Too Many Mornings

Archive for March, 2010

I was ninety-nine miles from LA when it dawned on me that no matter how fast and far I drove trying to forget him, I would always be one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind. The realization hit me hard, but I had to accept the truth of it; He was gone, and I would never see him again.

I started to cry. Quietly at first, and then very hard, uncontrollably. It surprised me to feel that much emotion all at once, and I had to pull into a rest stop because I couldn’t see the road through the tears anymore. I sat there in my car in the parking lot for the longest time, just sobbing and blowing my nose, and looking at myself in the rear view mirror every few minutes because I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I hadn’t understood until that moment how much I’d cared about him.

And then, exhausted, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, it was dark outside.  The car was still running, and the radio was playing Lose Yourself from Eminem’s movie Eight Mile. That made me smile a little, because we saw the movie together, and because it reminded me of a silly argument we had—of a silly argument that we were always having about the metric system.

“You didn’t like the movie?” I said.

“God no! Who cares anything about a white American rapper with one hit to his name? Nobody.” He paused, studying my face for a moment. “I’m totally indifferent, anyway. Like Teflon. And what’s with that title? Eight Mile? When are Americans going to join the rest of the civilized world and switch to the metric system?”

“I don’t think the point of the movie was to promote the metric system, Chris.”

“Should’ve been. Should’ve been called 13 Kilometers.”

“The metric system has no romance in it,” I protested.

“What do mean, romance?”

“Romance. Nobody says, ‘walk a kilometer in my shoes.’ It’s mile. And Peter, Paul and Mary sang 500 miles, not 735 Kilometers. Or whatever.

“More like 800 kilometers, actually.”

“You’re a grump.”

He frowned.

“Uhmm. Yes, I am. I am. But you’re here, Barbara. You’ll keep me on the level.” He reached out and hugged me tight, pulling my head into his chest. I could hear him inhaling, taking in the smell of my hair, and I was never happier in my life than I was at that moment.

But that moment was gone now. Like all moments, it added itself up with hundreds other moments and passed. Times moves on, people change, people move on.

I turned off the radio, but I was smiling a little now, feeling better. I decided to keep driving. I felt calm, and reflective. It was raining, not hard, but I put the wipers on.

We’d met in Toronto.

I’d been studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. It was summertime, and I finally got some time off, so I drove upstate to see Niagra Falls. I liked the sedate side—the American side, oddly enough—but crossed over the bridge into Canada to see the touristy side, too. Then on a whim, I decided to head farther north into Toronto, taking the long, slow way around through St. Catharine’s and Oakville, through miles and miles of dreary suburbs.

It was dark when I got to the city, and it wasn’t as grand as I’d expected. Not like New York, anyway. It was more like LA—smaller and neater, of course, but spread out, and surrounded by sprawling neighborhoods. Downtown was smallish, and I checked into a hotel near the lake, grabbing a handful of sightseeing brochures on my way up to the room.

The next morning, I took a narrated tour of the city on a “duck,” a bus that drives and floats like a boat. We drove around the city, through the financial district and China Town, up Queen Street and eventually into Lake Ontario. From the lake, it was easier to see the CN Tower rising high above the city, and I knew I wanted to go there next.

We met by accident in the tower’s observation room. I was leaning forward and looking out the windows at the city. He was standing next to me, wearing a tweed jacket that smelled faintly of cigarettes and old books.

“Do you know how high it is?” I asked.

“Approximately 553 meters,” he said, somewhat startled.

“How many feet is that?”

“Oh, you’re an American?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, 553 meters would about 1,815 feet, if that helps. Either way, it’s quite high.”

“It makes me dizzy.”

“Perhaps you’re just hungry.”

“I am a little, but it’s the height, too. I know it’s safe, but I can’t help thinking I’m about to fall.”

“I’ll catch you if you start to go.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Canadians are nothing if not kind.”

We talked for a long time after that while tourists came and went. He was an English professor “on holiday.” Not married, travelling alone, and a bit lonely, it seemed to me. I was a bit lonely, too, and, impulsively, I invited him to lunch.

“Yes, I’d love to. I’m starving. It’s late, you know. 13:40—that’s 1:40 p.m. in American time.” He grinned, enjoying teasing me. “There’s a restaurant on the floor below us.”

“I’d really like to go to Gretzky’s. It’s not far from here, according to my map. Blocks, or cubes, or squares, or whatever you call them here.”

“It’s blocks here, too, and you know it. But where?”

“Gretzky’s. Wayne Gretzky’s place. The hockey star, the Great One. You’re Canadian and you don’t know about Gretzky?”

“Oh, I don’t care much about sports. Not even hockey. But, yes, of course, I know about Gretzky. I’m not a complete idiot. In fact, I know quite a bit about two hockey players: Gretzky and Gabriel Whiteman-Jones.”

