A week ago, Nicole and I went to open mic poetry at a hip jazz bar with blue lighting and reformed hippies. A bunch of regulars read their work, lots of explicit sex which is especially uncomfortable to hear coming from a grandma (of course it could be fiction, but the smirk on her face made me feel there was some truth behind it... icky).
Since I've been thinking more and more about applying for programs to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry, I started to question myself... why would I want to voluntarily surround myself amongst people like this? I'm stereotyping, but there is some truth to a brooding, suffering poet. Who else is self centered enough to think his feelings are unique and deserve to be read and beloved by the world? I get along with most people, I think, but whiny bitches are where I draw the line.*
Getting an MFA isn't like going to grad school. You can write poems without the letters MFA suffixing your name. You aren't going to be arrested for writing a book without a degree like you would if conducted surgery without the letters MD. Do i just want to prove to people that I haven't plateaued? That i'm still on course for more than an entry level job that pays a buck and a half more than the absolute bottom the state will allow?
When did we start having to do more than just live? When did surviving become insufficient while all other creatures with whom we share this earth consider survival the greatest form of accomplishment? Without any background in anthropology or history, I'm pretty sure the turning point was precisely when surviving became easy, expected. Once the challenge of gathering food was simplified to a trip to Fred Meyers and the possibility of getting killed by a gila monster or musky, predatory mammal was reduced to nil save for the most unfortunate or the dumbest of the species, our most natural human challenges evaporated. People needed to invent new things to make life more difficult and, ever since we've been seeking achievements, praise, and approval as desperately as our ancestors sought consistent sources of glucose and clean water.
It impresses neither employers nor girls to brag that you've eaten food every day without fail for the last twenty seven years. Nor are guests at cocktail parties particularly wowed when you confide, "I have never suffered from mumps or rubella." My question: is there any way to reverse this inflation that human contentment seems to be suffering? Can I lower the bar and be satisfied with doing less? Maybe no one else wants to regress like me. But, can I personally oppose this trend that demands I do more and be more than I am now? I eat every day of the week. I sleep out of the rain. Homo habilis would be envious of my bike repair abilities. What more do I really need? I'm almost certain that if I were struggling to obtain those basic needs, all the feelings of longing and insufficiency that poison my thoughts would not exist. And if that's true, then it's all a head game: these modern human needs of accomplishment and accolades are invented and not a biological necessity. So that proves they can be controlled, right? And besides having food and shelter, I received the best birthday present possible: Isaiah Thomas has been evicted from both the front office and the coach's bench at Madison Square Garden. That would be enough to make any homo habilis throw his excessively long arms up to heaven in gratitude.
*This is the trait I find most salient in my roommate Marty, which is the reason I dislike her so much. Her own bitching isn't so offensive to me as the fact that she reminds me how I can be a little bitch myself and that's one of the things I hate the most about myself. As the band Down says, "I'm trying to kill what's wrong with me." I wish Marty's last name started with an R. That way she could be MartyR which is how she presents herself, maybe a bit more vocal about her suffering though than say St Stephen, Martin Luther King, or Gandhi. Unfortunately, her last name starts with an S.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
everybody plays the fool
It's april fool's day and so I thought it would be appropriate to list some of the ways I've been a fool in my life. My last relationship lasted slightly over one month. That was a year ago and it's still hurting to this day. Twelve months to get over a one month relationship... that's pretty foolish. If you wanted to extrapolate this data, that would mean if I fell out of a hypothetical two year relationship, it would take nearly my life time, up to this point, to recover. But most of this hurt was my own fault. As I told you in a previous blog, I have a hard time interpreting non verbal cues and often misconstrue people's actions and behaviors to mean they hate me. Well, I also make the same mistake assuming based on actions and behaviors someone might love me, which may not be the case. Nothing to pity here, though. That's what the R &B band the Main Ingredient tried to warn us about prophetically back in the year 1972: "Everybody plays the fool sometimes. There's no exception to the rule."
So, I'm not alone. Everybody plays the fool, including you. But--and I'm trying to be perfectly objective here-- I think I've played the fool more times than any of you have. Based on anecdotes and stories I've heard from other people during cocktail parties and various soirées, I think Rodney Dangerfield and I are in a league of our own. My stories are astronomically more embarrassing than anything I've heard from you. Here are some of the less embarrassing examples--if you can believe that--which many of you may have already heard and gotten a good laugh over already.
1. During one summer vacation from college, I was back in my hometown of Lincoln Park and went to a nearby town's library. There was a group of middle schoolers loitering in the foyer of this library and I intended to walk by them without any acknowledgment or further ado. But one of the boys in the group put out his hand as if to give me a high five, and so, not knowing what else to do, I went to slap his hand, only to have him pull away and say, "Syc!"making a dozen middle schoolers, including girls, laugh at me. The worst part was I still had to face them when I left the library and that punk ass bitch tried it again, but I just kept walking. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but this memory stuck with me for at least three years, and there were plenty of times when I'd call my college friend, Tum Tum, crying about how much I wished I'd just busted that kid's face up for taking my dignity away like that. He ruined what were supposed to be the best days of my life and I'll never forgive him for that.
2. A couple years back while I was teaching in Boston, I was on winter break and decided to do a good thing by de-icing the refrigerator in my apartment. we had never done this in the two years we'd lived there and there was a solid three inches of ice that had accumulated on all sides of the freezer. So i got out a Stanley screwdriver and began chipping away*. Yes, I knew that you are never supposed to use a sharp implement to de-ice a fridge. I just assumed that warning was for imbeciles who had no motor control; the same as the warnings to not use a Q-tip within the ear canal or warning labels on cups of coffee announcing in several languages that the hot coffee is served HOT.
I was doing great, chipping away all those years of frozen accumulation. I even found a ribeye steak that was dated to nine months before we had moved into the apartment. I felt like an archaeologist. I was uncovering layers of ice that may have even preceded the existence of refrigerators.
I had gotten almost all of the ice removed and was standing in a cold puddle that represented my victory over the years of neglect this poor Kenmore had received. There was just one little patch of ice left on the back wall of the freezer. I'd chipped away all of Greenland and Antarctica and all that was left was little, old Nova Scotia. No problem. So i began my delicate technique of tap tap tap, scrape scrape scrape, when suddenly I felt the screwdriver dig too far. Then, horrible smelling freon was splashing on my shirt. Fuck.
I called a refrigerator repair man. Contrary to what I assumed, duct tape would not fix this problem. Once you puncture a hole in a refrigerator, it becomes a Chinese wife who can't produce a male son-- fucking useless**. My options: pay the repair company $500 for a new refrigerator or search Craigslist for a free refrigerator and figure out how to transport it back to my place. There was no question i would go with the latter. This happened the first day of winter break and i had this horrible vision of me spending every day of that vacation answering ads for free refrigerators... and that pretty much came true.
Of course, the obvious challenges to choosing to find my own refrigerator instead of just paying to get it replaced: 1) how are you going to transport it? 2) how are you going to get it up the three winding flights of stairs into your apartment, and 3) is it going to fit in the apartment and the empty, dusty space the now defunct refrigerator used to occupy?
