zen's journal

05 April 05 --Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts
David Sedaris show

Shweetie, my boyfriend, is in the Producer's Circle. We sat in the Mary Wolley Auditorium, second row, on the aisle. It was a sold-out show, sponsored by WFCR 88.5, an NPR affiliate.

Mt. Holyoke is a truly remarkable campus, aesthetically speaking. The buildings, of that adobe-smoked-auburn coloured stone, could be transplants from a well-to-do medaeval European fiefdom; complete with Tutor and neo-Goth influence. Mary Wooley features chimeric statuary at the cornices above the main entrance, and at the apex of the gables. Masonic symbols can be decyphered. The crown-like roof looks exactly like the classical rook in chess.

Before the show, there was a reception that started as the life on the sleepy, picturesque campus, seemed to be winding down. The canapes were nice, and I avoided the booze.

He came out on time, and started reading immediately. All new material, the first offerings were 4 longer essays, and then he read excerpts from his journals.
After that, close to an hour later, he took questions from the audience for about half an hour. After that he did his signing untill about 11:30. We were second from last.

In his first piece he talked about his partner's mother's problem. She had a worm that grew in her leg. He said that's just disgusting. Somehow he could imagine all sorts of parasites and such crawling all over a dad, but for a mom it was, almost horrible.
If that happened to my mom, he said, I'd take all her clothes to the dump...and then burn them. I would burn everything she ever gave me, then put myself up for adoption.
I think I know how he feels.
He talked about how Hugh, his partner,'s mom always wants to help and do stuff when she comes over. She does all sorts of stuff, like wash the dishes, do laundry, move furniture....which, he continues, was her idea. I only suggested that the dresser hasn't been used in a while, and I just happend to mention that we've been talking about how it would be better for it to go down stairs.
I didn't think she'd actually move it downstairs by herself, he said.

The next one is a story called Town and Country. It was a genuinely histerical narrative that links together three succesive incidents on a plane, in a taxi, and in his sister's apartment.
We hear about this couple, dressed in expensive clothes, sit next to him. As they move into their seats, he apologizes, but seemingly for his very existence. He's shamed. But then the couple starts talking. Almost upon opening their mouths, he's bombarded by this well-dressed couple who continuously swear. Everything is fucking shit. The food was fucking shit. The music was fucking shit.
"First they make us listen to shit, and now they're making us eat shit," the man said as they ate their meal.
It was all something, or another as shit. He was postulating that to these folks, shit was the tofu of words. It could be molded, and manipulated to go with anything.
In the taxi, David has this run-in with, perhaps, an atypical driver. He wasn't to know about David. He asks David if he likes pussy.
We had to laugh.
The driver proceeds to tell David, actually calling him David, that he has to "fucky-fuk" 2 times a day.
"David, do you like the pussy."
He raises his paper.
"Does your dick not stand up?"
He raises the paper higher.
"Oh, I see. David, you like the dick?"
"David," he continues, pounding on the back of his seat, "David, do you like the dick?"
No repsonse.
"David, get a lesbian movie, and a bottle of whiskey."
"I certainly will not get myself a lesbian movie. I'm not like you," he says and proceeds to lambaste the driver. He insulted his coconut air freshner.
At his sister's in west villiage, she tells him that their dad is coming over. She likes to find stuff that shocks him, and display it on the table. Apparently this is a ritual with her; the day before this big visits, she hits all the book stores, and hunts for just that right book.
This time it is the "Wild Animal Orgasms" book, by Who Cares. The first involves two lesbians and their stallion friend. In this photo-essay, they take turns with the horse, and then get themselves off.
Under the caption of one picture it reads "this is this lucky fella's happiest day". But if that's true, he says, why doesn't the horse stop eating?
The next story involves a damsel and a "stray" collie.
"Stray, right," his sister says.
"Look at how shiney his coat is."
It occurs to him shortly thereafter the moral of the story, that he realy IS like that guy, the driver, an hour later. No it's not lesbian porn, and it's not a movie, and it is his siter he's with after all, but he can't help but think that cause it is his sister, he might be worse.

