Back in the days before Maude, before digital photography, microwave ovens, ATM's and other forms of instant gratification, we had to wait for things.
You can place the blame squarely on the TV dinner.
Ever since the advent of Swanson's frozen salisbury steaks, we have demanded our convenience neatly packaged and available on demand, ready to eat in half an hour or less at 350 degrees.
We have become a nation of leisure seekers, enjoying the fruits without the labor, the gain without the pain.
This congenital impatience has been inherited and passed down freely into our daily lives as an acute inability to bide time. I want my MTV, and I want it yesterday.
Video killed the radio star, perhaps. But it is also the cause of the decline of true talent; the ability to hold a note without the aid of AutoTune. (I dare not single out a single recording artist, a term I use lightly with say, Lady GaGa, but there you have it.) Telegenics have spawned the worst case of vocal genocide since I don't know when.
But back to my point.
With all of this lack of patience, other things must surely suffer.
People expect expediency from their laptops, cellphones, and even their online hookups. Where did people meet before e-Harmony? Okay, bad example. Let's call it a fast-mood mentality that has spawned the drive-through relationship that allows the patron to order exactly what traits they desire in a potential spouse. All bread and meat, hold the vegetables. (That may be a bit of editorializing, but you get the picture.)
Basically, we get what we ask for in a neat little bleached paper bag, otherwise we complain or take it back. No hassles. No fuss. No dishes to wash.
But what is lost when we don't take the time to get to know a potential partner, when we place an inordinate amount of time on the "rush" factor and not enough getting to know the individual? Do we find ourselves going back around to the pickup window?
Love is a tricky enough proposition in itself and should not be forced or hurried.
It should be relished and savoured, especially when you get it right.
It may come at 20. or 45. Or 60. But it will come. It is gratification delayed, but gratification nonetheless.
Frozen dinners be damned.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
grunches in bunches
From the start of all time, before even clocks,
the Gaggle would gather to mimic and mock,
poohpoohing the clothes and the joy of a few,
in their humpity bumpity hullaballoo.
With cocktails in hand, they mumbled and grunched,
about latest fads, and the gym, and a brunch
that didn't quite do as it does when it dunt,
the profiles all lied, the ones on Manhunt.
Sinning and grinning, and grinning in sin,
Tsk Tsking and flailing like fish without fin,
The subjects they ranged from A through U,
they were the blackiest creatures you ever could view.
Now the Grinch had no use for this useless chatter,
and the Cat, well he had too much ham on his platter,
and the Whos wondered why and the Nots wondered Who,
and Horton dismissed every consonant too.
On the edge of the circle, outside looking in,
stood one Finneas Fabreze who had heard all the din,
all the talk of the bars, and the drinks, and the frocks,
and comparison of shape and the size of their socks.
"Enough, enough" he exclaimed as he left,
ridiculed even more, he walked away deft,
"Enough with the names and the fake little games,
a place free of grunching and Gaggles my aim."
Time passed, a day, a week, a year
Then clocks were invented, the calendar near.
Other patents would follow, too many to choose,
but how about tea, and coffee, and news?
Finneas learned from the paper a curious thing,
of the town he had run from that previous Spring,
in an article framed way high on the shelf,
was a story of the Gaggle that had eaten itself.
the Gaggle would gather to mimic and mock,
poohpoohing the clothes and the joy of a few,
in their humpity bumpity hullaballoo.
With cocktails in hand, they mumbled and grunched,
about latest fads, and the gym, and a brunch
that didn't quite do as it does when it dunt,
the profiles all lied, the ones on Manhunt.
Sinning and grinning, and grinning in sin,
Tsk Tsking and flailing like fish without fin,
The subjects they ranged from A through U,
they were the blackiest creatures you ever could view.
Now the Grinch had no use for this useless chatter,
and the Cat, well he had too much ham on his platter,
and the Whos wondered why and the Nots wondered Who,
and Horton dismissed every consonant too.
On the edge of the circle, outside looking in,
stood one Finneas Fabreze who had heard all the din,
all the talk of the bars, and the drinks, and the frocks,
and comparison of shape and the size of their socks.
