Shorthand for Nothing

Dear R,

I’m sorry I didn’t laugh at your joke. You had pretty clearly planned for it in advance, and I feel like I disappointed you.

This was September of 2008, I think. I was going off to Boston and decided to pay you a visit before I went. We met at the mall. When I walked up, your friend said, “Hi Rob, this is my friend Ashley.” I think it was Ashley, anyway. I’m sorry if I remembered that wrong. She pointed at you when she said it, and then you both laughed.

I don’t know what sort of reaction you were hoping for, but I am pretty sure a blank stare wasn’t what you were hoping for. I didn’t laugh or say anything or play along. I probably just said “Hi,” and probably “how’s it going?” It’s possible I even went so far as to say “What’s up?”

Even though I know it’s kind of arrogant to assume, I feel like you hoped I’d do something more than stare. It could have been a good joke. But I blanked, instead, and we both know I could have done better.

Yours,

RM

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A lot of urban explorers like posting their exploring kits. Maybe one day I will have a real exploring kit, but until that day, these are the things I carry with me pretty much anywhere I go.

• zombie attack messenger bag - this reads “during a zombie attack, please follow me.” It stores most of my stuff. I think it makes a good bag, and it was fairly cheap.
• lockpicks - in my messenger bag. I am not any good with these, but I like to practice, and in the event it is really necessary I could probably do something with them, given time. Maybe.
• mini maglite - on my belt. This comes in handy a lot more often than you would think. It also doubles as a blunt instrument. I’d keep it in my bag, but I put the bag down from time to time and it sucks fumbling for a light or using your cell phone.
• bigger flashlight - it cost like $5 and uses D-cells. This one goes in my bag. I’ve only ever used it once, and that was when someone else was exploring with me. It worked pretty okay, though! It’s a backup. I’ll probably replace it with another maglite eventually. Probably another mini-mag to save space.
• cell phone - this is shitty and cost like $4. It doesn’t have voicemail anymore and the battery sucks. I usually keep it in the bag these days, but sometimes in a jacket pocket.
• bike lock - a bigass U-lock, courtesy of Chris. The bag goes where I go, so I can always lock my bike.
• toilet paper dispenser thingy - this was a gift from my brother-in-law, before he was my brother-in-law. I’ve tried to keep it with me since. Though there have been times when I’ve been lax, it now resides in my messenger bag, and I am never without it. It has no practical purpose except for confusing cops, border patrol, and TSA agents.
• wallet - I got it in England. It goes in my bag, since the back pocket is a terrible place for it. Some days I long for a slender wallet, though, that I could keep in my front pocket.
• camera - for taking pictures! I got this with my ex-girlfriend in Spokane. It’s actually missing its SD card right now. It has taken some pretty good photos, though, and there’s a small amount of room on the camera itself.
• USB key - mostly I store music on here that I think other people ought to have. It comes in handy on other occasions too, of course, but that’s its primary intention. It has a big lanyard on it. I am pretty sure I got both from my dad, but I don’t remember why. This is in my front pocket.
• keys - I actually don’t have any reason to unlock anything anymore, but I keep a bottle opener, which always comes in handy. I got it from Harvard’s Berkman Center. These go in the same pocket as the USB key.
• handkerchief - red, ancient, has a small hole in it. I use it mostly to clean my laptop and my sunglasses. Same pocket as the keys.
• aviator sunglasses - these are the actual aviator sunglasses worn by an actual navy aviator (my dad). I should probably tighten the screws. I’ve lost and found these about a million times.
• batteries - AAA and AA, for my mini-mag and the rear light on my bike. These go in my bag.
• playing cards - Aviator playing cards, I think. Never underestimate the utility of a deck of cards when you’re bored. In one of the pockets of my messenger bag.
• electrical tape - this comes in really handy, and it’s a hell of a lot less bulky than duct tape. I’ve used it for repairing shoelaces and injured fingers in the past. This is in a pocket of my messenger bag.
• tiny Swiss army knife - I always forget this exists.
• flask - I actually use this for drinking water when I’m out biking these days. It has about six ounces or so. It lives in a pocket of my messenger bag. It needs a funnel or something.
• And I am pretty much always wearing my green Converse, some skinny jeans or black cords, a t-shirt, and one of a rotating array of jackets. I love jackets. I have a black hoodie, a white hoodie (with fairies on it), and a black jacket that makes me look kind of like an emo kid that I’m wearing these days.

