Category Archives: foolishness

On a sore neck

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You ever get a sore neck that makes turning your head just about impossible? Whenever anyone speaks to you, or you hear a strange noise, or you turn to get a plate out of the cupboard, your neck just stops working–the swivel is broken and you feel about a hundred years old. You have to turn your whole body to see just normal stuff. I pulled a small muscles in my shoulder about two weeks ago, and I’ve been having a lot of fun since. First, driving is impossible. Second, any time you have to turn around, your neck is having second thoughts about the whole operation. Third, no matter what you do for a pillow, sleeping and lying down are new adventures in pain. You have to turn your whole body to see what’s behind you, and it looks so unnatural. Instantly, everyone is asking, “What’s wrong with your neck?” as if you didn’t know there was a problem. It seems, too, that just about the time it starts feeling better, you fall asleep sitting up in some strange position, and it continues to hurt like the devil every time you need to turn your head. You don’t dare look behind you because if you do you risk snapping your head clean off. Yes, you can take some “pain relievers” but they only solve the problem temporarily because it always comes back. A sore neck reduces you from functioning human being to orthopedic nightmare that can barely move, and all the while you feel like the oxidized version of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. My kingdom for an oilcan.

On a sore neck

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You ever get a sore neck that makes turning your head just about impossible? Whenever anyone speaks to you, or you hear a strange noise, or you turn to get a plate out of the cupboard, your neck just stops working–the swivel is broken and you feel about a hundred years old. You have to turn your whole body to see just normal stuff. I pulled a small muscles in my shoulder about two weeks ago, and I’ve been having a lot of fun since. First, driving is impossible. Second, any time you have to turn around, your neck is having second thoughts about the whole operation. Third, no matter what you do for a pillow, sleeping and lying down are new adventures in pain. You have to turn your whole body to see what’s behind you, and it looks so unnatural. Instantly, everyone is asking, “What’s wrong with your neck?” as if you didn’t know there was a problem. It seems, too, that just about the time it starts feeling better, you fall asleep sitting up in some strange position, and it continues to hurt like the devil every time you need to turn your head. You don’t dare look behind you because if you do you risk snapping your head clean off. Yes, you can take some “pain relievers” but they only solve the problem temporarily because it always comes back. A sore neck reduces you from functioning human being to orthopedic nightmare that can barely move, and all the while you feel like the oxidized version of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. My kingdom for an oilcan.

On surviving Friday night

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Lots of people go out on Friday night to celebrate the end of the week, but I’m melting down at the end of the day with a couple of loads of laundry, some pork chops, a bit of Kentucky hooch, and Tony Bourdain traveling around Colombia. I have no energy to go out, drink in a bar, or mix it up with a lot of strangers. There is something liberating about Friday night that breaks all of the rules, knows no boundaries, respects no conventions, and, frankly, my dear, doesn’t give a damn after a hard week of frustrations and disappointments. Yet, I also know that my frustrations and disappointments are pretty minimal when I compare them to others, who may be fighting for their very lives. My problems don’t amount to a hill of beans when others are fighting pneumonia or just old age. But on Friday night none of that matters as the wounds heal, perspective relativizes all hurts, and time begins to push all problems into the past. If we did not have Friday nights, our lives would be unbearable, or almost. Friday night is time off from the day to day routine which burdens us, makes us serious and sad. On Friday night most of us don’t really have to work, don’t have a fixed bed time, and can do whatever we feel like doing, which really doesn’t happen too often. Friday night is about freedom, to think, to do, to act, to sleep, to eat, to drink, to do nothing if the spirit so leads us. On Friday nights we cast off the shackles of daily life and let our spirits free. It just has to happen from time to time.

On surviving Friday night

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Lots of people go out on Friday night to celebrate the end of the week, but I’m melting down at the end of the day with a couple of loads of laundry, some pork chops, a bit of Kentucky hooch, and Tony Bourdain traveling around Colombia. I have no energy to go out, drink in a bar, or mix it up with a lot of strangers. There is something liberating about Friday night that breaks all of the rules, knows no boundaries, respects no conventions, and, frankly, my dear, doesn’t give a damn after a hard week of frustrations and disappointments. Yet, I also know that my frustrations and disappointments are pretty minimal when I compare them to others, who may be fighting for their very lives. My problems don’t amount to a hill of beans when others are fighting pneumonia or just old age. But on Friday night none of that matters as the wounds heal, perspective relativizes all hurts, and time begins to push all problems into the past. If we did not have Friday nights, our lives would be unbearable, or almost. Friday night is time off from the day to day routine which burdens us, makes us serious and sad. On Friday night most of us don’t really have to work, don’t have a fixed bed time, and can do whatever we feel like doing, which really doesn’t happen too often. Friday night is about freedom, to think, to do, to act, to sleep, to eat, to drink, to do nothing if the spirit so leads us. On Friday nights we cast off the shackles of daily life and let our spirits free. It just has to happen from time to time.

