a couple of twiggy arrangements from work that had been done by the guy who does the flower arrangements for the lobby and so forth. It's a couple of bundles of white branches tied up with silver ribbons and decorated with little silver balls. While I'm not usually in favor of the all-white look, they were free and the little shiny silver bits brightened them up. I also took the box of leftover little shiny silver bits and stuck them around here and there. I also scattered my little nutcrackers around.
The best part was I figured out that I could put my little lights out along my balcony railing and plug them in inside. Closing the door on them doesn't do any damage.

So I was feeling pretty darn festive yesterday. Then I remembered that nobody comes to my house for Christmas and nobody is giving me any presents, except my son Brian who's buying me a new teakettle. Okay, to be fair, I am going to someone else's house for Christmas dinner and then on Boxing Day I'm going to some friends' house down at the shore (yes, it's New Jersey where they have shore, NOT beach). None of that should matter because I'm not Christian anyway and in fact I don't even believe in god. But it does matter a little when there's the whole enforced festivity thing going on. But considering how broke I am, I guess it's a good thing I don't have anyone except Brian to buy a gift for. And he's 20 and not very demanding.

It's just that, with all the hype and mandatory jollity, no matter what you come up with, it's usually going to be a letdown on some level. So I'm wondering, how many other people feel that their holidays somehow don't measure up to expectations.

Moment Of Truth, Part Deux

Tomorrow evening is the reading of the second draft of my play. It's taken me a year and a half to do the rewrite after the first reading. This is largely due to the inconvenient fact that I have to work for a living and that my job (which I started at exactly the time I had the first reading) has very nearly sucked my soul out of me, not to mention several gallons of brain juice. But I'm not going to complain and carry on. Heaven knows I've done enough of that over the last year. No, I'm just going to try and keep the forward momentum going on this nutty little project of mine.

So...overall I am quite satisfied with the progress I made since the first draft. I think it is in much better shape. I took the actors' comments and suggestions and my own notes and made lots of improvements. I pared away a lot of the blah blah blah. So many words that didn't need to be there! They just get in the way and slow the story down.

One trap I think a lot of writers fall into is they fall in love with the sound of their own words. Guess what, it's not about the words. Well yes of course it's about the words but only insofar as they serve the story. Words are only part of the way that a play tells the story. And what the characters don't say is often more important than what they do say.

So tomorrow night I get to hear how many more words need to be ruthlessly obliterated. Of course there will be a third draft, and probably a fourth. But my feeling is that from now on, it will be more tweaking than major overhauling. But I'll know more in 24 hours.

A Schrodinger moment

I had me a little Schrodinger moment on the bus last week. I got on and sat down behind a woman who had apparently just come from the animal shelter. She had a closed cardboard carton on her lap that said ASPCA on it and had air holes all around. My first thought was, oh cool, she just adopted a cat. But then I thought, hmmm, is the cat alive or dead? It must be both! My god, there's a quantum superposition happening right here on the #11 bus! And there's no way to tell which state the cat is in until she gets home and opens the box.

Hey, It thought it was pretty funny. Of course nobody understood what I was laughing about.

Ushering in the Season of Wretched Excess

Pass me that bowl of stuffing -- I don't think I'm sufficiently stuffed yet. All around the table, people on all sides of me are saying the same thing: "I'm stuffed! I can't eat any more!" And yet they all do. Remarkable, isn't it?

Somehow I manage to escape that particular state of being. And what's my reward? I feel unsatisfied. Not that I haven't filled my stomach enough but that somehow, my experience feels incomplete. It's not food I'm lacking but rather some sense of
festivity. I think I know the problem! It's not my empty plate that's the cause...it's my empty glass! Send that vino down to this end! But I'm drinking alone. Wow, that's no fun. Well, okay, it's a little bit fun. But not as much as I'd like.

Thanksgiving...in my mind, the giving of thanks should be accompanied by a convivial consumption of liquid cheer. These guys...these non-drinkers or timid drinkers, they have managed to suck a chunk of holiday spirit right outa here.
Maybe some more cranberries will do the trick. They're red and bright and perky. Sigh. I love cranberries but there's just no substitute for a companion to share that dandy bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau with.

Never mind...on to the next feast.

Go see this movie

I've been a Julie Taymor fan since Lion King (the Broadway show, not the Disney movie). She is a visionary designer and director. She really gets the fact that visual storytelling is a very textured, multi-layered medium. And she's not afraid to take risks. The result is visually stunning production where the whole really is more than the sum of its parts.

It's really fun to see and hear all those Beatle songs woven into a story and see how they all fit. It's also neat to hear how some of them are interpreted so differently than the originals and are so good. There are some great little cameo roles: Eddy Izzard as Mr. Kite, Bono as Dr. Robert, Joe Cocker as a bum and a pimp.

