Full Stop

We park differently, and our parking differently betrays the existential divide between us. She is a confident huntress, sly and patient, always gunning for a closer spot, tightly orbiting her destination until her quarry reveals itself and certain that it will. Whereas I am quick to settle and reluctant to risk a worse predicament, always preferring sure-but-distant spaces to the fearsome uncertainty that lies beyond them—an uncertainty that breathes in joy and blows out dread, all fangs and tentacles, come to life for the sole purpose of slightly inconveniencing my passengers and me.

Meant To Be

When we began the excruciating process of shopping for a house, we unknowingly divided the world into believers and nonbelievers.

On the one side, those kind souls eager to comfort in times of frustration and hopelessness, urging patience and always seeming to draw your eye to some divine schematic that, enlarged properly, clearly illustrated the smallness of your heartbreak when viewed in the context of a grand design.

And me on the other, never really feeling the pull of fate one way or another, never convinced that the dead ends led to a destiny more fitting for me, even when that destiny threw open its doors, offered up some comfortable patio furniture and invited me in.

Ghosts of Beach Street

And there's always Chinatown, where I am anchored. An infinitely layered and relentlessly delicious playground for me in all my permutations: the friend eager to catch up over dim sum and coconut buns, the idle bachelor in need of a destination for a long summer walk, the boyfriend flirting over plates of squid and tofu and egg, the brother too heartbroken to finish his dumplings, the husband being repeatedly cued to wipe some remarkable sauce off his chin.

Marks

 


I was introduced to The Winter of our Discontent when I was just out of college, where I had studied literature a bit but had never really enjoyed it. It was one of a handful of books—Hell's Angels and The Illustrated Man among them—that opened me up to reading and imparted me with certain images I still love and will never ever shake.

The astronauts drifting endlessly away from each other in space, the boozy journalist beset upon by bloodthirsty hooligans, the semi-suicidal man walking into the ocean and back out again, a razor blade in his pocket.

I only mention them now because I have started re-reading The Winter of our Discontent and it is stirring up all those old fondnesses.

So I am remembering those old books and the girl who lent them to me. And I am thinking it's a strange thing, the way different people leave their marks on you.

In Very Fine Company

And looking at her across a plate of blood sausage and pickled cherry tomatoes, cozy among good friends and sleepy in the dim light, I breathed a great big breath and knew that things were good.

Socotra Notes, 3/19/13

There are flies on your toes, ocean waves in your ears, goat shit underfoot and great itching. There are army generals with bags of khat marinating between their teeth and the sides of their mouths, who, charged with sexual energy and far from their wives must walk down to the sea or go up to the mountain to cool down and sleep. The tea is sugary and the drums are made from sheep’s skin, warmed in fire and played for hours in the company of your curious guests. 

The men gather to eat and talk and the women orbit in dark veils and beautiful robes, with piercing eyes and giggling children. The beaches are littered with crab pyramids. The vultures have scraggly yellow heads and the ghosts of Indian House Crows haunt the trees. The sand dunes pile along the sides of great rock cliffs, rippling like ocean water. 

And the sound of Ismael’s voice is soothing and musical, flowing over everything and making every rock, every sandy stretch, every shrub, every ant, every hopeful hitchhiker, every great buzzing wasp, every delicious sweet potato, every premature date, every fisherman and goat herder and gas station attendant, every piece of garbage, every dusty jawbone, every severed goat leg, every drop of turquoise water, every bug bite, every bowl of fresh bread, every bottle of non-alcoholic Beck’s beer, every journal entry, every photograph, every call to prayer, every short-wave radio signal, every ache and itch, every dirt stain, every healing cut, every passport page, every winding road, every fly, every hand shake, every cup of tea, every star-eyed child, every fish carcass, every empty water bottle, every wet bathing suit, every civet cat sighting, every cushion, every conversation, every straining squat, every cramp, every circling buzzard, every flickering butterfly, every bare foot, every biscuit and every flat tire a part of his stories. 

And behind it all the hazy threat of spider bites and scorpion stings, a mild electric current that buzzes softly beneath the radio static, bird song and storytelling.

Guy Who Sometimes Slowly And Awkwardly Runs Short Distances Gets Hit And Killed By A Car

Sometimes when I’m jogging I worry that if I were to get hit and killed by a car, someone would write a headline that reads something like “Jogger Gets Hit and Killed By a Car.” It’d be a real insult to anyone remotely committed to jogging.

Bricklayer’s Fate

“It’s like that brick wall,” he said. “That brick was laid probably over a hundred years ago. The men who laid the bricks are all dead. No one knows who they are. But here’s this thing they left behind. And you and I can admire it and talk about it and take shelter behind it. My buildings will outlast me. And that’s why I’m not afraid to die.”

A Possibility Is Percolating

And there it was, quietly percolating beneath the television hum and the fish tank filter trickle. Barely audible in the pauses between dog yawns.

Almost unnoticeable.

But noticeable after all.

The Red Heading Of A Two-Headed Beheaded Fish (A Dream I Had)

In an office with V. He is hanging a blind in the doorway so we can keep the door open but still work in privacy. He gives me a strange glass jar because I’ve been doing good work.

I go to the bathroom, but the toilet has no water and is stuffed with trash.

At a bar, nursing a small glass of scotch. A is there, drinking alone at a table. We make awkward eye contact. She leaves, and others begin to whisper about her.

It’s night and I’m riding a bicycle up 128. I have no energy. I’m weaving between lanes and I don’t think I’ll make it home.

