Deep Shit

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 18, Verse 4

"A wise man's words express deep streams of thought."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Sometimes I wear silly socks because, sometimes, I wake up feeling silly.  There are pretty much two ways for men to go as far as socks are concerned: boring and outrageous.  There's very little in between, unless you consider argyle to be a sort of footwear middle ground.  I like argyle, but I still think argyle socks are boring, unless they're pink and green and yellow and then they're really just for Easter or the golf course. 

Or both.

I don't know when I started wearing silly socks.  I know I didn't wear them in high school-- I was way too insecure-- and it wasn't in college either.  In college, earth tones were my close friends, and I didn't deviate from the brown family too much when it came to clothes.  Or food, for that matter.  Have you ever noticed how comforting brown food is?  Look at your Thanksgiving spread tonight and count how many foods are brown.  You'll think to yourself, "Wow-- that guy's into some really deep shit!"

Or not.

I love to wear silly socks because, by and large, when you cross your legs and people see them, they smile.  I don't especially go out of my way to receive attention, in fact, I'd much prefer to hide under a blanket for the rest of my life, provided it was the right blanket and someone brought me a steady stream of brown food to keep me from expiring and losing weight I can't afford to part company with, but I do like it when people smile.  And when they laugh.  Silly socks aren't going to make anyone slap their knee or piss their pants, but a smile's good.  Smiles are good.  I like your smile.  You have a good smile.  Don't believe me?  Go run into the bathroom for a minute and check yourself out in the mirror.

I'll wait till you get back.

.............................................................................................

See?  I'm still here.

My wife's smile is the best.  Her eyes light up and the skin around them creases in all the right ways and she shows her beautiful teeth.  She has lots of different kinds of smiles.  I like the smiles she gives me when I'm being bad.  Deliberately bad.  Obscene or inflammatory, uncouth and ribald.  The smile that says, "I shouldn't be feeding into this behavior, but I can't help it."  

I love those smiles.  And I love to be bad.  Always have, at least, ever since I learned how to be bad.  I don't know where I learned it from.  Probably television.  Kids are always learning shit from television.  And Grand Theft Auto.

She claims that her smile is deformed-- from her brain surgery.  That happened almost ten years ago.  For a while, it was noticeable, one side turned down, but, if it's still that way and I don't think it is, I guess I just don't notice it anymore.  I don't see it.  Maybe because I don't want to see it, or perhaps because I'm not looking for it.  Why would I?  

If anyone's smile is deformed, it's mine.  I have a denticular disability-- I can't show my teeth when I smile.  Or, "won't" is probably more accurate.  My smile is thin-lipped and sad, slightly pained, thoughtful, wistful, almost coming out against itself, in spite of itself.  It's there, but it's rare.  There's a lot going on with it, and behind it.  But the smile is a good cover.  Just like my socks-- they hide feet that are flat as a desk top, nails that are thick, yellowed and cracked, and an odor that, as the day wears on is reminiscent of a hoagie left out in the Arizona sun for about a week.  Silly socks.  They're good to have around.  They're my smile.  And they're more for you than for me.  

Happy Thanksgiving.  I love you.

It's Like This One Big AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 18, Verse 2

"A rebel doesn't care about the facts.

All he wants to do is yell."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

It's been a while since I last screamed my fucking head off at my father.  I don't remember what it was about, although I'm reasonably sure it had something to do with him interfering in some fight or other between my sister and I.  Me and my sister?  My sister and me?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I used to think I could teach English.  These days I'm lucky if I can speak it better than the average guy who cuts lawns around our neighborhood.  That was a racist thing to say.  I am a racist.  How do you do?  Nice to meet you.  I love you.

My father can really take a beating, that's why I abuse him.  And because we love each other and so I know it's okay.  It's okay to hurt people if you love them-- didn't you hear that song/watch that movie/see that play/take that psych course/eat that poisonous apple/drink that antifreeze/pick that pepper?  

Well.  Didn't you?

I don't scream much anymore, about anything really.  College was a great time for screaming.  I screamed at ex-girlfriends, at friends, on stage, in my car.  There's a lot to scream about when you're 18-22.  It's a good screaming age.  Many of the confederate troops belting out that REBEL YELL were probably in that age bracket.  Some younger.  And they died.  What a bunch of assholes.  

