100 Chips of Wisdom

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 6

"There is treasure in being good, 

but trouble dogs the wicked."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"Chipped Wisdom" turns a hundred today.  100 posts filled with abhorrence, anxiety, acrimony, tumult, temerity, and tempestuous tummy-rot.  

Why, this calls for a celebration, but I don't think I'll be answering.  Celebrations just aren't my style.  I'm more into quietly farting in my corduroys, drinking Caffeine Free Diet Coke and watching "Frontline" on PBS.  The next one is going to air on March 25, and it's going to be about tuberculosis.  

Just so you know.

I started this blog, appropriately enough, on April 1, 2013.  It's taken me just under a year to wring out my brain with sufficient vigor to produce 100 posts, and, all this time later, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, for whom I'm doing it, or why.  Maybe no writers really ever get to fully ascertain the answers to those questions, and maybe that's fine for them and maybe it's fine for me, too.  I don't know.  

Three big things happened to me since I started this blog:

1.) I got promoted at work.  In July.  It's terrifying.  Nobody should be promoting me.  What's wrong with them?

2.) In April, we got a basset hound.  She's the most beautiful, awkward, lazy fucking thing I've ever seen.  And I love her.

3.) I shit-canned Facebook.  And that's recent-- happened last night. 

I suppose I should talk a little bit about why I did that last thing there.  Like most decisions I make on a daily/hourly basis, it was impulsive, hot-tempered, and arrived at through a mixture of bubbling vitriol and intense paranoia.  One shouldn't make decisions when one is angry and/or afraid, but that's kind of how I live my life.  Of course, I'm also afraid of being angry, so that rather complicates things, and means that, most times, decisions don't actually get made.  Which is maybe a good thing.  

The hospital where I work came out with a social media policy (Hello, 2004!) yesterday and I took exception to many of its dictates.  So, in true passive-aggressive fashion, I signed their policy, went home, and deactivated my Facebook account.  

Marc Zuckerberg clutched at my sleeve and implored me to think of all the minions I would be leaving behind.  "Your 483 friends will miss you!"  I laughed at that and hit the happy button and, you know what?  I feel pretty amazing.  And I don't feel pretty amazing in that "Aren't I so chic to be so iAmbivalent way?", I genuinely feel better.  Today, I sat down and wrote a long e-mail to a woman with whom I have been friends since I was in third grade-- my oldest friend-- who lives in California.  And she answered, in a way that really made me feel happy and satisfied.  There was no status to Like, no glib comment or shallow attempt at wit.  It was actual, real communication-- and I've been so hungry for it, and maybe that's what I'm doing here-- making some attempt to reach someone, anyone, in a meaningful way.  To matter.  To be good.

Because, on Facebook, I felt very, very bad.  A voyeur.  Playing at Oscar Wilde.  Mostly just promoting my blog and ignoring friends' birthdays and photographic evidence of their meals or their children's achievements.  And add to that feeling scared that somebody was watching what I was writing on social media was just the slick, stomach-upsetting icing on that Cakebook.  Do I have to start un-friending people in administration?  Or former colleagues from the unit?  Do I have to start worrying about who's "on my side" and who might get angry at me for something in the future and turn me in to the H.R. police over some dumb comment I made?  Why?  I worry about enough things-- both reality-based and thoroughly magical; I don't need that.  

Give me my anonymous blog, which can no longer be conclusively tied to me now that Facebook's gone, and leave me the hell alone.  Let me do my thing.  Let me have my creative outlet.  And, if you don't like it; change the fucking channel.

What's funny is that, now that I have cut the rope from Facebook, I have nowhere to promote the blog, so I have pretty much shot myself in the foot as far as readership goes.  This, however, doesn't bother me.  I was never really trying to connect with people I know; just people.  

You.

Whomever you are.

If you know me and love me or even just can stand being in the same room as me, or if you stumbled your way here as a result of Googling "Alpaca dildo", I'm okay with that.  Because you're here, and I'm here and, in the end, that is what counts.  

At least, I'm here for now.  I don't know if Chipped Wisdom will be here in 200 posts, though I suppose it's conceivable that it will be.  After all, I do love me my routines, don't I?  And, it's not like two posts a week is a particularly strenuous output, even for someone who despises changing his trousers every day (necessary when one of your hobbies is quietly farting in your corduroys) because it means the effort of taking off and putting on a belt, and switching the wallet and chap-stick to the new pair.  And matching.

Everything has to match.       

In the Top, Right-Hand Corner

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 1

"Don't brag about your plans for tomorrow - wait and see what happens."

