Although I originally wasn’t feeling it, once I got out there, another late night/early morning long walk was exactly what I needed. The usual suspects were there to greet me: drunk drivers, cats skulking, possums and skunks skittering, and random dogs barking at my audacity to walk by. I probably should apologize to one group of houses because I couldn’t resist barking back so that the dog objected even louder against my presence. When I made the long loop around and back across the interstate, one dog wagged its tail in the dark and let me pet it as it sat patiently under the beautiful modern street lights along Deane.
A man sitting perfectly still next to his house on Sang Avenue made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The house had only a few feet between it and a chain link fence bordering the sidewalk. I assume he belonged there rather than being someone who didn’t because he was sitting on something and mostly hidden by the bushes.
Totally unrelated: did you know that the circumference of your calf muscles bears a strong correlation to how long you are likely to live? It sounds like a scam but the science is there to back it up.
Did you know that the world record for a person holding their breath underwater is 24 minutes and 37 seconds? Tell me again that human beings aren’t fascinating.
This isn’t the kind of post I started out to write. I don’t mind expressing myself on the fly, nor do I worry about being vague when I shouldn’t be, or about not getting it quite right. There are so many reasons NOT to write off-the-cuff. But I usually don’t let that stop me. If you want to get into hot water or draw unwelcome scrutiny, just try openly talking about sexuality.
When we’re young, we don’t fully understand it. It takes experience, tempered with real-world knowledge of the rituals and social norms of sexual expression and interaction. By the time we’re older, our bodies begin to revolt, and our expectations can get skewed by people, circumstances, or frustration. It’s not supposed to be that way.
Most of us are sexual beings. It’s one of those facts that’s obvious. Yet, we spend an inordinate amount of time keeping it hidden in plain sight. Most of the time, anyway. We wonder about our attractiveness, even when we’re in a committed, monogamous relationship. Hair, makeup, clothes, body, just about everything gets intertwined in our sexual identity.
For much of our lives, seeking pleasure is a constant companion. When it’s good, it’s one of the best possible things we can experience. It’s free. It’s liberating. It creates a connection. At least it is supposed to. When love is present, it can be freely expressed without so much shame, guilt, or embarrassment.
Each of us has our own limits, boundaries, expectations, and fantasies. They aren’t something we talk about in our daily lives. If you’re lucky enough to have someone who loves you and is selfless enough to keep you satisfied, you are fortunate. If you don’t have unresolved issues, anger, or distance to keep you apart, you’re lucky.
Sex gets twisted into so many things it doesn’t need to be.
Because this is my blog, I can say anything I want. It doesn’t shield me from potential recoil, shock, or embarrassment if I share too much or share things people don’t want to know. It’s not as if I’m explicit.
I like writing romance stories. Especially shorter ones. I graduated with a woman who makes her living entirely from writing romance. The only difference between romance stories and erotica is that the latter breaks the barrier of explicitness. Romance novels use implication, innuendo, and roundabout means to signal all the things that erotica can express without limitation.
Is erotica literature? Not always. But it can be if done with elegance and care. Exactly like sex can be connection and intimacy, even though it is rendered in flesh and bone and a messy adventure. People will smirk at erotica, as if some people don’t watch “Dancing With the Stars” for inspiration, or watch steamy movies without realizing it is running along the same rail as erotica.
Imagination powers a lot of sexual expression. Just a fantasy does.
Because people don’t think about it comfortably, they can’t distinguish the subtle differences between fantasy and real-life expressions. They conflate a person’s fantasy life with their actual motivations.
As the long, dry spells of no sexual expression occur, I turn to erotica. I never thought I would be in a position to experience a life with such absences. However, as everyone knows, many relationships are more akin to roommate scenarios than to committed, loving, and intimate connections. I prefer erotica, whereas most people, it seems, turn to porn. Instead of reading what others have written, I prefer to compose it myself. To imagine people and scenarios. But all of them have the common theme of sexuality expressed as mutual satisfaction and selfless fulfillment. Don’t get me wrong. Sexual expression is amazing. But will anyone argue with the fact that it’s immeasurably better when you have someone who loves you and trusts you?