I found a refrigerator on Craigslist for $50. Not free, but significantly cheaper than the alternative. Remember, time was a factor here. i couldn't just wait around until a better deal came. I needed to replace this refrigerator so my roommates and I wouldn't have to pack food in the dirty melting snow outside. So i bit. Fifty dollars is a small price to pay when you fuck up.
As for transporting this refrigerator, I had a plan, surprising as that might be. One of my fellow teachers had a giant fifteen seater company Dodge van parked outside of his classroom. Since I worked for this teacher the year before as an aide, I knew he was lax about company policy and would have no problem loaning me the keys for the van to pick up a refrigerator, especially during winter break when no one was using it anyway. I'd even make sure to fill up the tank before I dropped it back.
This is the fine art of human problem solving. This is what separates us from the worms and other lesser coelomates. I was representing the apex of vertebrate evolution with my evolved and clever mind. So, recruiting my roommate and good friend Adam, we stole the company van and drove to Cambridge where a $50 fridge was waiting for us.
A kindly older lady who worked as a professor at Harvard University (pronounced: Haaaavaaad) had this old fridge sitting in her basement. Worked perfectly well, she said, but she didn't need it anymore. Turns out she taught high school teachers how to better teach their students and she had even done seminars for the organization with which I worked... the same organization from whom I'd stolen the van. So we hit it off right away and I paid her the fifty dollars and the only concern was how to get refrigerator out of her basement. It was humongous. It looked much bigger than the one I had destroyed, but with my tape measurer handy, it met the space requirements for my kitchen. So adam and I removed the hinges of her basement door, forced this ugly brown fridge up the rickety basement stairs, perched the refrigerator onto a dolly and tried to roll it down the stone path from her house to the street. Dollies are meant to work only on flat surfaces; as far as I know, they have not invented all-road dollies yet, and if they had, they were not at our disposal when we needed them. But, regardless, we made it the fifteen feet to the street where the glorious company van was waiting, gutted of its seats to fit this monstrosity.
Then we drove the ten minutes home and began hefting it up the three flights of winding stairs to the apartment. No problem. Adam and I are young, twenty something males. Healthy, strong, at the peak of our virility. How many kegs had the two of us lifted up these very same stairs over the past two years? Just take it one step at a time.
But, by the fourth step of the first floor stairwell, we realized this might actually be impossible. Not only was it very fucking heavy, the refrigerator didn't even seem like it could fit around the turns of the stair case. We were covered in sweat and our hands ached. We couldn't even hold onto the refrigerator after a while, and it would slide down the couple of stairs we managed to get it up. And worst of all, if we couldn't get it up the stairs, we'd have still have to figure how to get it back out of the stairs at least, which also seemed fairly impossible. Out of sheer desperation, we called Mandy, our other roommate and good friend, who weighs in at about 100 lbs and could probably fit inside of the vegetable drawer of the very refrigerator we were recruiting her to help us move. Understandably, we were desperate at this point.
Somehow, by the graces of god and the combined will of all three of us, we were able to push and yank and drag that refrigerator up all those stairs to the doorway of our apartment. With a few more heaves and more damage to the walls of the apartment, the replacement fridge was standing in front of the spot occupied by the old fridge. But, despite all my careful measurements, it was too big to fit in between the cabinet and the wall. Off by centimeters. The thought of tossing this refrigerator after the hour we spent getting it up the stairs was not inviting. We somehow figured how to dig the cabinets deeper into the wall to give us the necessary couple of centimeters to get our behemoth new refrigerator into place. And finally, there it was in place, plugged in, and I couldn't have been happier that day.
And i wish so much that's how this story ended. But, the next day, mandy, with the inquisitive nature of a mature Nancy Drew, concluded that the refrigerator was, in fact, not cold. It was not producing the customary humming or frigid air that you associate with this particular appliance. "Give it another few hours," I explained. "Refrigerators need to warm up before they cool down." But as always, I was wrong. The refrigerator that cost me $50 plus countless future chiropractic visits for me and my roommates was a lemon. A dud. An excessively heavy and ugly cupboard. I sent a very curt email to the harvard professor who sold me this refrigerator: "The fridge does not work." No reply. I swore if I ever had the chance to meet her again I would shove my entire fist down her throat.***
Then it was back to Craigslist and Freecycle and other websites to try and find a free refrigerator. My time was running out. I was sure someone from the landlord company would just stroll into the apartment to do something routine like bug spraying and find a gaping hole where a refrigerator should be and charge me $500 for a new one plus any subsequent penalties for trying to hide my misdeed.
But towards the end of this vacation week, which turned out not to be a great vacation because of this situation, i found another person giving away a refrigerator, a free one this time. So at least if it didn't work, i didn't have to throw away any more money. And just like if you suffer from a lot of flat tires (another subject about which I know more than I care), when you keep trying to move refrigerators, it becomes sort of routine. So i knew the drill: steal the company van, take out seats, pick up fridge, injure lower back, bring fridge home, force roommates to help move fridge even if none of this was their fault, cry when fridge doesn't work, lather, rinse, repeat.
So I drove to the school where the company van was being stored. And this is the part where I start realizing I am more of a fool than any of you. The company van is mysteriously missing. There is no way I can transport a refrigerator in my tiny Ford Escort. I need that fucking van.
I gave a quick call to the main office of my company to inquire about the whereabouts of this particular vehicle which should have been right fucking in front of me.
"oh, paul took it for some maintenance," said Anne, the secretary. Kindly, old Paul. A seventy something year old retiree who, out of the goodness of his heart, helped the organization out by maintaining their fleet of vans. And logically enough, he chose winter break to do maintenance because no one was using them at this time, except for idiots who needed to move refrigerators at low cost. So I thought of alternatives with my advanced mind: 1) Rent a uhaul, 2) rent a pick up truck from Home Depot, or 3) try to call Paul and see if I could get the van from him. Again, fearing that this refrigerator would not work even if I did have a van to pick it up, I opted for the cheapest method.
"Hi, Paul. This is armin. Do you know where van #15 is?"
"Hi Armin. I just took it for an oil change. Do you need it?"
"Yeah, ummm. I just left some papers in the back seat and need them to prepare class for after break."
"Oh, okay. I'll bring it back in 30 minutes."
Phew! No big deal. Just thirty minutes delayed but the whole plan was going smoothly. Soon Paul would come, we'd shoot the shit for a couple minutes, he'd drive off, and I'd joy ride to a New Bedford for a new used fridge. And so I waited, and though it took closer to an hour and a half, he did come with van # 15.
"You know Armin, that (name of teacher in charge of van) doesn't take care of this van at all. I mean, just look at the inside. It looks like shit."
"Oh, I'm sorry about that, Paul."
"No, it's not your fault."
Then Paul drove off and I hopped in ready to commit my crimes when i looked at the console between the driver's seat and the passengers seat. my heart dropped. GODDAMMIT!!!! You stupid old motherfucker! A cute little flip phone Nokia was sitting next to the armrest. Paul's cute little flip phone nokia. And he was already on the road headed home to his wife where she would probably ask him, "dear, where is your cell phone?" And he'd say, "Oh, I must have left it in the van. Silly me. I'll drive back and get it." But then he'd find the van was gone and he'd worry and call up the cops and they'd arrest me in New Bedford with a used refrigerator in the back.
