It’s all about me. It always has been. A blog is the natural outlet for the self-deluded. Where else can one passionately pontificate under the impression that anyone gives a crap. Even my family, sick of my constant entries on the Facebook, urged me to get a blog so no one would actually have to read my rants. But a blog, that's like a commitment, right?
If you are going to blog, I guess blank pages just won’t do. This is not modern art, where substance can be merely implied. There is nothing quite as pointless as a blog with nothing posted. So, before I start the political and social commentary, I will take a few posts to reveal a little of your grateful scrivener's life, as he imagines it, and at least as far as the statute of limitations will allow. Though no one is reading, and fewer still actually care, this will initially be a bio-blog, buttered with enough fiction to make the story tasty. Context is everything. It is of the utmost importance to me that you not waste time reading my blog, only to discover at some point, so far down the road that you are filled with regret and revulsion, that I am clinically insane, terminally shallow, and, of a soft intellect, which I have no compunction to harden. Still, my life has been the sort of mess that has some poignancy without being pitiful, much like if one was to re-make “It’s a Wonderful Life” and set it inEast Texas , starring Jerry Springer as George Bailey, and let his producers cast it from there.
To trust a writer enough to invest time reading their blog is a reckless and dangerous act. Phony writers abound and I am loath to even claim the craft for fear that I become known as another soul-less scribe. That, I could not bear. One (I always thought the impersonal “one” sounded phony) can easily hide their phoniness as long as they don’t go publishing everywhere pretending to know something and just making everyone throw up. Real writers embrace experience – both real and imagined - with a glance over their shoulder as they leap from the fire escape and race down the alley. In this blog, I will strive humbly to offer, through my experiences - what I have learned as I looked back over my shoulder - the universal shared pain, passion, exasperation, silence, dreams, love, incredulity, beauty, joy and contradiction of the ordinary life, and how it has sharpened and distorted my perception of culture, politics, art, technology, ethics, and the BIGGER STORY, which, after all, really is not about me. It never has been.
Thus it begins:
The child is standing in a baby bed holding the top rail for balance. The room is black dark, except the thin rectangular ribbon of light that traces the door across the room. As a man he recalls this as his earliest memory though the line between truth and grudge, mirage and memory is not definable. Beyond the door, there is an unceasing roar of laughter which never rises or falls. The child is screaming at the top of his lungs to the point of choking and gasping - the screaming intensifies. At first, the screaming is to make someone hear and help. Convinced of the futility of that, the blood cry grows to guttural roar, drowning out the laughter and bellowing to naught. This lasts for what seems like hours. The child cry’s so hard he breaks blood vessels under his eyes with rubbing and gouging to wipe away the tears. His rage grows so that for the first time he climbs the top rail of the baby bed, intent on throwing himself onto the floor and escaping the terror of the darkness and killing the laughter beyond the door.
The door bursts open and the shadows of three women block the light. They pause for an instant and then rush in. Rasping out one final terrified scream of defiance, the child vaults and launches toward the floor. The mother lunges forward, a cigarette deftly between her fingers and grabs the child out of the air. The alcohol and smoke laced breath and lips of the party priestesses press against the child’s sweaty cheeks, neck, and back. Cooing, and speaking sweet reassurances, the child’s rage is almost immediately bent to pleasure. Before he has endured nearly enough of this, he is whisked into the light, into the PARTY- where he is hoisted, exalted, toasted, and mocked. All of the faces are grotesque and unfamiliar. The room is heavy with smoke and perfumes and colognes and brightly colored clothes. As they honor and adore the young prince, the laughter never ceases.
Interestingly, I found this earliest vivid memory to be an absolute hoot when it was written in the first person. However, the veracity of the story above, never denied by my mother or father, emanates from such a dark and primal place in my consciousness, it requires the third person narrative. Like a Fellini movie running deep in my sub-conscious, there is really no reason to try to decide what is real – it isn’t going away.