Perhaps erotica is old school in an era of so much technology. However, it’s about imagination, and very few things can trump someone who has a fantastic imagination.
It is fascinating to watch people as they live their lives and wrestle with the hidden fact of their sexuality. We don’t know what people think in the privacy of their minds. What turns them on. But we do know that sexuality ruins a lot of people and a lot of relationships. Especially when it’s absent or used in a way it’s not supposed to be. A big part of that is because sexual discussion is very taboo except in very limited circumstances.
What makes it worse is that the very people most likely to criticize or shame others are also the ones who are most likely to be secretly consuming all manner of explicit content.
It shouldn’t be the outliers trying to guilt us or shame us. We’re all created and hardwired with the drive for sexual expression. Most of us, anyway. And there is an entire spectrum of differing sexual expression and need.
A good, satisfying life is about striking a balance in all things. Sex is just one of those things. On the other hand, I often think of one of my favorite lyrics, “I didn’t buy the house for the kitchen, but try living there without one.” If one thing is out of balance, it creeps into everything. Modern society constantly reminds me that people will lose all reason in their search for what they think is missing. It is also the cousin of alcoholism and addiction.
I don’t like the idea of objectifying people. That’s one main difference between erotica and other means. It’s entirely imagination. And the kind I like requires people who are excited to experience another person, trying to find the right mix of pleasure and living life with someone who wants the same.
Because I’m out and about at the weirdest times, I often notice patterns, even when I’ oblivious to them for a long time. It’s hard to define what looks off or weird, but once you recognize it, you pay attention, even if only in passing.
And that’s where the unavoidable urge for shenanigans started.
I mentioned the specifics to a friend, which was an error on my part. Because once I vocalized my idea, it became an imperative.
I’d noticed that people were acting suspiciously. I don’t mean the “they voted conservative” type of suspicious. Walking in zigzags, looking around way too much, and reaching on top of places that normally aren’t touched. (Unless you are a pigeon.)
It took me two times to realize that what they were retrieving was something another person was leaving in the agreed upon place. Which lead me to the conclusion that whoever was leaving the item had a line-of-sight to the spot. I’m sure they were watching from one of the apartments on either side. Since the trees have been removed in that area, visibility is much better for nefarious activity. And bird watching. I had my doubts about the bird watching.
Which meant I had to be careful. Or go in disguise. It’s not like I could drive up in my inconspicuous bright blue little car, jump out wearing my cape, and startle the participants. I thought about putting on my squirrel mask and magic cloak to avoid being identified. Instead, I put on my weird winter hat and a mask, walked calmly up to the spot, and left several notes in the place in question. I’m sure having a winter hat on in the pre-dawn heat didn’t look the least bit suspicious. After all, I’ve seen people walking the street wearing their bed blankets.
I didn’t stick around to see what happened. Not just because I had to get to work, but because while I can run fast and creatively, I’d rather not try to outrun objects traveling at high velocity.
I’ll take bets that a couple of people made some strange faces when they found the notes I left.
I was a little vague in this post – and for obvious reasons.
Even though I’ve been a little too much in my head, this shenanigan made it much better.
I’ll include pictures of the some of the notes I left for the people who need to be less obvious in their attempts to break into dubious capitalism. You have to D.A.R.E. to make a profit, after all.
One of the things I have to credit my brother Mike with is that he loved reading. Unlike me, his comprehension was instantaneous. I learned to read the “wrong” way. We both used books to escape, each of us initially preferring different kinds of books. By junior high, a miracle happened. Whatever had blocked me vanished. If Mike were still alive, I would continue to tease him for beating him in the city-wide spelling bee. His ability was natural, whereas mine was repetition and relentlessness. Spelling is the domain of the madman because its rules are conjured from a random assortment of sadistic guidelines that change on demand. If you’ve been married, I’m sure you can understand.
All of this comes to mind because of the recent denigration of education. Over half of the American population reads below a sixth grade reading level. Another 1/5 are functionally illiterate. These statistics are going to get worse.