Having heard David speak on NPR and audiobook, I had a good idea of what to expect. I'm glad to see that he performed to expectations. David Sedaris is a very funny, and talented comic who has keen insights whic come across easily in his written, as well as spoken stories.
I'm constantly reminded that here is perhaps not the greatest, to have him tell it, intellegence. Be that a statement of his self-effacing style, the fact is that it is through his focused intellect that he creates these wonderfully brillian comical contrasts, and distills the essence of a situation so that it becomes a somewhat general banner we might all pick-up and carry.

The third story was one involving this article his sister sent. It's about people who fantasize about being amputees. The scientific nomenclature, sadly eludes me, but there are support groups for these people, nonetheless. There's even a chat room for people who feel this way.
He talks about one man who was so desperate to become an amputee that he took a chainsaw to his leg.
Yes, this man, who tried to take his own leg, via chainsaw, cause no reputable doctor will remove a good limb, woke up in the hospital.
"Congratulations Mr. Smith. We were able to save it," greeted him as he awoke.
Unfortunately, in a sorta medical miracle--in reverse--he lost the leg anyway.
Darn the luck.
One woman who told her woes in the chat room, tells of being trapped in the wrong body. Her body has no arms on it. It's kinda like a transexual except their ideal body is their own, simply a smaller version of their own body. She's apparently dead-set on having her arms amputated.
Lady, Think of what you're saying, he says.
Try getting a taxi...
"TAXI~ dam!!"
And try to enter that chat room you're so smitten with.

He looks at situations that could perhaps happen to anyone, or few at all, and allows them to be reduced to simple yet insightful chestnuts.

He signed Shweetie's co-worker's book "Thanks for making me rich".
He signed mine under the 2 mushrooms he stamped.

This post was edited by zen on Apr 11, 2005.

Falling Thru
24 Feb 2k5::621pm

Niantic River starts at Long Island Sound. Niantic Bay, funnelling The Sound, takes The River past Milstone (power plant), under two bridges. From there we snake about 15% east, into the wake zone of what would be the small commercial port of Waterford, and Niantic. Lots of fishing vessels, and the businesses that support them.
At the next crook, straightening out to face North, we are now in The Channel--The River proper. In my early years, we living along the shores were separated from The Bay by the tandem of aged, all steel, industrial-looking, reconstructavist-era train and turntable-style car bridges.
The car bridge was replaced in 1991, or was it ’90? It looms 42-49 feet above water, accomodating 90% of sea vessels. It’s usually the pleasure craft, with antenae, masts that cause delays during summer.
Oswegatchie Bay ends the Niantic proper. Our treck would end at about 5 miles, hitting its Northern most point, the Route One bridge. Since it doesn’t open, larger boats need take care not to so do. Continuing from that bridge we would jut into a small bell. Only shallow bottom boats, or yes, hovercraft, would venture into there. This is a very lovely area to live.
Snaking back in a wide flowing swoop, we come to the second Route One bridge. During severe flooding, this bridge gets submerged. That doesn’t happen often.
Past this Route One bridge, we have a little pool which is receiving the water from Latimer Brook.

The tributaries are fresh flows, but once that water hits sea level, it’s brackish, or mixed salt and fresh. The biggest starts in the Oswega Hills, leading through Latimer Brook, under Interstate 95, to the “waterfall” behind the old saw mill. It is this little rock- lined drop in elevation where it reaches it’s actual level with the sea; which is to say the L.I. Sound.
Since the river starts at the end of the Oswega Bay inlet, it’s all salt water.
Oswega Bay to Sandy Point--The Point--is about a mile south. It was from the Point that we launched that ill-fated drunken row after that seniour skip day party on the beach.
The channel starts about 200 feet beyond the point, since it is not longer considered part of the point inlet. From here there’s a slight direction change to about 15 degrees south southeast.
Mid river, the part near where I crossed, is about 2 nautical miles further south. At this point it is about 30 feet deep at high tide. It has a definite current, as one rowing up the river will tell you.
When i was a senior in high school, 4 of us took my friend Micky’s father’s dingy and rowed to the point. It took about two hours to row there, and it took about 6 hours to get back, due to the current. The fact that we were all drunk didn’t help matters.

