monday night blights

OK, so my friend and failsafe dinner partner Jane met me at Kerbey Lane.

First, let's get it out there: Kerbey Lane, at least at some locations, has come to suck. The South Lamar location is often laden with bad odors, as it was last night, and the bathrooms are so horrid that it seems inadequate that the frequently indifferent staff are expected to wash their hands in there. Self-immolation is the only really sanitary option.

The thing is, it's a block from my apartment. In fact, it's another block closer now than it was from my previous apartment in the same complex. It seems stupid not to go there, particularly when the veggie burger with veggie chili, cheese tots, and cold beer I had post-run four hours earlier is forgotten in the glare of a pancake craving.

So, there's this odor. It's worse near the door, near the restrooms, and it immediately occurs to me, as it usually does, that I've made a horrible dining mistake. We're placed by an only somewhat indifferent host in a booth on the far side, where the odor has diminished to what Jane believes might be the sort of vegetable soup that smells "like sweat" when it's cooking.

Our waiter shows up, and I'm happy that it's a kid that is more like waiters in Austin, and certainly at Kerbey Lane, used to be: personable, even fun, and not visibly annoyed at having to refill your fucking iced tea. In fact, it becomes a race to see if I can get three gulps from the tea before Kevin materializes at my elbow with a pitcher.

There's a couple in the booth behind me. I get a brief look when we pass. The guy sounds like a stoner, and then his phone keeps ringing. The whole time, while I'm rattling on and on to Jane about stuff, he's rattling on and on about stuff, only louder and more... dumbly. And, it's not the kind of dumbly that you can forgive, like from a small child, dog, or person that is doing the best they can with what they've got in the brainpan. Granted, this guy doesn't seem to have a lot more untapped capability under his long, contrivedly disheveled mane.

After lots of separate ringing gone unheeded, he finally answers his phone, and we're treated to his side of a loud conversation. Several times, in my increasingly curmudgeonly way, I half- turn, kind of a mix between "Oh, I'm sorry, I was concerned something might be wrong," and, "I want to beat you unconscious with your Samsung."

To her credit, the girl leaves almost immediately, possibly seeing her chance, possibly to smoke, possibly to have her own conversation, politely outside, or possibly to brave the bathroom. Eventually, finally, after an unbearable length of time, he ends the conversation. By this time, the girl is back.
He's doing well over 90% of the talking, to the point that, though an attractive blonde, she could have sounded like Mike Tyson or Mr. T, and I would never know it. I catch snippets, and he's talking about acting. I hear bits about football, bits about lines...

Then a couple sits in the booth behind Jane. He and his companion talk little. He's in a UT shirt and a ball cap. Their food arrives quickly, and the guy shovels his food in, with his fork gripped like you'd grip a homemade shiv as you jammed it into one of your fellow inmates.

This, of course, impacts or annoys me little. He can eat as he wants, and I won't judge him for it. He's not my date.

SNGNNNNNKT. NGT. HWOCK. I look up from my migas taco in shock. It's the guy behind Jane. No, this can't be. Jane tries to suppress laughter. I can get over it. But no... he does it again. And again. He is clearly on a timed regimen, making the really loud snorting-phlegmy noise with his nose and throat, roughly every minute and a half. When I occasionally catch his eye on accident, he looks at me with the sort of look that says, "Yeah, my pet possum killed your fucking cat, and yeah, I got $8 for the skin. What the fuck are you gonna do about it?"

Meanwhile, the few tidbits from behind me that survive the hocking across from me begin to piece together. He's not just in theater. He's not just some actor schlepping in local commercials and student films. No, this guy's got real work, regular work. It's what he does. He's not actually discussing working construction, he's talking about stage business. He mentions "not having lines in the last eight episodes." He mentions someone named Minca or something, and despite never having dulled my brain on the show, I finally put it all together. I look it up when I get home, and this is the guy. I'm much less certain about the girl, but this might be her. She was far less annoying, with less contrived hair, but her choice of friends/people to know/coworkers to hang out with raises serious questions.

I mention this later to my girlfriend Chirstina, who says, "Christ, what is worse than an actual asshole high school football player with a gigantic ego? A fucking LA actor with a remarkably larger ego playing a high school football player on TV."

I am myself confused by this duality in me: the person who is angrily annoyed at the behavior of the people infesting the world around him, that doesn't see any realistic hope for humanity's resolution into something even mostly worthwhile and noble; and, the love for and belief that any good in people is worth appreciating and trying to nurture.

My friend Amber finally put forth a theory one night, leaving a bar of frats and maneuvering through drivers taking any visible advantage for themselves. "Maybe you like people, but just expect better from them."

That is, no doubt, it. I expect people to be nice to each other. I expect them to make the occasional small sacrifice to help someone out, or just to be courteous. I expect them to be aware that other people are occupying the same space, space that is disturbed greatly by loud cell phone conversations and the harvesting of phlegm from their sinuses and espohagus. And, no doubt, maybe I expect them to not be so judgmental of the ones that fall short; that fall as short as I do.

Pink Mizunos Part II: When Short Facebook Responses Go Bad...

So, a friend who shared my previous post about Senate Bill 5 got this civil and honest response:

Agree with what he says about the process, etc. No one wants to win by circumventing the proper procedures. Most of what he said makes a lot of sense. Not sure if I agree that this particular issue will ever be one that people can debate without taking extreme positions. I mean, this is LITERALLY a life and death issue.