On the good old days

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Today, nostalgia is an industry–books, movies, theme parks, television–anything that will evoke a time gone by when we thought everything was golden, that everything was better. Of course, our memories play tricks on us. Those “good old days” where perhaps only good because we were all so young, and it seemed like we could do anything–climb mountains, swim oceans, slay dragons, solve differential equations, resolve the enigma of the Sphinx. We were thin and energetic, full of vim, vigor, and vitriol, and we could eat anything and not put on a pound.Yet we were also inexperienced, foolish, and innocent. I remember my trip to Mallorca almost thirty-four years ago as if it were yesterday, but when I look at that picture of that guy who I used to be, I haven’t the slightest clue as to who he really was. Those days were good because we were not yet cynical and sad, disillusioned or unhappy. We had plans, a future. Life, however, seldom cooperates and gets in the way of the best laid plans a person can make. How is it possible that all of that time has passed in the blinking of an eye? Life is life, and we live it a day at a time, working, studying, eating, cleaning, picking up, exploring, singing, planning, loving, traveling, arriving, and then we start all over again, and so on. Life will not be better when the week is over, or when we get our next promotion, or when we get married, or when we get a new job. Life is happening every day whether you care to notice or not. Philosopher, poets, artists, have been telling us this with every new thing they create, but we fall victim to our own distractions and worry about when our lives are really going to start, or we obsess about a past that never existed in the first place. Perhaps the best thing to do with the past is remember it, but not idealize it. The past is an unknown landscape that exists only as a construction of our imaginations and our desire to be happy once more. If you go there too often, you will eventually crash in the present, bitter and tired. I prefer to remember the good old days as just that, the good old days, and some of it was very, very good.

On the good old days

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Today, nostalgia is an industry–books, movies, theme parks, television–anything that will evoke a time gone by when we thought everything was golden, that everything was better. Of course, our memories play tricks on us. Those “good old days” where perhaps only good because we were all so young, and it seemed like we could do anything–climb mountains, swim oceans, slay dragons, solve differential equations, resolve the enigma of the Sphinx. We were thin and energetic, full of vim, vigor, and vitriol, and we could eat anything and not put on a pound.Yet we were also inexperienced, foolish, and innocent. I remember my trip to Mallorca almost thirty-four years ago as if it were yesterday, but when I look at that picture of that guy who I used to be, I haven’t the slightest clue as to who he really was. Those days were good because we were not yet cynical and sad, disillusioned or unhappy. We had plans, a future. Life, however, seldom cooperates and gets in the way of the best laid plans a person can make. How is it possible that all of that time has passed in the blinking of an eye? Life is life, and we live it a day at a time, working, studying, eating, cleaning, picking up, exploring, singing, planning, loving, traveling, arriving, and then we start all over again, and so on. Life will not be better when the week is over, or when we get our next promotion, or when we get married, or when we get a new job. Life is happening every day whether you care to notice or not. Philosopher, poets, artists, have been telling us this with every new thing they create, but we fall victim to our own distractions and worry about when our lives are really going to start, or we obsess about a past that never existed in the first place. Perhaps the best thing to do with the past is remember it, but not idealize it. The past is an unknown landscape that exists only as a construction of our imaginations and our desire to be happy once more. If you go there too often, you will eventually crash in the present, bitter and tired. I prefer to remember the good old days as just that, the good old days, and some of it was very, very good.