When you're thirty-three, what is there to run around screaming about?  The homeowner's insurance payment that's due in January?  Vacuuming Basset Hound hair off the rug for the third time this week?  The pile of papers on the desk that you're blithely ignoring while you're blogging?  The phone that doesn't ring because the only person who calls you is sitting five feet away from you sewing costumes for a play that neither of you are in?  

That's nothing to scream about.  It's nothing to write home about either.  Good thing I'm not writing home.  I'm just writing.  To you.  To your home.  I'm in your home.  What are you wearing?

See?  Not only am I a racist, I'm a creeper.  You under the covers now?

I still want to scream about things.  There's scream left in me.  Eye scream.  

HA!

But I don't know where the energy is to move it out.  Up and out.  Up and at 'em.  

MARCH.

It's like eating something bad and not having the careening bile to push it up your esophagus and out of your mouth.  Something's not there.  Something just broke.  There's something happening here.  

At the hospital, we get all freaked out when people scream.  We say we won't, that it's a healthy way to get angry, but we're lying, 'cuz we're staff.  It's a good way to get attention-- nobody gives a fuck about you if you're just doing your thing quietly.  But if you're screaming, we'll all come out in the hall and stand there waiting.  What are we waiting for?  You tell me.  But we'll stand around, acting faux-casual, like nothing's going on.  But something's going on.  Because you're screaming.  

That's how we know.

Screaming scares me.  It scares me when I do it and it scares me when I hear it and it really scares me when someone's doing it to me.  Screaming at me is not something I like.  I can look you in the eye while you're screaming at me and I can feel your spit on my face and your nose grease on my nose grease and I can look at you with dead eyes because hey if you hit me you hit me what the fuck can I do about it?  Look at me.  Gimp limbs and gawk-eyed hawk-eyed hook-nose dumbfounded and confounded and consarnitall sometimes it's better to just get it over with.  I have been screamed at and have not reacted but all the while I've been shitting in my pants.

Proverbially speaking, of course.  I like all my pants too much to really do it.  I also lack the initiative.  

I wanna feel hot again.  Hot enough to scream.  Passionate about something.  Furious, enraged, out of calmer more rational alternatives.  I want to roar and bellow and bellyache and go on a tirade and go on a tear and go on and on and on about something I just can't express any other way other than to rage in your face.  

Against the machine.

Against all odds.

Against my better judgement and my humble, servile nature.  

Obsequious.  Deferential.  Apologetic for my very existence.

I'M SORRY.

Something like that.

The Widow's Laugh

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 25

"The Lord destroys the possessions of the proud but cares for widows."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

There's so many documentaries and specials and docudramas and God-knows-what-all-else is just coming out of the woodwork and out of the static and out of the screen such that it's searing into your eyes, seeping in through your fingertips and sliding into your veins.

After all, tomorrow's November 22nd.  

Where were YOU.

I don't know where the hell my parents were.  I haven't asked them, and I probably never will.  It's not that important, not to them, not to me.  There are dishes to do, you know.  She was fourteen, discovering life guards in Atlantic City.  He was fifteen, one year away from trudging through Israel's deserts with a rifle in his hands and a 60-pound pack on his back.  

God only knows.

There was a piece on the radio today about how the Boston Symphony got interrupted midway through with the announcement that Kennedy had died.  Some members wanted to not play the rest of the concert.  It was decided that they would, that they would help the audience heal through their music.  I wonder if it worked.

One of the stories I read today was about Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit's widow.  Her name is Marie.  She's still living, a great-grandmother at 85.  

"He was a Christian man," she said of her husband, whom Lee Harvey Oswald shot dead as he was being questioned on a street in Oak Cliff.  "He went to church with the family; we prayed together. He was a good police officer. He loved his children, and I always knew that I was loved."

She always knew that she was loved.  I guess, even if you do lose your husband on some Dallas street for damn near nothing in the blink of an eye, it doesn't get much better than always knowing you were loved.  

You have this idea about widows-- what they're supposed to look like and talk like.  How they're supposed to be thin-lipped and sullen, staring at the floor, or out the window-- right through you.  They look right through.  They may laugh at something, later-- later, you know.  But it's different.  It's the widow's laugh.  And it isn't phony or tinny or forced.  It's sincere as can be, but it's broken, somehow.  Like a Limoges saucer with a chip in it-- still pretty and functional, but it's not 100%. 