"Enough, enough" he exclaimed as he left,
ridiculed even more, he walked away deft,
"Enough with the names and the fake little games,
a place free of grunching and Gaggles my aim."
Time passed, a day, a week, a year
Then clocks were invented, the calendar near.
Other patents would follow, too many to choose,
but how about tea, and coffee, and news?
Finneas learned from the paper a curious thing,
of the town he had run from that previous Spring,
in an article framed way high on the shelf,
was a story of the Gaggle that had eaten itself.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
notes from 16E
The captain turns on the Fasten Seat Belts sign, and the aluminum carton lumbers down the runway. We are about to be tossed in the air again, all of the eggs securely strapped in. But if this thing goes down, we all crack.
To my immediate right, 16F pulls down the shade and says a quick prayer under her breath while clutching a copy of Harper's Bazaar.
The guy in a t-shirt across the way in 16A still has his iPod headphones in, nodding his head in time to some nameless beat. I wonder if he forgot to turn off his mechanical device, and the plane's navigation system will malfunction causing us to fly to the Azores instead of the Midwest. Of all times to forget to pack a bathing suit.
Sitting in 14A is a young mother with a colicky baby on her lap. I quickly wonder if I packed an extra valium or a pistol in the carry-on at my feet, for emergencies such as this.
The stewardess glides down the aisle and sums up the passengers, checking our laps, careful not to stare at our crotches. Now that's discipline.
In front of me, a sign that reminds me that the seat can be used as a flotation device. My mind replays all of the footage of airline disasters that have occurred over water, and I don't remember seeing any floating cushions.
13A is reading a copy of Ann Coulter's latest piece of trash, "Treason." I begin thinking that I hope that guy has a defective seat cushion in the unlikely event of an accident.
"We Know Why You Fly," as the recently successful airline ad campaign goes. I think about the reason behind this trip knowing that it won't be an easy five days, but I will make it through and will find myself on the exact same flight heading in the opposite direction towards home come Sunday. Life is funny that way. Arrivals and departures, sometimes early, oftentimes late. But definite.
Reservations guaranteed.
To my immediate right, 16F pulls down the shade and says a quick prayer under her breath while clutching a copy of Harper's Bazaar.
The guy in a t-shirt across the way in 16A still has his iPod headphones in, nodding his head in time to some nameless beat. I wonder if he forgot to turn off his mechanical device, and the plane's navigation system will malfunction causing us to fly to the Azores instead of the Midwest. Of all times to forget to pack a bathing suit.
Sitting in 14A is a young mother with a colicky baby on her lap. I quickly wonder if I packed an extra valium or a pistol in the carry-on at my feet, for emergencies such as this.
The stewardess glides down the aisle and sums up the passengers, checking our laps, careful not to stare at our crotches. Now that's discipline.
In front of me, a sign that reminds me that the seat can be used as a flotation device. My mind replays all of the footage of airline disasters that have occurred over water, and I don't remember seeing any floating cushions.
13A is reading a copy of Ann Coulter's latest piece of trash, "Treason." I begin thinking that I hope that guy has a defective seat cushion in the unlikely event of an accident.
"We Know Why You Fly," as the recently successful airline ad campaign goes. I think about the reason behind this trip knowing that it won't be an easy five days, but I will make it through and will find myself on the exact same flight heading in the opposite direction towards home come Sunday. Life is funny that way. Arrivals and departures, sometimes early, oftentimes late. But definite.
Reservations guaranteed.
Monday, April 13, 2009
next stop, Kalamazoo
The world certainly looks different from the window of a 737 than it does from down here at “see level.” Before you groan and start gathering your stones and torches, “travel at see level” was a tagline I coined years ago back in college for a Greyhound advertising campaign. This was the same client for whom I designed an ad with the graphic of a yellow BUMP sign in front of a picturesque mountain vista that read, “At 30,000 feet it's called turbulence.” Blame it on the late nights and Schaefer Light.
