Easily one of the best moments of John Adams, the HBO miniseries with Paul Giamatti, is the scene in which he turns down the sought approval of the painter of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence. Adams enters, old and beat from his previous years of politics and presidency and refuses to acknowledge the picture. The true genius of the scene is what we take with us: that in fact, history, is lived by those in it and our repetitions of the subject do little to its authenticity. The key word is authenticity, and with that word brings a heated debate amongst historians and fans alike about how we should approach those that lived through incredible moments.
I no doubt thought of this as I gazed with my eyes for the first time The Alamo Friday morning, and got a self tour throughout the remainder of the complex Saturday morning. It was heavy with tourists, of all designs and shapes. Regardless of origin, everyone was beat red, obliterated by a continuous heat that burned the early morning clouds rather quickly. The long barracks wall and the Alamo complex followed by some back area was all that was left. That Saturday after a light breakfast, I took as many pictures as I could before being told to put away my father's digital camera. It was all I could do to prevent myself from taking more stealthily. At first, I was awe inspired. In total, I must have spent over 24 hours of my life learning about the Texas Revolution and the Alamo specifically. There's messages everywhere: storyboards outside the north side of the Alamo tracking the event with writing and print. The Sun rises and strikes the storyboards and glow for the benches closer to the complex. There's a gift shop out back where you can pay for William B. Travis's letter, all bent and scrabbled just like...old paper. There's a model inside that glorifies the scene with incredible detail. Thousands of soldiers, frozen forever, are still cascading over that north wall. The defenders in gray and brownish undistinguished uniforms fight the good fight. Buoy may already be dead.
There's even a memorial made in stone given from a Japanese gentlemen who honored the Alamo with his time and effort. It sits in the shade at the far north end. And in absolute hilarity, you can pay three dollars to go across the street and see another diorama that's fifteen feet. Above it there's stage lighting that's synchronized to the dictation of a recording by Phil Collins, yes Phil Collins himself. Those who know his enthusiasm with The Alamo and Texas History will not be surprised by this. Our family went and listened to the whole fifteen minute presentation. It was eloquently told, except for the constant drumming that was sound-byted in by God only knows. It was constant, and completely unnecessary. Even before this we had heard an older, more credible historian give the exact same details and more with before and after tails of Gonzales and Goliad and San Jacinto.
But the more I listened, the more the rejection of the Declaration of the Signing of the Independence crept into my thought. Across the street, families can enjoy the wonders of Ripley's Believe it Or Not, Haunted Mansion, a wax museum, a gift shop, a t-shirt shop, and the Guiness World Record Museum. It's only 20 dollars per person. And while it's not Field of Dreams and it's not offering reincarnated baseball players, the families are in the moment. It's the Alamo, and it's the weekend. The Sun is hot outside, and it's this or going back through history.
Needless to say, they make a lot of money.
Outside of this ring is the Riverwalk: full of astounding tourist friendly history like moving hotels on giant rollers, hotels pieced together from separate parts of America, Cypress trees, a never flooding water system, restaurants that will murder a wallet, and other festive moments. Near it is the River Center Mall, which after its loss of a bookstore fell from grace in my eye. And outside this is the market square, where one can indulge in sizzling fajitas, spend more money on debatable merchandise or beautiful John Wayne paintings.
And outside of that is the rest of the city, but it all seems to revolve around the historical monument that is The Alamo. It is a confusing and wondrous thought, because in the end what was it? It was a bunch of po-dunk fighters who bunkered in and hoped to God hope would arrive. They all died, yes even Crockett, and never thought they would be remembered. Surprisingly they have. The wife leaver and gambler William B. Travis has streets named after him and is on the memorial. Crockett, the failed politician but renowned hunter went for the next big thing. He thought he could hit it big, and the truth was he did, but not in the way he thought. Everyone else died so fast they hardly understood what happened. Shot by their own cannons, massacred by Santa Anna, and left without a proper burial until Juan Seguin was the only one with enough balls to go back and do the job.
Why not Bunker Hill? Lexington and Concord? Why not the Battle of Eylau fought by Napolean? Custard made his last stand, and not many give him the credit. In the end, Santa Anna continued forth toward Louisiana, pushing the runaway scrape. History may always be bigger than necessary, but when does it become unbearable? Is it unbearable? Is it just me trying to cope with a life long question? Why are they remembered? Dying for the cause? There are literally thousands of moments like this, but yet the Alamo defense with 189 men ended up being one of the most important international history tales ever.
That about sums up my thoughts on such a historical landmark, and my visit of it. I of course always respect historical learning, but to see what it was all leading to, was something I had to question. If someone had survived, maybe they could've pulled a John Adams and told everyone to calm the hell down.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
For Those That Hug Crybabies
The problem with dating in junior high is people think everyone is waiting and watching for what they’ll do next. It’s a movie, and the couple is with other friends, but it’s never about watching the movie. It’s someone else’s home, but the parents are mysteriously not present, and the feeling of eyes still glaring is unforgivable. Should the man reach for a hand? Embrace the first step of many in their quest for something they hardly know? Arm around the shoulder then, if they have the guts. The man (child) decides, and throws the arm, but only because a friend of a friend said that she has a crush on him and that he should make some move. This is the first step in the realization of miscommunication. At school the next day, the girl blatantly says that she has no interest in him, but would like to remain friends, or something like that. The boy has a hard time hearing those last words as his fingers feel like water hoses are pushing from inside. Sweat from his armpits are racing down his chest, and his only hope for survival is to be as cordial and understanding as possible. If he doesn’t, the one thing that could happen is him tackling her and shouting while deflecting pathetic arm grabs, “Your friend is a liar!”
The true response comes from the boy that night after school. When a mother enters the room and asks, “How did the date go?” Moms know these things because the biological timeline of their child is never forgotten, especially from a mother who cares. In any case, it’s all it took for the boy to crumple like stacks of newspaper and sprawl out on the shaggy gray carpet and huff and puff. The tragedy that he’ll never blow the house down is never realized in the wheezing, and he keeps crying. All the mother can hear are things like, “It’s not fair” and “I’m never getting married.” Fortunately for the boy, the mother is some form of magician, and can soothe those ruffled feathers. All it takes is soaking up his tears in her t-shirt. All it takes is quiet whispers of reassurance that someday there will be someone who will be just the one for the boy. The boy sleeps like it never happened.
And in the end this story is lighter than others. It turns out the girl telling the boy early on about her feelings was the best thing a woman can do. And she learned it in junior high. But then we can conclude that there must have been worst stories, terrible ones. They weren’t all bad, but they weren’t all bad because there are traces of kinship in the human imagination and in literature that are so nurturing as to bring us to tears, and then there are our real mothers. And the ones in fantasy don’t nearly come close to the ones that have lived to tell their own tales.
In those heated days that never seemed to end, I hated those damn shoulder pads. Think about the most constricting clothing to ever be presented to a man, combine them all and then tell him it’s over one hundred degrees outside, and then tell him he must battle to the death against more of the same. In those heated days all the parents take pictures and barely sit in the fold out chairs. In those heated days, they still must’ve yelled at the officials and argued about the concession stand prices. But one thing is for sure: those parents saw their children raise lightning and throw down hell on those fields. Even if it was some form of absurdity in which parents are screaming “No son, dribble to the other side” or “Get the ball”, they were still titans. At the end of that hot day on the grass as they picked away at ants crawling up their cleats, they must’ve looked like the prize winner of the world. “My son is the future” they must have all agreed as they rubbed their children’s sweaty heads, and then bitter sweetly rubbed their hands on their jeans. And in those days was my mother. I was never a sport God. I never made great plays, or ran for touchdowns, or led in heroic speeches, but my mother did not care. I would eat snow cones and squint tightly as the ice froze my front teeth; my big gapped front teeth. And I drank it up, I drank it all up. All my mother wanted to do was watch. While I was throwing natural curves, all she wanted to do was witness me, like I was some new breed that no one else saw.
Picture a red suburban, the older kind, before SUV’s ruined everything. Picture the paint chipping off at the top, not because it was old, but because it literally could not take the intensity by which my mother and I listened to classic rock. Picture musicals that seem trivial now, but were witnessed five out of five times by a mother who drank it up, not by performing, but by just being there.
“Mom do you have any aspirin?”
“What?”
It’s the night of pop show, my senior year performance. I learned that aspirin helps the voice. I had no idea if that was true, but in those circumstances you’ll try anything.
“Do you have a headache?” she asked.
“No mom, I just need it. Ms. James said it helped the singing.”