At this point, I was feeling less pride in my problem solving skills and my alleged superiority over other coelomates and creatures that don't even have a spinal column. But my choices were obvious: 1) wait for Paul to realizes he left his phone, comes back to get it, then steal the van, whatever time or day that might be OR 2) somehow get the phone back to him.
"Hello, Mrs... um Paul's wife?"
"Yes? Who is this?"
"Hi, sorry to bother you. My name is Armin. I work with (same company as Paul) and just noticed he left his cell phone in the van here."
"Oh! Thank you so much for calling! I don't know where he is right now."
"well, I'm on my way home now. I can just drop it off at your place."
"Oh! that's so sweet of you!"
So i drive to paul's house and drop off the cell phone with his wife who praises me and tells me what a nice boy I am when really I was just trying to commit unethical deeds and would have just as readily murdered both Paul and his wife if that was the easiest way to get out of this quagmire of shit I'd created for myself.
Then I was driving to New Bedford and the refrigerator was still waiting for me and, much to my delight, looked much smaller and more manageable than the one i had purchased two days earlier. And it seemed a sign that everything was getting better when adam and I were able to lift it up the stairs without mandy's help and when we plugged it in, it made a familiar and comforting "whiirrrrr" and was cold on the inside. Joy of Joys! Beowulf has torn the arms off Grendal! Sir Lance-a-lot has slain the dragon! Armin has procured a refrigerator that works! So after that, Adam and I brought the two busted refrigerators down the stairs that were being stored on our porch at the time, and even though that was probably very tiring, I don't remember because the joy of having a working fridge (and the help of gravity) made it easy to get the two of those out of our lives forever.
And best of all, I did not get into any trouble for stealing the company van. After all the refrigerators were moved to where they belonged, one in the kitchen, two on the curb, i drove the van back to its resting place at the school with no one the wiser. until, of course, I got a call from Paul.
"Armin, I just went back to the school and the van is missing!"
"Oh... yeah. Um... I just took it to get it cleaned because you said it was messy inside."
"oh Armin, that's so sweet of you. You're such a good kid." he may have actually been crying on the other end, so moved was he by my consideration. So then, my dumbass had to take this giant van to the car wash and spend five dollars in quarters vacuuming out the inside so it would actually look like I took it to get it cleaned. The whole rest of the year Paul and his wife thought I was a saint.
But in the end, we had a working refrigerator and our landlords never knew because I still got my security deposit check back. So that means they also never noticed the poor spackling job i did on hole I punched in the hallways wall when I missed a shot in beer pong.
3. There is a third Armin Plays the Fool story to share, one that I'm pretty certain i've told to only one other person in this world. but it will have to wait till the next blog because I didn't realize how long and involved that refrigerator anecdote was. Suffice it to say though, i think I've made my point and if you think you could challenge my foolishness, i'd love to hear it.
* you know what's really not helpful? When you do something stupid and then after it cannot be undone someone tells you what you should have done. "Why didn't you just use a hair dryer to de ice the fridge, Armin?"
"Why don't you just shut your damn mouth?"
**I'm joking. Since it is the father who carries the Y chromosome necessary to produce balls, this joke doesn't even make sense.
***Amazingly enough, I had the opportunity to do just that. The summer of that same year, the organization i worked for asked me to take an enrichment class that discussed effective ways to teach math to high school kids. It took place in Harvard. The overseeing professor of this program: none other than my very own used refrigerator saleswoman.
After the first day, I came up to her and she said, "You look very familiar." It was hard for me not to look familiar back then since i had a mohawk.
"You sold me a refrigerator back in February," I said coldly.
"Oh, yes! How is it?"
"It didn't work."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I should give you a refund."
But for some reason, i broke down and let her off the hook, "Oh no. It's okay. Buyer beware, I guess! Laissez Faire!" And that's yet another reason I'm a douchebag.
So, I'm not alone. Everybody plays the fool, including you. But--and I'm trying to be perfectly objective here-- I think I've played the fool more times than any of you have. Based on anecdotes and stories I've heard from other people during cocktail parties and various soirées, I think Rodney Dangerfield and I are in a league of our own. My stories are astronomically more embarrassing than anything I've heard from you. Here are some of the less embarrassing examples--if you can believe that--which many of you may have already heard and gotten a good laugh over already.
1. During one summer vacation from college, I was back in my hometown of Lincoln Park and went to a nearby town's library. There was a group of middle schoolers loitering in the foyer of this library and I intended to walk by them without any acknowledgment or further ado. But one of the boys in the group put out his hand as if to give me a high five, and so, not knowing what else to do, I went to slap his hand, only to have him pull away and say, "Syc!"making a dozen middle schoolers, including girls, laugh at me. The worst part was I still had to face them when I left the library and that punk ass bitch tried it again, but I just kept walking. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but this memory stuck with me for at least three years, and there were plenty of times when I'd call my college friend, Tum Tum, crying about how much I wished I'd just busted that kid's face up for taking my dignity away like that. He ruined what were supposed to be the best days of my life and I'll never forgive him for that.
2. A couple years back while I was teaching in Boston, I was on winter break and decided to do a good thing by de-icing the refrigerator in my apartment. we had never done this in the two years we'd lived there and there was a solid three inches of ice that had accumulated on all sides of the freezer. So i got out a Stanley screwdriver and began chipping away*. Yes, I knew that you are never supposed to use a sharp implement to de-ice a fridge. I just assumed that warning was for imbeciles who had no motor control; the same as the warnings to not use a Q-tip within the ear canal or warning labels on cups of coffee announcing in several languages that the hot coffee is served HOT.
I was doing great, chipping away all those years of frozen accumulation. I even found a ribeye steak that was dated to nine months before we had moved into the apartment. I felt like an archaeologist. I was uncovering layers of ice that may have even preceded the existence of refrigerators.
I had gotten almost all of the ice removed and was standing in a cold puddle that represented my victory over the years of neglect this poor Kenmore had received. There was just one little patch of ice left on the back wall of the freezer. I'd chipped away all of Greenland and Antarctica and all that was left was little, old Nova Scotia. No problem. So i began my delicate technique of tap tap tap, scrape scrape scrape, when suddenly I felt the screwdriver dig too far. Then, horrible smelling freon was splashing on my shirt. Fuck.
I called a refrigerator repair man. Contrary to what I assumed, duct tape would not fix this problem. Once you puncture a hole in a refrigerator, it becomes a Chinese wife who can't produce a male son-- fucking useless**. My options: pay the repair company $500 for a new refrigerator or search Craigslist for a free refrigerator and figure out how to transport it back to my place. There was no question i would go with the latter. This happened the first day of winter break and i had this horrible vision of me spending every day of that vacation answering ads for free refrigerators... and that pretty much came true.
Of course, the obvious challenges to choosing to find my own refrigerator instead of just paying to get it replaced: 1) how are you going to transport it? 2) how are you going to get it up the three winding flights of stairs into your apartment, and 3) is it going to fit in the apartment and the empty, dusty space the now defunct refrigerator used to occupy?