“Whiteman who?”

“Whiteman-Jones. He’s an all-purpose forward for the Hyland Hills Jaguars. Played a pivotal role in helping his Bantam AA team win the Silver Stick championship last year.”

“Why would a guy who could give a rip about sports know something like that? Amazing!”

“No, it’s not amazing. Not really. He’s the son of a friend of mine. A proud father. The guy never stops talking about his kid.”

We laughed about that, and he asked me if, after lunch, I was also going to insist on visiting the “In nomen of abbas , filius, quod sanctus Gretzky.”   

“The what?”

“The holy temple of the father, son and Gretzky—the Hockey Hall of Fame. It’s near here, too. Just a few cubes away.”

More laughter at that. And more later, and more after that. We liked each other. Minutes turned into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, until I lost track of time—lost track of myself, too, and fell in love without meaning to.

I told him how I was feeling one morning before breakfast.

“Love?” he said. “Oh…”

“I thought…”

“I’m just a lonely professor on vacation. I assumed you were just a lonely actress on vacation. This was just a bit of fun.”

“Yes…no…oh, it’s a little embarrassing. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

I packed my bags and left later that day.

But I didn’t go back to New York.

I couldn’t.

I turned right at the border instead and dropped down through Detroit through Illinois and on through to Iowa. I stopped in Des Moines for a night to visit my parents. They were disappointed when I told them I was dropping out of school and heading straight to LA. That I was tired of learning. That I wanted to start doing something with my life.

But they understood.

My mother hugged me tightly before I got into my car, and my father tucked a hundred-dollar bill into my pocket before I could protest.

I used it to buy gas. Not liters. Gallons.

——————————————————————-

Author’s note: Sometimes I like to write humor, sometimes I like to write other things. This short, short story was hastily written tonight thanks to the inspiration provided by a couple of recent posts (indirectly starting with this one and this one, and then more directly with this one and then this one) by my friends, Frank Lee Meidere and Lorena. Frank writes a blog called I Probably Don’t Like You, which pound for pound is one of the best-written blogs on the Internet. Lorena writes a blog called The Couch Sessions, and her blog also tops my list. I guess that makes Frank and Lorena two of the best bloggers on the Internet in my book, but I prefer to think of them as writers rather than bloggers because they actually know what to do with words–and how, and when, and where, and who, and–most important–why. 

Sadly, neither of them post very much, or very regularly. But I love it when they do, and you should, too. 

Oh, and one more thing: Yes, I’m aware of how weird it is that Lorena’s and Frank’s posts inspired me to write a bittersweet love story from a woman’s perspective. There’s no accounting for inspiration, I suppose.

Could a chimp randomly write a novel?

I once read that if I gave my pet monkey a typewriter and lots of paper, it would eventually write something meaningful.

But as plausible as that sounds—specific finite events must be possible in an infinite universe, right?—I’ve always been skeptical. So I decided to test the theory—just like an actual scientist would, but without a Bunsen burner or Periodic Table.

Unfortunately, in addition to not having a Bunsen burner or Periodic Table, I also don’t own a pet monkey.

Or any monkey at all.

Instead, I decided to use a dictionary. My plan was to close my eyes, randomly open my Random House Collegiate Dictionary and randomly point to words on a page. That, I reckoned, would be about the same as asking my pet monkey—assuming I had one, of course—to bang out a copy of The Chimps Karamazov.

Then I realized that because I moved about two years ago and still haven’t unpacked all the moving boxes, I don’t know where my dictionary is. These days, if I need to check my spelling, I use an online dictionary. It’s not as evocative as flipping through the musty pages of an actual dictionary, but it’s quicker and easier, and I’m basically lazy when it comes to performing mundane tasks.

And it’s right at about this point in my experiment that I began to understand why so many scientists look frustrated and grumpy, and basically keep to themselves at cocktail parties.

Scientists are socially awkward and grumpy because testing theories is dull and tedious work.

Developing theories is tons of fun, the scientific equivalent of being a VIP decision maker in the corporate world and getting paid huge sums of money to come up with ideas instead of having to do any actual work. Testing theories, however, is dull and tedious, like being the poor schmuck who gets paid to dig holes, fill them in and then dig them up again at the whim of his boss.

Fortunately, I had an idea.

I Googled “random word generator,” and discovered that there are lots of random word generators available for free on the Internet.

Why, I have no idea.

I mean, who would ever need a random word generator except a chimp?

But this wasn’t philosophy—I wasn’t on a mission to understand why things are the way they are—this was hard science. I simply wanted to know whether my pet monkey could accidentally write a novel, assuming I had a pet monkey, a typewriter and lots of paper. So I used one of the random word websites to create a list of 100 random words. I tried it 10 times to give it a fair chance.