Just days ago I found myself flying over this very same terrain -- a patchwork of ruddy brown and green peppered with red thatched roofs, above ground pools, and bisecting lines of asphalt leading to somewhere else.
Now I find myself on the Amtrak Wolverine heading west towards Chicago, ironically traversing the very ground I happened to survey from the air a couple of days back. I recalled the beautiful sights from above, with boundaries clearly drawn and definitive borders giving a sense of order where none really exists except in city halls and dusty land plats. It was an earthen quilt peeking through clouds splayed like lobster tails, full of possibility and wonderment, beauty and grandeur.
Down here below though it's a different story.
Mattresses under overpasses, boarded up windows, discarded refrigerators along the tracks, and a hollow look in the eyes... the invisible people clad in gingham and pilled flannel who walk these city streets that quickly flash by the double paned glass of this single level coach. There is a duality that is readily apparent to someone like me who grew up in this area and had the fortune to move away before everything went to shit. The people still smile through the haze; through sour economic times and a shared poor sense of proper daytime attire.
A mile down the tracks, the Kelloggs plant with its smokestacks spewing Corn Flakes ash while a fiberglass Tony the Tiger happily waves unaware from the front lawn. Also whistling by like an apparition, the Jiffy company... “cornbread since 1932.” and MacMillan and Wife Hand Car Wash, around the corner from the Elite Barber Shop -- manufacturing and small business monuments to the people who wake up every morning at 5am, wipe the sleep from their eyes, brush their teeth, and drive to the factories and shops in order to keep food on the table, pay their mortgage and keep America moving forward. What other option is there really?
(So these are the people that make up that elusive and intangible “Main Street” Obama keeps talking about.)
The Joan Didion book on my lap is a welcome counterpoint to the novel I just finished, H.G. Adler's “The Journey,” with it's harrowing account of transporting Jews via rail to concentration camps during World War II. Perhaps, I was meant to take this rail expedition now, my own personal journey through the heartland to a destination that cannot be printed on any ticket. It is a trip, an exploration that doesn't allow itself to be purchased or fully articulated in a blog. Interestingly enough, this blog was meant to be an amusing travelogue detailing my date with a cocktail in Chicago and a review of the fabulously inspiring music flooding my ears from my iPod. But, you know what they say about the best laid plans.
(I wonder what Dorothy Parker would have to say about plans being laid end-to-end?)
Regardless, this is a journey we should all take at some point that doesn't require physical passage necessarily. The destination is already there if you take a moment to look closely enough. I am now reminded that much like the unnamed towns passing by at 70 miles per hour I have been here before and I will return to this spot a million times in my ahead with the gained insight that comes from being an accidental tourist, and the knowledge of a better stop just around the bend.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
back porch haiku
bamboo muhly sways
in time with spring's metronome
as summer tunes-up.
the wind in the leaves
passing secrets from Brazil
and Greece and Kansas.
water tithes the rock
flint shoals gleaming in sunlight
offerings to the Gulf.
in time with spring's metronome
as summer tunes-up.
the wind in the leaves
passing secrets from Brazil
and Greece and Kansas.
water tithes the rock
flint shoals gleaming in sunlight
offerings to the Gulf.
Monday, March 30, 2009
waiting to inhale
A close friend was recently kind enough to let me smell one of his books.
Now before you cart me off in a tumbrel, or start dialing 9-1-1, or 3-1-1, or whatever you do in a situation like this, allow me explain.
Ask any card-carrying bookworm: There is no finer fragrance than the interior of a yellowed tome with its notes of far-away lands, and an hermetically sealed universe that can only exist within the confines of a front and back cover. Some would rightfully argue that a book is a passport; a best friend; a portal into other people's fate, to be consumed as leisurely or voraciously as the reader would digest it. A good book is better than a good meal any day with nary a chance of acid reflux.
When I was a boy, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in self-imposed solitude, living through the pages of as many books as I could get my hands on. I found myself consistently laden down with pounds of age-appropriate literature from the school library, somehow managing to later steal more adult titles from the shelves of the neighborhood bookmobile to feed my precocious quest for carnal knowledge.