I found a refrigerator on Craigslist for $50. Not free, but significantly cheaper than the alternative. Remember, time was a factor here. i couldn't just wait around until a better deal came. I needed to replace this refrigerator so my roommates and I wouldn't have to pack food in the dirty melting snow outside. So i bit. Fifty dollars is a small price to pay when you fuck up.
As for transporting this refrigerator, I had a plan, surprising as that might be. One of my fellow teachers had a giant fifteen seater company Dodge van parked outside of his classroom. Since I worked for this teacher the year before as an aide, I knew he was lax about company policy and would have no problem loaning me the keys for the van to pick up a refrigerator, especially during winter break when no one was using it anyway. I'd even make sure to fill up the tank before I dropped it back.
This is the fine art of human problem solving. This is what separates us from the worms and other lesser coelomates. I was representing the apex of vertebrate evolution with my evolved and clever mind. So, recruiting my roommate and good friend Adam, we stole the company van and drove to Cambridge where a $50 fridge was waiting for us.
A kindly older lady who worked as a professor at Harvard University (pronounced: Haaaavaaad) had this old fridge sitting in her basement. Worked perfectly well, she said, but she didn't need it anymore. Turns out she taught high school teachers how to better teach their students and she had even done seminars for the organization with which I worked... the same organization from whom I'd stolen the van. So we hit it off right away and I paid her the fifty dollars and the only concern was how to get refrigerator out of her basement. It was humongous. It looked much bigger than the one I had destroyed, but with my tape measurer handy, it met the space requirements for my kitchen. So adam and I removed the hinges of her basement door, forced this ugly brown fridge up the rickety basement stairs, perched the refrigerator onto a dolly and tried to roll it down the stone path from her house to the street. Dollies are meant to work only on flat surfaces; as far as I know, they have not invented all-road dollies yet, and if they had, they were not at our disposal when we needed them. But, regardless, we made it the fifteen feet to the street where the glorious company van was waiting, gutted of its seats to fit this monstrosity.
Then we drove the ten minutes home and began hefting it up the three flights of winding stairs to the apartment. No problem. Adam and I are young, twenty something males. Healthy, strong, at the peak of our virility. How many kegs had the two of us lifted up these very same stairs over the past two years? Just take it one step at a time.
But, by the fourth step of the first floor stairwell, we realized this might actually be impossible. Not only was it very fucking heavy, the refrigerator didn't even seem like it could fit around the turns of the stair case. We were covered in sweat and our hands ached. We couldn't even hold onto the refrigerator after a while, and it would slide down the couple of stairs we managed to get it up. And worst of all, if we couldn't get it up the stairs, we'd have still have to figure how to get it back out of the stairs at least, which also seemed fairly impossible. Out of sheer desperation, we called Mandy, our other roommate and good friend, who weighs in at about 100 lbs and could probably fit inside of the vegetable drawer of the very refrigerator we were recruiting her to help us move. Understandably, we were desperate at this point.
Somehow, by the graces of god and the combined will of all three of us, we were able to push and yank and drag that refrigerator up all those stairs to the doorway of our apartment. With a few more heaves and more damage to the walls of the apartment, the replacement fridge was standing in front of the spot occupied by the old fridge. But, despite all my careful measurements, it was too big to fit in between the cabinet and the wall. Off by centimeters. The thought of tossing this refrigerator after the hour we spent getting it up the stairs was not inviting. We somehow figured how to dig the cabinets deeper into the wall to give us the necessary couple of centimeters to get our behemoth new refrigerator into place. And finally, there it was in place, plugged in, and I couldn't have been happier that day.
And i wish so much that's how this story ended. But, the next day, mandy, with the inquisitive nature of a mature Nancy Drew, concluded that the refrigerator was, in fact, not cold. It was not producing the customary humming or frigid air that you associate with this particular appliance. "Give it another few hours," I explained. "Refrigerators need to warm up before they cool down." But as always, I was wrong. The refrigerator that cost me $50 plus countless future chiropractic visits for me and my roommates was a lemon. A dud. An excessively heavy and ugly cupboard. I sent a very curt email to the harvard professor who sold me this refrigerator: "The fridge does not work." No reply. I swore if I ever had the chance to meet her again I would shove my entire fist down her throat.***
Then it was back to Craigslist and Freecycle and other websites to try and find a free refrigerator. My time was running out. I was sure someone from the landlord company would just stroll into the apartment to do something routine like bug spraying and find a gaping hole where a refrigerator should be and charge me $500 for a new one plus any subsequent penalties for trying to hide my misdeed.
But towards the end of this vacation week, which turned out not to be a great vacation because of this situation, i found another person giving away a refrigerator, a free one this time. So at least if it didn't work, i didn't have to throw away any more money. And just like if you suffer from a lot of flat tires (another subject about which I know more than I care), when you keep trying to move refrigerators, it becomes sort of routine. So i knew the drill: steal the company van, take out seats, pick up fridge, injure lower back, bring fridge home, force roommates to help move fridge even if none of this was their fault, cry when fridge doesn't work, lather, rinse, repeat.
So I drove to the school where the company van was being stored. And this is the part where I start realizing I am more of a fool than any of you. The company van is mysteriously missing. There is no way I can transport a refrigerator in my tiny Ford Escort. I need that fucking van.
I gave a quick call to the main office of my company to inquire about the whereabouts of this particular vehicle which should have been right fucking in front of me.
"oh, paul took it for some maintenance," said Anne, the secretary. Kindly, old Paul. A seventy something year old retiree who, out of the goodness of his heart, helped the organization out by maintaining their fleet of vans. And logically enough, he chose winter break to do maintenance because no one was using them at this time, except for idiots who needed to move refrigerators at low cost. So I thought of alternatives with my advanced mind: 1) Rent a uhaul, 2) rent a pick up truck from Home Depot, or 3) try to call Paul and see if I could get the van from him. Again, fearing that this refrigerator would not work even if I did have a van to pick it up, I opted for the cheapest method.
"Hi, Paul. This is armin. Do you know where van #15 is?"
"Hi Armin. I just took it for an oil change. Do you need it?"
"Yeah, ummm. I just left some papers in the back seat and need them to prepare class for after break."
"Oh, okay. I'll bring it back in 30 minutes."
Phew! No big deal. Just thirty minutes delayed but the whole plan was going smoothly. Soon Paul would come, we'd shoot the shit for a couple minutes, he'd drive off, and I'd joy ride to a New Bedford for a new used fridge. And so I waited, and though it took closer to an hour and a half, he did come with van # 15.
"You know Armin, that (name of teacher in charge of van) doesn't take care of this van at all. I mean, just look at the inside. It looks like shit."
"Oh, I'm sorry about that, Paul."
"No, it's not your fault."
Then Paul drove off and I hopped in ready to commit my crimes when i looked at the console between the driver's seat and the passengers seat. my heart dropped. GODDAMMIT!!!! You stupid old motherfucker! A cute little flip phone Nokia was sitting next to the armrest. Paul's cute little flip phone nokia. And he was already on the road headed home to his wife where she would probably ask him, "dear, where is your cell phone?" And he'd say, "Oh, I must have left it in the van. Silly me. I'll drive back and get it." But then he'd find the van was gone and he'd worry and call up the cops and they'd arrest me in New Bedford with a used refrigerator in the back.