I understand that most pro-choice people do not believe a fetus is meaningless and akin to a wart until it hits the air." However, in my opinion his whole "Yes, abortion is bad but people should be able to make their own choice" argument is intellectually dishonest. For instance, the parent that loves their child but supports the right for other women to choose an abortion. How can those two ideals exist in the same soul? Abortion is the ultimate act of arrogance. It says, "My life is so important that the mere fact that your existence will cause me inconvenience gives me the right to end your life." All parents know that parenting is about sacrificing yourself for your children and abortion is the antithesis of that. 

Still, I appreciate the guy's point of view and hope that when the legislature reconvenes that the theatrics are past.

I sidestepped the fundamental issue of abortion itself in my post, because I believed that the focus needed to remain on the issues most immediately at hand: the bill's scorched-earth scope and disingenuous stated purpose, and the abuse of power used to do an end-run around the normal legislative process.

Points, lines, and running in circles

I do agree that abortion is a life-or-death matter. As much as I want women in particular to have complete autonomy and sovereignty over the affairs of their own bodies and lives, and as much as it is cosmically unfair that women, who continue to be the subjects of institutionalized inequality, are the only ones who stand to lose that control, I do believe that there is some point at which a society has to recognize, protect - and participate in the care for - a life.

But, aside from the inevitable, and I believe, small percentage of callous or thoughtless people, those who support choice agree that a life is at stake, but believe that the mother must be the one to make the choice of where that crucial point is.

So, believing in choice is not necessarily intellectually dishonest at all, because logically, scientifically, that point is unknowable. We aren't omniscient, we can't see a soul. No equation can really solve for it, no proof can be demonstrated, because it will always have to be founded on premises that are themselves arbitrary and unknowable, at least in this life.

We're left, then, having to define a point, a line of demarcation on which we can come closest to agreeing. The essential and necessary foundation of any proper argument on abortion, is the question of when life that requires a new moral, medical, and legal status, occurs. Shall we go with conception? Sperm meets egg? Certainly, some people have some good faith belief that that's the case. Is that a life immediately deserving full legal rights? Or is it when the baby is birthed and cut loose?

The governing law of the land in the United States, is, of course, Roe v. Wade. Its second-trimester (24-week) limit is based on viability - when a fetus can survive outside the womb - which, in turn, hinges on when the lungs can operate in the atmosphere. At the time, the Supreme Court found that to be 24 weeks - when air sacs theoretically developed in the lungs.

Hospitals through the 70's and 80's drew the line of viability at 28 weeks, because that's when the lungs start to produce a surfactant, which keeps the lungs from collapsing and sticking together. (there's a great Radiolab episode that addresses this, in the context of a great story that raises many of these questions about life).

But about a decade after Roe, an artificial surfactant began being used that could provide enough lubrication in the lungs for them to operate normally. That moved the line back to, depending on the hospital and doctor, 22-25 weeks.

So, clearly, the Roe v. Wade line is based on available knowledge, intellectually applied, but again, on the basis of a point at which a child can survive outside the mother, a line that technology will presumably be able to continue to move back to some extent. A law embodying some uneasy compromise was needed, and Roe tried to provide that.

But clearly, most pro-lifers were not happy with the outcome, wanting either zero legality for abortion, or at least believing that 24 weeks into a pregnancy is too far down the path.

Now, a few states are passing laws based on pain perception, which is now thought to occur at around 20 weeks. They are unconstitutional, but obviously done to try to continue to move back those limits and test Roe.

What are we really talking about?

If we're all concerned about how far out to draw this line, maybe we need to look at the numbers - is there a great mass of abortions pushing up on these points, having 24th, or even 20th-week abortions?

The CDC has studied legally-performed abortions since 1969 (under the kinda creepy name, "abortion surveillance"). The most recent report, covering statistics through 2009, found that:

• 64% of abortions are performed at 8 or less weeks of gestation (73.5% in Texas). At eight weeks, the fetus is 13mm in length. Eyes and ear-shells start to appear. Fingers begin to form. The heart is beating. A week ago, the brain had developed into 5 parts, and cranial nerves became visible.
• 91.7% are performed before 13 weeks (95% in Texas). At that point, it's been officially described as a fetus for two weeks. From 11 to 14 weeks, limbs are lengthening, genitals appear differentiated, etc.
• 96.9% are performed at or before 21 weeks. (It's 99.4% in Texas).
• Abortions are shifting dramatically to earlier points of gestation: "From 2000 to 2009, the percentage of all abortions performed at ≤8 weeks' gestation increased 12%, whereas the percentage performed at >13 weeks' decreased 12%. Moreover, among abortions performed at ≤13 weeks' gestation, the distribution shifted toward earlier gestational ages, with the percentage of these abortions performed at ≤6 weeks' gestation increasing 47%."

(Info on embryonic/fetal development from the Mayo Clinic.)

Abortion rates and ratios have been generally declining since 1990, but let's take the number of sheets of copy paper that the GOP presented as a stunt to distract from Wendy Davis' filibuster, representing the number of abortions in Texas in 2011: 84,601 (I have not verified their count, but let's just assume they didn't lowball it). And, despite the noted trend towards earlier abortions, let's still use 2009 percentages. And, out of fairness, let's put this in terms of how many abortions are still performed past those points, so that they yield numbers that have more impact for pro-life arguments. We come up with:

• About 22,419 abortions performed at 8 weeks or later;
• About 4,230 performed at 13 weeks or later; and
• About 508 performed at 21 weeks or later.