 

---

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

It's 9:02.

 

In roughly an hour, I will be in bed.

 

In spite of the relentless, throbbing heat of the second floor of our house, I will sidle up close to my wife as I have done for ten-ish years and hold onto her as if she were a life-raft. 

 

Because, basically, she is.  A life-raft with glasses.  And moles.  I love to count her moles.  On her leg, she has three moles that are aligned in an almost perfect diagonal.  I like those three the best.  There's a crescent moon-shaped one on her big toe.  I forget if it's the left one or the right.  I'm not good with left and right.  They gave us numbers in first grade, and you had to put your number on every piece of paper you wrote on or drew upon, in the top, right-hand corner. 

 

Top, right-hand corner.

 

My number was 16. 

 

I wrote it on everything. 

 

You're never too young to learn that, in this life; you're just a fucking number.

 

Tomorrow, I will go to work and stare at a screen for a long time.  No one will tell me I have to write the number 16 on the top, right-hand corner of what I'm working on, but my employee I.D. number is 30014.

 

It's on my paystubs, so I know it's real.

 

Tomorrow I will do things and learn things and say things and I will say some stupid things and some insightful things and most of the things I'll say will pass for normal, banter, palaver, junk.  It's symbolic of JUNK!

 

On Sunday I had some direction about Monday.  But then Monday came and I did what I had to do for Monday and Tuesday, well, I just don't know.

 

I don't know about Tuesday.

 

There's a lot that I don't know.

 

There's a lot, probably, that you don't know either, but you're better at hiding it than I am, and I hate you for it.  No, hate's a strong word.  I detest you.  No, I adore you.  It's going to be okay.  I love you.  I love you all the time.  I love you in the top, right-hand corner.

 

I am Number 16. 

 

It was suggested to me today that I use my anxiety, channel it, use it as a springboard to thrust me into the work that I have to do.  I liked that suggestion.  I don't know how to do it, but I liked it.  As I may have said before, I like suggestions, and I often take them.  So don't suggest that I go fuck myself.

 

That was a joke.

 

That joke is symbolic of JUNK!

 

My mother used to love planning for tomorrow.  She had a clothing chart that she would make every Sunday-- she'd sit herself down in the living room, cross-legged on one of those stupid marshmallow chairs that they just got rid of, and she'd take a spiral notebook and she'd make a list of what she was going to wear to work, Monday through Friday-- the navy blue blouse with the green leaves and the big orange blossoms with the green linen pants and the beige sandals.  She even wrote down which earrings she'd wear, too.  I don't know if my mother still makes clothing charts anymore.  I don't know anything about her anymore.  Not really.

 

If I had to guess, I'd bet that she doesn't make clothing charts these days.  These days her life is filled with mourning the loss of her son-in-law, and helping to bring up her grandson and, when there's time, squeezing my babies in for a visit every now and again.  She's tortured by ghosts, tormented by a very painful reminder that life blows-- a reminder she hadn't received in many decades.  The seventies, eighties and nineties were good to her-- no, great.  They were great.  But it's been crash-and-burn time lately.  Who can plan for tomorrow when you don't know what the fuck is going on today, or what the hell happened yesterday?

 

I became anxious in second grade.  64 math problems in 5 minutes.  I wasn't Number 16 anymore, and I had to put my name, my real name, on the top of this paper and do 64 math problems in 5 minutes. 

 

It never happened.

 

I always shut down.

 

Shivered.  Shook.  Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong.

 

Ring-a-ding-ding.

 

DING!

 

Time's up!

 

One time I got a zero.  Didn't even try.  Couldn't.  Or, wouldn't.  I don't know.  Still.  Ever get a zero on something?  It's hard to get a zero, even in second grade.

 

Second graders shouldn't have to know anxiety.  My thing is, if it's a thematic element in any given Woody Allen film, you don't need to be experiencing it at seven years old.  But there it was. 

 

And we always knew when the tests were coming, because that corduroy pants-wearing Nazi would tell us, and so I knew.  But I couldn't plan.  For tomorrow.  There was only dread.  No nightmares because there was no sleep, not for years. 

 

These days, as the full-time workerbee father of twins, I can't help but fall asleep moments after I scoop my wife up in my arms.  There's lots of waking up way before the alarm clock says, "Number 16?  Time to shine," but, for a few moments, there is peace.  Peace.

 

Let us have peace, in the top, right-hand corner. 