We are backstage, and Mom gives me a look that says, “You’ll be fine” as she turns and heads back around to take her place in the audience.
We’re singing For The Longest Time, and it’s my turn at the solo. The crowd loves us, and tilt their heads right and left as we charm anyone and everyone, because that’s what seniors do I suppose. I get to the high notes, and when I do the most horrible crack occurs. My voice shatters in volume and in hindsight friends watch videos of it and laugh for hours, blowing it off. I know this because it’s mine, and while people always say they forget those things, I never believe them. Because how could they ever forget? It’s the worst thing in choral history. Watching the video footage, my other choral comrades literally could not snap together because they were physically disabled at the wretched sound. It sounded like a walrus couldn’t make it out of the swimming pool and just “arfs” his fat slob body on the side of the pool.
I head backstage and everyone looks at me for a reaction. By this stage of my life they still do not know how I react to these things. They obviously didn’t know the story of placing the arm around the girl. While I did nothing at school, the aftershock and reality always hits hours later, when I’m safe, alone. Always act cordially, because people will respect you for it, or something. But mother knows. She is there and when I walk up to her, she’s already got the aspirin in her left and a bottle of water in the right. She smiles a little, and I’m horribly stoic.
Singing Beyond the Sea later in that concert was the most important moment in my life because it taught me two things: one is to always get back up when you fall and the crowd will love you for it. The second is there will never ever be music that is so fun to sing as the jazz I sing now. It was young, it was confident, and it the beginning of something. Beyond the Sea was the story of a man who was a boy. He wept when he realized that he killed any hope of a future with one woman, but somehow on the other side there would be someone. Beyond the Sea, in a sense, was my mother.
I sang in college, but stopped. I played sports until high school, then stopped. I dated until graduation, then stopped. All my loves, all my desires, are becoming less and less relevant. But only to a certain degree, because no matter how many less and less people hear or see what I have to offer, there will always be one person who knows damn well what I can do, and loves me all the more even when I don’t do them. In her mind, I’m always throwing lightning, climbing some mountain that seems to be a mere geographic hindrance.
What I hate most about the Giving Tree, is the fact that this tree gets literally torn apart and all that’s left is a stump. And when the child returns as an old man, the stump is glad to have one last usefulness. It’s the most horrific moment in which the old man almost expects there to be someway out of the moment by using the tree, almost as if he expects it. And the tree gives in. It’s a horrible tale of lack of responsibility. And also it’s self hatred. Because I picture myself as this boy, and I picture my parents as the tree. “Don’t worry,” they say, “We want to do this.” Well that’s great and all but it doesn’t really fit well with me. Because where was I when they got dumped on dates and where was I when they cracked their voices or lost a game?
So this is all I’ve got. This is my building of a paper boat in a hurricane. This is me swinging at 98 mile per hour fast balls. This is me singing Beyond the Sea while falling 15 stories. Because it’s all I’ve got now, and I don’t ever want to keep writing without attempting to say happy mother’s day because my mother gave me everything I have today. And even at 21, I’m still just a boy who is still crying on shaggy carpet, and my mother is always there to dry them in a t-shirt.
The true response comes from the boy that night after school. When a mother enters the room and asks, “How did the date go?” Moms know these things because the biological timeline of their child is never forgotten, especially from a mother who cares. In any case, it’s all it took for the boy to crumple like stacks of newspaper and sprawl out on the shaggy gray carpet and huff and puff. The tragedy that he’ll never blow the house down is never realized in the wheezing, and he keeps crying. All the mother can hear are things like, “It’s not fair” and “I’m never getting married.” Fortunately for the boy, the mother is some form of magician, and can soothe those ruffled feathers. All it takes is soaking up his tears in her t-shirt. All it takes is quiet whispers of reassurance that someday there will be someone who will be just the one for the boy. The boy sleeps like it never happened.
And in the end this story is lighter than others. It turns out the girl telling the boy early on about her feelings was the best thing a woman can do. And she learned it in junior high. But then we can conclude that there must have been worst stories, terrible ones. They weren’t all bad, but they weren’t all bad because there are traces of kinship in the human imagination and in literature that are so nurturing as to bring us to tears, and then there are our real mothers. And the ones in fantasy don’t nearly come close to the ones that have lived to tell their own tales.
In those heated days that never seemed to end, I hated those damn shoulder pads. Think about the most constricting clothing to ever be presented to a man, combine them all and then tell him it’s over one hundred degrees outside, and then tell him he must battle to the death against more of the same. In those heated days all the parents take pictures and barely sit in the fold out chairs. In those heated days, they still must’ve yelled at the officials and argued about the concession stand prices. But one thing is for sure: those parents saw their children raise lightning and throw down hell on those fields. Even if it was some form of absurdity in which parents are screaming “No son, dribble to the other side” or “Get the ball”, they were still titans. At the end of that hot day on the grass as they picked away at ants crawling up their cleats, they must’ve looked like the prize winner of the world. “My son is the future” they must have all agreed as they rubbed their children’s sweaty heads, and then bitter sweetly rubbed their hands on their jeans. And in those days was my mother. I was never a sport God. I never made great plays, or ran for touchdowns, or led in heroic speeches, but my mother did not care. I would eat snow cones and squint tightly as the ice froze my front teeth; my big gapped front teeth. And I drank it up, I drank it all up. All my mother wanted to do was watch. While I was throwing natural curves, all she wanted to do was witness me, like I was some new breed that no one else saw.
Picture a red suburban, the older kind, before SUV’s ruined everything. Picture the paint chipping off at the top, not because it was old, but because it literally could not take the intensity by which my mother and I listened to classic rock. Picture musicals that seem trivial now, but were witnessed five out of five times by a mother who drank it up, not by performing, but by just being there.
“Mom do you have any aspirin?”
“What?”
It’s the night of pop show, my senior year performance. I learned that aspirin helps the voice. I had no idea if that was true, but in those circumstances you’ll try anything.
“Do you have a headache?” she asked.
“No mom, I just need it. Ms. James said it helped the singing.”
We are backstage, and Mom gives me a look that says, “You’ll be fine” as she turns and heads back around to take her place in the audience.
We’re singing For The Longest Time, and it’s my turn at the solo. The crowd loves us, and tilt their heads right and left as we charm anyone and everyone, because that’s what seniors do I suppose. I get to the high notes, and when I do the most horrible crack occurs. My voice shatters in volume and in hindsight friends watch videos of it and laugh for hours, blowing it off. I know this because it’s mine, and while people always say they forget those things, I never believe them. Because how could they ever forget? It’s the worst thing in choral history. Watching the video footage, my other choral comrades literally could not snap together because they were physically disabled at the wretched sound. It sounded like a walrus couldn’t make it out of the swimming pool and just “arfs” his fat slob body on the side of the pool.
I head backstage and everyone looks at me for a reaction. By this stage of my life they still do not know how I react to these things. They obviously didn’t know the story of placing the arm around the girl. While I did nothing at school, the aftershock and reality always hits hours later, when I’m safe, alone. Always act cordially, because people will respect you for it, or something. But mother knows. She is there and when I walk up to her, she’s already got the aspirin in her left and a bottle of water in the right. She smiles a little, and I’m horribly stoic.
Singing Beyond the Sea later in that concert was the most important moment in my life because it taught me two things: one is to always get back up when you fall and the crowd will love you for it. The second is there will never ever be music that is so fun to sing as the jazz I sing now. It was young, it was confident, and it the beginning of something. Beyond the Sea was the story of a man who was a boy. He wept when he realized that he killed any hope of a future with one woman, but somehow on the other side there would be someone. Beyond the Sea, in a sense, was my mother.
I sang in college, but stopped. I played sports until high school, then stopped. I dated until graduation, then stopped. All my loves, all my desires, are becoming less and less relevant. But only to a certain degree, because no matter how many less and less people hear or see what I have to offer, there will always be one person who knows damn well what I can do, and loves me all the more even when I don’t do them. In her mind, I’m always throwing lightning, climbing some mountain that seems to be a mere geographic hindrance.
What I hate most about the Giving Tree, is the fact that this tree gets literally torn apart and all that’s left is a stump. And when the child returns as an old man, the stump is glad to have one last usefulness. It’s the most horrific moment in which the old man almost expects there to be someway out of the moment by using the tree, almost as if he expects it. And the tree gives in. It’s a horrible tale of lack of responsibility. And also it’s self hatred. Because I picture myself as this boy, and I picture my parents as the tree. “Don’t worry,” they say, “We want to do this.” Well that’s great and all but it doesn’t really fit well with me. Because where was I when they got dumped on dates and where was I when they cracked their voices or lost a game?