I may have missed a few random items here or there, but I tried to search through my bag and pockets. It is the only reason I remembered the knife! What do you carry?

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There was a trailer for some movie involving hell demons featuring Nick Cage at Sherlock Holmes. I have no interest in seeing it! But I would be interested in seeing this:

DIABLO: THE MOVIE

Teaser trailer.

A dark set–a dark sky, a faint horizon, wilderness. Moody music. A fire is lit, casting red lighting over:

Two figures, a MAN and a WOMAN, seated around a small campfire; around them the signs of battle, or at least skirmish, are barely visible.

MAN: I don’t understand it. It’s like they were–

WOMAN: Possessed?

Shot of mountainous country with a desolate and slightly ominous feel. The music swells in intensity. WOMAN speaks over this.

WOMAN: This is an evil neither of us can hope to comprehend. We need to find someone who knows. We need to find Cain.

Cut to many scenes of the MAN and WOMAN battling demons, zombies, et cetera. Music is appropriately fighty. The montage concludes with an image of a massive, terrifying demon. The MAN and WOMAN pause, glance at each other, and simultaneously raise their weapons to charge. Cut to black, silence. The lights slowly raise on DECKARD CAIN.

CAIN: Stay a while, and listen…

The title DIABLO flashes on the screen. Fin.

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It is probably not accurate to say I learned a new trick, because I’m sure I’ve always done it. But recently I was talking about magazines with someone and I wanted to express how perfectly they capture the moment in which they were published, in a way that things like newspapers don’t do very well, and I paused and said, “I guess they really capture the zeitgeist, if you want to be the type of person who uses that word.”

This does nothing to prevent the impression that I am a self-conscious linguaphile with heavy affectations in everything that I do, but it does make it seem like at least I’m not the sort of person who uses the word zeitgeist! It’s a great trick. Like scare quotes, it distances you from the word, but it goes further than that. It says “you and I both know what this word means and I, at least, dislike its connotations, but nevertheless, there it is.” It is another self-conscious affectation that people can politely laugh at, or maybe even sincerely laugh at. For all I know other people hear certain words and phrases and sit there thinking “he just used ‘zeitgeist’ unironically–to think I liked that guy!”

In which case I may just be hilarious.

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(I think I’m going to do more of these ‘post a thing that I wrote and then ramble about it’ things.) I once sent a friend of mine some of a batch of poems that I wrote in early 2008. As I read through them and sent them to her, I commented on some of them. On one I noted that its meaning was inscrutable even to me. It started with the lines “Left turn only / once defined your destination,” and I’m still not sure what that means. The full text is here:

“Left turn only” once defined
your destination.
And, after hours on a Tuesday,
the blur of traffic signals–
the prohibitive reds, flashing
but never changing–
became too much,
and you would stand for hours
at a single intersection.

By day you could follow the crowds,
but at night,
with only the occasional passing car,
the isolation was crushing.
None of the distant lights
cared for you,
if they even knew you existed.
The most reaction you could get
came from the crosswalk signals.
Even then,
it was only so long
before “don’t walk” would flash again.

Did I just like the line? Did it mean something? I have no idea. I wrote this poem about making an impact, about isolation, and about destinations, but I don’t know why I decided that left turn only would have any meaning. Was it merely suggesting that, at night, you don’t have to turn left in the left turn lanes in Seattle (which the poem, as much of my poetry, was definitely about)? Was it instead suggesting that the person described in the poem was once defined by restriction and was now paralyzed by freedom?

