A few days ago, I accidentally left the freezer door ever so slightly ajar for a few hours. I didn't notice until I was about ready to go to bed and when I opened it to see the damage I had done, small flakes of snow came tumbling out. They had collected on the bottles there, clustered in small piles on sealed bags.
Today felt like a bad day. There's nothing I can point to really. Nothing was much different than any other day. The setbacks were no greater than usual. The worry about the imminent tomorrow no more urgent than yesterday. And yet everything seemed a little harder. The criticisms a little sharper. My guilt cut a little deeper. At the end of the day everyone else had left and I was rushing to get something out before running off to meet up with friends. And yet ... I don't know, maybe it's been all this rain.
There are things that I keep a secret, dear reader, because things aren't special if everyone knows them. There are stories than you can't flip to the end and understand. Jokes that won't make you laugh if the timing isn't right. There are dreams that need the freezer door to be ever so slightly ajar. Those snowflakes were so sad and beautiful; I knew that I could not keep them forever.
It must have been something I ate.
For the second time in as many months my entire gastronomical system has been whipped. So, with aches in muscles as well is in my head, I drive to work delirious. Over the weekend I went up to Tahoe with so friends. After two days of snowboarding in a sometimes moderate fall of snow, I was beat. I fell asleep on the table in the cafe where we waited for the roads to clear. It's those kinds of sleep that you don't want to wake up from because when you do, you're often groggier than when you nodded off. I felt like that driving into work today, which wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday. Call in sick you say? I had roughly five and a half hours of meetings yesterday and a few more negotiations this morning. But for the most part I've been pretty useless.
Groggy and driving into work sans music, the mind wanders. I remembered a boy I hated in elementary school. I remembered a girl I liked. I remembered the embarrassing things I did to catch her attention. She lives in Sacramento now I think. There was another girl, the one I went to prom with, she's married and living somewhere in the LA area. I wonder why I can remember some of these things so vividly, when I can't remember names of the runs I went down just a few days ago. My body aches with the weight of nostalgia and curiosity. It's grey and rain dots my windshield. It might as well be a night like Friday, filled with driving snow and treacherous roads. I'm not where I am.
This probably doesn't make much sense. I've been operating without a compass lately. My sextant is broken and the clouds obscure my way. I might as well shoot an albatross while I'm at it. I'm always thirsty. In the evenings I'm at home cold and quiet. I'm not hungry even though I haven't eaten all day. There a necessary inconvenience that's missing. There's an "excuse me, I have to take this," that I long for. I don't know if any of this makes any sense at all.
It must have been something I ate.
I've been pulled over five times in my life. The first time was some months after I had gotten my driver's license. The cop tailed me for a good two or three miles before I noticed him and started to slow down. That's when he pulled me over. He was very nice about it and I was properly chargined. The second time I was following my girlfriend back down to southern california when a cop pulled us and a couple of other cars over. We were doing 90 or so down the 101. All I remember was being a little upset and the sun setting over the mountains near the coast. The third time I was back from school and drive around late one night in my hometown. I made a quick right turn and immediately two cars with STUPID, WHITE cops pulled me over. They claimed I had ran a red light. I told them that was a green arrow. They told me there wasn't one in the intersection. I told them that there were two cars and to go take a look. Eventually they figured out that there was a green arrow there and the let me go. Eventually I figured out that it was because I wasn't white that they pulled me over.
When I'm driving I have this bad habit of watching things in my rearview mirror. If I pass a slow moving car, I want to see if that slow moving car is holding up other people. If I pass someone who is driving erratically, I want to see if they continue doing the same. It's a horrible habit, it's not likely that things that you pass are ever going to affect you anyway. That is, unless it prevents you from seeing something going on up ahead.
The fourth time I was pulled over I was in the passenger seat. This girl and I were speeding through the grapevine and the cop had just finished giving a ticket to someone else. After the usual business was done, the girl I was with remarked, "If you weren't I probably could have gotten out of it. Oh well." I took no offense; she probably could have. The last time I was pulled over was yesterday. I noticed him behind me at the stop light before the on ramp. I got up to speed and he tailgated me, so I signaled and changed lanes. He had started to exit the freeway when he made swerve hard to the left and got behind me again. I signaled and changed lanes again. He didn't signal and started riding my ass again. I decided that the proper thing was to move over to the right and let the quicker traffic pass me to the left. That's when the lights came on. "Have you been drinking?" "Not a drop." "Are you tired?" "No." "You were swerving." "I was trying to let you pass."
No matter what, it causes your heart to race. Sometimes it's because you've done something wrong and you just anticipating the punishment. Sometimes it's because you haven't and you're just angry. After my car was broken into, I learned that all automotive glass is tinted. As I'm racing down this highway often I get a tinge of road rage. Sometimes I just gotta remember it's just the tint in the glass.