My brother and I would have both learned to read whether we had attended school or not. We loved the imaginary worlds we found. Whether it was Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Louis L’Amour, for Stephen King.
As cynical as my brother could sometimes be, it was earned. He sometimes reminded me that we weren’t competing with half of the population because reading at a level that allowed us to dive into other worlds wasn’t something most of the people around us could do for pleasure. And writing anything substantive? “For get about it,” Mike would have said, quoting his doppelganger Tony Soprano.
If I had disagreed, I would have done so from a distance. I laugh about it now, like I do so many other things. Like when I told him that the “Lord Of The Rings” was like reading a 500-page obituary. I read all the Tolkien books because Mike loved them. I don’t even remember what he had me read next, but I do remember loving it enough to read it twice. Mike could read a book and effortlessly recount not only what happened, but what it might mean. That part took me a long time to learn.
As the years race ahead and leave my brother further behind, I catch myself wishing I could recommend a book to him. Especially the ones that might irritate him.
Don’t ask how far over the bridge I had to hang to take this picture in low light without a flash. I snapped it at 3:33 a.m. I’m not sure why I love this picture so much. I’m still on a long walk across Fayetteville. The U of A was gorgeous with both beautiful buildings and homes surrounding it. It’s a different experience at that hour, with strategically placed lights that disappear in the day. The crescent moon watched me as I navigated through places I should not have gone thanks to the road construction on West Maple.
Because I did not plan my route, the series of hills made me breathe harder than an octogenarian watching Dancing With The Stars. When I made my way back north, the breeze was a godsend. I was sweatier than JD Vance at a La-Z-Boy auction.
Another beautiful walk. I’m not home yet because I overestimated the arc of how far south I went. The incessant buzz of insects keeps me company as I wander.
Every new shiny place I passed was originally something else. Sometimes it clicks what those buildings used to be. 10 years ago. 50 years ago. I’m not sure whether these buildings are more historical than I am.
If you read all this expecting a nice bowtie conclusion, you’re in the wrong place. I also wouldn’t fault you if you read it and think I’m under the influence.
On average, if you’re sky diving, it takes about twelve seconds to reach 120 mph. Those twelve seconds are a piano riff of experience, one so fast that you only hear one thunderous notes as your fingers slide down the keys. Try to explain the indescribable sensation to someone who hasn’t experienced it. The same logic applies when you try to explain addiction, abuse, or a hundred other things to someone who has not personally experienced it.
Someone smart said that it’s the definition of a minute: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute.” If asked to describe both experiences, words come quickly to recount the hot stove, whereas the pretty girl scenario provokes a desire to be poetic.
Consider our biological imperative to procreate. In terms of evolution, it is our primary objective. It pervades us as individuals, and touches all aspects of society. Attractiveness is marketing. Most people are not aware of how much time and energy gets directed toward looking better. We clutch our pearls when people seem to be interested in sex, as if it’s not the elephant in the room. We’ve categorized it as one of the most important things in life, yet the one thing that we can’t talk openly about. This post will get fewer of views because I used the word ‘sex.’ Which is strange, because about 70% of the men who are on this app will pretend that the algorithm doesn’t feed them suggested content on the fringes of it, if not a spiral of partially clad women. The algorithm knows us even when we don’t acknowledge it.
Another friend posted about the ridiculousness of telemarketers. If everyone collectively refuses to participate, it goes away. And that’s true for everything. War? Prostitution? Banjo music? They exist because there’s a market.
Friday worship eats our modern life. Futurizing, anticipating, pocketing away the intervening moments just to be able to slide into perceived comfort that allegedly waits for us at the end of most of our workweeks. But Monday sits and waits for us. Take a vacation. You’ll think about it for weeks in advance. The blur of the glorious vacation flies past, leaving us to greet our mundane life when we return. Kodak moments give way to relentlessly washing dishes, paying bills, and surviving an endless series of orchestrated drama that most of us experience at work.
If you can’t embrace the “chop wood, carry water” part of life, the odds of you being happy fall like a vase placed on a table near a cat.
