Tuesday, October 5, 2010
it speaks for itself
whatever the fuck. I drank too much wine and didn't notice it until after I drank too much wine. My face feels like someone stuffed cotton wadding between my skull and my cheeks. My forehead is dressed like a grey padded room. My stuffed cheeks are reinforced with chicken wire. I haven't had a cigarette in 11 days. I haven't had sex in plenty more than that. Twenty? It hadn't even occurred to me to think about sex until a fucking transgender acquaintance suggested I masturbate because I admitted to being in a bad mood. The one person on the planet who is probably lacking the equipment to whack off properly recommends masturbation as a sure cure. What the fuck ever.
Learning to talk
As most parents will, mine were considerate enough to teach me how to talk. Thanks to their vigorous and dedicated efforts, I was fluent in German by the age of two. There was only one small fly in the ointment: I lived in Novi, Michigan. So, while other young children my age were experiencing their first major "Aha!" victory over the world around them by finding themselves finally possessed of the keys to effectively communicating with it, I found myself with a proverbial car that wouldn't start.
The emotional free-fall gap between between the massive exhilaration of finally being capable of communicating with other people, and immediately slamming up against a sudden, stunning brick wall of realization that GERMAN IS NOT THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA must, in hindsight, have been filled with considerable mental distress for me. The only people who could understand me, and whom I could understand -- by their own insidious design -- were my parents.
My mother tells me that I was so traumatized by this that when an American came to visit, I'd go into a literal paralysis. Wherever I happened to be when the American arrived on the scene, that's where I'd be rooted, utterly motionless, in some cheap parody of a California redwood. My mother tells me she'd have to carry me out of the room like a wooden tree trunk.
Just in case this wasn't enough for me to be FUBAR'd for life, my mother also saw to it that I spent my first day of kindergarten wearing a dirndl (think St. Pauli's girl outfit), which she had painstakingly sewn by hand just for the occasion.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm exaggerating these claims. But the irony here is that I don't remember any of this. My mother told me these things. If anything, the culprit of a story has a tendency to underplay the consequences of his or her actions. My mother was the culprit of these stories. I was too traumatized to remember any of this. What I write here is what she told me. No more and no less.
The emotional free-fall gap between between the massive exhilaration of finally being capable of communicating with other people, and immediately slamming up against a sudden, stunning brick wall of realization that GERMAN IS NOT THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA must, in hindsight, have been filled with considerable mental distress for me. The only people who could understand me, and whom I could understand -- by their own insidious design -- were my parents.
My mother tells me that I was so traumatized by this that when an American came to visit, I'd go into a literal paralysis. Wherever I happened to be when the American arrived on the scene, that's where I'd be rooted, utterly motionless, in some cheap parody of a California redwood. My mother tells me she'd have to carry me out of the room like a wooden tree trunk.
Just in case this wasn't enough for me to be FUBAR'd for life, my mother also saw to it that I spent my first day of kindergarten wearing a dirndl (think St. Pauli's girl outfit), which she had painstakingly sewn by hand just for the occasion.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm exaggerating these claims. But the irony here is that I don't remember any of this. My mother told me these things. If anything, the culprit of a story has a tendency to underplay the consequences of his or her actions. My mother was the culprit of these stories. I was too traumatized to remember any of this. What I write here is what she told me. No more and no less.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Urban Walking
When I lived in Chicago, I developed and perfected a method of walking that, every time I do it, I feel defiant and free. It's the ambulatory equivalent of telling the world "I don't need you to define myself; I don't even need you as a point of reference for my actions; I am completely independent of you and your moods"; or alternately, "Fuck off. I got my own thang".
The technique is based on the idea that I won't slow down or stop for anything or anyone. Nothing is allowed to get in my way, and my every motion, not matter what it is, is as deliberate and premeditated and fluid as a cat's. No matter what I just did, "I meant to do that".
That means, no slows or stops for traffic lights, other humans, cars or any other possible distraction. I am going where I am going at my own pace and nothing and no one shall interfere. You are all invisible to me. Better yet, you do not exist.
There is of course a significant amount of strategy involved to pull this off seamlessly. Traffic lights, if I am to create an illusion of not acknowledging them, must not only be noted many yards ahead, but their patterns anticipated well in advance. My course must take into account the arbitrariness of a light turning red or a light turning green at the exact moment that I appear on its intersection. If I know the light will be red, I have two choices: immediately adjust my pace so that my arrival coincides with it turning green again; or use the green light at the opposing corner as an opportunity to turn left or right. Either way, I do not wait for the light, and the trick is to make it magically appear (with careful foresight and absolute premeditation) that the traffic patterns part like the seas before Moses. I don't go with the flow: I create the flow; and I am immune to its vagaries.
This is how a cat dances in the city streets, without ever being detected.
The technique is based on the idea that I won't slow down or stop for anything or anyone. Nothing is allowed to get in my way, and my every motion, not matter what it is, is as deliberate and premeditated and fluid as a cat's. No matter what I just did, "I meant to do that".
That means, no slows or stops for traffic lights, other humans, cars or any other possible distraction. I am going where I am going at my own pace and nothing and no one shall interfere. You are all invisible to me. Better yet, you do not exist.
There is of course a significant amount of strategy involved to pull this off seamlessly. Traffic lights, if I am to create an illusion of not acknowledging them, must not only be noted many yards ahead, but their patterns anticipated well in advance. My course must take into account the arbitrariness of a light turning red or a light turning green at the exact moment that I appear on its intersection. If I know the light will be red, I have two choices: immediately adjust my pace so that my arrival coincides with it turning green again; or use the green light at the opposing corner as an opportunity to turn left or right. Either way, I do not wait for the light, and the trick is to make it magically appear (with careful foresight and absolute premeditation) that the traffic patterns part like the seas before Moses. I don't go with the flow: I create the flow; and I am immune to its vagaries.
This is how a cat dances in the city streets, without ever being detected.
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