* SKOOL DAZE BLUZ

(The following effusion was inspired in part by my awareness that I seemed to be "rushing" out blog posts now, knowing that I wouldn't be able to expend nearly as much effort when school started.)

I imagine that damned near EVERYONE who has grown up in a Western nine-month school system has internalized the same seasonal-emotional clock: the clock that says, with the end of summer, something painful comes. Whether your particular school starts in mid/late August or after Labor Day, it's that same archetypal turn towards the "Fall of Man," both a darkening of the seasons and an imprisonment of the soul: i.e., SCHOOL.

And it also really doesn't matter that much if you're a student or teacher, young or old. ALL know that two-weeks-to-go shudder, that beginning-of-the-end-of-pleasure "I-have-to-do-something-now-before-it's-over!" As a child, I knew it, even though I also knew that, as a poor kid whose only love was books, it wasn't that great a loss. As a young man without a job, though, I especially felt it, perhaps, since watching Jerry Lewis & his marathon without having found a real job YET meant true failure, according to the natural order/timeframe of things. (That is, without a job, I should by all rights be in school now, in some fashion or another, doing something!) As a middle-aged curmudgeon with a teaching job, yes, there's the pressure of syllabi and handouts and trying to concentrate the mind beyond the ephemeralia of blogs & "radio rants"—and yet my classes actually do deal with many of the issues that I'm so po'd about in these blog entries.

But still—yes: the body's, and society's, clock says it's the end of summer, a death, a finale, a funeral for the soul. But like that toothache I blogged about before—it's rather a delicious pain at this point in my life, an acknowledged product of the heavy fruits of consciousness. [Geez, I came off sounding older than I am. I hope.]

* Tom's Garlic Toast

I mentioned in my last recipe that garlic was my "favorite vegetable." In fact, I used to munch on raw cloves, for the sheer rush. In contrast to that namby-pamby store-bought garlic toast (using garlic salt or powder?), here's an "in-your-face" version:
1. Prepare garlic by chopping several garlic cloves (I prefer pretty big pieces, 3-4 per clove).
2. Make 2 pieces of toast.
3. "Butter" toast.
4. Sprinkle chopped garlic over toast, so that each bite will hit a piece of garlic.
5. Do NOT make spaghetti, or whatever. This is a heavenly repast unto itself.

* Subliminal Appeals on Cable News?

Several of the main cable news channels are displaying a visual of Hurricane Dean as a marquee in one corner, as it tears through the Caribbean. But sometimes when I'm channel-surfing and not thinking (happens a lot), I suddenly come upon this visual and see at first—gasp—a BREAST. And the hurricane's eye is the NIPPLE. "I do not know what makes me see these things." (Hey, that was iambic pentameter. Cool.)

* The Tao of Toothaches

I'm finally getting over another 4-5 day period of toothgumtraumapain, and I'm still surprised how surprised I was at that "old" feeling, when I shouldn't have been. The feeling I refer to is how monomaniacally obsessed one becomes with one's own debilitating pain, to the exclusion of all else. Work, food, love—"F--- it all: I've got a tooth that's killing me!" . . . Quot. of the Day:

For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently. . . .
    --Shakespeare

And the mere philistine that I am endures it even less well.

And I don't think that I'm being especially masochistic in noting that such acute & enduring pain becomes a talisman of sorts, almost a blessing in its ability to concentrate the mind, to constantly remind you that you're alive, that {ugh} "life is pain"; to teach you that your holy list of Immediate-Things-To-Do is an utterly ridiculous thing, at last—a lesson that I'm forgetting again already! Indeed, it's not entirely unlike an unsolicited vision quest or a near-death experience: if only one could keep that "vision" more within the view of the glass-darkly lens of everyday consciousness. (NOT that I'm hoping for more dental trouble. Please, no. Please, no. Please, no.)

* Nicotine Dreams

As I briefly mentioned in a previous blog entry, the warnings for the nicotine patch include those damned "vivid dreams." If these occur—oh, no!—one must "consult" one's "physician." (Now there's a waste o' money.) With the patch on as I sleep (to misquote Wordsworth), "I am the dreamer—Nicotine, the dream." I haven't dreamt so well since I earnestly kept a dream journal, as a budding Freudian/Jungian in my undergraduate days. Dreams that seemingly last for hours on end; dreams that are seemingly as cogently plotted as a movie. (Okay, as coherent as a double feature of two movies by David Lynch, maybe.)

And Freud is right again, at least regarding wish-fulfillment. I'm dreaming once again—or more obviously, at least—about things I want to do, not about anxieties I have about waking life: 1) I'm playing guitar for long periods of time (and swear I can ALMOST remember new licks I've come up with in the dream); 2) I'm spending lots of time with my daughter, and with other family members whom I haven't seen in years (incl. my dear dead maternal grandma); 3) I'm even having quite—uh—Freudian dreams about old girlfriends, and, again, for LONG periods of time; 4) and finally, yes, I'm even smoking the occasional cigarette!

Don't pinch me. I'm dreaming.