So this is all I’ve got. This is my building of a paper boat in a hurricane. This is me swinging at 98 mile per hour fast balls. This is me singing Beyond the Sea while falling 15 stories. Because it’s all I’ve got now, and I don’t ever want to keep writing without attempting to say happy mother’s day because my mother gave me everything I have today. And even at 21, I’m still just a boy who is still crying on shaggy carpet, and my mother is always there to dry them in a t-shirt.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Three Meetings
My creative writing teacher’s office lies on the fourth floor of the language building. As you exit the stairway and look right, there’s a selection of free books that are on shelves next to the entrance. The books are all unheard of titles representing incomprehensible topics. Most are bogus non-fiction, clinging to what looks like their final home had they not been free. Having visited my teacher several times I can tell you those books are there to stay. To me, it’s some foreshadowing of something horrendous I don’t care to name.
“Hey Colton.” my teacher said as I come in for the final time that semester. “Have a seat.”
I come in and sit down, with ideas in my mind that are not quite fleshed out. “I’m not going to lie, after working on this story for this long I think it’s total crap. I think it’s goofy that this character makes telescopes in such a modern time. I feel the characters I’ve made are so cliché, fake, or something. I don’t know. It’s like I can’t get in touch with anything, and the project feels so impossible to surmount.”
My creative writing teacher instantly smiles and says, “That’s normal.”
We both laugh, and he continues. “It is perfectly fine to feel these things. I sent in a story to be published, and I felt there were errors in it. That’s just the way it works. To be honest, I would be more scared if you felt fine about the story. I would be skeptical if you told me you were comfortable with anything in your story. A writer should always be critical of his own work; not to be pessimistic, but to understand what the flaws are and not respond negatively to outside criticism.”
There are few moments in life that lead to the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment, and while I don’t feel that with the short story, I feel that in his office. There’s wisdom in older people, and sometimes I feel they are there for us. While that’s not necessarily true, it’s almost as if he’s begging for listeners. And I’ve always loved to listen. While his room seems very briefly decorated, his very demeanor spurs on excitement, and passion. There are no pictures, no memorable artifacts. There lies only a desk, essential English books, and his computer. A writer until the end, he is confident living in his own world, but also pulling from others in a focused way. What does it mean to surround oneself in total isolation? In these days, it has become nearly impossible. But for my creative writing teacher it has been realized enough as an early 20th century man.
A week later, I will see a box in front of his door with writing that says, “PLACE SHORT STORIES HERE.” I pull out my 15 page short story and look at it, then look down. It feels so far away, and I look at my revision and how unclean it looks. I know that paper cannot have leprosy, but as I hold it I hear it scream, “outcast, unclean.” Out of anger, fright, and disgust, I drop the paper into the bin. It plops on top of the rest. It is a bittersweet feeling: finishing the class, but realizing that my story is not even closed to being finished.
“I called this meeting because I wanted to talk to you about your post-reflection paper in your teaching presentation. I also wanted to talk about your overall grade in the class…I feel like you do not really understand the theories we’ve discussed in class.”
That’s probably correct.
“You’re right. I don’t understand the theories.”
“The theories are important. Wouldn’t you agree?”
No.
“Yes, absolutely.”
She looks at me and starts talking about the details of each theory. My observation forms of other students in their presentations have been anything but fantastic. Honestly I don’t give a damn. But of course that isn’t the problem. I now realize that I am so resilient in doing things that I do not want to do that it will ruin me if I continue. But I can’t stop. As I looked at my education teacher I realized that despite my opinion of the crap theories that were before me, I became a mirror with which to reflect everything she wants to hear. I suppose in the end that’s all people want us to be is just a mirror for their own view of life.
“You did not fail.” she said as her mask of compassion was placed and she was trying out the look on me. “You could not fail this part. This is a learning experience.”
“I know. But it’s not up to you. My self-esteem has always been…not what it should be. It’s not you fault. That’s just the way I feel.” She looks at me like a failed experiment, but I look at her like she’s making all the difference in the world. I’m trying I really am. She puts on the statistics mask.
“Looking at your grades, you’ll probably walk out with a C in this class. But your teaching philosophy needs to be…well…you’d better show me these theories in there. This paper is as close to a cumulative final as I can get. Think about it like that.”
As I leave, I’m imploding from the inside. It’s a beautiful day, and inside all hell is breaking loose. I wanted to throw myself back into that dressing room and throw her masks all over the room and scream, “Jesus woman, I don’t care.” But I kept walking. We all keep walking I guess. Editing my teaching philosophy paper was for me like taking a well sculpted woman and cutting off the arms. Metaphors aside. I hate butchering what I feel good about. I hate doing things that I don’t want to do. This either makes me a child, a politician, or a man. No one has really told me which one yet.
I’m sitting in front of a man at Chase Bank, and he tells me he wants to review my contact information. His desk is made of straight laced wonder. It contains no pictures, no love letters, no valentine’s day projects from daughters. It contains no interesting pieces of art. It is purely work, and while it looks nice for an Ayn Rand novel, it has me worried more about him than him of me and my contact information. The truth is I want to grab his suit, pull him forward and make him grip with his child soft hands and say, “good God man, don’t you know what you’re missing?” But I can’t. Instead I hold my sunglasses because I have nothing else to hold on to. I’m running away in my mind, but in the physical I’m saying “yes sir” and “no sir.” To be honest I didn’t know why he called the meeting. I suppose it was to prove that I actually existed.
“Well we appreciate you coming down here,” he said, “And you can email me if you have any questions.”
I thought about emailing the man. I thought about saying something like this: “Hello sir. I had one quick thing to ask. I have this problem with my short story, but I think you solved it. You see my main character is a man not tied to anything, kind of like you. He has no real physical ties, but he makes telescopes for a living. He works hard and makes good money, like you, but I’m not so sure about the ending. He’s told to build this telescope for this woman who has emotional weight to her custom telescope request. So I wanted to ask you: ‘Would you build a telescope for a woman who seeks to get over her husband by watching the stars?’ Again I appreciate your time.”
And I’m laughing at the thought of walking in to the same educational teacher’s classroom for summer school. I scoff at authority, and I know it could destroy me. I love the idea, of countering every argument, refuting every theory, and simply slapping her teaching back in her face. While it seems to be a moment of conquest for me, the reality is I will walk in holding a giant mirror in front of me while I text my friends how boring the class is.
And in the fall I will literally cry with joy as I see my creative writing teaching again, this time for non-fiction. He’ll tell me that we think our life is crap and not worth writing and that’s okay, because in the end it’s that feeling that encourages better writing.
“Hey Colton.” my teacher said as I come in for the final time that semester. “Have a seat.”
I come in and sit down, with ideas in my mind that are not quite fleshed out. “I’m not going to lie, after working on this story for this long I think it’s total crap. I think it’s goofy that this character makes telescopes in such a modern time. I feel the characters I’ve made are so cliché, fake, or something. I don’t know. It’s like I can’t get in touch with anything, and the project feels so impossible to surmount.”
My creative writing teacher instantly smiles and says, “That’s normal.”
We both laugh, and he continues. “It is perfectly fine to feel these things. I sent in a story to be published, and I felt there were errors in it. That’s just the way it works. To be honest, I would be more scared if you felt fine about the story. I would be skeptical if you told me you were comfortable with anything in your story. A writer should always be critical of his own work; not to be pessimistic, but to understand what the flaws are and not respond negatively to outside criticism.”
There are few moments in life that lead to the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment, and while I don’t feel that with the short story, I feel that in his office. There’s wisdom in older people, and sometimes I feel they are there for us. While that’s not necessarily true, it’s almost as if he’s begging for listeners. And I’ve always loved to listen. While his room seems very briefly decorated, his very demeanor spurs on excitement, and passion. There are no pictures, no memorable artifacts. There lies only a desk, essential English books, and his computer. A writer until the end, he is confident living in his own world, but also pulling from others in a focused way. What does it mean to surround oneself in total isolation? In these days, it has become nearly impossible. But for my creative writing teacher it has been realized enough as an early 20th century man.
A week later, I will see a box in front of his door with writing that says, “PLACE SHORT STORIES HERE.” I pull out my 15 page short story and look at it, then look down. It feels so far away, and I look at my revision and how unclean it looks. I know that paper cannot have leprosy, but as I hold it I hear it scream, “outcast, unclean.” Out of anger, fright, and disgust, I drop the paper into the bin. It plops on top of the rest. It is a bittersweet feeling: finishing the class, but realizing that my story is not even closed to being finished.