At a pet store. Two giant creatures are displayed in an oversized aquarium. They look like polar bears wearing sports jackets. I travel the length of the store, and discover a lounge in the back. It’s empty and there’s a dry ice machine.

With E on a building rooftop. It’s night and the heights make me uncomfortable. We’re discussing a movie we’re going to make. My ideas are sad—his are funny. We decide this makes us a good team.

He has a sheet of paper. The ideas written on it read like a list of foods. Some are written in the form of Mad Libs, like ___________ kabob.

E is laughing as he explains each one. One item, he says, is the red heading of a two-headed beheaded fish.

The Other Day At Band Practice

The other day at band practice, Ben, attempting to correct Christian on the structure of a song section we were working on, said without pause or warning, “No, no… it’s meow, meow, meow… then a Texas,” illustrating that no proper, conventional terminology is ever really safe from the corrosive qualities of a tantalizingly silly and private nomenclature.

To Poop Among The Beasts

250 miles from mainland Yemen, where women are occasionally beheaded for sorcery and American drone strikes target a flourishing al-Qaeda contingent… 50 miles from Somalia, whose waters are dotted with pirate ships… on as island the size of Rhode Island, home to tarantulas, scorpions and centipedes found nowhere else on Earth… I will poop under the stars like a wild animal.

Along The Trail, Among The Dead

We left the road, picked up a trail that led us into the woods and made our way up the hill, stopping occasionally to catch our breath and admire the plants. The patchy fog, the light, the wet earth—it was all so weirdly colored, just slightly surreal.

Here and there the vertigo would catch up to me, especially on the steeper inclines, or where the sides of the path suddenly dropped off. But it would always pass, leaving me a little less sure on my feet.

Eventually, we reached a graveyard built into the steep, steep hillside. It was virtually vertical, with stairs along the side that led up and up and up. We climbed, me following slowly and unsteadily behind.

At the top there was a fence. We leaned against it, the graves in rows below us, the city of Hiroshima stretching out in all directions.

Between Islands, Just Floating There

Farther and farther from the boat, feeling ourselves ease down the food chain, we drifted and drifted. And a great big school of fish—little silver ones—appeared suddenly and without warning. And they were everywhere. And you could hear them. Millions of tiny popping sounds all around, in every direction. We held hands.

Ypsilanti

 

When we arrived, a surly woman cleaning up behind the bar was there to greet us.

“Where you boys from?”

“Boston.”

“Boston where?”

“Massachusetts.”

Pleasantries were exchanged. The conversation continued.

There had been a riot at a club just around the corner the night before, she explained. Dozens of people had locked themselves in here for safety, she said. If we cared to look across the street, we could still see a policeman's blood on the curb.

As we had around three hours to kill before we went on, we courteously excused ourselves, got back into the van and made our way to the hotel.

For the next two hours, we sat—two to a bed—and watched a martial arts movie on tv. No one said a word.

When it was time to head back, we shuffled silently into the van. Someone put Metallica on the radio. For Whom The Bell Tolls.

It was very loud.

And very funny.

Hero Homework

One of the first things they asked me to do was submit a photo of my hero. It was a cute get-to-know-you kind of a thing. Everyone had done it, leaving the kitchen's partition wall crowded with little portraits.

Here, Einstein. There, Madonna. And all manner of hero in between.

Weeks of ignoring the request segued seamlessly into weeks of laboring over a decision. Who to choose? What about me should my choice represent? Whose picture would one care to look at lunch after lunch? Had my co-workers been stumped so?

Anyways. Once I decided, I never looked back.

A Funny Thing To Picture Me Doing

The Bridge Cafe connects the library to the Robert Crown Center, where some of Hampshire's athletic-type stuff happens. It was named "the Bridge" because, in the architect's view, it links intellectual pursuits (the mind) with physical ones (the body), which is an odd and funny thing for a cafe to do.

For four years, I swept, buffed and dusted that bridge every morning, five days a week... a sleepy caretaker with a high-powered vacuum and some time to think.

Joe, Who Shared Insights Inspiring and Frightful

He was going to teach his daughter everything... and you could see how much it would mean to him. Mountaineering, bicycle maintenance, philosophy, history and on and on... the curriculum would take decades to get through, and form this stunning succession of moments in time that both of them — father and daughter — would always have to think back fondly on and smile over. Its architecture was sprawling, with branches that spiraled off in all directions.

He spoke with great pride, in sentences that sprung up from some deep paternal place, a prehistoric reserve of fatherly sentiment that every man-creature caring for a child had instinctively drawn from since the beginning of time.

In the company of such powerful forces of nature, I seemed to shrink some... thinking over and over to myself: What curriculum will I offer?

Yikes.

Raymond, Who Presided Over A Kingdom That Was Not His Own

An ugly end it was. Unceremoniously tucked between garbage cans, planks of wood and all manner of discarded household appliance, staring up into the streetlight with those baby blues, the rain pecking at his cheeks. A long way from his lofty living room perch, where he watched a decade of my life come and go. An ugly end. And no dignity to it.

I Look Forward To Remembering This Fondly

Most often, the last time a thing happens comes and goes, and it isn't until after the thing has happened for the last time that you realize it can't be repeated.

Sometimes, you know a thing is happening for the last time just as it happens, and you can enter into it with an appreciation that illuminates the thing. Though, in being illuminated, the thing is changed, and the last time it happened is already behind you.