*Hell=The Root of the—Canal

I got a root canal this morning. No pain, no prob., in a physical sense, but the true hell of the thing was mental. I assume that the dental industry has done lots of consumer studies to get to this point, but the point sucks: I was forced to listen to "piped-in" 60's rock thru the whole thing. (No, it wasn't even a real radio station: this was "elevator" music, on a long loop, I'm sure, for the dentally challenged.) I remember some episode from a 1970's horror series à la the Twilight Zone (Night Shadows?) in which some hippie-loadie dies in a car crash and gets sent to Hell—to a place he thinks is the waiting room thereto, with several elderly people listening to Lawrence-Welk-type music. He waits & waits . . . and finally realizes that he's waiting for nothing, no form to sign, no confrontation w/ Mr. D. This is his eternal (waiting-room-of-a) HELL. Aside from the doo-wop-rock crap, there were a few tunes by the Stones & Beatles, etc., that I actually liked; or used to like: they were totally out of their rightful, their righteous, context. I was being drilled into; I was not in the mood for either musical pablum OR the Beatles singing about "Revolution." I wanted either silence, or—hell—give me Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," over and over, and over and over. At least let the music be a constant fit metaphor for my current psychic condition. Don't jack me around with "pretend" bourgeois "ain't life great" ditties when surgery into the jawbone is involved. Geez, I just want the à propos!

* The Untranslatable (this really BYTES)

[I just got my first outside reader's feedback on my book manuscript, but (I couldn't open the attachment)—]
Question: If a Windoz document gets sent to a Mac computer, and it can't be opened, does it even "make a sound"? What is the sound of one OS "clapping"? Does being a (humble-Zen) disciple of the iMac, and of iTunes, and of the i-bloody-universe(-that-is-Maya) necessarily make you a fan of—uh—e. e. cummings?

<do loop eternalreturn.c>
i
don
't
know
<repeat loop>

* Complete Filler!

This blog entry is COMPLETE FILLER. You see, I'm disappointed that I don't have as many blog entries this month ("as per usual"), and I need more. So here's _one_. . . . You see, I spent much of the first half of this month among people, and family (those bastards): "not that there's anything wrong with that." And I spent a good deal of the rest of it OUTSIDE, driving backroads around Lincoln, and neighboring counties, and even up to South Dakota by-ways, watching, uh, BIRDS: "not that there's anything wrong with that." (And rendered my relatively new car a veritable rattle-trap-clap of a vehicle: but it was worth it.)

But I'm back, in earnest, to the Macintosh and to the digital world. I just revised and submitted an article on the Passenger Pigeon to a journal (yeah, one of those lame, uh, print, things, but younevermind); I'm getting ideas about doing something actually funny with the John&Martha cartoon series; and I'm back to converting the rest of my Classic/OS9 documents to OSX versions (mostly WordPerfect and HyperCard; the bane of my existence right now).

You see, I have fruitfully once again forgotten any human contacts. Yes, my daughter in Colorado just had some traumatic dental work—I sent her flowers. Yes, my wife is at wit's end regarding her job, her son, and her raison d'être—I told her that I'd take her to a nice Indian restaurant the next time she limped her sad—auto into town.

So you NETmeisters who thought I'd abandoned our posthuman project—never you mind! I'm back!

* Life's Little Riddles

How do you know when sauerkraut's gone bad?

* A Movie Review of Sorts (Tryin' to Relate)

Saw Shrek the Third tonight, alone—just had to get out of the apartment. Plus, memories of seeing the first Shrek with my daughter (who now lives in Denver w/ my 1st wife) probably urged me on, memories from when she was still so young that we shared one bag of popcorn (with chocolate-covered raisins dumped in for good measure), when she hung upon and cherished every clever & knowing aside that I whispered to her. And of course, she always ended up eating nearly all of the chocolate; I wasn't there for the candy.

The movie itself?—ho-hum, especially compared to the first of the trilogy. The best scene is the parody of contemporary high schoolers (at "Worcestershire High"); the best line soon follows: after Shrek has just tried to talk "hiphop/street" to young Artie, the latter runs towards a house they've come upon, screaming, "Help! I've been kidnapped by a monster trying to relate to me!"

My daughter Em is now fifteen, and I'm sure, as she's spent time with me the last couple summers, she's already wanted to shout these very words! . . .

* Of Space and Time

Moving to a larger town makes you realize how much one's "geography" is based upon perception & subjectivity. Those few days/weeks driving in Lincoln (NE)—why, it took forever to get anywhere! . . . because I was noticing every little novel thing. But a few months later, and hell, that 10-mile drive to Wal-Mart takes no time at all. It's habituation: one simply stops paying attention. . . .

From space, then, to time: just so is the "habituation" of childhood to adulthood. As a kid, everything was so new and full and vibrant—and it seemed to last forever; but to the adult (for whom the "world" has been "too much with us," for whom the "glory & the freshness" of those first days have fled), time itself goes so much "faster," as whole decades fly by the "driver" who scarce bothers to look out the car window anymore. [based on a January 2004 journal entry]

* Of Birthdays & House Cleaning

I didn't even remember that it was my birthday until I got an e-card from daughter Emma in Colorado. Before that, by "chance," I'd been performing the bi-annual chore of cleaning this filthy apartment (I omit the grisly details)—and I'm still cleaning. (There are two main downsides to a long-distance marriage: having to scrub a whole life-space by yourself is one of them.) But then I thought, how à propos, how almost cliché in the analogy—this supposed renouveau of my birth-year, and this cleansing "rebirth" of my wretched abode. (Well, it'll be "reborn" for a week or two, anyway.)

* Stories from Strangers

[Based on a February 1991 journal entry:]

You're leaving a room or a store or a restaurant where some stranger is engaged in telling a lengthy humorous story to some other strangers, and you give the teller a look that says, "Yes, I wish I knew you better; I'd stay and hear the rest of such a charming tale"; and the stranger reciprocates—or so you imagine—with a knowing glance of total, however tacit, appreciation.