Plenty of Time

There is never enough time to do everything you put off all those years, all those idea you have that you'll get to one day. That is no new theme. I guess if you're making logical decisions about how to spend your time and are never idle just because it would take too much effort to get started, or underway, and you still have all these things you never got around to doing, that's okay.
I spent the summer writing about nonsense, and it didn't help my brain out at all. If it's to be strong then it needs to work hard.
It's after eight and kids are playing in the alley. They shout a lot. The buildings contain the sound, give it to me. Everything else is unusually quiet, though. I notice when the kids shut up. I can almost hear the ringing in my ears over the keys typing. THere are thumps vibrating from somewhere in the building.
Anna is on her way to TaeKwonDo, here on referred to as tkd, because I don;t like to type tae kwon do. We went to a barbecue party a couple of weeks ago on our bikes, it was really far out west. I didn't like riding on the streets, but it was worse riding with her. He bike is slow and she is overcautious. She will not ride through yellow lights. Twice she said she heard something fall off of her bike. I couldn't tell what it was, but I don't trust that piece of crap she rides so we more or less got rid of it. But now she has to walk to tkd in the dark, which is not good for my peace of mind so I go to pick her up at least, three times a week, which is nice. Her instructor promotes people into higher belts even if they are fat and out of shape and can't remember the moves very well, and I think it's to keep people coming back. She has complained of this also. Everyone wants to just say they are a black belt. One day a young guy wasn't in class because he got beat up. His tkd skills didn't help him at all, he said. He wanted to know why, and the teacher said it takes time. But I watch that class when I wait for Anna to be done and they mostly don't look like their hearts are in it. But maybe I just don't understand the way martial arts are taught and learned.
We went to make some dinner over at a friend's place, a couple we like to double date with periodically. Anna and Gavin were cutting vegetables, the knives were pointy and cold and hard steel, pointed at one another. I know it's because there is something imbalanced in myself that makes me feel this way, but while I watched them cut onions I had to force myself to trust Gavin not to stab Anna in the eye. He is a good friend and would never dream of hurting anyone, but because that possibility was there of Anna getting violently killed and because of what I think that would do to me I had to calm myself down. I always think about how easy it would be to seriously hurt someone in the kitchen. Then I worried as I watched her cutting the peppers, because it looked to me like she was not paying very good attention and that the knife wasn't very sharp, which is more dangerous that way. I thought then that that was the same thing, and I wasn't trusting her to take care of herself. I wondered if it also tied in with a lack of respect I had for her, which I suppose is possible. That is not a very good way to treat people, I thought. Like they are not even capable of cutting vegetables, like I would have to intervene in order for it to be safest and most efficient. And as I watched she cut herself on the thumb, and I saw the blood right away, under the soft orange light it was the exact same color as the pepper. Considering all that neuroticism I was flying with a minute ago I thought I would cringe or get mad at her or something, but I really just felt like it was no big deal. Still grasping at a way to justify all that worry I tried to think of when it would be a big deal but all I came up with was the days before immunizations and antibiotics, etc. Still, I don't think I'll ever not be nervous when someone points a knife at Anna, in even the most innocent of ways.
A number of years ago I ate a dose of mushrooms with a couple of friends and had a pretty dark trip. Another friend of ours, Sean, had recently been killed and this was the first time I'd done psychadelics since. It was night, there weren't a whole lot of people around, and Erik and Matt and I were hanging around and about Erik's apartment in logan square. I went through a pretty tough couple of hours, becoming convinced that people were all angry and greedy and lost and sad, and decided at one point that the only reason I shouldn't commit suicide was to remain strong for my other friends, in particular our friend Caroline, who was Sean's girlfriend. Around the time that I lost the ability to communicate with Matt and Eric I tried to shake off the effects of the drug by taking a shower, but I succeeded only in finding myself imagining the water to be my own blood flooding into the drain because of a picture my ex girlfriend had shown me before we started dating of her dead in a bathtub splattered in fake blood, and soaking the hell out of Erik's bathroom and ruining all his toilet paper because his water pressure was pretty strong and I don't think I shut the shower curtain all the way. I was still fucked up when I got out of the shower. Erik's kitchen was pretty disgusting, and because drugs always give you grandiose ideas about prfoundly fixing your life when you are in ino condition to act on them I decided that the only way to fix my disgusting life was to start cleaning it up right away, and I filled up Erik's sink and started washing his dishes and stuffing glad bags full of all the crap he had everyhere until Matt came out and said something like Man, it's his place, and I could see he was right, and I was freaking out. I tried to control myself, I tried to make a joke. I had this knife in my hand. It was serrated, and was forked on the end. It seemed to me to be the most ridiculous knife I had ever seen. "Look at this knife!" I said. "Look at this knife." I suppose at that point it was pointed right at Matt, or at Erik, or wavering at both of them, who were both standing in front of Erik's room on the other side of the kitchen from me. WBEZ was in the background, coming from Erik's alarm clock radio. I remember it felt like I knew her, like I could almost pinch her lower lip if I reached out to try because I could see her so well, and her voice represented what all of us in the whole world were feeling now that we were all forced to live in such an immoral a world.