Watching her work is inspiring and at the same time discouraging to me. I say, "wow! look what's possible!" And then I say, "yeah, but I never would have thought of that." But I'm glad she did.

Anything to keep from working

Tough week. But before I get to that, I have to stop and wonder how many blogs devolve into whiny little litanies of miserable complaints...kind of like this one. This one is about pain. The physical kind. Specifically pertaining to the lower back. Sciatic nerve. Any of this sound familiar? Don't worry, it will. This is a misfortune that struck me when #2 son was a mere babe. (Never mind how old he is now.) But anyhoo, it hadn't bothered me from then until last week, at which point it came out of nowhere to turn life into a misery of pain. I did all the good things to make it go away, and it almost had, but then it came back. Ow is the understatement of the century. So today, I ditched work (hell yeah!) and went and got a 90-minute massage therapy treatment. Except for the time when Leo (the massage therapist) was making me almost cry in agony, it was wonderful. And of course the agony was for a good cause. Now, 5 hours and three glasses of pinot grigio later, I'm feeling considerably better. And in another day or two, I'll be way WAY better.

I also took advantage of the day off to go see a recruiter. No, not a military recruiter, but what we in the creative trades like to call a head hunter. Someone who can find me a new job. About 99% of the tension that caused this back spasm is due to my stoopid job which I hate. So that's another good thing. PLUS, I have a HOT DATE on Friday. Life is looking pretty sweet right now. Or potentially sweet anyway.

Has it really been that long?

I can't believe it's been two weeks since the last time I posted! Well, yes maybe I can. There's this weird thing that happens beginning at the end of October. No, I mean besides my birthday. And besides the end of daylight savings time, although now that I think about it, maybe it does have to do with that a little. This is why I know that time is relative. Because right about now is when time starts to speed up. Days get shorter and everything goes faster. Yesterday I realized that it's only three weeks till Thanksgiving. How did that happen? It's this crazy year-end time compression thing. And then, in about a minute and a half, we'll find ourselves snacking on leftover turkey and stuffing, starting to think that maybe we really ought to start getting organized for Christmas/Chanukah/New Year. And then we blink twice and we're all yelling Happy New Year and it's 2008.

I know what you're going to say, that the calendar is just an arbitrary human invention for keeping track of everyone's birthday so we don't forget to send cards and presents. (Hint hint) But I think it's more than that. I think there's some gravitational shift or maybe the year is not evenly weighted to begin with. Once you kind of crest the hill at Halloween, gravity takes over and we all just come tear-assing down to Christmas and New Year's, whether we plan it that way or not. I think an interesting experiment would be to investigate different parts of the world and see if there are some places where the gravitational pull isn't so strong. I'm thinking that Fiji might be once place. There's a good chance that non-Western countries near the equator that don't celebrate Western/northern hemisphere holidays might not feel it as strongly. But who knows? Maybe you take your gravity with you when you travel. This requires further thought.

Make me laugh, please!

Is it just me or is nothing very funny any more? Or maybe not nothing, but not much. I find that very few things make me really laugh any more. I know, I know...the world is going to hell. Yes. But the world is always going to hell somewhere. And usually when the world is going to hell, great humor and comedy abounds. I don't get it.

The Onion can sometimes do it and the current issue has two real winners. There's the lead story, "Conceptual Terrorists Encase Sears Tower in Jell-O" and "Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down to Area Man." According to the terrorists (and you have to see the image from their "video"), true terror lies in the futility of human existence. Gotta love it.

But I would just love to come across something that made me laugh until my sides hurt. That hasn't happened since, well, I don't know when. Then again, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just not funny any more. I don't know what the answer is.

What season is this anyway?

It feels weird and wrong that it's dark so early when it still feels like summer outside. It's producing a strange sense of disconnection in me. I'm not quite hooked into the season. I felt the need to go buy some clothes to wear to work since my summer stuff isn't appropriate any more. But it was nearly impossible to get into the correct frame of mind. Everything looked drab and unappealing. I did buy a couple of things, mostly because I felt like I should. And of course when you do that, it always ends up wrong. I got them home, looked at them again and cringed. Now I have to make another trip downtown to the store and return them. I should have listened to that little inner voice that said DON'T DO IT!.

...or are you just happy to see me?

So...what I did on my summer, uh, fall vacation:
I hiked every day. I climbed and scrambled up steep, rocky trails with frustratingly unsteady footing. I hiked along the ridgelines, high up where I could see in all directions. Not that there was really much to see. I trudged along the rocky canyon floors and sandy dry washes. I immersed myself in the amazing silence. Of everything, that was the most wonderful.

I took some pictures but not a lot. After the first 20 or so, I realized that pretty much everything looked the same, so taking more pictures was really unnecessary.