My sister's a widow.  She's still pretty, and functional.  But she's not 100%.  She's broken somehow.  She's always been touchy and emotional.  Dramatic.  And I want to be of use to her, not to do things for her or to clean up after her, but to make her laugh or let her know that she is loved, but I find that I'm inept, fumbling, bumbling, stumbling.  It doesn't work.  It's not clicking.  It's not happening.  Something's broken somehow, not just in her, but in us.

Her husband was appallingly ripped away from her, not by a gunman's gruesome bullet, but by ravenous, voracious cancer; unceasing and insane.  At the funeral, she stared right through everyone; it was terrifying and I knew something was over somehow.  Some part of us as a family was over.  Maybe it had ended years earlier and I was just too self-involved to notice.  I used to call my mother, absolutely panic-stricken about how "our family is falling apart!" but not that it's happened, there's no more fear or anxiety about it.  After all, fear and anxiety are all about anticipation.  That's the stuff that all comes before.  

This is after.   

Finding Center

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 28

"A good man thinks before he speaks;

the evil man pours out his evil words without a thought."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

The year was 1988, or '89 maybe.  I don't know.  Maybe it was '91.  It's hard to keep track when you get to be older, and you judge the passing of the years by what body-style Chevy Caprices the local police department was using (they'd just mustered in the first of the "upside-down bathtub" cruisers in 1991.  I remember seeing one parked on the street during my fifth grade graduation.  That's how I know I was in fifth grade, and that's how I know that I think I might have Asperger's, and a law enforcement fetish.

Anyway, my sister and I were fighting outside, as we often did.  I didn't mind making a spectacle of myself in those days the way I abhor public displays now.  I'm one of those rare actors who absolutely hates being the center of attention.  I have to be told, repeatedly, to stand center stage by the exhausted director.  For most performers, finding center comes naturally.

Right, so, back to the front yard of my parent's house.  I'm however old I am, and she's three years older, and we're fighting over Christ knows what.  Who got to sit in the front seat, who got to have a pony for Yom Ha'Guiliani-- whatever it was.  Kids get so worked up over dumb shit, have you ever noticed that?  One minute you're sitting there, eating your rice and beans and the next minute some kid is having an absolute shit over the fact that he didn't get his face painted by Nylon the Clown at the local Jiffy-Lube.  Kids.  You know I love 'em!  

And speaking of kids, I was a kid once.  There I was, on the front lawn like a jerk, yelling at my big sister.  Boy, did we have some hair in those days, let me tell you.  Hair to spare we did!  Boy, howdy, did we.  I looked like Moe from the 3 Stooges.  Yessiree, I rocked that Beatles-ass shit for near on thirteen years.  It was only at the old Bar Mitzvah did I think to part the shit-strands, and I guess nobody in my family dared suggest anything of the sort to me for fear I'd have a fucking aneurysm or something.  Kids.  You know they're always having fucking aneurysms or something!

So, back in time we go-- into the old DeLorean back to my parent's front lawn and I'm just going ape, like a tapir.  It's funny-- it's pronounced "tape-ier" but I don't know-- looks like there should be an extra letter in there.  What the hell do I know, though?  Not much about much, and I think that's probably pretty obvious to you.  Must be what keeps you coming back to this trough, you disgusting little pig, you!  You squealie little dealie!  Reading this makes you feel better about yourself!  I GET IT NOW!  SO I'M THE FAT GIRL YOU GO TO THE MALL WITH AND YOU DON'T MIND THAT I EAT RANCH DRESSING OUT OF THE BOTTLE WITH MY FIST BECAUSE NEXT TO ME YOU LOOK HOT!  

Meh. I'm okay with that.  An audience is an audience.