I don’t know these things, and this is weird, even to me. I could probably tell you what inspired most of my writing, even though I am probably too prolific for my own good at times. I know these stories. And yet, here’s this. Some of the others are the same way: I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it. Not in a ‘wow, this is terrible’ sense, but in a ‘I don’t recognize these emotions’ sense. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

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So, I was unpacking earlier and I found a little scrap of paper that I’d seen before but never paid attention to. It’s the first draft of the poem that I like enough to show people even now. Most of my poems, I start to dislike not long after writing them. This one is different. Here is the current/final draft:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne
when you returned the world to Atlas?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz
just a quiet effervescence that screamed
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, that is,
and with no help but the world.
And when you became what you pretended to be,
did you lift a glass to the horizon?

Did you smile like it’s a crime,
or maybe like a secret between you and me
though we haven’t shared secrets for years?
Did you smile, afraid to smile,
frightened to be unafraid?

Remember when I sang your fears to sleep?
I never expected them to leave.
Did you think of me when they fled?
Or did you drink my memory away?
I know the champagne
is stronger than you’re used to.

It was something in your eyes,
I think,
and I knew you weren’t who you were.
And neither am I–
who I was, I mean,
and so, like strangers,
we pass in the street with a smile and a “What if?”
but we’re not like strangers at all.

The first draft reads as follows:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz,
but a quiet effervescence that screams
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, I mean, and on your very own,
no help but the world.

Or did you sigh and smile, content,
as you returned the world to Atlas?
And you did grow weary
and made him take it back–
and he was willing to bear it all for you.
Yours was no Herculean task.

I was expecting something I didn’t know I knew:
It was your eyes
(and your smile and your posture and your body language).
They made strangers say you were
the loneliest girl they’d ever seen.
I never understood until I saw
your eyes sparkling like champagne
or maybe I saw your contended smile
as you saw someone else
carry the world.

The rest of the post is concealed behind the jump, in the event you don’t want to read me talking about the “technical” details here. (more…)

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Tonight was going to be uneventful in every sense of the word (are there even more than one? what a weird intensifier) when I realized I hadn’t gotten to print the thing I was going to print today. So I mentioned on Twitter that I needed a printer, and had a kind gentleman DM me suggesting that, were I to come by MIT, he could print it for me. It was just shy of 11:20 at the time, in the evening.

It takes me about twenty minutes to get to the subway from here, and another twenty to get down to MIT. That would put me there at about midnight, if the trains favored me, which I couldn’t count on. I couldn’t hesitate, because if I did I’d end up stranded at MIT for the evening and have to walk home. And I couldn’t walk, because the T stops running early, and I wasn’t sure how early. No, I had to run for it. I immediately sent a DM back saying I would be right there, and locked up my computer, and ran most of the mile and a half to the subway.

The train came shortly thereafter, and I went down to MIT, found the building in which my associate was located after a brief phone call, and went inside, produced my USB key, and attempted to print from his laptop: success! We stayed to talk briefly, and, sensing time was short and this conversation could go on for hours, I said, “I should run to catch the T.” And run I did, and made my way down the stairs just as the train was arriving. I hurriedly passed through the turnstile and ducked onto the train just as the doors opened.

Then the train arrived and I made my way out, no longer hurrying, resigned to a long walk back, if not a jog. Then I looked over to see a bus parked at the busway, and to my great surprise, it was the 89, the once-every-hour bus that runs from Davis Square past my house, the bus that is entirely useless to rely upon but is a great boon when I catch it. I ran up to the bus and entered with some time to spare, and walked home, sat down, and marveled at my success, and at the lengths I went to to avoid the inconvenience of going to a store or library to get the same thing printed tomorrow.

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This section starts with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. It’s about taking flight, in more ways than one. (more…)

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The saga continues. I guess. I would tell you to enjoy it, but really, you know what you’re in for by now. (more…)

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Following is what may eventually be the opening to the thing I am working on, which will simply go by Untitled for now. After the jump, a wall of text. It appears to be a story about departures. It is unnecessarily bleak, but that’s what departures will do for you. (more…)

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