“I called this meeting because I wanted to talk to you about your post-reflection paper in your teaching presentation. I also wanted to talk about your overall grade in the class…I feel like you do not really understand the theories we’ve discussed in class.”
That’s probably correct.
“You’re right. I don’t understand the theories.”
“The theories are important. Wouldn’t you agree?”
No.
“Yes, absolutely.”
She looks at me and starts talking about the details of each theory. My observation forms of other students in their presentations have been anything but fantastic. Honestly I don’t give a damn. But of course that isn’t the problem. I now realize that I am so resilient in doing things that I do not want to do that it will ruin me if I continue. But I can’t stop. As I looked at my education teacher I realized that despite my opinion of the crap theories that were before me, I became a mirror with which to reflect everything she wants to hear. I suppose in the end that’s all people want us to be is just a mirror for their own view of life.
“You did not fail.” she said as her mask of compassion was placed and she was trying out the look on me. “You could not fail this part. This is a learning experience.”
“I know. But it’s not up to you. My self-esteem has always been…not what it should be. It’s not you fault. That’s just the way I feel.” She looks at me like a failed experiment, but I look at her like she’s making all the difference in the world. I’m trying I really am. She puts on the statistics mask.
“Looking at your grades, you’ll probably walk out with a C in this class. But your teaching philosophy needs to be…well…you’d better show me these theories in there. This paper is as close to a cumulative final as I can get. Think about it like that.”
As I leave, I’m imploding from the inside. It’s a beautiful day, and inside all hell is breaking loose. I wanted to throw myself back into that dressing room and throw her masks all over the room and scream, “Jesus woman, I don’t care.” But I kept walking. We all keep walking I guess. Editing my teaching philosophy paper was for me like taking a well sculpted woman and cutting off the arms. Metaphors aside. I hate butchering what I feel good about. I hate doing things that I don’t want to do. This either makes me a child, a politician, or a man. No one has really told me which one yet.
I’m sitting in front of a man at Chase Bank, and he tells me he wants to review my contact information. His desk is made of straight laced wonder. It contains no pictures, no love letters, no valentine’s day projects from daughters. It contains no interesting pieces of art. It is purely work, and while it looks nice for an Ayn Rand novel, it has me worried more about him than him of me and my contact information. The truth is I want to grab his suit, pull him forward and make him grip with his child soft hands and say, “good God man, don’t you know what you’re missing?” But I can’t. Instead I hold my sunglasses because I have nothing else to hold on to. I’m running away in my mind, but in the physical I’m saying “yes sir” and “no sir.” To be honest I didn’t know why he called the meeting. I suppose it was to prove that I actually existed.
“Well we appreciate you coming down here,” he said, “And you can email me if you have any questions.”
I thought about emailing the man. I thought about saying something like this: “Hello sir. I had one quick thing to ask. I have this problem with my short story, but I think you solved it. You see my main character is a man not tied to anything, kind of like you. He has no real physical ties, but he makes telescopes for a living. He works hard and makes good money, like you, but I’m not so sure about the ending. He’s told to build this telescope for this woman who has emotional weight to her custom telescope request. So I wanted to ask you: ‘Would you build a telescope for a woman who seeks to get over her husband by watching the stars?’ Again I appreciate your time.”
And I’m laughing at the thought of walking in to the same educational teacher’s classroom for summer school. I scoff at authority, and I know it could destroy me. I love the idea, of countering every argument, refuting every theory, and simply slapping her teaching back in her face. While it seems to be a moment of conquest for me, the reality is I will walk in holding a giant mirror in front of me while I text my friends how boring the class is.
And in the fall I will literally cry with joy as I see my creative writing teaching again, this time for non-fiction. He’ll tell me that we think our life is crap and not worth writing and that’s okay, because in the end it’s that feeling that encourages better writing.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Teaching Philosophy
Assignment for May 3rd in which I had two to three pages to explain my teaching philosophy. While I don't think this is what my teacher wants or expects, I am very happy with it.
I threw fire, at least that’s what they told me. In those days of unmitigated youth the only conclusion that can be drawn from baseball and football was that they were superheroes. The kind of superheroes that stood for something, and what it was it could not be named. It’s the feeling when my father stood up and celebrated the winning pitch on television. It was watching the movie “Sandlot” and understanding that part of growing up sometimes was running for my life. To a child, it was the feeling of complete power, and complete freedom. And for that short time as a child or even a teen, we learn we slowly lose that simplistic paradise. In hindsight some conceive that childhood freedom to be ill used. For me, I was a left-handed pitcher.
They told me I threw fire. While this one kid threw faster but put bruises on their chests with wild forced exchanges, and the others were still trying to understand a curve ball, the great part about left-handed throwers is that we have a genetic advantage. When a left-handed pitcher throws a baseball, as long as his body presents a straight line from the mound to the hitter, the ball remains concealed. It’s especially important to keep the body in front until the very end. And to deal the perfect pitch, I held my glove out in front of the batter’s eyes. As long as my line was in between, the batter had a shorter time to react. No. I wasn’t the best, not even close. In fact I was so scared that I was terrible, I didn’t try out for the high school team. This was after playing as a child for eight years.
But while this story seems to end on a note of skills becoming less and less relevant as I got older, the real catch was farther ahead in physics. Numbers to the history man seems to be an unnecessary theoretical assimilation of Egyptian hieroglyphics to plane crashes. Sure the symbols are there, but why calculate if the passengers are already dead? But what a physics teacher taught me in high school was that in the chaos of plane crashes, or pitching, we can come to terms with what makes an airplane pitch, or a baseball roll. My physics teacher explained events and things that occurred everyday, and all I had to do was find out for myself. Though I did not play baseball any longer, I dusted off the old glove, grabbed a couple baseballs, and headed for the backyard. Before I had thrown thousands of them at a wooden strike zone nailed to a tree, but now it seemed more powerful now than ever. The motion started, and as my right foot moved back and prepared for the kick my hands reached up towards the air. With the kick, there was a slight lean back, to balance the weight exchange to prepare for the leap forward in velocity. There was a lunge, and with it every muscle tweaked and cracked and hurled forward in motion as my right foot took the biggest step. The arm, while seeming to be most important, really carried the accuracy and added slight power to the legs. The ball screamed with initial velocity. And in my mind, there was a line that came out of the baseball. Numbers upon numbers calculating gravitational movement, wind resistances, and the final force as the loud “Smack!” fired off from the tree. Numbers singing.
Pitching never felt better. And that’s the role of educators, is it not? It is small and fragile, but present a historical world in which men wore wigs and painful foot binding was considered attractive, and it would be irrelevant unless the rhyme of time would be accounted. But teachers are only a whisper in a lifetime, and in order for that whisper to tickle those small parts of our ears, they must attempt earnestly to present a world in which numbers are seen everyday. We must present a life that is filled with historical revelations, of how it fundamentally allows us to preserve and protect and improve positive ways of life. For history, make them understand that right now, we are all pulling it, and are pulled by it. We are both pitcher and batter, and the what of today, is the why of yesterday. Make a student understand in their very soul that not only is history important, but do so with the events of today, so they may tell their children the why of their lives.
I threw fire, at least that’s what they told me. In those days of unmitigated youth the only conclusion that can be drawn from baseball and football was that they were superheroes. The kind of superheroes that stood for something, and what it was it could not be named. It’s the feeling when my father stood up and celebrated the winning pitch on television. It was watching the movie “Sandlot” and understanding that part of growing up sometimes was running for my life. To a child, it was the feeling of complete power, and complete freedom. And for that short time as a child or even a teen, we learn we slowly lose that simplistic paradise. In hindsight some conceive that childhood freedom to be ill used. For me, I was a left-handed pitcher.
They told me I threw fire. While this one kid threw faster but put bruises on their chests with wild forced exchanges, and the others were still trying to understand a curve ball, the great part about left-handed throwers is that we have a genetic advantage. When a left-handed pitcher throws a baseball, as long as his body presents a straight line from the mound to the hitter, the ball remains concealed. It’s especially important to keep the body in front until the very end. And to deal the perfect pitch, I held my glove out in front of the batter’s eyes. As long as my line was in between, the batter had a shorter time to react. No. I wasn’t the best, not even close. In fact I was so scared that I was terrible, I didn’t try out for the high school team. This was after playing as a child for eight years.