Performing surgery (and politics) with a chainsaw

So. Is this worth Senate Bill 5's nuclear solution, if we look beyond what David Dewhurst claimed his motivation was - the elimination of almost all abortion clinics - and examine what the bill claims to address: patient safety?

According to that CDC report, 12 women in the United States were claimed to have died from complications from legally-performed abortions in 2008. From 2004 to 2008, the mortality rate was .64 deaths per 100,000 legally performed abortions.

Yet, of those 47 clinics that Dewhurst was gunning to shut down with SB5, a number do more than simply perform abortions. Some Planned Parenthood clinics, many of which, were already decimated by the defunding of Planned Parenthood, which Rick Perry openly said was a way to eliminate as much abortion as possible, are included.

According to their 2012 annual report for just the Planned Parenthood Trust of South Texas, 95% of their patients in 2011 came for preventative healthcare - breast cancer screenings, pap tests, STI/STD screenings and treatments, and general healthcare, for women, men, and children. That's 34,160 patients for non-abortion care in south Texas alone. How many lives are saved and definitely improved by these clinics, against how many abortion-related mortalities (which may, for Texas, have been zero)?

The numbers don't even remotely support the alleged reason for this bill. That's why the bill was opposed by the Texas chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as the Texas Medical Association, and the Texas Hospital Association.

Perhaps more importantly for people who want to reduce the number of abortions: how many unplanned pregnancies were completely avoided? There are no numbers for this, but most rational people would have to believe that more abortion-bound pregnancies were avoided thanks to Planned Parenthood in south Texas alone, than were aborted at any time past the transition from embryo to fetus, across Texas.

And... back to language

Finally I have to say, I understand where the response to my post was coming from in terms of parenting being all about sacrifice, and I don't even have kids. But it is also arrogant and presumptuous to assume that abortion itself, and therefore all abortions, are "the ultimate act of arrogance," chosen because of "inconvenience".

By including abortions across the board, he was also saying that pregnancies from rape or incest, or that pose a real threat to the health of the mother, are also just "inconveniences" that don't merit the option of abortion. In case those seems like rare circumstances, a pair of mid-90's studies estimated that there were 25,000-32,000 pregnancies a year resulting from rapes in the US during those years. One of those studies calculated a pregnancy rate of 5% per rape. I would have to assume that incest numbers would be included in that.

It is difficult to find statistics for the number of abortions performed for the health of the mother, but in response to a claim by Joe Walsh (Representative from Illinois, not Eagles guitarist), the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reported that about 600 women a year die from complications from pregnancy and childbirth, and that "many more" would have died had it not been for access to abortions. And, clearly, if that danger presents itself before viability... no living mom=no living embryo, fetus, or child.

Again, this is what I mean when I say that our language is important in issues like this one, unless you do, in fact, mean that rape victims and mothers faced with a grave danger to their own health are arrogant and merely inconvenienced.

I do believe that past some point of development, that abortion should not be an easy or careless choice. It is most certainly not birth control, and I don't appreciate it being talked about casually, or as just another right to be exercised without a need for responsibility. Personally, because we are human, and we believe that there must be solutions to what may be "misfortunes" in our lives, I'm sure that sometimes, it could probably be resorted to too easily. But in the light of what stages the vast majority of embryos and fetuses are being aborted, where flawed or even careless choices are being made, I do not believe that most of the resulting abortions are crossing that line of life that must be protected.

And, I know plenty of people who had abortions that regret them, and teen mothers like Wendy Davis who kept their kids and don't regret that. But neither the presence of regret in one case, nor the lack of regret in the other, mean that abortion is necessarily the wrong or selfish choice to make, in that time, and in that place. Rick Perry says "the ideal world is one without abortion," and there, he's right. But we're not in an ideal world, just as we're not in an ideal world where people don't feel the need to have a gun to protect themselves (and no, I'm not anti-gun).

So... how does it end?

The response above was not the only one I received. In the foolishly continuing hope that there is some reason in him that I can appeal to, I sent it to my stepfather, and while the response was short and un-detailed, it was clearly not well-received, and like so many requests for explanation from David Dewhurst, no response was forthcoming. A couple of pro-choice friends didn't really seem to get the point, either, sticking to the language that limits the motivation of all pro-lifers to the desire to control her body.

Most of the time, it seems that the only thing the two sides have in common, as in so many debates, is the need to take the easy path of demonizing the other side; the fear that acknowledging good faith in the opponent is weakness; the security of righteous anger; and, of course, ego. I find that sadder than any law that could ever be passed.

But there were also nods of agreement, from both sides. But, I honestly don't know... I can't see through the smoke of battle to see how many soldiers there might be on either side that are willing to come out of the trenches, disregard their flags, realize this doesn't have to be a war of good vs. evil, accept that there are things they can't know, and start to find a line that they can debate, but that doesn't have to divide them.

What the Pink Mizunos Really Stood For

My time at the Capitol Tuesday night was an amazing experience that continued to rock my faith back-and-forth. It was the final minute of a championship basketball game, complete with Republicans employing the Hack-a-Shaq strategy, and the use of 70's-era Boston timekeepers. Still, honestly, I felt a little out of place in the rotunda last night, surrounded by that sea of conviction and emotion, despite the fact that I am, at the end of my explanations, pro-choice enough that I stand for it and will fight for it.