At this point, I was feeling less pride in my problem solving skills and my alleged superiority over other coelomates and creatures that don't even have a spinal column. But my choices were obvious: 1) wait for Paul to realizes he left his phone, comes back to get it, then steal the van, whatever time or day that might be OR 2) somehow get the phone back to him.
"Hello, Mrs... um Paul's wife?"
"Yes? Who is this?"
"Hi, sorry to bother you. My name is Armin. I work with (same company as Paul) and just noticed he left his cell phone in the van here."
"Oh! Thank you so much for calling! I don't know where he is right now."
"well, I'm on my way home now. I can just drop it off at your place."
"Oh! that's so sweet of you!"
So i drive to paul's house and drop off the cell phone with his wife who praises me and tells me what a nice boy I am when really I was just trying to commit unethical deeds and would have just as readily murdered both Paul and his wife if that was the easiest way to get out of this quagmire of shit I'd created for myself.
Then I was driving to New Bedford and the refrigerator was still waiting for me and, much to my delight, looked much smaller and more manageable than the one i had purchased two days earlier. And it seemed a sign that everything was getting better when adam and I were able to lift it up the stairs without mandy's help and when we plugged it in, it made a familiar and comforting "whiirrrrr" and was cold on the inside. Joy of Joys! Beowulf has torn the arms off Grendal! Sir Lance-a-lot has slain the dragon! Armin has procured a refrigerator that works! So after that, Adam and I brought the two busted refrigerators down the stairs that were being stored on our porch at the time, and even though that was probably very tiring, I don't remember because the joy of having a working fridge (and the help of gravity) made it easy to get the two of those out of our lives forever.
And best of all, I did not get into any trouble for stealing the company van. After all the refrigerators were moved to where they belonged, one in the kitchen, two on the curb, i drove the van back to its resting place at the school with no one the wiser. until, of course, I got a call from Paul.
"Armin, I just went back to the school and the van is missing!"
"Oh... yeah. Um... I just took it to get it cleaned because you said it was messy inside."
"oh Armin, that's so sweet of you. You're such a good kid." he may have actually been crying on the other end, so moved was he by my consideration. So then, my dumbass had to take this giant van to the car wash and spend five dollars in quarters vacuuming out the inside so it would actually look like I took it to get it cleaned. The whole rest of the year Paul and his wife thought I was a saint.
But in the end, we had a working refrigerator and our landlords never knew because I still got my security deposit check back. So that means they also never noticed the poor spackling job i did on hole I punched in the hallways wall when I missed a shot in beer pong.
3. There is a third Armin Plays the Fool story to share, one that I'm pretty certain i've told to only one other person in this world. but it will have to wait till the next blog because I didn't realize how long and involved that refrigerator anecdote was. Suffice it to say though, i think I've made my point and if you think you could challenge my foolishness, i'd love to hear it.
* you know what's really not helpful? When you do something stupid and then after it cannot be undone someone tells you what you should have done. "Why didn't you just use a hair dryer to de ice the fridge, Armin?"
"Why don't you just shut your damn mouth?"
**I'm joking. Since it is the father who carries the Y chromosome necessary to produce balls, this joke doesn't even make sense.
***Amazingly enough, I had the opportunity to do just that. The summer of that same year, the organization i worked for asked me to take an enrichment class that discussed effective ways to teach math to high school kids. It took place in Harvard. The overseeing professor of this program: none other than my very own used refrigerator saleswoman.
After the first day, I came up to her and she said, "You look very familiar." It was hard for me not to look familiar back then since i had a mohawk.
"You sold me a refrigerator back in February," I said coldly.
"Oh, yes! How is it?"
"It didn't work."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I should give you a refund."
But for some reason, i broke down and let her off the hook, "Oh no. It's okay. Buyer beware, I guess! Laissez Faire!" And that's yet another reason I'm a douchebag.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Who's driving your bus?
I've read the book The Stranger by Albert Camus more times than I've read any other book, with the possible exception of Caddie Woodlawn, a coming-of-age-young-woman's tale set in the old frontier which i read annually so I could use it for every book report and English project I had to do from grades third through sixth.
For those of you unfamiliar with The Stranger, it's basically a story about a Frenchy guy that likes to smoke, take long lunch breaks, people watch from his balcony, and ditch work to hang out with his girlfriend on the beach. Then one day, he commits a sudden, senseless crime and finds himself in jail trying to explain to people why he did it and, unfortunately, he really doesn't have an answer. It just happened.
I haven't been asked to write a book report in a very long time, but i still find myself reading The Stranger every other year or so. I've found solace in that book the way people normally find solace in the Book of Psalms or Chicken Soup for the (fill in age bracket and occupation) Soul.
Why do I love this book so much? It tackles the most difficult question anyone can ask you in this world--Why?--and answers it with the most juvenile and unhelpful answer anyone can give--I don't know. This book was the seed for the only philosophy I have in this world, which I will share with you today.
So here goes... Armin's Philosophy of Life:
In answer to the question WHY, I sincerely hope that either 1) everything in this world has a purpose and there is a plan for us OR 2) everything is meaningless and random. These may seem like very different belief systems, but I think the end result is the same. Either way, I'm can't be held accountable for any of my decisions or their consequences.
If you believe in the former, you like to use this tidy, little standby when things get rough: What's meant to be is meant to be. Sweet and convenient. A cloying pull of optimistic taffy to stick between your gritted teeth during the more painful times in your life. On the other hand, the latter viewpoint may seem a bit more depressing at first, I guess because people want desperately to believe there is Purpose in this world, that Someone (God, Allah, L. Ron Hubbard) knows what that Purpose is, and that we are an important and positive part of that Purpose. But, believers of the latter philosophy still get a cute little mantra to chant during the bad times: Que sera, sera (What will be, will be). Notice there is a subtle distinction between the two phrases. It's best illustrated as simple arithmetic problem: WHAT WILL BE, WILL BE is the difference calculated when PURPOSE is subtracted from WHAT IS MEANT TO BE, WILL BE. Personally, I think this is a small difference, but apparently to the rest of the world, it's not. To the rest of the world, it's the difference between Christians and Atheists, optimists and pessimists, Albert Camus and whoever wrote the screen play for When Harry Met Sally.
I'm not a philosopher and didn't do all that hot in the one philosophy class I took sophomore year of college. But here's an analogy to explain my point like Plato's Man in the Cave.
1.) You're riding a bus. You have to get off sometimes and get back on sometimes. If you believe in MEANT TO BE then the bus driver knows the route even though you don't know the route yourself. And this bus driver is a nice fella; even though he never talks to you, for some reason you have faith that he knows where he's going and is making sure you get off at the right stops. Also, you have free will so you get to pull a little yank cord above your head if you want to stop and get out. But the thing is, the bus driver knows better than you so maybe he'll stop when you pull the cord, but maybe he'll just keep going because he knows the next stop will get you closer to where you need to be. There's reason and planning to it all, even if you're not privy to the knowledge the bus driver has.