But while this story seems to end on a note of skills becoming less and less relevant as I got older, the real catch was farther ahead in physics. Numbers to the history man seems to be an unnecessary theoretical assimilation of Egyptian hieroglyphics to plane crashes. Sure the symbols are there, but why calculate if the passengers are already dead? But what a physics teacher taught me in high school was that in the chaos of plane crashes, or pitching, we can come to terms with what makes an airplane pitch, or a baseball roll. My physics teacher explained events and things that occurred everyday, and all I had to do was find out for myself. Though I did not play baseball any longer, I dusted off the old glove, grabbed a couple baseballs, and headed for the backyard. Before I had thrown thousands of them at a wooden strike zone nailed to a tree, but now it seemed more powerful now than ever. The motion started, and as my right foot moved back and prepared for the kick my hands reached up towards the air. With the kick, there was a slight lean back, to balance the weight exchange to prepare for the leap forward in velocity. There was a lunge, and with it every muscle tweaked and cracked and hurled forward in motion as my right foot took the biggest step. The arm, while seeming to be most important, really carried the accuracy and added slight power to the legs. The ball screamed with initial velocity. And in my mind, there was a line that came out of the baseball. Numbers upon numbers calculating gravitational movement, wind resistances, and the final force as the loud “Smack!” fired off from the tree. Numbers singing.
Pitching never felt better. And that’s the role of educators, is it not? It is small and fragile, but present a historical world in which men wore wigs and painful foot binding was considered attractive, and it would be irrelevant unless the rhyme of time would be accounted. But teachers are only a whisper in a lifetime, and in order for that whisper to tickle those small parts of our ears, they must attempt earnestly to present a world in which numbers are seen everyday. We must present a life that is filled with historical revelations, of how it fundamentally allows us to preserve and protect and improve positive ways of life. For history, make them understand that right now, we are all pulling it, and are pulled by it. We are both pitcher and batter, and the what of today, is the why of yesterday. Make a student understand in their very soul that not only is history important, but do so with the events of today, so they may tell their children the why of their lives.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Tumblers
Ruth’s Room is located just off of Carroll, and is barely noticeable if our mission wasn’t to reach that very place.
“Collin.”
“Yea?” he said, nine at night the previous morning.
“You wanna go to that place that has the glasses. That was you I was talking to right?”
“Ruth’s Room.”
“What? Ruth’s Room?” I said, “That what it’s called?”
“Yea.”
And that was that. Tumblers look so good in a set of sixteen, but in the very case that life doesn’t come cheap, and my friends don’t add up to sixteen, what was the point? Besides, tumblers usually don’t stack and I had just brought home cups in the dozens from people who wanted them trashed at work. No one feels like wasting anymore.
So I want to look like a man in a suit; isn’t that what we all want? The chance to prove I’m old enough to fill in my shoes is the only thing I’ve wanted. This was just a step in the right direction. So combine the need to rise above something I could not determine and buy something I could scarcely afford and the answer is: a trip to a thrift shop for tumblers. Yes I said it. I imagine it a little more formal, with a stand with a mirror in the apartment room. What drink would I like sir? Of course fan that I am of certain Jon Hamm, I would request Old Fashioned, because by this referential point we are indeed at no return. Besides, they gave me the directions when I bought season four.
Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! Off. Off. Off. OFF! 9:30 AM and I’m calling. No answer. Instead of me thinking I would have to think of some charming but elusive way to wake up Collin, he was actually beating me to the punch. Popping off from the shower just as I arrived, we quickly exited the rapidly warming air and drove towards a place I must have passed over a hundred times and never noticed until now. Ruth’s Room is like your grandmother’s attic if you had a price tag on everything and enough shelves to push the vertical limit to six foot. It’s got everything a thrift store needs: mismatched clothing, odd magazines, Christian books that plead, “how can we be bad?” But yet there’s hundreds. Somewhere along the line, soup wasn’t cool for the college soul. The romance/mystery novel actually looked exactly like Kroger’s. All those books by all those same authors, with most having flashy women to make up for a grand mistake within. There are rows of VHS’s in bookshelves that plead to children, “how do you not know of me?”
There are pictures of random actresses with absurd poses. There are random magazines with random dates. The top magazine is the president with a coat in his hand. The magazine? Vanity Fair. I look and he looks back pleading, “how can I be bad?” I look in and laugh at advertisement after advertisement. I just wish the cover would’ve been a little different from the filler.
There are two choices for the tumblers: there are four in a sage green, thicker color at the bottom for cheap, and there are two identical ones with a thick bottom. The second pair are clear heavier glass. The first quad are light, but there are four. Collin chooses the second pair for their feel. I agree.
“Will this be it?” a lady past middle age asks as I carefully place the pair on the platter.
“Yes ma’am.” I said, and look a different direction. There is silence for a short while and then Collin recognizes a book on their table.
“Are you reading that?” Collin asks. “That book right there.”
The second lady wrapping the glasses in newspaper from exactly one week ago answers politely, “Well I tried, honest I did, but I couldn’t get through it.”
“I was just wondering,” Collin said, “because I’ve read it and wanted to know what you thought.”
“Oh I couldn’t really tell you about that.” she said. The first woman has completed my purchase and grabs the book. She turns to the back, reads silently, and laughs.
“Well it’s about a man’s soul. Of course you didn’t finish it.”
The first woman laughs overly hard and replies, “If I would’ve known men had souls I might’ve finished it!” The laughing continues.
“You know it says ‘Wild at Heart’, but I didn’t know they had a heart.”
The laughing continues.
“I wasn’t aware they had a heart to break either.”
The laughing continues. We left politely.
Of course, I thought. Immediately when I put up the tumblers she must’ve thought I was some raging lunatic young up and coming drunkard who would be just like her bad decision and rise someday and smack her face and smear her lipstick and I bet she hangs around in hate men clubs and decrees that a good man is hard to find and after a while I bet she changed the hard to impossible because of the same drink that got her there in the first place but of course she judges me because all I did was buy a product from her store that she didn’t make so that she could eat another day and I bet through all of this she has probably seen Jerry Maguire and agrees with those girls and disagrees with Jerry and somehow through all of this I am the reincarnation of a drunk Tom Cruise who didn’t have a heart to break.
Women my age think that all boys are stupid. What do I have to say for myself? I only wanted to wear a suit, and fill those damn shoes? You think we aren’t going through an identity crisis? The geography is gone. All those tales of the Rough Riders and lion hunting are gone and the only thing that’s left is a business trip to Tampa. The search for unknown lands has been replaced by the search for unknown social triumphs. Pull the friends closer, only to recoil in horror as both gaze at each other for what they are: human.
I look. Up. And see. The rot-at-ing. Fan. That. If you. Look. At. One. Blade. It. A-ppears. Station-ary. In. The. Cons-tant. Cha-os. Of. Spin-ning.
I just wanted to by some tumblers.
“Collin.”
“Yea?” he said, nine at night the previous morning.
“You wanna go to that place that has the glasses. That was you I was talking to right?”
“Ruth’s Room.”
“What? Ruth’s Room?” I said, “That what it’s called?”
“Yea.”
And that was that. Tumblers look so good in a set of sixteen, but in the very case that life doesn’t come cheap, and my friends don’t add up to sixteen, what was the point? Besides, tumblers usually don’t stack and I had just brought home cups in the dozens from people who wanted them trashed at work. No one feels like wasting anymore.
So I want to look like a man in a suit; isn’t that what we all want? The chance to prove I’m old enough to fill in my shoes is the only thing I’ve wanted. This was just a step in the right direction. So combine the need to rise above something I could not determine and buy something I could scarcely afford and the answer is: a trip to a thrift shop for tumblers. Yes I said it. I imagine it a little more formal, with a stand with a mirror in the apartment room. What drink would I like sir? Of course fan that I am of certain Jon Hamm, I would request Old Fashioned, because by this referential point we are indeed at no return. Besides, they gave me the directions when I bought season four.
Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! Off. Off. Off. OFF! 9:30 AM and I’m calling. No answer. Instead of me thinking I would have to think of some charming but elusive way to wake up Collin, he was actually beating me to the punch. Popping off from the shower just as I arrived, we quickly exited the rapidly warming air and drove towards a place I must have passed over a hundred times and never noticed until now. Ruth’s Room is like your grandmother’s attic if you had a price tag on everything and enough shelves to push the vertical limit to six foot. It’s got everything a thrift store needs: mismatched clothing, odd magazines, Christian books that plead, “how can we be bad?” But yet there’s hundreds. Somewhere along the line, soup wasn’t cool for the college soul. The romance/mystery novel actually looked exactly like Kroger’s. All those books by all those same authors, with most having flashy women to make up for a grand mistake within. There are rows of VHS’s in bookshelves that plead to children, “how do you not know of me?”