Growing up, I was told that the river is not supposed to freeze. Of course the periphery does when it’s cold. Down toward the sources where it’s more fresh, of course it will froze. It’s shallow.
But the entire river isn’t supposed to, or at least not freeze as far up as i am. It was so cold in the winter of 1978 it did exactly that.

Anyone around my age, grown up in New England, would remember the Blizzard of ’78. Memory has it that the final tally of snow was two feet. It broke records; not only for the amount of snow, but the temperature, and the amount of days that it was sub-zero. It was fucking cold and snowy even by NE standards. I was 10 that year. That was also the year that i walked across the Niantic.

Falling through ice is neither fun, nor pleasant.
It is a horrible experience.
Kids are stupid.
Really, truly i mean that. And that goes for all parent’s kids, not just my sisters’.
As an adult (or at least anyone 13 or over) when you are warned that the ice is thin, that you shouldn’t go on it, but yet you walk on it anyway, you fall into a very special category of human being.
However, kids have a “common sense” defense. They just do what they do for their own reasons, mostly due to the lack of common adult sense. Hopefully at some point in life, that sense becomes activated.
It happened to me when I was 7 or 8. It was the pond at the bottom of my street. The older kids were enjoying their camp fire slash wine-jug pass-athon. I think 3 of them told me not to go out there, it was unsafe.
“The ice is cracking,” one of them said.
I think I said something like “I know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t go out there...”
...and I went any way.
So, after you’ve been warned and still do it anyway, and then you go right ahead and fall thru (just like you were warned would happen,) it makes the experience ever-so-much-more horrid. And rememberable.
But it begs the question, that since this experience was so traumatic, i should have learned that adult common sense. But i ignored it in order to do what i did on the river.
If i were an adult doing this, even with a minimun amount of safetly gear, i’d probably just be labled a “thrill seeker.” But at 8, you’re really just a problem’d child.

So, it was perhaps 3 years later at most, when i started the first few steps of that faithful journey across.
Let me divigate a point a moment to mention something about geological scale. The distance from my house, this very room i’m in writing this, to the point where i made those steps is only about 150 feet.
By contrast, the distance from those steps to the last ones off the frozen Niantic, in 1978, was about 1500 yards. Nearly three quarters of a mile across, that sheet of ice had a thickness which allowed a 112 lb person--i was big for my age--to safely cross.

Of course, since this was in the middle of the day, and it was sunny, it was not so bad. The temp was in the high 20's. For the most part a cheery-enough winter day where it’s moderate enough to want to go outside.
I seem to remember that i wore really skimpy, loose knit gloves. Either that or socks. And i don’t think that i wore a hat, against my mom’s strict orders. In fact, if memory serves correctly, i was off doing something else, and wound-up at Bayside Beach at that point. I was walking on that outer crust because i knew it was safe. But for some reason, i just kept walking. I think i just wantd to see how far i could go out there before it started to “really crack,” so i started walking.
And walking.
And walking.

It was at the middle of the trip across the ice that one overwhelming thought came to my head. I am going to die. The ice is going to crack. And it is going to be a whole big sheet of it, and it’s going to turn over completely and trap me under it. I thought that they would be finding my body in the spring wedged in one of the water inlets in Milestone the nuclear power plant.
I just knew, that at any second the ice was going to make that really big, hellacious cracking sound that sounds like it just came blamming out of a shot gun. The one that makes your heart stop--that crack was going to come.
There were old, settling cracks in the ice. Almost no snow on it cause the high winds that year literally swept the ice clean, even though there were still inches on the ground. I could see through it in parts. I knew that the water just under the ice was near freezing. The ice was thick. But was it thick enough? How long was it going to hold?
And because of it’s thickness, it means that the ice would break into large pieces. From the topside, a person my size would have no problems flipping it over, or tipping it. Once in the water, could get stuck under the ice.
I’d be dead within minutes.