Independon't

Rebel yell is a song I was trying to remember the melody for, so I searched in the card catalogue, you know, the dewey decimal system, for a book that would direct me toward an interpretation of this dream I had the other day, the pillars were ornately carved and placed in mystical ways, and on a plate on the platform they guarded like sphynxes were the silhouettes of the charlie's angels and Anna and I had to choose who we were supposed to be, and I held my hand down long enough on the one on the far right for the change to travel up my arm, but my face was bloated and splattered with acne like a David Lynch characature, but when I looked at my crotch the polyester pants shined in the glow, and Anna was old and whithered and gaunt.

Tai Cheetos

I know moves now that will push your soul right out of your butt. Don't even try to attack me because I already know you are about to do it, and then you are in trouble, buddy. I rode the biko today and it made me ten minutes late to class, because the trees were really sneezing this morning, which was no good no good and when I sat on the dancefloor in my polyester pants I left sweaty buttprints I tried to hide and so did the me in the wall that is a mirror. Unfortunately I will be in Boston when the Tai Chi lady teacher will be buying all the wine in Chinatown for the class to drink, so sad. I will miss the drowned duck and the mooncakes, I don't know what those are either but this place has the best ones for the autumn festival for the Chinese, wheat fire.

Vile Mile Und Waggomac

I gave up after fifteen minutes because no one ever thought to teach me how to clean the dirt out from underneath my toenails, as much as I wanted to wait I thought there would be a bang and that would be the end, all I would be able to think about would be understood if it needed to be. But I couldn't help but see the horse's lips curling upwards into a smile, even though I wasn't really going to give him the carrot. I just rubbed it on the rusty bars until they were wet and there was no more friction and cracked it in half and tossed it into the pen, one end of it plunked right into a pile of manure, that was really funny. And the horse was too stupid to be mad at me, at least that's the impression I got. I don't think those guys on the corner were talking to me when they said vanilla ice cream, I'm pretty sure they were not, but I had the flannel tied under between my breasts you know and my belly was showing, like I wasn't thinking I'd run into anyone just going out to talk to the horse, cause Rick was out of town and I was seriously considering just getting out of there, I'm so sick of every day the only thing there is to do is get into a truck and drive to Walgreens, I mean I know I should be appreciative or whatever, living so close to the mountains, and the river, but that river is really just more like a stream you know and there isn't even any fish in it or nothing, and you can't camp over there because that's where all the guys go down to shoot their guns at like nothing, they just like to hear them bang bang bang I guess. I mean it's really just frightening when you have to hear that all day. And plus the mountains are so pretty and I love it, and I think it really does give me a sense of peace, the kind I never got to have when I was living in the city and there were just sky scrapers and leering guys thinking you just couldn't wait to bend over and take it from them, like they know. BUt after awhile the mountains are so far away it's like they're just this part of the air, you can't touch them and it never gets any better than just a bunch of pretty mountains in the distance, and clouds, even when you climb them you see its really just more dirt and cactuses and rocks and heat, and you still can't touch a cloud.

French Idioms

Originally I was set to write this cultural paper about these French ballerinas that were supposed to shack up with us until the day of their French ballet, at which point I would be able, theoretically, to speak a little French with them and get an insight into the life of a French ballerina. But the French ballerinas turned out to be French tap dancers, and they didn’t need a place to stay, and while my friend almost insisted that I speak French to them on the day of the performance I refused because I am most certainly NOT fluent in French and the idea of being presented in that way as the ‘guy who speaks french’ was pretty petrifying.

But as it turns out, hey, someone I work with is an exchange student from France! Rather than doing the whole what’s it like to be a French girl, we went to the park and exchange idioms and cultural sayings, a few of which I’m going to list and talk a bit about. Initially, she suggested that we talk about the differences in culture between French and Americans, but it quickly became apparent that she just wanted to point out all the stuff she didn’t like/respect about American culture, which is boring and easy. For example, she said that a shop owner in France pretty much just leaves you alone as opposed to the American corporate cultural approach being filled with smiles and enthusiasm and “Just let me know if I can help you, really!” While Americans see French people as rude, French people see Americans, in this particular scenario, as bizarre. Also, she went on, American people are always saying “I love you” all the time to their significant others- which is pretty true, there is a whole lot of “I love you”s, Annie Lennox notwithstanding, flung around the airspace in America- the complaint being that it loses its meaning if you say it all the time, which is true, and in fact I have found that the French have this particular taciturn cultural aspect in common with the Japanese. I would further like to assert that I see this as an evolved sensibility, wordless understanding being the idea, one that implies love is more complex and great than three simple words can describe unless they are conveyed through song, where various instruments bear the task of delivering the complexity of human emotion.