I got wet in the pool. It was quite small so actual swimming was really not possible. But it felt great to cool down after a couple hours of sweating in the desert sun.

I wrote. Yes, every day I wrote. Sometimes I had to force myself but I did it.

I napped. I took siestas. Under normal circumstances, I don't take naps. I can't. It doesn't work for me. But there, in the heat and the silence I was able to. Interesting thing about the heat - even though it got up into the high 90s every afternoon, I never once had to turn on the air conditioning. The place had ceiling fans in every room and there were doors onto my little veranda which I kept open. It was warm but totally comfortable. And the nights were wonderfully cool.

So that's what I did. I hiked, I wrote, I slept. I spoke to almost no one for the whole week. The checkout girl at the Safeway, the checkout girl at the Walgreens. Two rotund ladies by the pool. That was about it.

It may sound pathetically lonely and boring, but I loved it. I wasn't lonely or bored. I was totally enveloped by the place.

Oh yes, I also heard coyotes on a couple of evenings. They kind of sounded like squeaky doors.

Another thing about Arizona: they have great highway signage.

Conundrum

Lots of grasshoppers here. But no grass. Makes ya wonder.

The silence is like velvet

Arrived last night. It's a cluster of condo-type units at the edge of a huge nature preserve. The utter, absolute silence just took my breath away. Not barren, desolate silence, but gentle, soft silence. It was like a velvet blanket over everything.

I took an hour-long hike this morning. Not so much a hike as a scramble. Clambered over lots of uneven, rocky terrain. Climbed a couple of steep grades, took in some pretty cool vistas. Pictures to come. Even during the daytime, the silence is amazing. Dense, like it has texture. I'm loving this. I can't remember ever being in such a quiet place.

In crazed pre-vacation mode

So I'm leaving on vacation on Saturday. I've never felt so unprepared for a trip, ever. I'm going to Arizona -- my first encounter with the desert -- and I'm still a few t-shirts short of a suitable wardrobe. I missed buying shorts while they were still in the stores so I ended up making cutoffs of an old pair of jeans. I have no idea what happened to my old shorts. Lost in the move, maybe. I did manage to purchase a pair of hiking shoes online. And they fit! Ta-da! But before I go, I have a buttload of work to get through.

I've had two job interviews in the past two weeks, adding to my sense of dislocation. I have a strong feeling that one or the other of them will come through. One, however, has asked me to write a short spec piece. It happens occasionally. But I also have parts of two freelance projects to deliver before Friday. How do I get myself into these things? Well, one way or the other, it will all be over in 2 days and I'll be on a plane.

One of my main vacation activities, besides hiking and hanging out by the pool will be finishing the rewrite on the second draft of my big play. (There's also my little play, but I'm not going there now.) This will be my chance to tackle this sucker. A big chunk of clean, unencumbered time. if I can't do it next week, then I better just give up. I've been whining for so long about "not having any time." Now I'll have it, so it's put up or shut up time.

Knowing how my brain works, I'm sure I'll also find myself hatching new writing projects as I absorb the new, alien environment. This has been known to happen. Damn inspiration! I don't mind that I'm going alone. I'm looking forward to reveling in the solitude and the silence. I hope the sky is very clear. I plan to lose myself (figuratively speaking) in the starry nights.

The job thing is weird. In my mind, I'm already gone from the present one, although still there in body. But I don't want to think about that. I want to think about the desert and the stars.

Going loony

This is the most exciting news since, well, I don't know when. Maybe since Spirit and Opportunity started trundling around on Mars. Maybe even longer than that. I feel like jumping up and down. Or at least up...I'll come down without any extra effort. The cause of all this nutty behavior is the announcement today of the Google Lunar X Prize. 30 million crisp dollar bills (or the electronic equivalent) to the bunch who can land a rover on the moon, drive it around a little and send back some really awesome You Tube clips.

My world, my universe just got a whole lot bigger today. The universe of possibilities for the human race just got infinitely bigger. If we're ever gonna get off this rock -- which we'd better if we hope to survive and thrive as a species -- then it's going to be the independent inventors and entrepreneurs who get us there. Don't get me wrong, NASA has done some truly remarkable things. But they're not equipped to handle the nitty gritty of regular space travel, exploration, settlement building, industry and commerce off-world. They've got limitations, constraints, politics. The kinds of things that private citizens don't have to deal with. Plus, there's that Grail of All Grails -- the profit motive. There's money to be made out there, boys and girls, and some enterprising individuals are not gonna let a few million miles and the vacuum of space stand in their way.

I'm not going to be on an X Prize team. I'm not going to be one of the first settlers or mine owners on the Moon. I'm probably never going to leave this planet. But knowing that somebody not too far from now will move into a condo with an Earth view just thrills me to my tippy toes. We may just make in this big ol' universe after all.