Archive for the ‘Piece of Mind’ Category
At Ad Club
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Last night, I saw the world between the slats of a wrought iron gate and the sky as pointed to by black spires. The post-six-o’clock sun warmed the front porch and the lost sand particles in with the cement mixture. At that hour, the sun burns off its last heat of the day before the fall nights dip into the 50s and lower – absolute blanket weather for anyone who keeps the windows slid open for a taste of fall. Fire ants and various other species of that kind are usually found in such places in the summer and spring, but either the day’s heat or the overnight fridgedness had driven the insects into hiding.
Casually dressed business men sipped beer and laughed hollowly at the stairs leading up to the historic, two-story house that is the headquarters for the Kansas City Ad Club. I sat, with elbows on my knees, waiting for a familiar face to arrive. I had a beer, too, Boulevard Wheat, in a red plastic cup set on a step between my feet. (more…)
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Tags: Business
Lunch Hour
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Moths that hatched in the final days of summer play above the overgrown grass and purple-headed weeds. They stand out, yellow, against the greenery, swooping into tangles and ducking out again, as though they aren’t finding what they want.
From thick spot to thick spot, they flutter on the wind, killing the afternoon, enjoying the warmth and the soft afternoon sunlight that’s overcome Kansas in mid-September. The temperatures have turned fall-like already and, though I ate lunch a couple of hours ago, I’ve decided to take in the scenery outside the corporate ofice complex from my car.
The main building here is surrounded fervent fields alive with buzzing and activity that most the workers notice. In a month, when the Earth has tilted some more, the volume will have lessened. Most of these afternoon creatures will freeze to death or go into slumber for the next season, when winter thaws to spring and the buds turn red and purple on tree branches.
Fall, so appropriately titled, usually comes on in late September, a pleasant substitute for the siffling heat of August. But this year, with transition being so gradual and the warmth fading already, the summer seems to be dieing and the fall is truly more like a drop from grace or distinction – something more esteemed, maybe, than what it is now.
On the drive into work, I try to remember where the most colorful shrubs are – where vines are wrapped around tree trunks – so that in the depressing gray melancholy and dried wheat rows of eternal February, I can imagine bright spots.
Those days are nearly five months away, but in my age (which I still like to consider relatively young), the memory of last winter and its delay of spring are still fresh on my mind.
At 4 o’clock, the warmest part of the day, summer returns to these Kansas fields. And, the insects and animals are temprarily fooled that’s June or July again. I’ll be inside at that time in a sterile office building that is sound-proofed against this nature and nearby interstate sounds. Winter or summer, it matters not … my afternoons during work week are essentially the same. So these intermittent breaks at lunch time are the best way to gather the wisdom and to be prepared for another long, cold winter.
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Tags: Free Writing, Summer
A honey-blonde glare, the same color as rich wheat beer, outlines the rooftops and building features.
The sun sets on the Crossroads district with its blocks staggered like steps as they progress up the hill on Wyandotte Street. At the top is a beautiful church, watching over all this urbanity, the small creative boutiques, the real estate offices, and the apperent factories where workers in casual dress smoke and curse on a perfect fall night.
The wind is nearly imperceptible close to the brick walls on the street’s west side. On the east, the wind comes barrleing down the block, picking up loose leaves and a concert flyer that’s come unstuck from a tarred telephone pole.
The edges on the buildings are sharp and pronounced against the perfect blue sky. Glass in the street lamps glow prematurely. And, the crickets in the long line tree branches poking through a chain-link fence along the sidewalk start chirping in anticipation of final sundown.
Cars parked streetside reflect the sunlight in big diamonds of white light. Jets from the downtown airport leave the sky streaked with white strips. I’m tired from a day spent writing and in anticipation of it. I feel as tired as the sun downs itself, burning itself in all the blueness, never able to overcome the coloring.
I walk these streets searching for inspiration, under the swooping power lines, past the gated, private parking lots, the trash dumpsters, art pieces in windows, empty salon chairs, hip lamps and lingerie, cafe windows with daily specials sloppily written on chalkboards. Then the breeze again, and I feel safe on these streets, transported to earlier in the summer when it was warmer and the anticipation greater. The more the searching goes on, the more I feel inspiration is looking for me a block over. Cross my path, something to capture on my handheld, a word painting or therabout, some sort of wisdom to impart.
Where does the mosquito come from in all this, circling my long sleeves futilely? If it were June, I’d have my blood sucked and he’d fly off with a fully tummy, back to the overgrowth in the lot by Southwest Boulevard. For now, he’s out on his own search, hoping to cross paths with warm red blood, and in that sense he’s not unlike the vagrants that wait for singles to walk down the wrong alley carrying whisky money in their pockets. I feel connected to the few living things I can see and hear.
The sun is half gone now as I walk only in shadows. I sit on the sidewalk ledge and look down the hill. I thinl about the big hill near my childhood home that we’d ride down wildly on skateboards hoping the wheels didn’t lock up on the chestnuts that would fall from overhanging trees. At this angle, the speed would be intense and too fast to stop, so the rider would have to jump off and abondon his board and watch it careen into the street.