2.) On the other hand, if you believe in WILL BE, then the bus driver has no idea where he's going. Shit, there may not even be a bus driver, for all you know. Somehow the bus is driving a random, unplanned route and lets you off any old place and picks you up whether you are ready or not. You still have free will. You can pull that yank cord, and just like the passenger on the bus with the benevolent bus driver, sometimes the bus will stop, but sometimes it won't. You sometimes think the driver's a dick and is just ignoring the beeping, automated "Stop Requested" voice every time you yank on that cord. More likely though, the cord is the arm of a slot machine. Sometimes you pull it and the bus stops, sometimes it doesn't and you know it's nothing personal. That's just how the bus is built.
So, is there really a big difference between having a benevolent bus driver who knows where he's going or a self propelled bus that has no predetermined route? On both buses, you're still moving. On both buses, you still get to yank a cord that works only occasionally anyway. On both buses, the ride eventually ends and since you don't know the route on either bus, you won't know when your ride ends.
So I don't have any problem with either of these situations and will vacillate between the two frequently, leaning more towards the WILL BE after reading The Stranger and leaning more towards the MEANT TO BE when i watch romantic comedies. There's only one situation I pray is not true; wouldn't it be horrible if it turns out I'm the bus driver? I have complete control of the wheel and the pedals. I stop when I want, I start when I want, and if I get lost, it's my own damn fault. If I stop the bus and get off well before my destination, there's no one to blame.
Can you imagine waking up one day, realizing your life is fucked up, and having to admit it was all your fault? No thanks. I hate responsibility. I much prefer chili con carne.
For those of you unfamiliar with The Stranger, it's basically a story about a Frenchy guy that likes to smoke, take long lunch breaks, people watch from his balcony, and ditch work to hang out with his girlfriend on the beach. Then one day, he commits a sudden, senseless crime and finds himself in jail trying to explain to people why he did it and, unfortunately, he really doesn't have an answer. It just happened.
I haven't been asked to write a book report in a very long time, but i still find myself reading The Stranger every other year or so. I've found solace in that book the way people normally find solace in the Book of Psalms or Chicken Soup for the (fill in age bracket and occupation) Soul.
Why do I love this book so much? It tackles the most difficult question anyone can ask you in this world--Why?--and answers it with the most juvenile and unhelpful answer anyone can give--I don't know. This book was the seed for the only philosophy I have in this world, which I will share with you today.
So here goes... Armin's Philosophy of Life:
In answer to the question WHY, I sincerely hope that either 1) everything in this world has a purpose and there is a plan for us OR 2) everything is meaningless and random. These may seem like very different belief systems, but I think the end result is the same. Either way, I'm can't be held accountable for any of my decisions or their consequences.
If you believe in the former, you like to use this tidy, little standby when things get rough: What's meant to be is meant to be. Sweet and convenient. A cloying pull of optimistic taffy to stick between your gritted teeth during the more painful times in your life. On the other hand, the latter viewpoint may seem a bit more depressing at first, I guess because people want desperately to believe there is Purpose in this world, that Someone (God, Allah, L. Ron Hubbard) knows what that Purpose is, and that we are an important and positive part of that Purpose. But, believers of the latter philosophy still get a cute little mantra to chant during the bad times: Que sera, sera (What will be, will be). Notice there is a subtle distinction between the two phrases. It's best illustrated as simple arithmetic problem: WHAT WILL BE, WILL BE is the difference calculated when PURPOSE is subtracted from WHAT IS MEANT TO BE, WILL BE. Personally, I think this is a small difference, but apparently to the rest of the world, it's not. To the rest of the world, it's the difference between Christians and Atheists, optimists and pessimists, Albert Camus and whoever wrote the screen play for When Harry Met Sally.
I'm not a philosopher and didn't do all that hot in the one philosophy class I took sophomore year of college. But here's an analogy to explain my point like Plato's Man in the Cave.
1.) You're riding a bus. You have to get off sometimes and get back on sometimes. If you believe in MEANT TO BE then the bus driver knows the route even though you don't know the route yourself. And this bus driver is a nice fella; even though he never talks to you, for some reason you have faith that he knows where he's going and is making sure you get off at the right stops. Also, you have free will so you get to pull a little yank cord above your head if you want to stop and get out. But the thing is, the bus driver knows better than you so maybe he'll stop when you pull the cord, but maybe he'll just keep going because he knows the next stop will get you closer to where you need to be. There's reason and planning to it all, even if you're not privy to the knowledge the bus driver has.
2.) On the other hand, if you believe in WILL BE, then the bus driver has no idea where he's going. Shit, there may not even be a bus driver, for all you know. Somehow the bus is driving a random, unplanned route and lets you off any old place and picks you up whether you are ready or not. You still have free will. You can pull that yank cord, and just like the passenger on the bus with the benevolent bus driver, sometimes the bus will stop, but sometimes it won't. You sometimes think the driver's a dick and is just ignoring the beeping, automated "Stop Requested" voice every time you yank on that cord. More likely though, the cord is the arm of a slot machine. Sometimes you pull it and the bus stops, sometimes it doesn't and you know it's nothing personal. That's just how the bus is built.
So, is there really a big difference between having a benevolent bus driver who knows where he's going or a self propelled bus that has no predetermined route? On both buses, you're still moving. On both buses, you still get to yank a cord that works only occasionally anyway. On both buses, the ride eventually ends and since you don't know the route on either bus, you won't know when your ride ends.
So I don't have any problem with either of these situations and will vacillate between the two frequently, leaning more towards the WILL BE after reading The Stranger and leaning more towards the MEANT TO BE when i watch romantic comedies. There's only one situation I pray is not true; wouldn't it be horrible if it turns out I'm the bus driver? I have complete control of the wheel and the pedals. I stop when I want, I start when I want, and if I get lost, it's my own damn fault. If I stop the bus and get off well before my destination, there's no one to blame.
Can you imagine waking up one day, realizing your life is fucked up, and having to admit it was all your fault? No thanks. I hate responsibility. I much prefer chili con carne.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
glory days
I heard from a very reliable source that my old college roommate and fellow chemistry major, Scott Whitman, is hooking up with Jackie LePage. I'm going to let that sink in for a minute. Jackie LePage, aka, JLP. Quite arguably the most attractive chem major ever at the College of New Jersey, though to be perfectly objective about it, chemistry rarely recruits the hot girls with the volume that other majors can like business, psychology, or professional beach volleyball. Regardless, this is quite the feat to be seen publicly with a girl that was the punchline for four years of inappropriate chemistry/sex puns such as "bonding between the sheets" and "backside attack."
So how did he pull off this remarkable accomplishment? Hell if i know; he hasn't returned my texts... probably too busy with JLP, which is perfectly understandable. Anyway, fishermen don't give out coordinates for where they catch the big ones, do they?
Last I saw him in December, he didn't look or act any different from what i remember. That's a good thing; he was a great guy in college and it'd be a shame if he changed. But the point is he doesn't seem to dress any better than I remember, hasn't lost or gained any weight, still smokes and loves television, and certainly hasn't undergone any growth spurts. If anything, he's just grown his hair out into a long mess, and if that's the only thing that was preventing them from getting together in college, well I'm sure he would gladly have saved his ten bucks and not gotten a hair cut every couple months.