There are pictures of random actresses with absurd poses. There are random magazines with random dates. The top magazine is the president with a coat in his hand. The magazine? Vanity Fair. I look and he looks back pleading, “how can I be bad?” I look in and laugh at advertisement after advertisement. I just wish the cover would’ve been a little different from the filler.
There are two choices for the tumblers: there are four in a sage green, thicker color at the bottom for cheap, and there are two identical ones with a thick bottom. The second pair are clear heavier glass. The first quad are light, but there are four. Collin chooses the second pair for their feel. I agree.
“Will this be it?” a lady past middle age asks as I carefully place the pair on the platter.
“Yes ma’am.” I said, and look a different direction. There is silence for a short while and then Collin recognizes a book on their table.
“Are you reading that?” Collin asks. “That book right there.”
The second lady wrapping the glasses in newspaper from exactly one week ago answers politely, “Well I tried, honest I did, but I couldn’t get through it.”
“I was just wondering,” Collin said, “because I’ve read it and wanted to know what you thought.”
“Oh I couldn’t really tell you about that.” she said. The first woman has completed my purchase and grabs the book. She turns to the back, reads silently, and laughs.
“Well it’s about a man’s soul. Of course you didn’t finish it.”
The first woman laughs overly hard and replies, “If I would’ve known men had souls I might’ve finished it!” The laughing continues.
“You know it says ‘Wild at Heart’, but I didn’t know they had a heart.”
The laughing continues.
“I wasn’t aware they had a heart to break either.”
The laughing continues. We left politely.
Of course, I thought. Immediately when I put up the tumblers she must’ve thought I was some raging lunatic young up and coming drunkard who would be just like her bad decision and rise someday and smack her face and smear her lipstick and I bet she hangs around in hate men clubs and decrees that a good man is hard to find and after a while I bet she changed the hard to impossible because of the same drink that got her there in the first place but of course she judges me because all I did was buy a product from her store that she didn’t make so that she could eat another day and I bet through all of this she has probably seen Jerry Maguire and agrees with those girls and disagrees with Jerry and somehow through all of this I am the reincarnation of a drunk Tom Cruise who didn’t have a heart to break.
Women my age think that all boys are stupid. What do I have to say for myself? I only wanted to wear a suit, and fill those damn shoes? You think we aren’t going through an identity crisis? The geography is gone. All those tales of the Rough Riders and lion hunting are gone and the only thing that’s left is a business trip to Tampa. The search for unknown lands has been replaced by the search for unknown social triumphs. Pull the friends closer, only to recoil in horror as both gaze at each other for what they are: human.
I look. Up. And see. The rot-at-ing. Fan. That. If you. Look. At. One. Blade. It. A-ppears. Station-ary. In. The. Cons-tant. Cha-os. Of. Spin-ning.
I just wanted to by some tumblers.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Manhattan
When I was thirteen years old, I used to mow yards, drink Gatorade, and think of heaven. It started when I was seven; the yards not the utopian dissertations. There were three: grandmother’s who just happened to have a corner lot, ours which was miniscule, and my neighbor who payed 25 bucks for his also pathetic excuse. People back then still cared less for green pastures. I was handed the push lawnmower, yes the push. I don’t know why I was told to be an ant. Pushing something heavier than you through southern Texas grass on a hot summer day was slave labor to a seven year old. It makes men out of boys, in one way or another. It was the payoff, as it always was, that brought the slave back the next time. The Stop n’ Go, at the front of the neighborhood, and inside was the Gatorade. I could have any flavor, but heaven was blue raspberry. We would enter the white truck and as quickly as I could unwrap the plastic seal, I was tilting the bottle up, opening the gates with closed eyes.
Fourteen years later I open them, and the alarm rings, signifying that the expected is never the truth. That taste that’s always advertised as being quenched barely signals. I lumber out of bed, and walk the trail to my bathroom. The rest of the floor is filled with clothes and paper. I examine myself in the mirror. In dry erase marker, it says at the top, “wake me up.” Black slacks, white t-shirt, I’m a ying-yang on its head. Don’t forget the belt, which I so often do at five in the morning. It’s the basic attire for a catering service. Nametag, pen, wallet, phone, and I’m out the apartment door. The pre-sun morning chill is always a surprise even if it was darkest Africa. I throw my hands in my pockets consistently each morning. I have a sister who says I’ve got cold hands.
“I think I’m made of wax”
“You’re not made of wax Colton.” Elena says. “Mario, tell Colton he’s not made of wax.”
Mario looks at me and says, “You’re not made of wax Colton.”
“You don’t get it,” I say, “Every time I look into the mirror it looks like someone keeps carving it.” I pop a grape in my mouth to chew away their confused looks. Turning I keep cleaning what’s left of the tea containers. The high powered jets of the cleaning spray bounce off and land on my ying-yang.
“Do I what?”
“Do. You. Think. About. Heaven?”
She pauses and looks puzzled.
“It’s not a ridiculous question.”
“In college?” She was about to say something after that, but then realized what she had said.
“No.”
“No to it being a ridiculous question?”
“No I mean about heaven.” She takes her tie off and hangs it back on the clothes hanger. I take a bite out of a leftover cookie.
“Vi bhot?”
“What?”
I hold up a finger for two seconds clearing my throat. “Why not?”
She looks at me, not puzzled anymore but tired.
“I’ve got more important things right now.” She motions to the ground. Elena exhales sharply, and after seeing disappointment says, “I’m made of wax too you know.”
I open the doors from the main building and the sun streaks in my face. Have I really been at work that long? I look around for a five and dime, a Stop n’ Go, but there’s none within reach. I walk back to the apartment. Ying-yang comes off and school comes on. What a rush, and within fifteen minutes I’m seven again pushing the lawnmower back to the side yard. The sweat pours so hard I can taste the salty curiosity. My father is weed eating around the trees. Enamored by the skill by which he hugged the line and prevented complete destruction but somehow trimmed perfectly, I would peer around corners. Grandmother’s neighbors had parrots, but they had too many. Instead of scary repetitions by one, it sounded like Congress was in session, and the issue was split. I never saw the parrots, which made it seem like a level of hell, in which the tortured spoke like, well parrots.
The great big city's a wonderous toy just made for a girl and boy. We'll turn Manhattan
into an isle of joy!
There’s nothing Ella Fitzgerald couldn’t fix. As she places my feet on clouds to and from class, I look down. Thirteen dollar shoes invade my privacy, and I think about those damn converse. Seventy dollars and fully customizable converse, including a personal ID tag on the outside, can be mine. I always cut the sides of my jeans so that shoes could fit under them. That was my style, but with converse it was unnecessary. I wasn’t going to touch these jeans, because they were my Manhattan jeans, the kind that lived on for something. The something being the converse I thought about for half a year.
“Why do you read Ayn Rand?”
“Again?” I have these conversations often.
“She’s melodramatic.”
“Did you read that book?” I give him a doubtful look.
“Well no. No one’s crazy enough to read over a thousand pages senior year of high school.”
“So now I’m crazy?” I get up to leave my desk seat; the next class already storming in to sit down one seat away from everybody else. He grabs my arm.
“I’m not reading it.”
I smile and look at him. “Then I’m not telling you.”
Utopia. Thank God people try, no pun intended. Something about trying makes it all worth it. And when I find Ella Fitzgerald on my player, it’s like that blue raspberry drink. Utopia certainly isn’t botching the teaching presentation given on March 22nd, but it was inevitable. It was because it was the first time I taught, and after twenty one years I realize nothing’s quite as simple as repeating it back as a parrot. We’ve been talking, us soon to be teachers. Where are our jobs? Eighty percent of our class majoring in history and where are the jobs? Truck gets towed, Presentation is ruined, graduating in a year with no blue raspberry sealed shut.
Nietzsche says, ‘Out of chaos comes order.’
Blow it out your ass, Howard.
“You know you can be an FBI agent with a major in history?” I say that enough. I say that to everyone. I make sure that any person who is worried about a teacher’s future knows that I am also a born killer, and will sacrifice liberties and kidnap whoever it takes. I am covered. I have a future as an agent.