Now, my sister and I, we could really go at it.  I'm sure you've got stories about how you used to push your little brother's face into the gravel driveway until he had to have little pebbles and bits of glass surgically removed from his gum-line and that you once doused your cousin in propane and cause a five alarmer and got sentenced to juvie until you were 21 and then had your criminal record expunged so that you could get a job at that local middle school and have nobody be the wiser, and I think that's great.  Good for you, Stan!  We've all got stories.  Did you know that EVERYBODY'S GOT AT LEAST ONE NOVEL IN THEM?  Well, everybody's also got Gram-positive coccus-shaped bacterium in their mouth, too, but I wouldn't go around bragging about that to Terry Gross now would you, FISH-FUCKER?!!!

So we're doing the old tit-for-tat thing there outside, and it's nice weather, see, and people are milling around, walking their dog or their streptococcus and everything is going fine.  Except these two kids are fighting.  And it doesn't take much to disrupt suburbia.  No.  It doesn't.  Did you know that I once called the cops on the guy who came to read our water meter?  They jumped on his ass, too.  Classic.

And the thing to remember about fighting is that, when you're all sweated up and getting into it, you're not really thinking about what you're saying.  Especially when you're seven.  Or eleven.  Or however the fuck old I was.  Come to think of it; you're never really thinking no matter how old you are, because people just don't think, do they?  No, we're not very good at that.  We're all kind of basically idiots when it comes to being smart, I do believe.  And that's okay, because there's one thing we human beings are really good at; and that's annoying the piss out of each other, and it's not so easy to do that if we're hemming and hawing over every little grammatical positioning of each little phrase we may come to utter, or not, because we're too goddamned busy thinking about it.  And, when push comes to shove, there's nothing in the world like telling your sister at the top of your lungs in the middle of a quite spring warmth of a gentle southeast Pennsylvania neighborhood to go dip her vagina in duck sauce.

Check Yourself

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 9

"Evil words destroy, Godly skill rebuilds."

---

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Think there's no such thing as "evil words"?

Think again, sport.  

I bought my 2001 Volvo V-70XC station wagon on October 25th.  It's November 14th, and tonight marks the third time those fuckery little words showed up on my instrument cluster.  

ClusterFUCK!

FUCK!!!!

What the FUCK?!!!!!

Now, I don't want to panic or start obsessively rubbing gravel and bits of glass into my eyes and prostrating myself before the Swedish God of Oxygen Sensors, but I'm frightened, I'M VERY VERY FRIGHTENED!

As is the case with this blog entry, I don't know where this little vehicular tale is going to end.  When I purchased this car, it had just a hair under 90,000 miles on it, which is extraordinary for a vehicle that old.  On eBay, you see Volvos of this vintage for sale with two hundred thousand, two hundred fifty thousand, there's one or two with over three hundred thousand miles on the odometer.  So, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that, when I purchased this car I had visions of us staying together for an appreciable length of time.  I envisioned my bony ass and my scoliosis-laden back pairing up with that sculpted, heated, sumptuously and cowliciously-appointed leather seat to be a supullent, sexcellent marriage.  

Now, I'm filled with doubt.  Gout.  It's spouting out of my grout.  And so I sit here and pout, and you know what about.

About evil words.  Those two orange, evil words.  

You don't typically think of orange as an evil color, a color of the devil.  Orange is the color of autumn, of clementines, of Fiskars pinking shears.  Sorry-- my wife sews.  Hey, and speaking of my wife: orange is her favorite color.

How the hell could orange be evil if my pretty buddy loves orange?  

And yet, there it is:

  

Again.  For the third time.  First time was $310.  The dealership I bought the car from paid for that repair.

Phew. 

Less than a week later, it was $435.  That was on me.

ZING!

Now?  Who knows?  It's an expensive Swedish car.  The possibilities are limitless.  Maybe it needs a new thrånkenheuser.  Or a rotating flaçsêknävs.  Could be it needs its skleàâng adjusted.  Your Ikea-hued guess is as good as mine.  I just don't want the car to turn all Christine on me.  Because, if that lovely hunk of sheet metal parked outside is indeed going to rob me blind and rape me bloody, if those evil, evil fuckety-fuck-fuck words are going to come back to haunt me every two or three weeks or so, it's going to be a painful ride for both of us.  

That's right: both of us.

    

I'm Trying to Look Like Slim

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 1

"To learn, you must want to be taught.

To refuse reproof is stupid."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

The psychiatrist likes to ask if I'm "cured yet".