The next few years must have had some joy but I can barely remember – though the proof is right there in 1000’s of feet of 8mm color film taken by Boop, my maternal grandfather, capturing birthday parties, snowstorms and joyous visits with relatives. Also captured is me jumping into a deep gravel pit filled with water when someone let go of my hand for an instant, me waving goodbye and having my hand slammed in the car door and me jumping off the deep side of a pier in the Florida Keys, while people scrambled out of the shallow side to come save me. While it is clear that the love in our family was strong, I more vividly recall leaving the yard without permission and winding up blocks away in a creek until dark. The hardest whippings I ever got, including one with a coat hanger for the creek infraction. Worse, was the building of a huge Christmas tree fort and then, while inside, lighting the match that resulted in an inferno that terrified the neighborhood and caused limited and strictly supervised play dates. I learned early on, if people who love you think you are dead, or going to die, and then it turns out you are alive and were just being stupid, they are going to whip the hell out of you. At least that’s the way they saw it in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
I was 6 when they found the collection of three years of nasal effluence, carefully extracted by index finger - encrusted on the underside of the box springs of my bed. We were moving due to the impending divorce. I don’t remember much about the divorce except waking up to a huge fight, violent yelling, a gun on the bed side table… but that’s not interesting, half of us have have lived in an emotional ghetto for some period of our life. The boogers they found under my bed when we had to move to sub-standard housing because of the divorce, are the real story! A divorce and dried boogers under the Box Springs – the family was exploding. We were dysfunctional before people used the word dysfunctional. Properly embarrassed and deterred by the family indignation at this unspeakable disgust, I vowed to never wipe my boogers where they could ever be found again. I had to find new, undiscoverable places – under the refrigerator, under the water tank of the toilet - to wipe my boogers. After all, I had stopped eating them, but I couldn't just let go of them. Kleenex was too fragile and handkerchiefs seemed to result in snot everywhere, so picking had become my preferred method of nasal hygiene. I had been exposed as a “nose-picking-booger-wiper”, according to my older brother, who as it later turned out was a nail-biter and a belly button fuzz collector. (He kept it in an empty match box!) The moment of my disgrace began, when they tipped the box springs up on its side to take it to the moving truck and my mother said, “What the hell is that?” As everyone peered closer and the horror dawned on their faces my brother began to laugh with hysterical glee. I had been the cute, just darling, little boy, now transformed into the hideous “booger-boy” that no one wanted to be touched by. “Hi Sweet boy”, became “Have you washed THOSE HANDS?” and “Don’t touch me with your booger-hands!”
So, that’s a beginning of sorts. Who we are and what we become is so influenced by how we were loved and the incidents that find a place in our memories. When people tell me a story about their life they often express doubt about the importance or meaning of that experience. I don’t understand that because I find that these incidents tell me so much about a person’s humor, judgment and character. One person’s history is a part of the collective that makes up our common humanity. I look forward to hearing your stories and sharing more of mine.
Coming soon! :
Mr. Peppermint is really my dad.
How the Kennedy Assassination messed with my head.
Benny the Ball - outlasting the Bully
I Take Naked Pictures of Women to School!
Thanks for reading!
If you are going to blog, I guess blank pages just won’t do. This is not modern art, where substance can be merely implied. There is nothing quite as pointless as a blog with nothing posted. So, before I start the political and social commentary, I will take a few posts to reveal a little of your grateful scrivener's life, as he imagines it, and at least as far as the statute of limitations will allow. Though no one is reading, and fewer still actually care, this will initially be a bio-blog, buttered with enough fiction to make the story tasty. Context is everything. It is of the utmost importance to me that you not waste time reading my blog, only to discover at some point, so far down the road that you are filled with regret and revulsion, that I am clinically insane, terminally shallow, and, of a soft intellect, which I have no compunction to harden. Still, my life has been the sort of mess that has some poignancy without being pitiful, much like if one was to re-make “It’s a Wonderful Life” and set it in
To trust a writer enough to invest time reading their blog is a reckless and dangerous act. Phony writers abound and I am loath to even claim the craft for fear that I become known as another soul-less scribe. That, I could not bear. One (I always thought the impersonal “one” sounded phony) can easily hide their phoniness as long as they don’t go publishing everywhere pretending to know something and just making everyone throw up. Real writers embrace experience – both real and imagined - with a glance over their shoulder as they leap from the fire escape and race down the alley. In this blog, I will strive humbly to offer, through my experiences - what I have learned as I looked back over my shoulder - the universal shared pain, passion, exasperation, silence, dreams, love, incredulity, beauty, joy and contradiction of the ordinary life, and how it has sharpened and distorted my perception of culture, politics, art, technology, ethics, and the BIGGER STORY, which, after all, really is not about me. It never has been.
Thus it begins:
The child is standing in a baby bed holding the top rail for balance. The room is black dark, except the thin rectangular ribbon of light that traces the door across the room. As a man he recalls this as his earliest memory though the line between truth and grudge, mirage and memory is not definable. Beyond the door, there is an unceasing roar of laughter which never rises or falls. The child is screaming at the top of his lungs to the point of choking and gasping - the screaming intensifies. At first, the screaming is to make someone hear and help. Convinced of the futility of that, the blood cry grows to guttural roar, drowning out the laughter and bellowing to naught. This lasts for what seems like hours. The child cry’s so hard he breaks blood vessels under his eyes with rubbing and gouging to wipe away the tears. His rage grows so that for the first time he climbs the top rail of the baby bed, intent on throwing himself onto the floor and escaping the terror of the darkness and killing the laughter beyond the door.