On the last night of the year

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Certainly, all calendars and all counting systems are arbitrary and inevitably meaningless, but today is December 31st and tonight is New Year’s Eve. One might wax nostalgic or maudlin or sad or happy or whatever, but most of that is meaningless as well. In fact, there is almost no meaning whatsoever in the fact that 2013 comes to a close this evening. I used to dread New Year’s Eve because I couldn’t find the merriment and fun that apparently everyone else felt so strongly. The end of the year also felt a little melancholy to me. I mean, looking at a frozen January from the bottom up seemed no treat–short days and cold nights punctuated with a bunch of snow didn’t seem like anything to look forward to. I never understood the reason to party on New Year’s Eve. Was it happy or sad? Or just what was going on. Were people trying to put something behind them? Or was this some irrational hope that the next year would be a sight better? Most years seem eerily similar, with highs and lows to be expected, so why do people expect anything any different. In the end, poetically, tragically, the changing calendar is a symbol of human hope, the ability to forget the past and to hope for a different future. Perhaps this is our greatest quality as a race–to bounce back from adversity and build a new future in spite of everything that we still drag along in our unopened baggage. Maybe the new year is a time when we dump the baggage, once and for all, and move on.

On the last night of the year

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Certainly, all calendars and all counting systems are arbitrary and inevitably meaningless, but today is December 31st and tonight is New Year’s Eve. One might wax nostalgic or maudlin or sad or happy or whatever, but most of that is meaningless as well. In fact, there is almost no meaning whatsoever in the fact that 2013 comes to a close this evening. I used to dread New Year’s Eve because I couldn’t find the merriment and fun that apparently everyone else felt so strongly. The end of the year also felt a little melancholy to me. I mean, looking at a frozen January from the bottom up seemed no treat–short days and cold nights punctuated with a bunch of snow didn’t seem like anything to look forward to. I never understood the reason to party on New Year’s Eve. Was it happy or sad? Or just what was going on. Were people trying to put something behind them? Or was this some irrational hope that the next year would be a sight better? Most years seem eerily similar, with highs and lows to be expected, so why do people expect anything any different. In the end, poetically, tragically, the changing calendar is a symbol of human hope, the ability to forget the past and to hope for a different future. Perhaps this is our greatest quality as a race–to bounce back from adversity and build a new future in spite of everything that we still drag along in our unopened baggage. Maybe the new year is a time when we dump the baggage, once and for all, and move on.

On free t-shirts

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Have I ever mentioned how much I love getting free t-shirts with strange or bizarre designs and logos? I mean, I don’t have fifty-eight of them, but I have a few. I’ve picked up a few at sporting events (had them thrown at me, really), worn a few at fundraisers (trimmed with the many supporters of the fund raiser), and I have also been handed others in totally random and chaotic situations. There is something blatantly charming about free stuff, but a free shirt is just too much fun. Free shirts are like book marks in time, and every time you wear it, you remember that soccer game, book sale, or picnic in which you received. Two radio stations, a men’s haberdashery, and a light opera all gave me free t-shirts. Strange t-shirts have just appeared in my closet, and I have no idea where they came from or to what they might refer–they are mystery t-shirts. Some favorite t-shirts get rather ratty and need to be culled from the herd. Many of my t-shirts celebrate the school colors of the schools that I have attended (although a few of those were bought, which is not in the spirit of free t-shirts at all). Free t-shirts are frivolous, chaotic, random, liberating, anarchic, and unpredictable. There is nothing about free t-shirts which really organized type-A’s can either like or appreciate. Free t-shirts are a metaphor for the arbitrary nature of life itself.

On free t-shirts

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Have I ever mentioned how much I love getting free t-shirts with strange or bizarre designs and logos? I mean, I don’t have fifty-eight of them, but I have a few. I’ve picked up a few at sporting events (had them thrown at me, really), worn a few at fundraisers (trimmed with the many supporters of the fund raiser), and I have also been handed others in totally random and chaotic situations. There is something blatantly charming about free stuff, but a free shirt is just too much fun. Free shirts are like book marks in time, and every time you wear it, you remember that soccer game, book sale, or picnic in which you received. Two radio stations, a men’s haberdashery, and a light opera all gave me free t-shirts. Strange t-shirts have just appeared in my closet, and I have no idea where they came from or to what they might refer–they are mystery t-shirts. Some favorite t-shirts get rather ratty and need to be culled from the herd. Many of my t-shirts celebrate the school colors of the schools that I have attended (although a few of those were bought, which is not in the spirit of free t-shirts at all). Free t-shirts are frivolous, chaotic, random, liberating, anarchic, and unpredictable. There is nothing about free t-shirts which really organized type-A’s can either like or appreciate. Free t-shirts are a metaphor for the arbitrary nature of life itself.