Detritus

This morning, very early –

detritus76 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:08:03 +0000

or late last night depending on your temporal perspective, you said “I love you” for the first time. It felt so good to hear. I had been making a great effort to not say it – not because I wanted to see who could hold out longest, but because it is a very serious phrase, of a strength similar to “I promise.” Hearing those three words made my day, and probably made my life.

- sent at 12:09 pm on August 31, 2009

Goodbye 2008

detritus76 — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:29:40 +0000

I haven’t written much lately. I suppose my new year’s resolution should be to write more.

The year ending today is somewhat of a blur; I don’t feel I accomplished much, though I think that’s just a feeling most people have after finishing high school and college. Besides taking and passing the bar exam and becoming a licensed attorney, this year was mostly just about being a working stiff. I read a lot of books, studied a bit, and traveled a bit.

I’d like to make a list of things I did in 2008:

- Attended the baptism of my nephew and godson Kilian

- Traveled to Virginia to attend Blythe’s wedding

- Traveled to Vancouver to spend a few lovely days sailing on Kin and Steeve’s lovely boat Corus

- Traveled to San Franciso to explore the city for the first time, and re-connect with Billy

- Traveled to Wisconsin to re-connect with Yoko, Meredith, Jackie, and other lovely ladies from my high school days

- Read many books, which I should attempt to list:

Satanic Verses and The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (which I bought and had signed when he spoke at the Harold Washington Library in July
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Long Goodbye and Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Windy City by Scott Simon
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by R.L. Stevenson
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
Eugenie Grandet by Honore Balzac

- Took up tennis, and got generally more active

- Enjoyed a perfect summer, and lamented the short and cold days we have now…

- Started and never finished a few blog posts, including this one

aphoristic

detritus76 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:54:08 +0000

I recently heard someone on the radio whining about how no one loved her for who she is. I couldn’t help thinking to myself that she should work on becoming a better who.

I thought about what a lovely slogan this idea could be turned into, and spent a little too much time daydreaming goofy bumper stickers. Here is what I think I’ve settled on:

If no one loves you for who you are, become a better you.

It felt good to resist that part of me who wanted to respond to the woman on the radio, “Maybe that’s cause you suck, hon.”

Photo from the past

detritus76 — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:17:31 +0000

I love this photo from so many months ago. Between courses during lunch at Maiko’s, we all splintered off and did different things. This was just a random snap. It almost looks to me like a bad scene in a terrible play; but it brings back good memories.

Scrap of time

detritus76 — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:13:13 +0000

I found this writing, and now I have no idea when, where, or why I wrote it. May as well post it here:

Lies?

Eradicate all traces.

Purge, disinfect, lament.

Lost year; lost in love; blind.

Lazy and blind. Should have ended it sooner.

since feeling is first

detritus76 — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:54:54 +0000

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

-the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- E.E. Cummings

I can’t remember

detritus76 — Sat, 03 May 2008 01:31:53 +0000

Listening to The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, I was overjoyed the other day to learn that eidetic (“photographic”) memory doesn’t exist, and relieved to learn that everyone’s memory is inherently faulty in everyone. After 31 years of eventful life, I have my fair share of memories, and this is the time of year for nostalgia with me. Sitting at the window, working on my Linux installation, listening to Ella while the sun blinks intermittently from the fat wet clouds, I reminisce. It’s the gaps in memory that really make me think, and make me feel sometimes that recently all I do is think about what I can’t remember. It makes me wish I kept a journal.

Stranger’s Kindnesses

detritus76 — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:00:22 +0000

I am not a do-gooder. I am far from altruistic. Though I am by no means evil, I could never be bothered to help the bewildered or obviously needy. I am sure there are many reasons for this: living in cities for so long, I have become callous, because many asking for help are staging a con. Once upon a time, I gave fairly freely of my loose change, until one late night in a Burger King parking lot in Evanston, Illinois the gentleman receiving my pocket coins moved without any thanks or acknowledgment to my companion: his hand was still closing on the 78 cents I had deposited as his eyes sought another source. It wasn’t the first time I’d suffered shoddy customer service from an asphalt entrepreneur, but I vowed it would be the last. At the time, I was sucking up $9 an hour at a soul-withering job, so those lint-ringed monetary discs represented several minutes of my life, and a shard or two of my dessicated soul. 12 or so years later, I come to the sudden realization that this episode helped to make me the cheap and avariocious beast I may see through eye schmutz, if/when I wake up in the morning.