Cars turn off and on Wyandotte, disappearing behind rows of buildings, brakes squeaking on even the newest model cars. Downtown at twilight, though, the streets are mostly silent and more like they were historically than they are during the day time.
The sun is down and I decide it’s time to turn my eyes to another street.
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Tags: Downtown, Free Writing, Summer
Fish
Monday, September 15th, 2008
Seldom does any section in a department store hold childrens’ attention as well as the toy aisles. But for our kids, the fish tanks are a major attraction.
The back-lit boxes stuffed with psuedo-seaweed and mock treasure fascinates them not necessarily because of the beautiful whipping tails and booping mouths that bubble with life, but also the lifeless bodies that swirl around randomly and at odd angles, running face first into glass, lodging in fake plants and aerators.
Our youngest child, who will turn three next week, has learned much about death in the pet aisle. She took me by the hand tonight to show me a tank at her eye level. As I stooped, I heard her whisper, “See, it’s dead.”
And, it was.
There was use in shielding her from the sadness on obvious display with an innocent mistruth. The truth has a way of presenting itself sometimes, and it rose to my lips instantly, as if I’d already been caught in an unspoken fib and needed to come forward to clarify something long misunderstood. “Yes, it’s dead.”
No bigger than my pinky and aswirl in orange and white, the fish spun against the bottom of the tank on its eye. I wondered, then, how well they are taken care of here, but then remembered I’d never seen an employee tending to them unless a customer had purchased one and stood waiting for the net to scoop up the right fish. But it’s not the care that kills most of these fish, it’s the poor breeding that leads to sickly, short lives as miserable as the final deaths they die.
This little fish, I suppose, didn’t die in vain. My daughter noticed it and it was enough for me to think of the value our society puts on life (or the lack thereof.) That fishes life, because it is tiny amd quiet and can be recreated, is nearly worthless and is treated so, not as the tiny package of life it truly is. My little girl, as tiny as she was when was born, was no less precious then because of her size than she is now. Maybe at her age, she’ll learn to grow up to care for all types of life and actually do something about the smaller ones that can’t protect themselves and the best they can hope for is to be noticed, in death, to pass on a hard lesson to be learned.
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Tags: Kids
Praise be for Sunday afternoon solitude, the animals wrapped in their own bodies on cushions around the room, and the warm cup of steaming hot coffee filling the house with smell. Praise the remote control pointed at a television switched off earlier in the day on which the day’s big football game never played out. Praise the sounds of neighborhood lawnmowers whirring to life seconds after the quarterback throws an incompletion that puts a merciful end to the home team’s ugly drubbing in a familiar stadium – three hours wasted rooting for the losers and now they’re out trudging through the lawns wet from a week’s worth of rain.
These men, as evidenced by their bellies, are given to drinking beer on game day. I doubt that they realize the quiet moments of relaxation they are missing out on witht the televison going all day or some loud activity to sidetrack the. But their wives know and they must recognize it the same way I do when all that is supposed to be done on Sunday, as usual, is either accomplished or postponed to the next weekend prior to 4 p.m.
Most of the houses on the outside appear to be quiet. Through the thin opening in the screen door, I can hear heavy breathing dogs in the backyard, chasing each other from fence to fence, around the trees and small piles of mulch. When the dogs stop to take a drink from an old aluminum water bowl, the sun breaks through, the faces of houses seem to smile as the paint on them brightens. All of outdoors except for the locusts is dead silent as everyone looks up to see the great light sourse that has wrapped itself in clouds the deepest gray it was though the sun and sky were attending a funeral with big, wet downpours of fat tears. I am gradually tiring, just sitting here and enjoying the quiet while the children sleep.
Nearly every weekend, about this time in the afternoon, I start to think about heating what’s left of the morning coffee, the last murky cup or two that’s been sitting in the pot since the warmer clicked off six or maybe eight hours ago. This is the last part of the pot that my wife thoughtlessly pours down the drain if she chooses to drink coffee so late in the day. For those of us new the coffee realm, pouring out so much of the pot seems like a total waste. My wife claims drinking a pot several hours old is wrong and that the taste is stale. But as a novice, I taste no difference. I drink not for taste, but for the false energy.
Now one of the cats has decided to lay on my lap where I balance the cup as I write. Each time the dog barks, he lifts his head in fear, and then settles back in to his purring. I am envious of his ability to sleep in the afternoon, to carelessly burn the day while his master is hard at work, attempting to perfect a craft that can’t be perfected. Constant writing fueled bu coffee and false passion, at least for today, rates far below an afternoon nap. The day seems quieter now as I start to dream about sleep. The sun goes back to its favorite resting place of late behind the clouds, and the day grays up again. In the winter, the melancholy of a day like this together with a drafty house are plenty enough to send me to a heated bed for sleep. Today, though, there is jusy enough summer left and black coffee to keep me gaining ground on a decent first novel.
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Tags: Sunday