Here’s one of the lists of words it created: lithography, made-to-order, bankrupt, feces, voluptuous, grand, daub, unemployable, slider, tracery, jargon, asteroid, courtship, diplomatic, henceforth, confuse, systematize, din, musket, abridgment, taciturn, tinge, second nature, Bedouin, flattering, heavy, inclemency, folk, tumultuous, showy, entomology, pilgrimage, anemometer, UNICEF, stagecoach, shirttail, cold war, nonhazardous, vertigo, deafen, impacted, free trade, raffia, paperboy, chairwoman, out-of-date, foreshadow, windlass, cup, spring, fever, markdown, vestment, chose, job lot, purposeless, plead, wristband, cape, concern, hands down, suavity, stifle, cowgirl, misappropriate, dynamo, weeds, hyper, rain check, wise, imprecation, masturbation, sonata, highland, xenophobia, pathological, asleep, intestate, everybody, unsafe, milk chocolate, attorney general, aseptic, transcontinental, deify, shake, scrumptious, obstinate, floppy disk, broiler, chickadee, embolism, contortionist, ourselves, grub, cook, opening, ulna, aesthetic, aristocracy, mischief.

Now I could’ve made sentences of these words, even paragraphs. But not once did they arrange themselves into a sentence, let alone a paragraph or a page of sensible text.

What did I prove?

Nothing.

I didn’t test the random word generator often enough to make the experiment valid. Maybe it would’ve worked if I’d tried it 11 times, 11,000 times or 11 million times.

But I did learn one thing: If I’m ever lucky enough to get a pet monkey, I’m going to teach it to whistle.

That would be a hoot.

Here's Palin's map. Happy hunting!

Wasilla, Alaska–Conservative pundit Sarah Palin declared open season on liberals Wednesday, urging her followers to hunt down and kill key Democrats who supported the public health care legislation signed into law Tuesday night by President Obama.

“Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead—RELOAD!” Palin said in a misspelled and oddly capitalized post on her Facebook page. “Take them from your helicopters, take them from your trucks, take them in the open woods, take them anywhere you can find them. We’re going to reclaim the power of the people from those who disregarded the will of the people and return control of this country to the Americans who know how to manage it best—the bankers, insurance companies, corporate leaders and the elite members of the military-industrial complex.”

Palin also posted a U.S. map showing where 20 key Democrats live, marking their locations on the map with the crosshairs of a rifle sight.

Reaction from her conservative followers, known as Palin’s Posse, was swift and violent.  

Bricks were thrown through windows at the offices and homes of several Democratic leaders. Somebody cut the gas line at the home of the brother to Rep. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va. Many lawmakers received verbal and written death threats, including Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., whose vote was critical to the passage of the health care bill.

“Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing mother f***er… I hope you bleed out your a**, got cancer and die, you mother f***er,” one grammatically challenged man told Stupak. An angry woman also left a voicemail that sounded surprisingly New-Agey for an über conservative, but also darkly twisted: “There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill, and all of those thoughts that are projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you.”

Palin remained unapologetic.

“With the president signing this unwanted and ‘transformative’ government takeover of our health care system today with promises impossible to keep, let’s not get discouraged,” Palin said. “Let’s go get ourselves some trophies. Bonus points for anybody who gets one of their staffers, too, you betcha!”

"Let's put some holes in some liberals, kids!"

Palin, Alaska’s former governor, first gained national prominence as the vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. An avid supporter of gun rights, she was known for hunting moose from a helicopter. She’s now a conservative commentator for Fox News, “America’s Fact-Challenged Network” and the home of a highly successful job-training program for mentally challenged workers like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.

Some observers said the vehement reaction to the health care legislation recalls the threats and violence directed against political leaders during the highly charged civil rights debates of the 1960s.

“Now, everything is ‘kill’ or destroy the other party, not just beat them at the polls,” said former House historian Raymond Smock, who directs the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies in Shepherdstown, W.V. “All this talk of ‘targeting’ other people is very dangerous stuff, and it’s getting worse.”

“Pshaw!” Palin responded. “Americans have a long tradition of shooting one another, especially when it comes to politics. That’s why we have a Second Amendment protecting our right to bear arms. It protects the balance of power. My goodness golly, in Tennessee, shootings are so common, you have to promise not to shoot anybody when you take an oath of office. We’re just having a little good old fashioned fun here.”

Let me introduce you to my good friend, Jean Moulin. He's a little secretive, but he's efficient.

I came home from work today, tired and beat, opened up my blog and discovered that I had received nearly 550 spam comments in less than 12 hours.

After deleting them all, click by increasingly impatient click, I decided to turn my anti-spam Captcha plugin back on.

I know you hate it.