At first, I thought my reservation was simply posterboard-induced. Language is important, and each side in incredibly divisive issues like this one pushes the other towards more extreme rhetoric and language. And, with no offense to the protestors/supporters of Wendy Davis in her epic filibuster, in the rotunda that night, I was certainly in Slogan and Hyperbole Central. I'm sorry, but "keep your laws off my body" sounds eerily like telling someone they can have your gun when they pry your cold, dead fingers from it.

I believe that the vast majority of pro-choicers are not just wanting to feast on baby flesh. Despite what a handful of them do, in fact, say, they do not believe a fetus is meaningless and akin to a wart until it hits the air. They do not believe in abortion as a method of birth control. When the slogans clear, they know that abortion, like war, is never a good. Ideally, they would never happen. They just genuinely believe that in some situations, it is the right thing to do. Like Bill Clinton said, "Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare."

By the same token, I believe it is utterly ridiculous to paint all pro-lifers as religious zealots merely wanting to subjugate women, and it's insulting and petty to ignore and deride the fact that many are truly motivated by a care for life, which is something that, agree with the details or not, everyone should understand and respect.

We cannot deny that we as humans will never truly have a certainty about the point at which life absolutely must be protected. Many good people are going to hold beliefs in good-faith about where that point is.

All that brings me back to the marble floor, overwhelmed and moved by the display of conviction in a cause that I do believe in, and finding a useful outlet for my own loudness, but also shuffling a bit uneasily.

First, as much as I wanted to, I knew it wasn't the demonstration of the will of the collective that we wanted it to be, and that many proclaimed it was. In this state, it was only (albeit an impressive) demonstration of the motivation and will of one side of the issue, in a city that is an ideological and political island in the middle of a red sea. I don't want to take anything from the moment, but it's the reality.

I also felt myself an interloper because I wasn't there crying out for the very core issue of choice. My primary outrage was focused on two things that seemed more immediate to me. I was certainly not alone in that, but I felt the priorities were generally different.

First, the scope of this bill was an unbelievably nuclear option. Presented under the guise of patient safety, despite anything other than anecdotal evidence from extremely isolated cases that the current standards threaten that, Dewhurst and Perry made clear that their intent is to shut down almost or all abortion clinics - Dewhurst actually quoted the pro-choice claim that this would be the result in a Tweet.

Even accounting for some minuscule occurrence of a threat to patient safety under the current standards, they pale in balance to not only the availability of a constitutionally-guaranteed and limited right to abortion, but to the other care clinics like Planned Parenthood provides, from breast and other cancer screenings gynecological care, STD screening and treatment, and prenatal care. Despite Sen. Jon Kyl's lie/ignorant statement that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions, the numbers show it to be more of 3%. Even accounting for some interpretation, abortion clearly makes up a very small the percentage of PP services. And, this is in a state with particularly poor access to healthcare, access that was further stripped in the last legislative session, specifically with regard to women and children, which is why the Texas Hospital Association, the Texas Medical Association, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all opposed the bill.

The other issue is what makes me more angry than anything: that Perry and Dewhurst can act without any apparent consequences. Yes, the legislature, like most bodies governed by parliamentary procedures, is governed by arcane and ridiculous rules. Filibustering itself is really pretty stupid, but it's a long-standing tradition employed by both sides of the aisle. And, it's fair game to use those same rules to try to derail a filibuster.

But when you start changing the rules, from the beginning... when you call a special session to try to ram through what failed to even come to a vote in the regular legislative process... when you suspend the not-mandatory, but traditionally adhered-to out of courtesy and respect for the process 2/3 rule... when you call discussing the role of abortion clinics non-germane; when you falsify the legislative record by changing a timestamp to validate a vote; and, when you show the will and gall to repeat this scorched-earth process as often as necessary to circumvent the regular, state-constitutional process of lawmaking, partially, no doubt, out of true personal conviction, but also, no doubt, for personal political gain - witness the sniping between Patrick and Dewhurst.

So, I think my feeling slightly out of place among the cheers was because oddly, people felt this was about the core abortion debate, and while it certainly was at the root, the fight is more properly focused on the gnarled tree that the GOP grew through underhanded, subversive, and even illegal, tactics. That was the victory I cheered for the most when Cecile Richards announced the result of the caucus, that's what was the first thing that was capable of restoring some small measure of hope in me.

Even some of my most vehemently pro-life friends were openly disgusted by the methods SB5 supporters employed. They're fair people who don't want a win if that's how it's done. The question is whether the large mass of voting, pro-life Texans are willing to win at any cost to the values of fair play, our state and federal constitution, and a civil society, and whether they continue to support the shady hit men who are clearly so willing, particularly when there are so many political points to be won.

Perry's unsurprising announcement today of a second session brings us all back down to that marble floor in our Capitol building, and there, we need to do some soul-searching. For those that believe in choice in a conservative state like Texas, and across the country, the only lasting key will lie in education - changing hearts and minds of the populace, and in our own commitment to recognize, respect, and empathize with the fact that some of our "opposition" are genuinely motivated by compassion and care for life.

The disagreements will continue, but that step on our part will lessen the need for the hate and extremism. We will meet the similarly understanding, empathetic, and rational people on the other side, and maybe we'll talk and argue, but all to try to find the best balance that we non-omniscient mortals can.