I think that for a 150 lb person, the ice needs to be almost 2 inches thick to support his weigh. Most of the ice in the path i crossed, i estimate, was around 2 inches.
Even still, i just knew that i was going to hit an air bubble that isn’t as thick as the rest, or that a log just in my way would be frozen, making the ice weaker. There were all sorts of things going through my mind.
I was so incredibly relieved by the time i finally reached the other side.

I think if asked why i really did it, it might have been just to see if i could, but to say that I did it. i had enough guts to do something that ballsy, which I knew was just deaad wrong. I faced my worst fear, and survived.

But now I had another problem. I had to get back home.
Should I walk back across?
Walking along the shore, I noticed that patches of ice a few feet across were framing water. There were holes in the ice. It reinforced all that much more that the ice really was not safe. It was very likely that those were spots that people had small boats.
I didn’t connect it at the time, but the owners decided that it was going to be too cold to keep their boats partially submerged. Unless the boat is completely under water, the ice by freezing and contracting can ruin boats. It can uproot pilings the size of telephone poles when those posts are put in too close to winter.
The tide’s rising and regular falling make these ice sheets a hazard for stationary objects. In a sense, that first 5 or 6 feet of ice alone the shore is a type of expansion zone. Because esentially a “ledge” at the edge of the water is subject to the rising and falling height of the water during its regular cycle, it creates these pockets of air. That is a buffer that happens cause ice freezes to itself rather than the water; or better put, water freezes to ice.
There were kids playing hockey on the frozen river. I could see them as I was coming across. Noone seemed to particularly take notice of the fact that I travelled across the river. They were, as most kids are wont, most interested in their hockey game. None of the kids thought it was particularly interesting that I walked across. Actually, I’m not sure I actually told anyone what I’d actually done. I didn’t talk with any of the guys.

Looking back, I think what only through the discussion of this story I recall yet another blunder on my part. I buddied up to one of the guys playing hockey. I offered to play goalie. I’m a decent one. Of course I didn’t bring any gear. I could borrow theirs.
I was really shy back then, but I loved playing hockey. I was usually the idiot that sat in gaol cause my feet were too big for skates.
I buddied up with one of the dudes. So for the next 3 hours or so I played hockey with some of the guys from Niantic. It was really cool. I fit right in, even though I wasn’t the best goalie. I’m still a great defensive player. Even at 10 I was big. And for some things, size matters.

So Eric, my new friend, invited me to his house. I knew at some point I was goig to have to call the folks, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I got to hang out with him, and eat dinner at their house.
During the meal, they asked me where I was from, and I told them across the river.
“How did you get over here? Are you visiting?”
“No, I walked across the river,” I told them.
Both the folks looked at each other, and then me. It was almost funny.
“Dear,” the mom said, “we’ll call your parents as soon as you’re done eating.”
Of course, when my folks got the call, they were firstly astounded.
“He’s where?!” i heard my dad scream.
“We’re in Pine Grove,” he told him.
“You father said that he’ll be here in 20 minutes,” the man told me.
It was 22 minutes of torture, and hell.
Of course it was worth the wait cause I get beat soundly. More than any punishment, I remember how disappointed mom sounded. There also intoned a note of resignation. Of course I walked across the river: children are stupid.

It’s now Saturday night, and it’s snowing. Yet another snowstorm, supposed to drop 6 inches. They say that another Nor’easer next week will drop 8 to 12 inches. March 1st we will be getting yet more snow. Except for the cold, it reminds me of the winter of 1978. Inside all winter, and nothing got done till well into the spring.
Except back then I was not working. I didn’t have to support myself.

PART 2

I need to start working. I have money problems, but this is the tip of the iceburg. I have a world of hurt, and hatred bouncing around my head. I’m severely depressed.
Tonight I may be just as troubled as I was that day, back then. Tonight i know i want to kill myself.