Maybe it was cute on the first follow up visit (it wasn't really) but it certainly wasn't on the third, and especially not after he kept me waiting for thirty-two minutes, only to see me for a grand total of three-and-a-half.  

"Well," I said, crossing my legs like a girl the way I do, "I think I'm cured in a manner of speaking."

"Yeah?" he said, staring confusedly at the keys on his flip phone, which I wanted to grab out of his hand and eat.

"It's cured me of a desire to talk about myself."

He furrowed his brow-- you know, wrinkled it up a little bit, put his phone down in his lap and he looked at me.

"Well, that's a little unusual," he said blandly before adding, for good measure, "Maybe you're incurable." 

Cute, isn't he?

---

It is, I have to admit, getting to be a little much.  I mean, I go to therapy once every other week-- every week, if I'm feeling someone shy of thrifty, I see a psychiatrist-- what is it-- every two weeks to talk about pills that do nothing for me-- and I blog about myself twice a week.  That's enough to make anyone who isn't a complete, bow-wrapped narcissist throw the hell up.  So I'm giving serious consideration to bagging the whole enterprise: therapy, psych, the meds, all of it.  Who was I before?  A skinny, sour little bastard.  Who am I now?  Well, I think you can see where this is going.  Since, however, I am getting awfully sick of talking about myself but still, apparently, like to write, I suppose I ought to spend tonight talking about somebody who isn't me, myself, or I.  

But, who?  Who's the lucky little fuckeroo?

It's Veterans' Day, so I thought maybe I'd talk about my father.  He's a veteran, after all.  Of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War.  You know, not an American veteran.  He's American now, but he wasn't then.  So I don't know that he counts.  I don't know what he thinks about on Veterans' Day.  I don't know if it means anything to him.  Probably not, since other "days" that are applicable to him: his birthday and Father's Day, for example, he eschews with a certain vile, vulgar verbosity.

"FACK DAT SHIT!" he screams, twisting his face in disgust, "BUNCHA FACKIN' RETARD DAY, PLEASE!  LIKE I NEED SOME FACKIN' ASSHOLE TO TELL ME TO FEEL SPECIAL?!  GIVE ME A BREAK ALREADY!"

And you're standing there holding a card or a present or something and then he kisses you tenderly on the cheek.

"I love you, Mummy.  Thees ees bee-yoo-teeful."

I'm not really related to many other veterans, I don't think.  My mother's father was in the Navy, as were his brothers.  I'm not sure they saw much combat.  My great uncle Morris was, though, shot in the stomach in South Philly by some asshole who was trying to rob his fruit stand.  Legend has it that Morris collapsed on top of the guy and wouldn't get up until the police got there.  

That's what my people do: we scream obscenities, then kiss you, or we lie on top of people and bleed.

---

I don't think I'd do too well in the armed forces.  Fortunately, I don't think it'll ever come up.  Between the asthma, flat feet, scoliosis, mental health "problems" and the projectile bed-wetting I think I'm pretty much off Uncle Sam's dance card, but, if it did, I think there'd be some problems.  I don't mean necessarily with cowardice.  There have been plenty of situations that occurred at the hospital that required me to summon up some courage and risk getting seriously assaulted by some psychotic guy (or gal) who was much bigger, stronger, and hyped up than I, not to mention someone who didn't have to play by crisis intervention rules, and somehow I did it.  So I don't think that would be the main problem, I think the main problem would be that I wouldn't know where to shoot.  

See, I know what you're supposed to do in the army.  You're supposed to be there, standing there, holding that M-4, or RPG or whatever the fuck it is, all square-jawed, trying to look like Slim, and I don't think I'd be able to pull it off.  I'd probably kill someone I'm not supposed to.  I'm not a real visual learner-- and I hear in the military they use a lot of maps and pictures and visuals and shit like that.  But see, I'm not a very spatial learner either.  And forget kinesthetic.  My body's about as useful as a eighty-seven-year-old paperclip that's been left out in the rain.  And auditory?  When people talk to me I tune them out almost instantaneously.  I asked a coworker a question today.

"Didn't we talk about this, like, on Friday?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered, "but I wasn't listening."

"I'm gonna kick your fucking ass," she said.  Then she repeated what she told me.