But Charlotte agreed and was enthusiastic to trade idioms with me. I was happy with this take on the cultural paper, though I don’t know if I’ll get away with it, because I know that you’re never really speaking the language you are studying unless you can use those weird little sayings that don’t make literal sense but inject real liveliness into language. I was lucky to have Charlotte- I often find idioms in my enormous French dictionary, which I can’t trust because once an idiom is archived in a dictionary it’s probably been around long enough to where if I were to use it I would sound like a total dork.

“Raining cats and dogs.” (raining really heavily)
A bit old fashioned, nobody really says it.
Possible Etymology: Maybe a tornado kicked up a kennel. It rains some pretty weird stuff that way.
Its French counterpart: ‘Il pleut comme vache qui pisse.” (It’s raining like a pissing cow)
In this case, I imagine that when this is spoken in french not many people actually imagine a cow pissing.

“Beating about the bush” (stalling, avoiding the issue)
Still in use fairly regularly.
etymology: From hunting. Beating bushes to get the birds to go flying
It’s French Counterpart: “Tourner autour du pot” (turn around the cooking pot)

“Making your blood boil” (getting you really angry”
French counterpart: “Son sang n’a fait qu’un tour” (his blood didn’t turn)
The idea being the anger is so severe that there is interference with blood circulation

“Never say Never” “Knock on wood”
French counterpart: “Il ne faut pas dire ‘fontaine’ je ne boirai pas de ton eau” (If you don’t say “fountain” I won’t drink your water.)
Apparently, this means a cross between to two english idioms, i.e. “don’t speak too soon.” Also, if one speaks only “Il ne faut pas dire ‘fontaine’, ” the rest is implied, just like “Speak of the Devil (and he may come)” and “When in Rome (do as the Romans do).”

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” (don’t assume you have won)
Another of many agribund idioms.
French counterpart: “Vendre la peau de l’our avant de l’avoir tuer” (to sell the bearskin before killing it) Again, one can stop at ‘l’ours’ and the rest is implied.

“Hit the ground running” (to set to work as the earliest possible moment)
French counterpart: “Attraper le train en marche” (catch the moving train)

It was my assumption that I would find, after putting these down, a common difference between English and French idioms, but I can’t really see anything on the surface, and I see now that a real study of it would take a lot of research and a much better grasp of the French language than I have as of yet.

Orphantastic

Well there it was, sitting there without thinking. It never tried to, and I never wanted it to. But sometimes you just have to wait for it to be available, without a proper mailing code there is very little that I would have been able to figure out. If I had to I would thank the man with the hat for carroting his fedora and moving beyond the point of madness he received from mercury poisoning. And thus to I put distance between myself and the nagging discomfort I gain on, reaching forward as I realise that age really does matter, doesn't it? Boil an egg, revolve your thoughts around a bank of chairiot riders, think in terms of who was going to be there and who was going to try to rewrite the rules of coupling, not me. And here we stand before you all, waiting as we try to move forward and put everything we have tried to protect at risk, but still the sirens continue as they always have before, and aloud I speak the names of two out of three of the children I've been dreaming I had since I was seven years old, swimming through the air and watching the grass stream beneath me through my eyelids. Muhammad is the blanket name I chose to assign to the two boys I remember that were different, one of them beat up my brother and now look how he turned out. I have now finally decided that it is right for me to get frustrated when he makes such bad decisions, because if I am not thinking that it is a bad reflection on the genes then I am thinking that it is a bad reflection on my influence on him as we were growing up. Too bad the planes are so loud in the distance, I was hoping to congratulate myself for detecting them over the din. There is a strict question of a logical fallacy: Do you plea for mercy because you are an orphan after you are caught murdering your parents?

Semiotock, tick

And then there was a foul inside the branded captain.

Holiday In Hamloafia

A shame you never taught me engines, father, I would have been quite good with my hands. I thought there was a plot of land over that hill, next to a tree straight out of a Robert Frost poem, that I could dig for myself and make my life worth living. When I was a kid I thought I could catch the rays of the sun in the evening, when it was huge and orange, and I thought I could change the direction of the wind if I concentrated hard enough. Extraordinary things are still possible, they just take time and more effort that simply thinking about things to make them happen. But the feeling of accomplishment is the same. No reason to be greedy. Just settle yourself in for some work, and uncertainty, but be confident that you will reach the end in a timely fashion and be impressed with the results.