The door bursts open and the shadows of three women block the light. They pause for an instant and then rush in. Rasping out one final terrified scream of defiance, the child vaults and launches toward the floor. The mother lunges forward, a cigarette deftly between her fingers and grabs the child out of the air. The alcohol and smoke laced breath and lips of the party priestesses press against the child’s sweaty cheeks, neck, and back. Cooing, and speaking sweet reassurances, the child’s rage is almost immediately bent to pleasure. Before he has endured nearly enough of this, he is whisked into the light, into the PARTY- where he is hoisted, exalted, toasted, and mocked. All of the faces are grotesque and unfamiliar. The room is heavy with smoke and perfumes and colognes and brightly colored clothes. As they honor and adore the young prince, the laughter never ceases.
Interestingly, I found this earliest vivid memory to be an absolute hoot when it was written in the first person. However, the veracity of the story above, never denied by my mother or father, emanates from such a dark and primal place in my consciousness, it requires the third person narrative. Like a Fellini movie running deep in my sub-conscious, there is really no reason to try to decide what is real – it isn’t going away.
The next few years must have had some joy but I can barely remember – though the proof is right there in 1000’s of feet of 8mm color film taken by Boop, my maternal grandfather, capturing birthday parties, snowstorms and joyous visits with relatives. Also captured is me jumping into a deep gravel pit filled with water when someone let go of my hand for an instant, me waving goodbye and having my hand slammed in the car door and me jumping off the deep side of a pier in the Florida Keys, while people scrambled out of the shallow side to come save me. While it is clear that the love in our family was strong, I more vividly recall leaving the yard without permission and winding up blocks away in a creek until dark. The hardest whippings I ever got, including one with a coat hanger for the creek infraction. Worse, was the building of a huge Christmas tree fort and then, while inside, lighting the match that resulted in an inferno that terrified the neighborhood and caused limited and strictly supervised play dates. I learned early on, if people who love you think you are dead, or going to die, and then it turns out you are alive and were just being stupid, they are going to whip the hell out of you. At least that’s the way they saw it in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
I was 6 when they found the collection of three years of nasal effluence, carefully extracted by index finger - encrusted on the underside of the box springs of my bed. We were moving due to the impending divorce. I don’t remember much about the divorce except waking up to a huge fight, violent yelling, a gun on the bed side table… but that’s not interesting, half of us have have lived in an emotional ghetto for some period of our life. The boogers they found under my bed when we had to move to sub-standard housing because of the divorce, are the real story! A divorce and dried boogers under the Box Springs – the family was exploding. We were dysfunctional before people used the word dysfunctional. Properly embarrassed and deterred by the family indignation at this unspeakable disgust, I vowed to never wipe my boogers where they could ever be found again. I had to find new, undiscoverable places – under the refrigerator, under the water tank of the toilet - to wipe my boogers. After all, I had stopped eating them, but I couldn't just let go of them. Kleenex was too fragile and handkerchiefs seemed to result in snot everywhere, so picking had become my preferred method of nasal hygiene. I had been exposed as a “nose-picking-booger-wiper”, according to my older brother, who as it later turned out was a nail-biter and a belly button fuzz collector. (He kept it in an empty match box!) The moment of my disgrace began, when they tipped the box springs up on its side to take it to the moving truck and my mother said, “What the hell is that?” As everyone peered closer and the horror dawned on their faces my brother began to laugh with hysterical glee. I had been the cute, just darling, little boy, now transformed into the hideous “booger-boy” that no one wanted to be touched by. “Hi Sweet boy”, became “Have you washed THOSE HANDS?” and “Don’t touch me with your booger-hands!”
So, that’s a beginning of sorts. Who we are and what we become is so influenced by how we were loved and the incidents that find a place in our memories. When people tell me a story about their life they often express doubt about the importance or meaning of that experience. I don’t understand that because I find that these incidents tell me so much about a person’s humor, judgment and character. One person’s history is a part of the collective that makes up our common humanity. I look forward to hearing your stories and sharing more of mine.
Coming soon! :
Mr. Peppermint is really my dad.
How the Kennedy Assassination messed with my head.
Benny the Ball - outlasting the Bully
I Take Naked Pictures of Women to School!
Thanks for reading!