I guess the moral is that maybe we didn't all peak during our college glory days. Perhaps we do still have a few good years left to accomplish the things we were supposed to achieve by 21. This might be a good time for me to take another stab at Calc 3 with Dr. Conjura and try to redeem myself after earning the unfathomably low score of zero on the second test.
So how did he pull off this remarkable accomplishment? Hell if i know; he hasn't returned my texts... probably too busy with JLP, which is perfectly understandable. Anyway, fishermen don't give out coordinates for where they catch the big ones, do they?
Last I saw him in December, he didn't look or act any different from what i remember. That's a good thing; he was a great guy in college and it'd be a shame if he changed. But the point is he doesn't seem to dress any better than I remember, hasn't lost or gained any weight, still smokes and loves television, and certainly hasn't undergone any growth spurts. If anything, he's just grown his hair out into a long mess, and if that's the only thing that was preventing them from getting together in college, well I'm sure he would gladly have saved his ten bucks and not gotten a hair cut every couple months.
I guess the moral is that maybe we didn't all peak during our college glory days. Perhaps we do still have a few good years left to accomplish the things we were supposed to achieve by 21. This might be a good time for me to take another stab at Calc 3 with Dr. Conjura and try to redeem myself after earning the unfathomably low score of zero on the second test.
Friday, March 14, 2008
pointing out the obvious
I checked in a customer at the airport by the name of Tom Jones.
"Tom Jones, huh?"
"yeah, i get that a lot."
"I bet it's not unusual."
Polite laughter.
I wanted to pepper my small talk with more annoying Tom Jones references, but he was running late and I'm sure he wouldn't have taken too kindly to missing his flight because I needed more time to figure out how to slip "Sex Bomb" into the conversation.
"Tom Jones, huh?"
"yeah, i get that a lot."
"I bet it's not unusual."
Polite laughter.
I wanted to pepper my small talk with more annoying Tom Jones references, but he was running late and I'm sure he wouldn't have taken too kindly to missing his flight because I needed more time to figure out how to slip "Sex Bomb" into the conversation.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
a disease of perception
I went to an AA meeting the other night, not on purpose. I didn't want to go home and had no where else to be. I was sitting in a coffee shop its last open hour, drinking coffee I didn't really want, feeling low, bored, without direction. Didn't bring a book, so I read a self published 'zine on their bookshelf, an autobiography of a 32 year old single mom who got pregnant during a sex/drug backpacking romp through Europe. She lost her backpack on a train which contained the only contact information she had for the father. Despite how horrific this situation sounds to me, the 'zine certainly took a comical look at single, welfared parenthood in Portland. The last couple pages were just an advertisement selling her woven goods, her main source of income.
There were only a handful of us in the coffee shop and the barista was kind enough to let me have free refills. What's the difference at that hour of the night to her? She's not going to make any more money off the dregs at the bottom of the pot. She won't have to brew a new pot. She's ready to go home. But, she was really pleasant, and I read and waited for her to finally kick me out when a few men started coming in, setting up chairs. The barista left on her bike and people, all men, started filling in. They all knew each other, chatting, filling up free cups of coffee. One guy who sat next to me, who seemed to be a real Pollyanna amongst the other guys (handsome forty something, rugged sort of dude who shook hands with everyone using both hands) turned to me, "Are you staying for the meeting?"
"What's the meeting for?" I asked.
"AA."
"Sure, if that's okay."
Within ten minutes the little coffee shop was packed with at least 40 AA members, all guys of all kinds. Balding men in business suits. Young punks with expanded ear holes and tattoos on their neck. Wall to wall recovering alcoholics. A cow bell was used to get everyone's attention. We started with a couple minutes of silent meditation followed by a reciting of the Serenity Prayer (God, grant me the strength to change the things I can change, etc...) which I lipsynced. Then a black gentleman started the meeting by introducing the topic: "How we react to the world differently to the world when we are sober." He talked about how angry he was still. He's still in a rehab center and during morning meetings, if anyone pulls down the blinds he'll "fucking bark at them." I guess he really likes his morning sunshine.
I started getting worried when I realized this guy was the moderator of the meeting and was picking people at random to share their feelings on this topic and was debating if I got picked whether it would be better to admit the truth, "Shit fellas, I'm sorry, I'm not an alcoholic. I was just depressed and didn't want to go home yet." Either they'd lynch me for being a fake and belittling something as serious as alcoholism by hanging out at a meeting for kicks, or they'd ask if I drank alcohol and I'd say yes, and they'd insist i was an alcoholic and just can't admit it. The other option was just pretending along and I rehearsed in my head what Alcoholic Armin would say, 'Hey, my name is armin and I'm an alcoholic. Been sober three years now. I think nowadays, I try to focus on the positive whenever I feel like having a drink. Marvel at how well my windowsill green onions are growing. Make lists of things i need to do, laundry, shopping, and praise myself when I get them all done."
Thankfully, it never came to that. I made it through the hour without being called on and only raised suspicion when i thought the meeting was over and started to get my backpack and head out when I was supposed to stand up and hold hands in a circle to recite the Serenity Prayer again followed by "Keep coming back! It works if you work it!"
Biked home and felt a little better than when i started the evening. I can understand now why the main character in "Fight Club" attends all those support groups. There's something very reassuring about a group of people who all suffer and purge together, sucking the venom out of each other's snake bites.
Not much of what the AA members said was worth recording, mostly that their sober selves thought more before saying things to people and they still got really "fucking angry" but could control themselves more. The one thing that stuck with me: one young man referred to alcoholism as a disease of perception, which is really the perfect moniker for all emotional disorders.
A disease of perception. The baffling inability to interpret facial expressions, intentions, or scenarios with any logic. Everyone looks threatening, everyone hates you. In your distorted mind, you imagine you are the anathema of everyone you know. Worse off, once you begin misconstruing all sensory data, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Everyone hates me, you say, so you avoid everyone. Then no one calls you up because you never come out anyway. So that proves they hate you, right? They don't call, they must hate you. Horrific... you are actually eating yourself up, causing all the misery you predicted. You look like a goddamn prophet.
I remember having just moved to Boston, none of my roommates were around yet and I still had a few days before I could move into my apartment so I was sleeping out of my car on Commonwealth Ave. It was very hard to sleep since my car was stuffed and I couldn't recline my seat, so I'd occupy myself by taking the train back and forth through Boston, reading a borrowed copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" until I felt tired enough to sleep. Was trying to save money so i wasn't eating much, but broke down and hopped into a cheap chinese restaurant. I remember waiting for my order and looking at a man and woman who were also waiting and I could have sworn they were making fun of me. I thought they were this biker, Harley Davidson couple and were cracking jokes about me. I kept watching them from the top of my book feeling threatened until I realized they were laughing at the restaurant owner's toddler daughter who I assume was doing something amusing. And when I looked more closely, i could clearly see they were not biker couple--not to say they didn't ride motorcycles or attend Sturgis once a year-- they were not dressed as bikers as I originally perceived, but were very neatly dressed, professional looking people and I had just thought they were bikers because the gentleman had a beard and was wearing a black leather coat.