"Okay," I said, "got it."  Then I stood up, walked four steps towards the door and forgot most of what she'd just said.  She was talking about 50/50 raffles.  I could care less about 50/50 raffles.  I won one once.  I bought tickets, but I didn't know what I was buying them for.  Then someone gave me $96 a couple hours later.  It was the greatest fully clothed moment of my life.  

---

He wanted to up my dose, or change to something "a little more potent."

"No, I don't think so," I said, staring at the ten year old phone he was playing with, "let's just stick with this and see what happens."

"Hm," he said, pushing buttons, "most people aren't that patient."

"I'm not patient," I said, "I just don't care."  

This is how I volvo

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 2

"Proud men end in shame,

but the meek become wise."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm doing it again.

Apologizing.

Apologizing, for my car.

And I hate it, but I feel compelled to do it.  It comes up and out of me like vomit that sears my throat and my nostrils, but it's unstoppable.  It's propelled up my esophagus by guilt and pushed out of my oral cavity by embarrassment and fear of being judged.

The way I judge others.  The way I judge.

But people are judging me.

Aren't they?

"Oh!  You drive a Vol-vo?"

They like to put the emphasis on the first syllable.  VOL-vo.  

If you say "Volvo" enough times, it starts to sound stupid, like any word.  I didn't know what "Volvo" meant, so I looked it up.  The internet told me.

Volvo means "I roll" in Swedish.

A few years ago, I owned a 2002 Volvo S-40.  It was a very nice car.  It had beige leather seats and fake wood trim everywhere and it had ass-warmers.  And I loved the car from the moment I sat behind the wheel, all through the ride home, until the first acquaintance I knew saw it and said, "Oh!  A Vol-vo!"  And I instantly knew that I did not deserve to be driving this car.  

For the first time in my life, I had committed the sin of purchasing a car that was above my station.  If you think that America doesn't have a rigid class system like England or even a caste system like India, just try to earn $30,000 a year and by an old luxury car.  People will put you in your place, without meaning to, without trying to be unkind, without even thinking about it.  It'll just happen.

I had owned a Volvo prior to the S-40.  When I was sixteen, I drove a 1989 Volvo 240-DL.  You know, the time machine that looks like it could have been made in 1954 or 1967 or 1975 or 1989.  Nobody made me feel weird or uncomfortable about driving it, because it was Volvo's entry level car, and it had blue cloth seats and maybe four buttons on the dashboard.  I don't remember whether it had heated seats, but I doubt it.  It was about as spartan and basic as it got-- Volvo's version of the original Beetle.  An underpowered, no-frills people mover.  But, unlike the original Beetle, it was a safe underpowered, no-frills people mover.  And I guess the fact that we bought it for $2,300 and that nobody I knew when I was sixteen knew enough about cars to know that Volvo was a big deal, plus the fact that I went to school in a very affluent area where all the kids drove BMWs and Lexuses and the teachers came to work in rusted out Chevettes and Sentras probably had something to do with it, too.  My Volvo 240-DL blended in anonymously.  

And now, all these years later, I'm on my third Volvo.  A 2001 Volvo V-70 AWD.  When it was new, it cost nearly $40,000.  With the trade I offered, I got it for $1,300.  Not bad.  It was driven less than an average of 7,000 miles a year and it's gorgeous.  And I love it.  

But it embarrasses me.  Or, I'm embarrassed by it.  It's too good for me, or I'm not good enough for it.  

When people see it and they say, "Oh!  You drive a Vol-vo!"  I am very quick to jump in and say, "Well, an old Volvo."  For good measure, sometimes I'll add, "It's thirteen years old," or, for added dramatic effect, "you know I was still in college when that car was built!"  Or, to ameliorate the person's good image of the car, I'll subtlety disrespect it.

"Yea, it's beautiful, but the gas mileage is pretty terrible."

But I'm really just dissing myself.  It's my poor self-esteem talking.  Why should I deserve to drive a car like that?  What gives me the right?  Leather seats?  Ass-warmers?  A moon-roof?  More fake-wood than I can shake a fake stick at?  A V-6 engine (my first V-6 in years), all-wheel-drive?  Come on-- who am I?  A Rockafella?