The crazies on both sides will always be there, but they will become disrespected outliers. And, the Perrys and Dewhursts and Patricks, and no doubt, some equally devious and self-interested pro-choice politicians, will be deprived of one less tool to divide us for their own political gain.

sofa, so good

i've been thinking lately, well, about a lot of things, obviously, because that's what i do for a hobby. but i've also been thinking about selling my couch. it's not being used right now, and i'm in a place where the money could be put to good use. 

but a friend was asking me about it, and how it was a nice couch. then, i remembered having written something about it when i first got it. i went back and read this piece, and remembered, and saw how, in some ways, i'm very much in the same place that i was then, though my parents seem to have a greater sense of acceptance. or resignation, either way, visits tend to go much better.

anyway... i'm keeping the couch.
June 19, 2006
i had a new couch delivered saturday morning. it's really very exciting - a dark-chocolate leather sectional. buying a piece of good furniture is a weighty process, a serious commitment. there's considerations of money, style, and longevity.

my last couch had taught me that vital lesson about pieces of furniture that you'll be sitting or laying on: the vast majority of couches or beds will feel fantastic when you're out shopping. this is simply because furniture shopping by its very nature is a tiresome experience that makes you want to sit, or, if possible, lie down on anything available.

furniture stores, at least all the ones i could even begin to afford shopping at, are topographical marvels, upholstered labyrinths designed to keep you wandering for miles and miles. they are invariably crammed with families of no less than five, swarming around any number and variety of battleship-sized sectionals. the parents sit on various pieces, staring at the fake televisions as they debate the relative merits of mauve chenille vs. the latest in turquoise microfiber, glancing only occasionally and disdainfully at their children, who are diving from one piece of furniture into another, even if the other piece of furniture is an innocent bystander.

the previous couch had seemed pretty decent sitting on it in just such a store, but as i recall, it was in a relatively quiet corner, far away from the shopping hordes. red-hot spikes protruding from the bottom and back would have been a welcome mental and physical distraction at that point. as it was, there were no spikes of any kind, and it was nicely cushy, in an unobtrusively dull neutral color. i went for it, and a complementing chair. only with more focused and practical sitting did i discover that the couch was far from ideal. but i was committed, obligated, even, and have remained so for the last seven or eight years.
in those years, i've occasionally found myself with friends in furniture stores. i'd offer my opinion to them, but occasionally would spot something that sparked my interest, and i might brush tiny muddy footprints off of a sofa to try it out.

i usually discovered that i had no idea at all how i normally sit on a couch. do i like to have something behind my head, or just under the neck? how high do i like the armrest? is this couch too short from back to front? if my entire lower torso is swallowed up in the cushions, is that too soft?

i found the new couch doing the same thing, shopping with my ex-roommate. i was briefly deterred by other options, but i forced a new discipline on myself. i did the sitting, and tried to put myself mentally in my living room, in front of, say, an evening of multiple X-Files re-runs. In this sort of self-hypnotic state, I felt the crick develop in my neck on one couch deep into the fourth season. On another, I realized that the cushions folded in around my head in such a way that i would have no peripheral vision should the alien bounty hunters get past my cats.

on my most recent trips, about to move into a new apartment, i knew that i was ready to buy. but, while laying, sitting, and crouching in a variety of positions on a variety of couches, making faces at the children and their tired-looking parents, i was nagged by two guilty thoughts. first of all, i already had a couch. because my ex-roommate had a much nicer couch at the time, my own had resided for the last year at a friend's house. but that couch, which had almost immediately fallen out of favor with me, had seen and mostly survived a hard life.

the cats had had their way with it, and it sported a sort of fringe effect at the corners. when my cat Oliver would get one of his recurring urinary tract infections, he apparently found the center of the couch a less threateningly painful place to relieve himself. the subsequent, frequent washings of the covers had shrunken them to the point that they strained over the cushions and pulled apart at the seams like a worn pair of jeans stretched perilously to their limit on a person heavily in denial.

lest the couch's state be blamed entirely on my pets, humans had done their part over its seven-year life. years of persistent, consistent sitting and lounging had compressed the foam cushions into flatter, less geometric, unappealing shapes. scores of people in various states of cleanliness, sobriety, and disarray had sat and slept on it, sweat, oils, and drool soaking the wide weave that had already incorporated a rich tapestry of cat fur and dirt. and in the last year, the couch had been in another house, assimilating the detritus of people i don't even know.

the other guilty thought was that i didn't have a job, and really shouldn't be buying furniture.

when, however, i saw The One, my sofa soul-mate, any such thoughts disappeared. this was a couch finally done correctly, as if god had built it from one of my own ribs. it was a sectional, but a sane one, without the puffiness, hideous color, reclining bits or horrid oak remote control holders that i once believed were essential to sectionals.

it managed to look just retro-modern enough to be of enduring style, or at least enough that it wouldn't be dated by the time it was delivered. the corner of its "L" shape beckoned softly to me, and when i sat there, it received me perfectly, my body settling into a position that even i couldn't conceive fidgeting from. my arms settled into the cushions, though not so high that they'd fall asleep, my legs immediately found a variety of comfortable options, and the pebbled-grain leather was cool and just slightly stimulating against my skin. i was a happy man, and there was no question that it was the right choice.

so, saturday morning, i was still shaking off a mild physical hangover and a larger emotional one from the night before. i was chatting with my new neighbor when we heard the sound of a large truck, punctuated with a brief barrage of ripping and rending noises. moments later, the furniture store truck pulled in front of my apartment with what looked like most of a tree attached to the top of it.