This happens to me a lot, the inability to process sensory input logically. Maybe more AA meetings will help, but drinking to the point of alcoholism just so I can join a support group to help me with depression doesn't seem like the most logical course of action, even to my perception diseased mind.
***********
Q & A
Q: the sad thing about blogging is their inevitable demise. please prove me wrong armin.
A: When Rob Zombie released "The Sinister Urge" my junior year of college, a much hyped second solo album with glitzy pictures and packaging to distract from the completely hollow, rehashed lyrics and unimaginative guitar riffs, I felt much as I imagine Moun'ain Girl feels now... betrayed and, perhaps, a bit gassy. So good for you for calling me out on my half assed attempts to keep this blog up. Yes, the quality AND quantity have diminished in 2008; neither my photography nor my ukulele playing can compensate for crappy blog entries. I had been considering retiring the blog the last few weeks--undoing the last knot if you will--because I don't have much left to say. That's not entirely true: I don't have anything funny and entertaining left to say, and the serious things I have to say... well I don't know how to say them right and that's hard to stomach. But goddamn if I don't respect your opinion, Moun'ain Girl, and for you will give it another try even though I haven't seen any updates to www.platonicandgin.blogspot.com since october.
There were only a handful of us in the coffee shop and the barista was kind enough to let me have free refills. What's the difference at that hour of the night to her? She's not going to make any more money off the dregs at the bottom of the pot. She won't have to brew a new pot. She's ready to go home. But, she was really pleasant, and I read and waited for her to finally kick me out when a few men started coming in, setting up chairs. The barista left on her bike and people, all men, started filling in. They all knew each other, chatting, filling up free cups of coffee. One guy who sat next to me, who seemed to be a real Pollyanna amongst the other guys (handsome forty something, rugged sort of dude who shook hands with everyone using both hands) turned to me, "Are you staying for the meeting?"
"What's the meeting for?" I asked.
"AA."
"Sure, if that's okay."
Within ten minutes the little coffee shop was packed with at least 40 AA members, all guys of all kinds. Balding men in business suits. Young punks with expanded ear holes and tattoos on their neck. Wall to wall recovering alcoholics. A cow bell was used to get everyone's attention. We started with a couple minutes of silent meditation followed by a reciting of the Serenity Prayer (God, grant me the strength to change the things I can change, etc...) which I lipsynced. Then a black gentleman started the meeting by introducing the topic: "How we react to the world differently to the world when we are sober." He talked about how angry he was still. He's still in a rehab center and during morning meetings, if anyone pulls down the blinds he'll "fucking bark at them." I guess he really likes his morning sunshine.
I started getting worried when I realized this guy was the moderator of the meeting and was picking people at random to share their feelings on this topic and was debating if I got picked whether it would be better to admit the truth, "Shit fellas, I'm sorry, I'm not an alcoholic. I was just depressed and didn't want to go home yet." Either they'd lynch me for being a fake and belittling something as serious as alcoholism by hanging out at a meeting for kicks, or they'd ask if I drank alcohol and I'd say yes, and they'd insist i was an alcoholic and just can't admit it. The other option was just pretending along and I rehearsed in my head what Alcoholic Armin would say, 'Hey, my name is armin and I'm an alcoholic. Been sober three years now. I think nowadays, I try to focus on the positive whenever I feel like having a drink. Marvel at how well my windowsill green onions are growing. Make lists of things i need to do, laundry, shopping, and praise myself when I get them all done."
Thankfully, it never came to that. I made it through the hour without being called on and only raised suspicion when i thought the meeting was over and started to get my backpack and head out when I was supposed to stand up and hold hands in a circle to recite the Serenity Prayer again followed by "Keep coming back! It works if you work it!"
Biked home and felt a little better than when i started the evening. I can understand now why the main character in "Fight Club" attends all those support groups. There's something very reassuring about a group of people who all suffer and purge together, sucking the venom out of each other's snake bites.
Not much of what the AA members said was worth recording, mostly that their sober selves thought more before saying things to people and they still got really "fucking angry" but could control themselves more. The one thing that stuck with me: one young man referred to alcoholism as a disease of perception, which is really the perfect moniker for all emotional disorders.
A disease of perception. The baffling inability to interpret facial expressions, intentions, or scenarios with any logic. Everyone looks threatening, everyone hates you. In your distorted mind, you imagine you are the anathema of everyone you know. Worse off, once you begin misconstruing all sensory data, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Everyone hates me, you say, so you avoid everyone. Then no one calls you up because you never come out anyway. So that proves they hate you, right? They don't call, they must hate you. Horrific... you are actually eating yourself up, causing all the misery you predicted. You look like a goddamn prophet.
I remember having just moved to Boston, none of my roommates were around yet and I still had a few days before I could move into my apartment so I was sleeping out of my car on Commonwealth Ave. It was very hard to sleep since my car was stuffed and I couldn't recline my seat, so I'd occupy myself by taking the train back and forth through Boston, reading a borrowed copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" until I felt tired enough to sleep. Was trying to save money so i wasn't eating much, but broke down and hopped into a cheap chinese restaurant. I remember waiting for my order and looking at a man and woman who were also waiting and I could have sworn they were making fun of me. I thought they were this biker, Harley Davidson couple and were cracking jokes about me. I kept watching them from the top of my book feeling threatened until I realized they were laughing at the restaurant owner's toddler daughter who I assume was doing something amusing. And when I looked more closely, i could clearly see they were not biker couple--not to say they didn't ride motorcycles or attend Sturgis once a year-- they were not dressed as bikers as I originally perceived, but were very neatly dressed, professional looking people and I had just thought they were bikers because the gentleman had a beard and was wearing a black leather coat.
This happens to me a lot, the inability to process sensory input logically. Maybe more AA meetings will help, but drinking to the point of alcoholism just so I can join a support group to help me with depression doesn't seem like the most logical course of action, even to my perception diseased mind.
***********
Q & A
Q: the sad thing about blogging is their inevitable demise. please prove me wrong armin.
A: When Rob Zombie released "The Sinister Urge" my junior year of college, a much hyped second solo album with glitzy pictures and packaging to distract from the completely hollow, rehashed lyrics and unimaginative guitar riffs, I felt much as I imagine Moun'ain Girl feels now... betrayed and, perhaps, a bit gassy. So good for you for calling me out on my half assed attempts to keep this blog up. Yes, the quality AND quantity have diminished in 2008; neither my photography nor my ukulele playing can compensate for crappy blog entries. I had been considering retiring the blog the last few weeks--undoing the last knot if you will--because I don't have much left to say. That's not entirely true: I don't have anything funny and entertaining left to say, and the serious things I have to say... well I don't know how to say them right and that's hard to stomach. But goddamn if I don't respect your opinion, Moun'ain Girl, and for you will give it another try even though I haven't seen any updates to www.platonicandgin.blogspot.com since october.
Monday, February 18, 2008
strumming on the beach
wanted this to look like one of those laid back Corona commercials. instead it's just me singing badly.
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