I hate it, too, in the same way that hate I being forced to run anti-virus software on my computer, lock the doors to my house, and wear pants when I’m out in public. Without the Captcha device, I get at least a few more comments on each post from the lazy lurkers and the drive-by drifters.

But there’s no way I’m going to spend 60 to 90 minutes every day deleting hundreds and hundreds of spam comments from the old posts that the spammers’ automated computer bots still haunt.

I don’t have the time.

I don’t have the interest.

I don’t have the muscle tone required to click the “delete spam” button that many times. I don’t have the mental fortitude, either. I’m France, the spammers are Nazi Germany, and I surrender. I’m waving the white flag and admitting defeat.

The spammers win.

But…Oublier Jamais!

The fucking Nazi spammers had better stay alert when they’re walking down the narrow alleyways of the Internet. Because if I get a chance, I’m going to drop large stones on their heads when they’re not looking.

Very tired now. Thinking fuzzy. Months of lazy unemployment. Nothing to do. Got up when I wanted. Then working again Monday. No, not working. Filling forms. Ha! Government job. Good job. Grateful. Very grateful. But always stay up late, late, late. Not sleepy. Never sleepy. Creative time. Nighttime not dark. Comforting. Like chocolate. Time to think. Soothing. Up early for work. Daytime bright. Tired. Eyes hurt. Busy. Sunday night, less than four hours sleep. Curse the alarm clock! Curse the sunrise! Curse the traffic lights, and the hunt for a parking spot near the front door! Shocking development. Began week with meeting. Lasted hours, then lunch, then another meeting. No desk or computer on day one. Must have forms for both. Filled out forms. Wrong forms. Must have other forms. Filled out more forms. Head hurts. Wonder if no sleep causes hallucinations. Wonder if forms cause hallucinations. Next day, less than four hours sleep again, bad news: still no computer. Support services says it might take three weeks. Meanwhile, required to take computer security course and test. Need computer for course. No computer. Used personal laptop. Reprimanded, security risk, homeland security, hackers, loss of critical secrets. Good news: got desk, will share it with part-time employee. Nice woman. Name sounds familiar. Fran Kafka. Put yellow sticky notes on stacks of her papers. “Don’t Touch! Don’t Move!”  I won’t! No time, no interest! Too many forms to fill out! Haha! Wednesday morning, less than five hours sleep, sleep deprivation sets in. Head spins. Eyes droop. Legs feel heavy. Back and neck ache and ache. Joints ache. More forms. Bank forms, insurance forms, forms saying I signed forms. Then, suddenly a hallucination? Pinch myself. No, not crazy. Unexpected progress! Helpful computer tech with spiky hair willing and able to set me up with computer. Not my quasi, half office. Across the hallway. I like it better here, can I have this office instead? No. Somebody works here. Nobody’s seen him in months. Wonder what he does? Probably creates forms. Hahaha! Desperately need sleep. Thursday morning, less than six hours sleep, whole body aches. Aspirin helps. Another waking dream: computer working. Almost. Must create passwords to use. Each one 12 characters, letters and numbers, uppercase and lowercase, with at least one special character. Will have at least 10 passwords for computer, telephone, e-mail, software. Not allowed to be same. Must be changed every 60 days. Not allowed to write them down. Can’t remember them all. Now what? Everybody writes them down. Everybody? Everybody. Even the computer techs. Bwahahaha! Endure the tyranny of the passwords! More forms. Friday morning, another short night, less than six hours. Snowstorm arrived overnight. Curse the snow! Curse the cleaning of the snow from the car! Curse the slow snow traffic! Must go. Personnel meeting first thing in the a.m. with human resources. Purpose: forms. Lots of forms. Instructions on how to get more forms needed next week. More forms? Hahaha! Really? Not a joke? Lots and lots and lots of forms needed. Forms of Biblical proportions. And the earth was formless, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and said let there be forms of every kind, and the people said, yes, we will obey, but do we need to fill out a form first, Lord? Yes, for I am a jealous and form-minded God. Oh, and use a pen or I will smote thee. You will be smitten. In triplicate. Personnel meeting done. Computer working now. I work. Writing. Suddenly notice total quiet. Everybody gone. Alone. Wander hallways. Find boss. What happened? Dismissed for snow. Snow? It’s snowing hard. Office closed. Did you get administrative e-mail? No. How do I get? Fill out form. Seriously? Yes. Not automatic. Send help ticket, ask to be put on list. Yes, of course, a form. Hahahaha! See you Monday. Have nice weekend. Yes. Will do. Will Sleep. Blessed bed! Blessed blanket! Blessed pillow! Sleeping at last. Pleasant dream. Nighttime. Moon quarter full, dark orange. No body. Formless. Free. Flying. City below. No cars. No people. Warm air on face. City ahead. Shimmering orange lights. Quiet. Beautiful. Flying.