Of course, there really isn't a point to any of this. Taken at face value, it is just a few paragraphs thrown together in a virtual shrine of the written word. Perhaps it is a call to arms for my fellow compatriots to continue fighting the good fight, reading the good paperback, forging forward against the wind, Oprah Book Club selection raised firmly in hand for everyone to see.
Besides, you can always sniff it later when nobody is watching.
Now before you cart me off in a tumbrel, or start dialing 9-1-1, or 3-1-1, or whatever you do in a situation like this, allow me explain.
Ask any card-carrying bookworm: There is no finer fragrance than the interior of a yellowed tome with its notes of far-away lands, and an hermetically sealed universe that can only exist within the confines of a front and back cover. Some would rightfully argue that a book is a passport; a best friend; a portal into other people's fate, to be consumed as leisurely or voraciously as the reader would digest it. A good book is better than a good meal any day with nary a chance of acid reflux.
When I was a boy, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in self-imposed solitude, living through the pages of as many books as I could get my hands on. I found myself consistently laden down with pounds of age-appropriate literature from the school library, somehow managing to later steal more adult titles from the shelves of the neighborhood bookmobile to feed my precocious quest for carnal knowledge.
Of course, there really isn't a point to any of this. Taken at face value, it is just a few paragraphs thrown together in a virtual shrine of the written word. Perhaps it is a call to arms for my fellow compatriots to continue fighting the good fight, reading the good paperback, forging forward against the wind, Oprah Book Club selection raised firmly in hand for everyone to see.
Besides, you can always sniff it later when nobody is watching.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
what is a depression, and who is it to me?
Who wastes time fretting over whether the glass is half full, or half empty? What we really want to know is whether it is water or whether it is gin? Changes the equation entirely.
Brings to mind all of this incessant hand wringing over what to call the current economic downturn. A recession? A depression? A retrenchment? A Barnum-and-Bailey World?
Oh, come on... it's only a paper moon after all (and hopefully not one made of common stock, or cheese for that matter, although they are now worth about the same.)
Regardless of what term we settle on, all this daily sturmundrang has me wondering if the mere attempt to classify said blemish on the nation's fiscal complexion is what is leading to the stock markets steady decline.
It seems to me -- and I'm not one to give away my age for a cheap cocktail and a bag of peanuts -- but during the original Depression of the 30's, people just made due. They rolled up their collective sleeves and went to work righting the economic ship that was helmed by an improbable captain, FDR. They did not wallow in despair or self-pity, or go on Oprah to blab how much worse off their plight was than their neighbors.
If I see one more waif publically plead her case about lack of good roles for women before the national media, I'll just turn the channnel. That's what I'll do.
In the end, if we are forced to wear oatmeal boxes for shoes, make our own clothes, or drink from Mason jars again, so be it. I shall be the very last person to complain. Just make sure you that you fill that jar half full.... no water please.
Brings to mind all of this incessant hand wringing over what to call the current economic downturn. A recession? A depression? A retrenchment? A Barnum-and-Bailey World?
Oh, come on... it's only a paper moon after all (and hopefully not one made of common stock, or cheese for that matter, although they are now worth about the same.)
Regardless of what term we settle on, all this daily sturmundrang has me wondering if the mere attempt to classify said blemish on the nation's fiscal complexion is what is leading to the stock markets steady decline.
It seems to me -- and I'm not one to give away my age for a cheap cocktail and a bag of peanuts -- but during the original Depression of the 30's, people just made due. They rolled up their collective sleeves and went to work righting the economic ship that was helmed by an improbable captain, FDR. They did not wallow in despair or self-pity, or go on Oprah to blab how much worse off their plight was than their neighbors.
If I see one more waif publically plead her case about lack of good roles for women before the national media, I'll just turn the channnel. That's what I'll do.
In the end, if we are forced to wear oatmeal boxes for shoes, make our own clothes, or drink from Mason jars again, so be it. I shall be the very last person to complain. Just make sure you that you fill that jar half full.... no water please.
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