No.  I'm just a skinny little shit who found a good deal and he jumped on it.  And I try to enjoy it and, privately, I can.  When I'm alone behind the wheel or I catch a glimpse of it parked outside, I have to admit, I like it.  I like it very much.  One day, when we've been through enough together, I might even love it.  But, when I'm in the presence of someone else, I can't help but feel intensely self-conscious about it.  Like I'm wearing a huge, gaudy gold necklace with the Volvo symbol around my neck everywhere I go.  

And I want to just enjoy it all the time.  Because, one day, it'll be gone.  And I'll miss it.  I'll miss the exaggerated stitching on the seats and the roar of that powerful Swedish engine.  One day, I'll be sitting on a seat that's deficient, less satisfying, less glorious and scoliosis-calming.

But, for now, this is how I roll.  And I have to learn to be okay with that, no matter who's around.

By the way, her name is "Petra."  Say "hi" to the people, Petra.  

A King by Your Own Fireside

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 14

"Without wise leadership, a nation is in trouble."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

There's a tale I've heard that, in a certain Scandinavian country, if your car is too ugly, you can get pulled over and fined.  I don't know what defines, exactly, an "ugly" car-- I guess it's up to the individual Scandinavian type police officer to decide-- but, if it were up to me, anyone I caught driving a Pontiac Aztek would be dragged out of their car and Tased.  

Vigorously.

Fortunately for the huddled masses, I'm not a police officer, Scandinavian or otherwise.  I'd make a funny looking Scandinavian police officer.  But, no.  I don't wear a duty-belt, or a badge.  I don't have the authority to arrest and I don't sit on a throne with a golden, engraved scepter clutched in my hand either.  I'm not a monarch of the sea or a modern major-general.  But, if I were, if I were the king of the forrest, believe me, there would be hell to pay, of that you may be sure.

There would be a list of names you couldn't call your dog.  No Fifi.  No Biscuit.  

Sorry.  

You can't name your dog "Cat" either.  I know, it's pretty clever, but not while I'm King.  Or you'll get Tased.

If I were in charge of this shit, you wouldn't have to pay for postage, either.  If, that is, you can draw a really cool design on the top right-hand corner of your envelopes.  And it doesn't have to be Harriet fucking Tubman either-- you can draw whatever you want, as long as it's really cool.  Because, really, even if you're a great artist, how many people are going to necessarily see your art work?  Not that many.  Why not send it out in the mail?  If you're that good, why should you have to pay $0.46 or whatever the fuck a goddamn stamp costs now?  

You could do whatever you wanted to people who park your car in, if I were the king by my own fireside.  All you have to do is take a picture or their bumpers kissing yours to show the authorities afterwards and you're free to do anything you wish.  Shit on their hood?  Pinch that loaf!  Pour gasoline all over their Sentra and light a match?  Hey, they asked for it.  What the fuck, is your car invisible?  No.  It isn't.  It is not.

I wonder sometimes if I'd be the sort of king who'd want a jester.  I can't imagine that I would.  I'm a naturally insecure person, especially when it comes to my ability to be funny, and I think I would get extremely angry with a jester if he was terrible, or hilarious.  "We don't know how to be happy," my eldest sister once said to me.  She'd be a duchess, or a baroness, I guess.  Anyway, she's right, of course.  I wouldn't be happy with a jester, no matter what he wore or how he sang.  I wouldn't be happy with pratfalls and banana peels, or jester jocularity, jibe and joke or quip and crank.  Anyway, why should a king need a jester?  He'd, I would think, have a front row seat to all his kingdom's lunacy, hypocrisy, pain and palaver.  I can't imagine a need for a jester, making fun.  Who'd have the time to laugh, anyway?

But, then, I think we all know I'm not king material myself.  Too timid, too frightened, to swallowed up by his own anxiety and terror.  Too apologetic and abashed.  Too self-absorbed and self-effacing.  I would make a good king's scribe; dutifully crouched over a small tablet, furiously scribbling to make sure I catch every regal word, wordlessly correcting the royal grammar.  Fetching a bone for Biscuit.  Tasing the jester for being too bad.

Or too good.   

The Lexapro Isn't Working

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 5, Verse 23

"He shall die because he will not listen to the truth;

he has let himself be led away into incredible folly."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"So, how bad is this O.C.D. of yours?" he asked me.  Nobody'd ever asked it quite like that before.