I came to [regular daily] driving (of the automobilical ilk) later in life, having been an inveterate transit user. For months after acquiring a jalopy to call my own, I would snigger inwardly at seeing a stranded motorist, thinking “Well I may be poor and cheap, but at least I know enough to keep an old car running properly.” Such logic is a luxury, and we ought bask in it while we can, for fate has an enormous spiny dildo to stuff in our unwilling orifices, and fate takes all the pleasure in the act. The flat tire without warning; the sudden loss of engine oil; the sinking in uncharted, unfathomed, unknown mud.

Yes, dear reader. That bitch fate laughed at me while applying her namesake slap, and while going about my workaday assignment in suburban (and newly thawed) Minneapolis, my rental sank front-bumper deep in muck.

I needed to take four photos of a site I had identified as a candidate for a clever wireless antenna installation, so I headed out in a drippy balmy 40 degree day, and pulled into what I had previously identified through the ice and snow as a gravel path along a baseball diamond. I noticed some wetness, to be sure, but had no idea that my incursion would release the floodgates of a melting makeshift ice rink. The vehicle hesitated, then stopped, though my pressure on the accelerator had not changed. The black Jeep Compass – “basic,” as described by the friendly Fargoan at the rental counter at MSP – would not even spin its Detroit-engineered front wheels fast enough to move an inch. The very intelligent traction control led the tires to do a very slow spin, which would have been unutterably perfect were I trying to dig two holes in the ooze. Oscillating at a seemingly slower rate than the second hand on my third-hand watch, the generic slicks lazily tossed up fragrant suburban slime in any direction I chose to orient the steering wheel.

Long story shorter than it seemed one paragraph ago to allow: A gentleman of elderish proportions sidled up in somewhat Buicky transport. He asked if I needed help; I guess my confused look was an effective inducement. The Jeep had only front-wheel drive, a bumper made of plastic, the driver’s manual’s suggestions were supremely impotent, and when I tried to push while he reversed, I slipped in the mud (though managed to remain upright, thankfully). He told me to wait a few minutes while he fetched some gear, and I was still thumbing the rental documents and driver’s manual when he returned in overalls on some kind of small four-wheeler, and we conspired to suck the truck out of the muck. When the muddy Chrysler product was righted on the road, he said something akin to “OK now,” and headed off the way he came. I made it back only 30 minutes late to the mothership in the stench of the MALL OF AMERICA [I find I cannot type that using small caps].

I was nearly speechless. This nameless man had helped me out of a sticky situation, for no real reason – other than perhaps to get my unsightly ass out of his town. I would never have the time, means, or perhaps even inclination to do likewise – and that sucks for all the people like me out there.

PatSanto Says:

detritus76 — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:24:19 +0000

Everyone, year after year, expresses dismay when he or she learns that I have done nothing to celebrate St. Inebretius, on March 17, the day of my youngest brother’s birth. I rarely answer coherently or rationally; this year, as my walls are greenly-painted, I am hosting a post-Pat’s.

I want to expound, but I just don’t feel the need, energy, or inspiration.

So, here’s what I’ve learned about alcohol:

* about half is enough

* when one starts to feel good, one is halfway to not-good

* hindsight is harsh, self-critical, and inevitably more wise than foresight which spys a desired bottle and desolate stretch of time

* alcoholic regrets are never worth the remembering unless something worthwhile and lasting has come from them (my current score is zero, unless we’re looking at a cumulative scale of bad decisions)

I could go on, but that would waste precious minutes I’ve alloted to drinking.

again

detritus76 — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:56:22 +0000

Well, [I was hopeful, again] the only logical explanation was that he was on his way, but it turned out he was only inattentive, lazy, forgetful, as usual. Is this destiny, doom, or merely hell?