It’s next Thursday night and I’m cleaning an annual banquet with the caterers. A song plays. I don’t know the song, doesn’t matter. I nearly fell apart. I turned around. Everyone was doing their duty: Sarah had the sugars, Tyler had leftover dessert plates, I had lemon bowls. I fell into a chair. Elena walks up and says, “You alright Colton?”
I look up and ask quietly, “Do you think about heaven?”
She looks up, and pauses for a few seconds. Then she turns around and notices an uneaten cheesecake. She grabs the top solid chocolate triangle decoration, and places it in front of my mouth. And I ate it. She smiles and moves on, working diligently like the rest. The melting triangle is the ride home.
“I read it.”
“Read what?” But I already know. Amazed he did it during a semester, I just wanted to hear him say it.
“Atlas Shrugged. Done.”
“And?” I lean in and the desk digs into my abdomen.
“I still think she’s melodramatic.” He responds, somewhat prideful that he bested the challenge unscathed.
“I see. You know what your problem is?” I say.
“What?” He’s eager.
“You don’t have Manhattan jeans.” I walk away, leaving another clue for people like him to solve.
The city's glamour can never spoil. The dreams of a boy and goil. We'll turn Manhattan
into an isle of joy!
It’s 2001 and I’m rounding the corners in the backyard of grandmother’s house. There’s a big hole that my father said he dug when he was little. All of us want to go to China someday apparently; it’s a timeless tradition. Expertly weaving the push lawnmower around the edges, its audible sound changes as it goes over the reverberating gap. The parrots respond. That day I had other plans, and told father about how unfair it was to mow the yards every week. Two hours later I was loading the machine into the back of his truck and with a lunge he raises the back end with a loud metal noise. He turns and pats my shoulder, saying, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” We turn into the Stop n’ Go, and inside is something waiting for me. We went back to the truck, and as we climb inside the blue raspberry Gatorade is already opened. And my thirst is quenched.
Fourteen years later I open them, and the alarm rings, signifying that the expected is never the truth. That taste that’s always advertised as being quenched barely signals. I lumber out of bed, and walk the trail to my bathroom. The rest of the floor is filled with clothes and paper. I examine myself in the mirror. In dry erase marker, it says at the top, “wake me up.” Black slacks, white t-shirt, I’m a ying-yang on its head. Don’t forget the belt, which I so often do at five in the morning. It’s the basic attire for a catering service. Nametag, pen, wallet, phone, and I’m out the apartment door. The pre-sun morning chill is always a surprise even if it was darkest Africa. I throw my hands in my pockets consistently each morning. I have a sister who says I’ve got cold hands.
“I think I’m made of wax”
“You’re not made of wax Colton.” Elena says. “Mario, tell Colton he’s not made of wax.”
Mario looks at me and says, “You’re not made of wax Colton.”
“You don’t get it,” I say, “Every time I look into the mirror it looks like someone keeps carving it.” I pop a grape in my mouth to chew away their confused looks. Turning I keep cleaning what’s left of the tea containers. The high powered jets of the cleaning spray bounce off and land on my ying-yang.
“Do I what?”
“Do. You. Think. About. Heaven?”
She pauses and looks puzzled.
“It’s not a ridiculous question.”
“In college?” She was about to say something after that, but then realized what she had said.
“No.”
“No to it being a ridiculous question?”
“No I mean about heaven.” She takes her tie off and hangs it back on the clothes hanger. I take a bite out of a leftover cookie.
“Vi bhot?”
“What?”
I hold up a finger for two seconds clearing my throat. “Why not?”
She looks at me, not puzzled anymore but tired.
“I’ve got more important things right now.” She motions to the ground. Elena exhales sharply, and after seeing disappointment says, “I’m made of wax too you know.”
I open the doors from the main building and the sun streaks in my face. Have I really been at work that long? I look around for a five and dime, a Stop n’ Go, but there’s none within reach. I walk back to the apartment. Ying-yang comes off and school comes on. What a rush, and within fifteen minutes I’m seven again pushing the lawnmower back to the side yard. The sweat pours so hard I can taste the salty curiosity. My father is weed eating around the trees. Enamored by the skill by which he hugged the line and prevented complete destruction but somehow trimmed perfectly, I would peer around corners. Grandmother’s neighbors had parrots, but they had too many. Instead of scary repetitions by one, it sounded like Congress was in session, and the issue was split. I never saw the parrots, which made it seem like a level of hell, in which the tortured spoke like, well parrots.
The great big city's a wonderous toy just made for a girl and boy. We'll turn Manhattan
into an isle of joy!
There’s nothing Ella Fitzgerald couldn’t fix. As she places my feet on clouds to and from class, I look down. Thirteen dollar shoes invade my privacy, and I think about those damn converse. Seventy dollars and fully customizable converse, including a personal ID tag on the outside, can be mine. I always cut the sides of my jeans so that shoes could fit under them. That was my style, but with converse it was unnecessary. I wasn’t going to touch these jeans, because they were my Manhattan jeans, the kind that lived on for something. The something being the converse I thought about for half a year.
“Why do you read Ayn Rand?”
“Again?” I have these conversations often.
“She’s melodramatic.”
“Did you read that book?” I give him a doubtful look.
“Well no. No one’s crazy enough to read over a thousand pages senior year of high school.”
“So now I’m crazy?” I get up to leave my desk seat; the next class already storming in to sit down one seat away from everybody else. He grabs my arm.
“I’m not reading it.”
I smile and look at him. “Then I’m not telling you.”
Utopia. Thank God people try, no pun intended. Something about trying makes it all worth it. And when I find Ella Fitzgerald on my player, it’s like that blue raspberry drink. Utopia certainly isn’t botching the teaching presentation given on March 22nd, but it was inevitable. It was because it was the first time I taught, and after twenty one years I realize nothing’s quite as simple as repeating it back as a parrot. We’ve been talking, us soon to be teachers. Where are our jobs? Eighty percent of our class majoring in history and where are the jobs? Truck gets towed, Presentation is ruined, graduating in a year with no blue raspberry sealed shut.
Nietzsche says, ‘Out of chaos comes order.’
Blow it out your ass, Howard.
“You know you can be an FBI agent with a major in history?” I say that enough. I say that to everyone. I make sure that any person who is worried about a teacher’s future knows that I am also a born killer, and will sacrifice liberties and kidnap whoever it takes. I am covered. I have a future as an agent.
It’s next Thursday night and I’m cleaning an annual banquet with the caterers. A song plays. I don’t know the song, doesn’t matter. I nearly fell apart. I turned around. Everyone was doing their duty: Sarah had the sugars, Tyler had leftover dessert plates, I had lemon bowls. I fell into a chair. Elena walks up and says, “You alright Colton?”
I look up and ask quietly, “Do you think about heaven?”
She looks up, and pauses for a few seconds. Then she turns around and notices an uneaten cheesecake. She grabs the top solid chocolate triangle decoration, and places it in front of my mouth. And I ate it. She smiles and moves on, working diligently like the rest. The melting triangle is the ride home.
“I read it.”
“Read what?” But I already know. Amazed he did it during a semester, I just wanted to hear him say it.
“Atlas Shrugged. Done.”
“And?” I lean in and the desk digs into my abdomen.
“I still think she’s melodramatic.” He responds, somewhat prideful that he bested the challenge unscathed.
“I see. You know what your problem is?” I say.
“What?” He’s eager.
“You don’t have Manhattan jeans.” I walk away, leaving another clue for people like him to solve.
The city's glamour can never spoil. The dreams of a boy and goil. We'll turn Manhattan
into an isle of joy!
It’s 2001 and I’m rounding the corners in the backyard of grandmother’s house. There’s a big hole that my father said he dug when he was little. All of us want to go to China someday apparently; it’s a timeless tradition. Expertly weaving the push lawnmower around the edges, its audible sound changes as it goes over the reverberating gap. The parrots respond. That day I had other plans, and told father about how unfair it was to mow the yards every week. Two hours later I was loading the machine into the back of his truck and with a lunge he raises the back end with a loud metal noise. He turns and pats my shoulder, saying, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” We turn into the Stop n’ Go, and inside is something waiting for me. We went back to the truck, and as we climb inside the blue raspberry Gatorade is already opened. And my thirst is quenched.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Florence
My truck sounds like a creaking tanker when I get in. I can't quite put a finger on the origin of the sound but something tells me it's between the bed and the front end, or at least where they meet. The suitcases are packed with my laundry, dirty and otherwise. The drive home is raging with traffic, it's a five hour drive. The Forever War on audiobook is in my CD player, but I didn't prepare enough material, and soon it turns into early Ella Fitzgerald in some Great Depression sing-a-long. Eventually it's back to Radiohead, with The Separator chiming in just as I enter Friendswood. Two months and although I expect something to be different, the town is right where I left it. "Spring Forward Saturday" is posted on the Friendswood Hardware sign.