Tonight it snows, and I walk along the shore. It’s a heavy snow, and the wind is kicking up a bit. I’m now walking on the beach. I stand at the very spot i started walking from. There’s no ice tonight, only water. It is calm, and there are no waves.
It looks like a sheet of ice i think.
The snow is driven into my face. I tighten down my hood, and start walking. I start walking the shore I must’ve walked a million times growing up.

I heard a man at one of my meetings say that he couldn’t imagine the pain that it would make him go through the pain of drinking.
I thought to myself, I do. I can imagine that kind of pain. I don’t need to expend precious mental energy imagining. If I could’ve spoken i’d have told you that I have a brain hurt that no asprin in the world can cure.
I can understand a pain so sever, and mind-numbing that you not only want to drink your hurt away, but literally wash it clean with alcohol.
I can understand a hurt, and pain, and bitterness, and sorrow, so profound that the only solution that looks doable is to peel off my skin and drown in a vat of pure alcohol.
I listened to my pain, and misery
If the water had been pure grain alcohol, I would have fallen in. Or tried to jump in.

It was like I was trapped beneath the ice. I was feeling quite hopeless. I have no way to move through this feeling. I have to keep moving.

I walked about a mile along the beach. I had to start back home. About 2 inches of snow had accumulated. It was becoming difficult to trudge through the snow.
This is my life, I thought. Trudgery and drudgery.
It's more interesting to read about someone who fights this shit, I thought, rather than the one who just gives up.

I don't have to balls to committ suicide. I wouldn't be buying sleeping pills and liquor in the morning.
I decided that I'd have to talk to my partner about my thoughts and feelings. But it won't be tonight.
Tonight, I live in my caccoon of hurt and torment.

The snow will have stopped by morning.

This post was edited by zen on Mar 08, 2005.

The system on NAO, for journal posting, whatever it's fucking called, fucking sucks moose dick.
I just spent, 45 minutes writing an very nicde entry about the snow.
I posted it before it got lost. The server tells me that I've already posted that journal entry, and won't let me post it again.

I think, great, and hit the "back" button, and it's gone.

There was nothing there.

It's not just that 45 minutes of my life has simply evaporated, but that excellent fucking entry about snow in new england and walking across a river that wasn't supposed to freeze when I was 8 is now gone...KAPUT!!

this shit is fucked!

A big flame to the NAO journaling software that loses entries.

I believe that all registered users can rate other's posts. At some point, one's work will be rated by strangers, or our on-line friends.

It's easy enough to rate someone's work, as it's just a button. One button with 5 degrees of like or dislike. It doesn't take any sort of special skill, or even thought to use this button.

I'm incline oft to think that there is no thought put forth when people use this button. I'm inclined to think that people use it instead of replying to a person's work, in a thoughtful manner.

Written feedback is optional. Noone HAS TO give comments or suggestions to another's work. Call it a courtesy, if you will.
Rating another's work is also a courtesy. But the two are diffent. One requires a moment of thought. The other requires a bit more thought, and then action. The written commentary takes a bit of energy, and time. But the writer, some of whom are serious in that chosen pursuit, doesn't learn a dam thing by the number i.e.% rating.

Whether the rating is 100% given by 5 viewers, or 63% given by 4 viewers, the point remains for both those instances: the writer of the post has no idea why his/her work was rated that way........
uinless you take the time to write a note saying what you liked or disliked about a work.

Personally, I don't give a shit about ratings. Like I said, they seem tailored to the individual who gives little thought to the post being rated.
I look at the numbers as an involuntary reaction, kinda like vomiting or laughing, after reading a post that emotionally moves one. The number rating, I suspect, is the perfect out for the person without much confidence in his or her own ability. It's undeniably the easier, softer way. Rating another's work poorly, and not having the decency, and courtesy of actually telling that person what you thought of it is also the coward's way out. It's like hiding behind a mask.