Last night, after driving half an hour in sometimes torrential rains, I arrived home. When I stepped out of my car, I noticed a gecko clinging to the roof. I stared at this unblinking thing in wonder. I thought about tossing out into the damp night, but then, figuring that it had earned it's place atop my car, went inside and shut the door behind me. When I left for work this morning, I thought it might still be there, perched like some stately raven of yore, but it had moved. At least I know now that it was still alive.
This weekend I went to visit my brother's family. With a toddler and an infant, going out to eat is pretty much the same as running a circus. I remember when I was little, I would slip underneath the dirty tables at chinese restaurants and play there. My mom still likes to tell stories about what a hand full I was. Yesterday when I was picking up a cake from the bakery, a little boy ran in, nearly bumping into a gentleman who was holding a cup of coffee. Sometimes I think that not much has changed. A couple of decades of living has made me more wary of blind corners and quickly moving objects. But I still sometimes miss the warning signs that tell me I should slow down.
Today, driving into work in my now usual silence, I noticed that I didn't miss my stereo all that much anymore. I managed a hundred and a half miles over the weekend with just the wind and rain to keep me company. When it was first stolen, I didn't think I would last a week. Now it's been more than five and it gets easier every day. I look at my niece and I wonder if my attention span is really any longer than hers, if i'd have the mental tenacity to hang on to a moving car, through rain and wind and darkness for an interminable time. But perhaps it'd be better just to slow down and stop listening to all the doubt on the radio; turn off and start listening to the simple joy of getting there.
I came across this article. I've linked Part 2 of the article because it has a link to Part 1 and not vice versa. Even if you don't know sports or who Jamie Escalante is (google people, google!) it's still a good read. This was my favorite part (all quoted text is Malcolm Gladwell's):
"I was watching golf, before Christmas, and the announcer said of Phil Mickelson that the tournament was the first time he'd picked up a golf club in five weeks. Assuming that's true, isn't that profoundly weird? How can you be one of the top two or three golfers of your generation and go five weeks without doing the thing you love? Did Mickelson also not have sex with his wife for five weeks? Did he give up chocolate for five weeks? Is this some weird golfer's version of Lent that I'm unaware of? They say that Wayne Gretzky, as a 2-year-old, would cry when the Saturday night hockey game on TV was over, because it seemed to him at that age unbearably sad that something he loved so much had to come to end, and I've always thought that was the simplest explanation for why Gretzky was Gretzky. And surely it's the explanation as well for why Mickelson will never be Tiger Woods.
Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so?
The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder."
The people I knew in my class in college fell, for the most part, in two categories: smart procrastinators who did just enough to eek out an A or the occasional B, and diligent studiers who usually managed a B or a C for all their hours spent. I never knew how to console my friends in the second group when they came back with their grades from a midterm or a final. I always admired the people who struggled and managed to do the best they could with what they were given. But often it's not enough in this society. If you're smart, great, go out into the world and succeed. If you're not, sorry, go find a job at McDonalds or in the Oval office.
My favorite part of the dialogue was this:
"When I asked an Ivy league admissions officer why the SAT is such a lousy predictor of how good a student is going to end up being, he said to me (memorably): 'People take the SAT when they're 18. When you're 18, we can't even predict what you're going to be like three hours from now.'"
Recently I bought a lock. The last time I used a combination lock was in 8th grade for PE class. So it makes sense that this lock is also intended for use in a gym. Sometime I walk around with it in my pocket and if I'm waiting around I'll take it out, open and close it repeatedly. I do it in the car too, when I'm stopped at a light or in heavy traffic. There's something satisfying about being able to open a lock -- working the black dial quickly to the right, reversing it twice, then pulling the shackle and hearing the cylinder release. For me it's like having a little secret than only it and I know. We whisper it back and forth to each other when we're bored. Best of all, it will never accidentally let the secret slip, it will sacrifice itself before it betrays me. And, when I am old and I have forgotten the combination to this lock, it alone will remember this secret that we shared.
Night watch: A movie review in question format
What is it about the eternal struggle between light and dark that intrigues us so? And the paradox of choice that seems to plague us at every turn. Our great epics are all written thus, pitting the light within against the darkness outside; usually using a small boy or other innocent as the symbol of light, or ironically, an Arthur Miller type tragic hero seeking some sort of redemption. It is the essence of the romantic to be epic and grand in scope. What better stage than one shrouded in chiaroscuro and supernatural conceits?
What is it about foreign language films in limited release that have gained so much popularity? The critics decry, "Hollywood and pop music are dead!" -- even though they are prominent enough to hate. The truth is you can't be indy if there isn't a mainstream. But there's something so worldly watching a movie in a language that you don't understand. Especially when the subtitles crowd and cower about the screen, these displayed synesthesia fading into the Gloom.
What is it about films made on a tight budget? The rugged editing and raw acting seems so much more real than the polished blockbusters from the City of Angels. There's a sort of respect and empathy for these rough diamonds. As if there's a measure of every man that's lost in the hundred million dollar budgets; and found again on the cheap. Why is it we default to routing for the underdog?
I don't know what it is ... but it's cool.