two men carried the two pieces of the sectional up to my apartment, removed them from their plastic-wrap cocoons, and deployed them in my living room. as i thanked them and held the door for them, the driver looked back and said, "damn, man, that's a lot of couch, there."

my cats and i stared at it from the edges of the room for a while. they approached it first, sniffing it, and then i did the same. mmm... leathery. i sat on it and they eventually joined me, and we perched on it and looked around. it was, indeed, a lot of couch.

the feeling of guilt began creeping back in, except that this buyer's remorse bore no relation to color or style or construction, or even cost. instead, the question was not whether the couch was worthy, but whether i was.

in my mind, large leather sectionals reside in homes that people own. those people aren't necessarily or even probably perfect, but i imagine that they generally have their shit together. they have careers. they always have money in the bank. they own property. other people, maybe even their parents, respect their accomplishments.

at 37, my résumé, my finances, and so many other of the listable, quantifiable aspects of my life, are decidedly unimpressive. they are, in fact, often depressive. in march, i quit my job, wanting to leave the law altogether, deciding to change my life into something more closely resembling what it should have been, what it should be.

that hasn't gone so well. i was just lucky to have gotten a job a week earlier.

getting that job, combined with recent weight loss and the deep tan and improved muscle earned tone from weeks of doing landscaping work, had incited a week of mild rejoicing and renewed hopefulness. i started feeling and acting like myself again, maybe even got a little overconfident.

all of that, though, disintegrated in a matter of hours last friday night. a night out with some cool new people, yet i ended up feeling worthless again, and a bit stupid for believing that anything would have changed. i stormed into my house, pulled open another beer, wandered around with the notebook computer looking for my neighbor's wireless signal, and i wrote.

I’m back, and everything’s the same, everything’s just where I left it: the reflection in the mirror, the past, the self esteem, the future. it’s all the same. did I really think five pounds, quitting my job, being a mediocre runner, anything would change it all? how stupid could I be to think I could change the fact of who I am?

yeah, I coulda been a contender. you know the rest.

another night, more money, more hope, more “confidence,” same result. time and situations don’t change who I am. this is who I am.

clearly, i did not feel worthy of much at all, much less a nice leather sectional couch.

i will grant, to be fair, that i'm a professional self-recriminator. i've made a lifetime career of questioning myself and my worth, which for most of that lifetime drove me to try to be a better person. but now it's become more of a burden than a catalyst. it seems later in the game, and self-recrimination has increasingly become an end in itself, a simple statement of fact, left at that.

in recent years, i've cycled in and out of jobs and relationships, fought for respect, struggled with finding something meaningful to define me. of course, once i left high school, my own critical abilities continued to be matched and surpassed only by that of my parents, so when i'm in the middle of a particularly self-loathing phase, it's best to avoid putting myself in harm's way by, you know, communicating with them at all.

sunday, unfortunately, was father's day.

i'd say it generally went ok, which is not true at all. mom is excited these days about this michael bublé guy, a young crooner type from canada. she popped in a DVD of one of his performances, and on the plus side, it was an hour or so of me being present, without any potentially treacherous conversation.
on the other hand, i watched him do his thing on stage, and ugly things stirred in me. envy, jealousy. here was a guy that not only deserved a nice leather sectional sofa, but could purchase dozens of them without guilt. more importantly, he was not an attorney. and even more-more importantly, he was singing, performing, doing what i'd always wanted to do, but failed to do. and ironically, he still had my mother's absolute respect, and somehow, this guy, this... Canadian, was even a suitable catalyst for shaming.

several times, she repeated what he had said in some interview: "my dad was a fisherman. he doesn't have to do that anymore."

i was happy for the elder Bublé's turn of fortunes, but i felt yet a new burn of guilt. on my mother's part,  it may seem completely innocent, but years of experience have revealed one of her biggest go-to themes - ambitious kids who are driven to succeed primarily by the desire to do nice things for their parents.
mom seems to miss the fact that neither she nor my father are, or have never been, fishermen. ok, actually, my dad had a bass boat, complete with blue glitter clear-coat, and he entered a bass tournament or two. but you know, we're not talking "deadliest catch." and, while we were indeed solidly poor in the 1970's, they had both already done a tremendous amount of work to get themselves out of that situation, and into a very comfortable lifestyle where cash gets paid for things. like Hummers and Austrian crystal chandeliers. credit cards are only a convenience, and just a way to get frequent flier miles. there's just not really a need for my help, and they've leapt so far ahead up the income ladder, that i would need to be pretty extraordinary to be able to "help" them, should they need a second home in the Bahamas or something.

that, however, is clearly not the point. there are other things at issue for my parents, for my mother in particular, and always will be. things that riddle our interactions with easy condescension and insult.
then, during dinner: "the other day, i saw this really good interview with dan rather and the attorney from houston that's defending tom delay... gosh, what is his name? he's an attorney. from houston. he has this very big ranch, and, well, you're not going to like this, but i'm going to say what he said. he said if you think you're a good attorney, look at how much money you make, because if you're a good lawyer, you're going to make a lot of money. otherwise, you're not a good lawyer, no matter what you think.'"
as i began to try to leave, already late to meet some friends, she brought up my young cousin's recently-announced intent to go to law school after she receives her mechanical engineering degree, because "she wants to have a big house and lots of money. she knows what's important."

outside, on the driveway, as i edged towards the smelly car my friend had loaned me while my own well-beaten used car was being fixed: "don't you want to have things that show you're successful? this house and everything i have, they're like trophies. don't you want that to show you're a success?"
i wanted to tell her i had a nice new leather sectional, and try explain to her the concept of wanting something on its own merits, not just to fill some literal or figurative space, but i knew it would just play into her hand. she'd decide it was an indication that i want trophies as desperately as she does.