What I do give a shit about is getting a poor rating, and not knowing why people disliked the work. It is a courtesy to reply to a person's work, sure. However, it does nothing for me to know that 3 or 4 people read my work and all thought poorly of it.
What exactly is the problem with the work? Am I hard to follow? Does the post make no sense? Or is there some other reason why you really, really, really disliked the work?
And, if you disliked the work that much, shouldn't you say something, on general principles, for no reason other than you consider the work to be flamebait?
And I'm not talking about useless commentary like "your spelling/punctuation is atrocious"; but a discussion that talks about the content, or the issues discussed.

To sumarize: If you're going to "flamebait" someone's work, you should at least have the balls to speak up: male and female alike.

My toughest fight is with myself, for myself.

Realized through the brilliant flame of the pages of notebooks, rife with the rhetoric of what's, perhaps, singly some of the most insanely bright work ever done. And some of the most demented ideas ever put to words. Not in the deluded meglo-maniacal sense of one devoid dirty fingernails
But in the sense of one convicted by the morals of the heavy-laden and weak, and vulnerable; in the sense of one whose been there, and has survived to tell of it.

Catastrophes make one human.

Reflecting thoughts and impulses, they meander about the page, swimming in a jubilee of cherried whims, and apologetic sentences. Pictures maybe worth 10,000 words, but it's the words that keep my hopes, fears, and wishes alive. I exist to perpetuate the written word, injected by those little bits of memory that just can't be expressed. What does a body (formerly) at rest look like the moment after impact with a large metalic body moving at the speed of traffic on the highway?

Rust, pasty ochre running down the side of a now useless car, placed randomly, without much conviction or thought, attesting to the forces of nature, and the brighter angels of our own insecurities, and humanity. It is the catastrophe of a devistating explosion, or the simple falling-off of one's wheel at highway speeds that will make humble even the most obnoxious, or self-assured of us.

Beauty In Decay has already been taken.

In seeing the wheel and tire to the side, the car without brake rotor and calipers, the other side with wheel removed, bleeding its rusty trail, Nature inflicting its will upon the formerly shiny metal, a sense of belonging and wellness develops.

She's lucky to be alive.

My toughest fight is with myself, to keep my speeds within survival range. A life of relative ease and luxury, as most all in this country know, but don't really know, makes one fat, dumb and happy.

I starve myself to keep human.

It's in the immenent reflection upon those events that we need take a moment to reflect our fragility as creatures in this world, our articulate and reasoning weapons of choice to quell the ravages of time, and a world that cares not for the nicities of civilization. Gravity, inertia, and physics its trump card.

In seeing the car, divested of it's tires, stranded, showing its delicate metal, studs sheared, metal stretched, and conformed to the laws of motion of hi speed impacts, and bodies in motion tending to stay in motion until acted upon by guardrails, or other automobiles; in seeing the bare hemorraghing metal, one must pause. She's lucky to be alive.

This post was edited by zen on Dec 28, 2004.

I think that if i focus i can conduct the pain and hurt to the center of my being, that i can focus and love the pain
that i can conduit those feelings hard and hated thru my limbs and such, into the very center of my being

that them in there, and in them there contained and, yes bottled, I'm allowed to feel
I can live as emotions and words
In that moment of tongueing the nude wires the feelings
the infinite void my hatred and hurt seeks to fill;
it is in that moment of movement I moved, to be still.

I choose the inevitable

that in that moment and movement of emotions I feel them like returned semen through the vas deference of my veins and arteries, hair even, i allow the pain and vanquished memories flood thru my body into my pores and embrace me with their salty coming

that them in there and in there them no longer contained nor asking to be they ask not changed to rage and pity sadness sorrow regret remorse
... but never not
does it orbit the hurtred

in this moment of extreme focus intense being i see something
i see it all what i must do: what is important: break the insan-
i-ty and cycle.
I chose to live
i choose to be still.

I choose to feel
this moment
for one
more
.

This post was edited by zen on Dec 25, 2004.