I looked at him.

"Well, I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's definitely a part of me.  I mean, it's there.  Like, for instance, just this morning, I went to a conference, and it was downtown-- would have taken me twenty minutes to get there.  And it started at nine.  Well, my wife left the house at a little after seven.  I didn't have anywhere to fucking be, but I left with her.  So, I'm driving around like an asshole with nowhere to go, and I thought to myself, 'Oh, I'll go to Starbucks,' which makes sense, right?"

"Right," he said, furrowing his eyebrows.  He could tell I didn't go to Starbucks.

"So, I go to Starbucks, but, as I park the car, I remember, 'Oh, this guy I used to go to school with works there, and he's really nice, but I really can't stand interacting with people and making small talk and shit like that-- plus the mother of a girl I went to school with has some kind of intellectual bullshit discussion group at that Starbucks in the morning and I'll definitely run into her, in fact her car's in the parking lot and I really like her and I loved her daughter like a sister but I think I'll just sit here in the car for an hour'.  And that's what I did.  Idling, wasting gas, listening to fucking intellectual bullshit NPR like a dickhead dipshit asshole for forty five minutes until I couldn't take the anxiety of not knowing what traffic would be like and I left and got to my conference over twenty minutes early."

He looked at me.

"So, maybe this isn't working."  Pause.  "Are you feeling any... any spark?  That's what we're looking for; a spark.  Have you had moments like that?"

I looked at him.

"No."

-----------------------------

Maybe it's too soon.  Maybe that's it.  Or maybe I don't want it to work.  Or maybe they're sugar pills.  Or maybe I'm a horse.  Or maybe it's the day after Halloween and I should be writing about how my babies went as a Hershey's Hug & Kiss and how the dog at my wife's glasses while we were trick-or-treating.  Maybe I'm getting myself into trouble with my big mouth and my self-disclosure and oh, listen to that, my daughter's screaming.

Deal with that, would you?  I have neuroses to dissect.

Ordinarily, I'm a pretty decent judge of when things are or aren't working.  If I'm involved in a play and it's a disaster, I typically know it, though I am powerless to correct any piece of it aside from my own performance, and sometimes I'm not even adept enough to fix that.  I know when writing's working and when it isn't (this piece could go either way at this point) and I've known that my former romantic relationships were going down in flames while it was happening-- hindsight was not required, though it helped.

As for medication-- I don't know.  I'm not terribly aware of my emotional state at any given time to be especially keyed in to give a good report.  I feel the same as I did four weeks ago as I did fourteen years ago.  I don't know what to tell you, or him.  I don't know whether I should stay on this smack for the rest of my life just because I know I have anxiety and depression and all that other nonsense that goes merrily along with it, or if I should try something else, or just stick to drinking decaf and putting bacon on everything and split the difference.  

In the end, it doesn't really matter, because I'll be dead, and whatever decisions I've made or haven't made relating to diet and caffeine intake and psych meds and wingtips vs slip-ons won't really amount to much.  Sure, they seem like big decisions now, but really, who gives a fuck?  So I'll be a little more anxious, or a little less depressed.  I'll be out a $5 co-pay, or $10 when the insurance changes.

Whatever.

I don't know.

Would it have been such a Zen triumph over the ego or whateverthefuck if I'd gone into Starbucks that Monday morning and hob-nobbed effervescently with the guy I went to school with and the mom of the girl I went to school with and I traded witticisms with the bearded, latte-swilling members of her faux-Mensa group?  I do or I don't.  The therapist thins his lips or gives a wan smile.  Either way, I give him fifty bucks.

I think about death all the time.  Not suicide, just death.  It pops into my head at lunch or during sex or on a walk or a drive or when I'm holding my son.  It happens when I'm being cynical or brooding, but also when I'm funny or contrite, ballsy or bashful.  I don't know what it is, or why.  But I know there isn't a pill for it and, if there was, I don't know that I'd take it anyway because I don't know what, other than sex, I'd think about.  

It's silly, isn't it?  It's silly and strange and peaceful and terrible all the time.  Each and every day.  It's rainbow vomit.  It's a Crystal Light chandelier.  It's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

-----------------

"We'll try 15 mg and see what that does, okay?"

"Sure," I said.  "What the fuck, right?"