My house has no cement driveway, it's a combination of shell and rock. The close edges to the house are starting to grow green and as long as we stay parked far enough, it's likely to keep growing green. It's dark by the time I pull in, and a deep amber glow fills the street. None of that bright white post modern crap. The old standard amber, that made dates all the better because people looked more tan in the muggy midnight. I turn and look at the window where the computer is, and there's Jamie. Her hand is prying open the window blinds, trying to get a look. With a jolt and five seconds she's left through the garage and hugged her long lost brother, the shipwreck that is always college. She takes my bags, most of them actually, as I relish in the laziness of being the big man on campus. My mother and father are watching television. The black couches that were bought years ago show more signs of wear and tear. The house is even more cluttered with coupons and books and CDs and time and time and time. Exhausted from some unseen force I fall asleep.
The time is eight thirty, and I haven't woken that early since my last shift on campus. The light in the guest room is blaring in my face, and for a man who blankets his window for complete darkness, there is a change. First stop is half-price, where I buy books I'm not even sure I'll read this summer. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler: the story of a private investigator in 1930s Los Angeles dealing with a murder. That's probably all I'll ever hear of it. Rabbit Run, by John Updike: the beginning novel of a series about a man growing up in middle America. My salivation for Mad Men related anything is unquenchable. Half Price at home is a disappointment. It's not the super store in Dallas and it's no comparison to Recycled on the square, but it gets the job done. Best Buy, a place where I would buy everything if I had the opportunity actually does not have what my mother wants. Taco Bell, the famous seven layer burrito is waiting for us.
Mad Men. I cannot help but convince my mother to watch it. I can't tell if she enjoys it, or just wants me to think she is enjoying it. Either way, my lack of creativity stops Saturday to a halt. It's not that I don't enjoy doing things, it's the cost. So we decide to buy me some new clothes which no one would deny. We hit up Walmart and do what I do best: making really cheap clothing work. I buy some flannel shirts: one which match my eyes and another in neutrals which I love. I buy some jeans. Blah, blah, blah.
There's something about revisiting a place that is big as a kid and small as an adult, and on Sunday after church it's Mr. Gatti's, well known as "a poor man's Chuck-E Cheese." I love pizza buffets. We all win some tickets and we pool together our resources and prizes come out and you wonder why didn't you just cut the middle man and buy the prizes wholesale back at Walmart? Doesn't matter. Maybe it feels more like you earned it.
It's been wanting to rain all week but it only did it Monday, quickly and in a fit of anger. Unlike many other places in the world, the weather here just gets worse, with the muggy Mondays seeping into your sweaty socks and penetrating the new flannel shirts. Battle Los Angeles in the theater was seizure inducing mayhem, but it was fun if you like that sort of thing. The actors all played their cut-outs well and I couldn't see anything of the action because the camera was held by a drug addict who had obviously not taken the drug. Then came Never Let me Go with Zane and his sister Lacie. The movie that will kill your soul with a knife and then twist the blade. It's a movie that is so sad, they probably invented the word melancholy.
The other moments of the week are kept as a secret, but I'll share a little piece that interested me. My grandparents needed yardwork, which was overly paid as usual. I couldn't help but notice as I was about to be fed corn beef, there were little porcelain figures in the back behind the glass. They were perfectly still, and they were old. "Flappers forever" is what I thought as they were dressed in progressive style clothing. They looked youthful and happy, and they were absolutely beautiful. I don't know if they were real but I look down and notice that they say, "Florence" on them. I have no idea what it means but what is true is that those figurines will be young and delicate forever. I don't know what to make of it, but I think of them now, the hat hiding her dark hair. The young women in a "provocative" dress that shows enough to keep your interest. Smooth porcelain on everything.
I'm leaving tomorrow, and as usual I cannot imagine where the eight days went. I suspect that with time I'll understand visits home a little more, but in this transitional period I have no words to explain it. Does it mean anything? Is there a purpose? I had a dream last night where I visited what I thought was New York, but it was some spectacular city with a massive tower overlooking the coast. I told someone that I wanted to see that while I was here. I did not know why I was there, or what the tower was, but maybe it does not matter. This deal of finding purpose in things may be supremely overrated.
My house has no cement driveway, it's a combination of shell and rock. The close edges to the house are starting to grow green and as long as we stay parked far enough, it's likely to keep growing green. It's dark by the time I pull in, and a deep amber glow fills the street. None of that bright white post modern crap. The old standard amber, that made dates all the better because people looked more tan in the muggy midnight. I turn and look at the window where the computer is, and there's Jamie. Her hand is prying open the window blinds, trying to get a look. With a jolt and five seconds she's left through the garage and hugged her long lost brother, the shipwreck that is always college. She takes my bags, most of them actually, as I relish in the laziness of being the big man on campus. My mother and father are watching television. The black couches that were bought years ago show more signs of wear and tear. The house is even more cluttered with coupons and books and CDs and time and time and time. Exhausted from some unseen force I fall asleep.
The time is eight thirty, and I haven't woken that early since my last shift on campus. The light in the guest room is blaring in my face, and for a man who blankets his window for complete darkness, there is a change. First stop is half-price, where I buy books I'm not even sure I'll read this summer. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler: the story of a private investigator in 1930s Los Angeles dealing with a murder. That's probably all I'll ever hear of it. Rabbit Run, by John Updike: the beginning novel of a series about a man growing up in middle America. My salivation for Mad Men related anything is unquenchable. Half Price at home is a disappointment. It's not the super store in Dallas and it's no comparison to Recycled on the square, but it gets the job done. Best Buy, a place where I would buy everything if I had the opportunity actually does not have what my mother wants. Taco Bell, the famous seven layer burrito is waiting for us.
Mad Men. I cannot help but convince my mother to watch it. I can't tell if she enjoys it, or just wants me to think she is enjoying it. Either way, my lack of creativity stops Saturday to a halt. It's not that I don't enjoy doing things, it's the cost. So we decide to buy me some new clothes which no one would deny. We hit up Walmart and do what I do best: making really cheap clothing work. I buy some flannel shirts: one which match my eyes and another in neutrals which I love. I buy some jeans. Blah, blah, blah.
There's something about revisiting a place that is big as a kid and small as an adult, and on Sunday after church it's Mr. Gatti's, well known as "a poor man's Chuck-E Cheese." I love pizza buffets. We all win some tickets and we pool together our resources and prizes come out and you wonder why didn't you just cut the middle man and buy the prizes wholesale back at Walmart? Doesn't matter. Maybe it feels more like you earned it.
It's been wanting to rain all week but it only did it Monday, quickly and in a fit of anger. Unlike many other places in the world, the weather here just gets worse, with the muggy Mondays seeping into your sweaty socks and penetrating the new flannel shirts. Battle Los Angeles in the theater was seizure inducing mayhem, but it was fun if you like that sort of thing. The actors all played their cut-outs well and I couldn't see anything of the action because the camera was held by a drug addict who had obviously not taken the drug. Then came Never Let me Go with Zane and his sister Lacie. The movie that will kill your soul with a knife and then twist the blade. It's a movie that is so sad, they probably invented the word melancholy.
The other moments of the week are kept as a secret, but I'll share a little piece that interested me. My grandparents needed yardwork, which was overly paid as usual. I couldn't help but notice as I was about to be fed corn beef, there were little porcelain figures in the back behind the glass. They were perfectly still, and they were old. "Flappers forever" is what I thought as they were dressed in progressive style clothing. They looked youthful and happy, and they were absolutely beautiful. I don't know if they were real but I look down and notice that they say, "Florence" on them. I have no idea what it means but what is true is that those figurines will be young and delicate forever. I don't know what to make of it, but I think of them now, the hat hiding her dark hair. The young women in a "provocative" dress that shows enough to keep your interest. Smooth porcelain on everything.
I'm leaving tomorrow, and as usual I cannot imagine where the eight days went. I suspect that with time I'll understand visits home a little more, but in this transitional period I have no words to explain it. Does it mean anything? Is there a purpose? I had a dream last night where I visited what I thought was New York, but it was some spectacular city with a massive tower overlooking the coast. I told someone that I wanted to see that while I was here. I did not know why I was there, or what the tower was, but maybe it does not matter. This deal of finding purpose in things may be supremely overrated.
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