I'm still trying to escape, almost to the car, and she told me about the young and "very successful" Korean couple they had met in New York. she had told them about me, how i was an attorney, wanted to be a writer, and that i run. apparently, Mr. Young, Successful and Married to the Beautiful Young Korean Woman That Wanted to Call My Mother "Mom," said, "wow. sounds like he has too many different things going on. it's going to be hard to be successful."

car door open... so close... but now, she's talking about the new couple that moved in down the cul-de-sac into a non-descript mcmansion... yeah, yeah, my age, yeah, very successful, got it... got that... and i finally made my own passive-aggressive statement:

"yeah, well, you know, i guess you guys should have had more kids..."

they chuckled. dad said "no, one is enough." mom, however, voiced no argument.

afterwards, i didn't feel like hanging out with my friends as planned. i headed home, opened up the door, opened up a beer, and settled into my spot in the corner of my new nice new leather sectional. my cats were somewhat comforting, but i know they mainly like me because i'm their only semi-reliable food source.

what is the measure of a life?

monday morning, i came to work, began scanning through reams of documents. i didn't feel like talking to anyone, and i went through hundreds and hundreds of pages. many of the emails from one company feature signature blocks with goofy, wordy, and ultimately meaningless little taglines for the author - "I maximize the leveraging of my coworkers' efforts going forward, while remaining mindful of my clients' need for a proactive, solution-based culture."

but then out of the hundreds of emails, i found one from some rogue employee who opted for a quote from Albert Einstein: "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
Einstein understood that in more ways than one, measurement is relative to the position and speed of the observer. i thought about my friends. some are successful on paper, the kind of success that lenders are interested in. but a lot of them don't have a lot of money, a lot don't have impressive titles or careers. i would never judge them the way my mom would. they may laugh a little or shake their heads at my choices and the situations i work myself into, but at the tend of the day, the good friends only judge me by my own happiness.

unlike my mother, those people are able to separate success from value, trophies from accomplishment from meaning. trophies are only memorabilia of accomplishments, not the accomplishments themselves. trophies fade, discolor, tarnish, break, burn. they get lost, stolen, packed away, shredded by cats.

those people have accomplished things, but have also achieved perspective. many know that the only accomplishments that matter come from value, from effort. trophies don't - can't - always tell that story. they can't testify to the measure of one's character. they don't say with any certainty that you're a good person to be around, to hang out with, to call a friend, to spend a life with.

there's a lot to be done in my life, a lot that hasn't been done. i still feel the sense of my life slipping away from me, of losing the hope of it being, in the end, something meaningful and memorable. but i have to keep my standards clear. the fact that i don't own a house, control a company, am a killer attorney, or am ready to retire doesn't really matter to me or my friends.

i do want success, but only insofar as it makes me and the people that i really care about truly happy. i want accomplishments, but i want them to speak well of who i truly am, and who i work to be. anyone can make a lot of money, build a resume, win awards, but what do they really mean at the end of the day?

so yes, for now, by my own standards, i have failed. or perhaps i just have yet to succeed. but right now, if nothing else, i have value, and in a way, i even have my own trophies to attest to that. and when those trophies visit, i have a nice leather sectional for them to sit on.

time and dreams, unmoved

I'm still getting myself writing, but one way I'm keeping myself motivated is by going through older pieces, bits of which make me feel this is worth doing. This is from September 4, 2008.
I dreamed last night. I need no seer or psychologist to decode it all, to trace the shadows to their source.

I can't remember how it started, except that it started with death. I'm driving, and someone's in the car with me. We see something, and it shakes us up. It's horrific, and we drive away, trying to get away from it.

We drive on. There's a fog over the grass in the fields, surrounding and seeping into the cracks and seams of old white-framed houses. There's a wide divider between our lane and the next. Across the road, to our left, a massive white swan is trying to take flight, but its neck and back are partially broken, the graceful length tortured, twisting on itself. With great struggle, it leaves the ground, trying to keep hold of what it is, but it can't get more than a few feet up, and it crashes to the asphalt again.

We're moving too fast, and I can feel a momentum in my heart, mostly helplessness, but a twinge of that is self-imposed, like there's nothing we can do to help, because maybe we won't. It's too hard, too much effort. But despite the doubt of our willingness to try, we know we can't help, we can't get back, can't fight the momentum, no matter how much we want to.

I turn back to the road ahead, the flatbed truck ahead of us swerves to the left, there's a crunch and then I see the girl, about eight or nine, standing in the road, her bike behind her, her brother's body tangled with his bike on the street in front of her. She cradles his head awkwardly, and doesn't stop screaming.

We stop this time, get out and start running to the girl. Whoever I'm with grabs the girl. People are running out of the house nearby. The woman isn't reacting enough to be the girl's mother. I'm reaching for the phone to call for help, and I wake up.

1:00am. I'm shaken, a little frightened by the force of it all, that I can still feel on me and inside of me. I think of calling someone, but I don't. The cat is bundled up extra tightly against my leg, like he knows, and is applying comforting pressure to some wound.