Did you know that the fastest camera in the world can take 156.3 trillion pictures per second? Despite its speed, it is still slower than reality. We look at clocks to see what time it is, as if it means anythimg other than it is our mechanical executioner, demarcating another flash of time that we didn’t dive into.
Think of the famous painting of the Mona Lisa. Millions of people have seen it. Yet few notice that the painting hasn’t had eyebrows in centuries. We focus on the enigmatic smile, yet rarely notice the glaring absence of eyebrows. We do the same for people. Everyone has something noteworthy, yet we constantly filter and categorize people in order to makes sense of the world. But it’s our world, one limited to us. It boggles the mind that we are entirely different people depending on who is interacting with us. Each of them has their own idea of who we are. Even though we claim to be driven by logic, all of us know the agony of realizing that we can never change someone’s first impression, much less having become a totally different person.
People feel lonely despite most of us having complex communication devices that can connect us to almost every person in the world, every idea once expressed, all at once. We hold these devices up in an attempt to capture a moment, even though there isn’t really such a thing as a singular moment. It doesn’t stop us from having thousands of pictures on our phone. Like bibliophiles with a thousand books they never removed from the shelf.
Scientists now know that time seems to fly as we age because we have fewer new experiences, less revelry in different food, and less inclination to switch the radio to another music station. We attempt to become stagnant, limiting ourselves to the comfort of what we know. “New music sucks,” some say. Some new music sucks – just like some of the music that grooved valleys into our emotional memories sucked. “People are all the same,” is another refrain. “I’ve seen it all. Why travel? Everything is the same no matter where you go.” No, it’s not. You’re the same wherever you go. Finding new things becomes too much trouble.
The reason I love stories of people who break things is that whether they are pushed into or choose it, they realize that the long list of things that supposedly define us are all easily discarded if circumstances demand it.
If you don’t think we complicate thingss, think of the Hawaiin language. It has only thirteen letters, yet can voice all the ideas and content that our more complicated language does.
PS The picture is of College Avenue. When I’m out walking in the dead of the night, I love to walk down the middle of the main roads and see how long I can walk without a vehicle passing through to interfere. I’m sorry Chad, that you’re on your way home at 2:00 a.m. after drinking nine craft beers and a cucumber-infused tequila.
A huge bolt of lightning shook the neighborhood shortly before 1:30 a.m. Even though it’s rare for me, I had miraculously fallen back to sleep after waking up around midnight. I was dreaming so intensely that the lightning strike seemed to have followed me out of the dream. I’m certain that one part of the dream resulted from a conversation I had yesterday when I explained that I track how many days old I am.
It’s rare for me to remember my dreams vividly. Since my sleep pattern switched a few years ago, my brain retreats to a dead place that is more akin to hibernation than sleep.
Today is my first day off work all year. It didn’t occur to me that this was the case until late last week. I decided I would make the final decision as to whether I would work when I woke up this morning. And that if I didn’t go in, I would take a ridiculously long walk. I had to wait for the storm front the mostly move away. For those of you who weren’t up at 1:30, the lightning show was amazing.
I work with several hard workers who don’t get to enjoy the incredible benefit of paid time off. Some of them are losing almost a couple of hundred dollars per pay period because we lose the hours once we are capped out at the maximum. All of us appreciate that we work for an employer with good benefits. But all of us feel the cringe of being put in a situation where we can’t enjoy it because of understaffing. Whether I should say that or not is another issue. But everyone knows that burnout is unsafe for us as individuals and as workers.
Perhaps they grind of work is training for the upcoming economic mess. There is no doubt it is coming and its tendrils will affect all but a few of us. I can picture my grandma saying, “there ain’t no belt tightening when someone has taken your belt.”