Good Old Sergeant Chevalier

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 20

"Ambition and death are alike in this: neither is ever satisfied."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"The Pink Panther Strikes Again" is, arguably, his best Panther.  Peter Sellers absolutely shines in what is a pretty poorly-constructed film.  Its plot is outlandish and ridiculous, though criticism of the plot of "Pink Panther" films is, in itself, as ludicrous as critiquing the plots of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, or, frankly, soap operas, but the slapstick comedy is some of the best you'll sever see on film.  This film boasts the quintessential Cato vs Clouseau fight-- it's as long as it is hilarious, and very creative-- and one of the best pratfalls performed by one of the best prat's (and the best prat's stuntman, too, no doubt).  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 33 delicious seconds of Sellers: 

Beautiful, wasn't he?

One of the quieter moments of the film takes place on the pastoral grounds of a psychiatric hospital where Chief Inspector Clouseasu's former boss and rival Chief Inspector Dreyfuss has been involuntarily committed after Clouseau made him crack.  I know, I know, no one can make you crack.  Anyway, Clouseau and Dreyfuss are making a painful attempt at congenial small-talk, and Dreyfuss asks after some old colleagues.

"Sergeant Chevalier sends his regards," Clouseau says, trying for conversation.

"Sergeant Chevalier?  Ha ha ha-- good old Sergeant Chevalier.  How is he anyway?" asks Dreyfuss.

"Ah, well, you know, there are some who will be leaders, and some who will be followers.  Sergeant Chevalier, I'm afraid," opines Clouseau, "will always be a follower."

Dreyfuss can't help laugh at this, with a maniacal twitch of his eye.  

"And you, Clouseau, a leader?  Eh?  Always a leader?  Onward and upward to the top?!"

"It is my destiny," says Clouseau, "my karma."

I believe more in Peter Sellers than I believe in destiny or karma-- at least I know he existed once.  My mother is a big fan of "everything happens for a reason" which is kind of like the poor man's destiny.  I can remember, a short time ago, interviewing for a job and telling the Executive Director, "Look, I don't have designs on your job.  I just want to come in, and do a good job for an organization I care about.  I don't mind being a cog in a wheel.  I just want it to be a good wheel."  And don't you know she offered me the job?  I told her that "I basically have no ambition", and she offered me the fucking job.  Gotta love America, right?

Ambition is a funny thing.  Those of it who have too much scare the shit out of everybody, and those who have too little everyone writes off as an ass-scratch nail clipping.  I'm somewhere in the middle, but definitely closer to the ass-scratch nail clipping than, say, Mussolini.  In everything except theatre.  If there was a part in a show I wanted, I prepared for that audition.  I am an aggressive auditioner, and I will try everything I know how to do to charm my way into a director's heart.  Pants.  Whatever.  And, unlike smarter actors, I won't take another part if it's offered to me.  I am a child.

I want THAT one.

WAAAAA!

And, usually, I get what I want where the footlights are concerned.

Life is a different story.  Since college, I haven't run or walked so much as crawled.  My occupational path hasn't been linear or logical or luminous.  It's been what it's been, and I'm tired of apologizing for it.  There is a cadre of boys with whom I was very friendly back in elementary school, and they're all doctors.  They all went to the same college, and the same medical school, I think they fucked some of the same chicks and now they're all doctors.  And that's fine for them.  That didn't happen to me, partially because I didn't want it to, and partially because I can't do math without counting on my fingers and the scientific extent of my life is occasionally contemplating watching an episode of "NOVA".  But I went off that show when they re-did the theme music. 

I suppose I'm a little bit like Sergeant Chevalier-- a follower, but I'm not always sure who I'm following, and I don't know if that makes me better or worse off than the fictitious Surete police sergeant spoken about by Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers on that insane asylum bench.  I got a new position at work-- a promotion, we can call it, because I suppose that's what it is.  And I am extraordinarily grateful for it but I'm also terrified of it.  I know that I will disappoint a lot of people if I fail to perform my duties-- not that I'm even all that sure what exactly my duties are at the present moment-- and I know that the stakes, for me and for my family, are too high to crash and burn on the runway. 

Things change as you get older, and I'm not just talking about the cartilage erosion in your knees. It used to be that my ambition was to not say something idiotic during a date, or to get through a shift on the ambulance without ripping off the light-bar at a drive-thru restaurant.  Back then, that was a big fucking deal.  Today, everything feels like that.  Every second of every moment of every breath of every footstep is terribly, dreadfully important, and my ambition now is to make it to the next moment, the next foothold, the next sip of coffee and we're striving and it's furious and the wind burns the cheek and the desert goes on forever, at least, I hope it does.  Because good old Sergeant Chevalier will always be a follower.  

And I was known as the Pavlova of the parallels.