I pet him and fall back asleep.

I dream again. I'm in an apartment, just down the parking lot from mine. It's the apartment where yesterday, in the waking world, my neighbor's body was found.

Here, I walk in as several people are cleaning out the apartment. The living room is empty of the larger furniture, and now it's just the small stuff, the flotsam and jetsam of her life, the same as in all our lives, those things that are left unboxed and scattered across the floor in those final moments of moving out of a home, things to keep, but without a real place.

I see a litterbox, and there's a cat on the windowsill, already looking lost. I pet it a bit, tell it things will be OK.

No one there knows anything about her, though I sense that one of them is a friend, maybe a brother.

There's just a helplessness again. Though we didn't know her, we know what a life is. Though she's already gone, the moment she left hangs around us like a fog, something we can almost touch, and if we can touch it, maybe we can go back, maybe we can change it.

But time moves, and I'm moving towards waking again. The people in the room fall silent, and I know we all feel that momentum in our hearts, moving us past that moment, that sight of the falling swan, that point at which we can't turn back.

canned laughter

After the last post about the lonely sound of canned laughter, let's try to restore some emotional balance with a recycled piece from November, 30, 2007. (Note: I don't get the reference to "The War at Home," nor do I recall ever watching it.)

This morning, I was draining the office kitchen's coffeemaker of all its precious hot water to make my oatmeal, as I do every morning. I usually allocate a broad range of time to do this, which is directly related to the fact that I usually allocate a broad range of time to get to work, which is somewhat related to the fact that I usually allocate a broad range of time to get out of bed. Let's just end the causal chain there.

Regardless of when I'm depleting the coffee water for my own oatey needs, there's pretty much the same cast of characters coming through the kitchen. They're friendly, but it is odd that most of them only know me in relation to instant oatmeal, resulting in exchanges like this:

"Hey, oatmeal eater."

"Hey, fascist roundeye lawyer whore."

Now, unfortunately, of course, I did not call this woman a fascist roundeye lawyer whore. For one thing, I think she's actually a paralegal, and for another, I have no idea what her political leanings are. I am also not certain whether she will exchange money for sex as a going business concern, and I have no interest in finding out, especially if she's a fascist.

More importantly, she's actually a very nice person, at least in the context of sub-two-minute kitchen conversation. But, the response flashed in my head only as a bleed-through from some alternate universe where my life is, indeed, a sitcom, though hopefully a better one, i.e., with no laugh track, featuring a racially diverse cast, and not airing on CBS.

Maybe it's from a childhood of talking to the television more than people, but the most innocent or banal comment can trigger a scene, with dialogue, that will just run concurrent with the one actually playing out. For example, this morning, after I was called an "oatmeal eater", which I know only sounds like some sort of bizarre racial epithet, my actual response was:

"Yeah, heh, heh. Oatmeal. Hot. Uhh... Yum."

I could have at least come back with my impressive Wilford Brimley imitation, but I didn't, because I was too busy watching the other scene, which clearly tested better, unfold in my head.

It's not simply a matter of trying to be funny. I really think things should play out differently. Oftentimes, I'm so disappointed by the lack of comedy or set-up in someone's response that I want to go back and reshoot... err... replay, the whole scene, with me rewriting the whole thing, kind of like watching "The War at Home", except you don't want all the characters to die excruciatingly lengthy and painful deaths.

In most cases, I would prefer to read the other person's lines, too, because I know how they should be delivered. But then, I believe this is how people get labeled "socially incompetent" and/or "batshit crazy." I also fear that it would show a lack of solidarity with striking screenwriters. So, I just keep my mouth shut, hope she can't hear the audience in my head, and eat my oatmeal.

Mmm... oatmeal. It's good, and good for ya.

asher's lullabies

I roam the country and its cities in my mind, passing quietly down streets, past houses where families are asleep, where air is warmed between lovers sleeping close, where old men sit and play dominoes, where friends talk and laugh, undeterred by the shortening sleep the night will allow them. 

And then, there are the other houses. Houses where lives within are marked only by blue liquid crystal glows and cathode ray flickers through windows, and by the muted and curiously sad and lonely sound of canned laughter in the middle of the night, echoes from decades ago. So many houses, filled with electronic ghosts keeping the living from being quite so alone.

The night, the avoiding of the waiting bed, with its hollowness in the center, is the loneliest time. It's another surrender of another day to unconsciousness, to just brief bouts of oblivious escape between panicked wakings.

Some of those awakenings come with the immediate realization of being alone, doubling you over like the piercing pangs of a stomach virus, a pain that won't be escaped, no matter how much you roll from side to side, curl into a tight ball, wrench at your sides with desperate hands.

And sometimes, it's just waking to the sound of your own voice, speaking a name unheard in months, or years, or, a simple, "no," as she turns to go, pulling the curtain down behind her on a dream.

The eyelids are heavy. The head nods. The arm twitches. The people on the television speak in a disjointed dialogue, longer and longer portions dropping out until the plot is lost. I've struggled, but there's only so much you can do when the day is so far gone.

I want a dark and dreamless sleep. I fear anything else. I fear waking in the morning, what the light will expose, I fear fighting the same fights, trying to make something out of nothing. It's been so long. So long, cut up into days that seem like those fitful awakenings in the night, days that end only in the cold comfort of flat faces and their recorded voices.