My long walk was beautiful. The strange misty glow of the early morning-late night after rain lights. The smell from the rain and the clingng heat. The empty roads that I walked down the middle of. A family of raccoons that complained as I unknowingly walked by. An unseen young woman on one of the balconies of the beautiful modern apartments flanking Gregg, as she beautifully and melodically sang a song I wasn’t familiar with, and a song probably unwelcome to the ears of the other residents. (But for me, as an accidental audience, it was perfect.) The long stretches of both hill and road. The night time summer sky billowing with retreating white clouds. The occasional person on a scooter; some of them involuntarily participating in the morning.
I hated giving up ownership of the streets. Leaving the unobserved and frozen in time houses with all the residents tucked away inside.
It’s hard to explain how rounding a corner and seeing strange orange glow of a section of road brings on the same feelings that “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” or “Stranger Things ” It’s just a stretch of road illuminated by optical illusions. But you weren’t there when I looked to my left and saw a ground light being temporarily blocked by a cat who was creeping along the edge of the driveway. It was accidental synchronicity and caused the hair on my arms to stand. I stopped to take a picture of the light. But that’s all it is. People sound a little off when they try to express how such little moments are entirely different when they are experienced.
The same is true for most of us when we listen to someone describe their dream. The narrative loses the immersive magic that held the storyteller captive while they were experiencing it.
X
.
(I added the word death to the mailbox as a joke…)
…
The dream:
Instead of a tombstone, the grave was marked by a tall crystal spire. Somehow, I knew that it wasn’t an actual grave and that inside whatever what was in the ground was nothing more than a DNA sample.
The sun peeking through the trees was orange red and seemed off in a way I couldn’t precisely explain.
Even the air felt thin and reprocessed.
The dash of the dates didn’t initially make sense: “1967-23,666.” Then I realized whoever designed it knew about my penchant to calculate my age based on the number of days instead of years.
Turning my head, I saw that four people stood behind me. Each of them carried a vial of colored sand. The sand shown brilliantly, like ground diamonds.
They didn’t speak English but I understood them.
“Does anyone have anything they would like to say?” I couldn’t see who voiced the words.
“No. I think he said it all before he left.”
As I turned my head again, the four people moved closer. I didn’t step away. They passed through me as they approached the spire. I felt like I had become mist.
Each of them opened their tiny vials and poured the contents into a almost invisible seam about halfway up the spiral. Flashes of almost every color began washing over the grass around them.
They disappeared as the sky became dark, like a sped up movie traversing time. As I watched the sun slide down the sky, my field of vision collapsed into a single dot of rainbow colored light and then disappeared.
I love when forgotten memories get unlocked by music. Monday afternoon I was scrolling and Sammy Arriaga’s version of Freddy Fender’s “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” came on.
I remembered a specific summer afternoon over the years. But for some reason, this time an enormous amount of details came back. It felt like a door had been unlocked and let me remember things that were locked away. It was July of 1990, back when I was as naive about so many things and an expert at things most people didn’t experience.
I hadn’t thought about that summer afternoon in years. Even though it was my first year at Cargill, I was trying to do something for Uncle Buck who had helped me yet again. Many people don’t know that it was because of him that I was able to do things that I otherwise might not have. Several times in junior high, he stepped in and helped me when my parents drank all their money away. I have to include Aunt Ardith in my thanks.
I mowed Uncle Buck’s yard for him. Because Aunt Ardith went to play bingo, Uncle Buck invited me to join him as he poured himself a “snortee.” Jimmy would have been at his job at Mary Maestri’s, working in the separate building on the large property at the corner of what is now highway 112 and 412. Like almost everything else, it’s an entirely different world out there now.
For once, I accepted a small glass of whiskey with two cubes of ice. Uncle Buck laughed like he did, pointing out that people who preferred to drink their whiskey straight were either sophisticated or about to start a fight.
When I was younger, Uncle Buck tried to encourage me to learn to play bass guitar. He liked to tease me about being in band and choosing the French horn. But he was glad that I was into music. Once I graduated, I turned down both a music scholarship and an offer to be in the United States Army Orchestra. Uncle Buck wasn’t someone who repeated himself often, but there were a few times he told me to find a way to get back into music.
Uncle Buck got out one of his records. He chose Freddy Fender’s “Before The Next Teardrop Falls.” He showed me the album cover and laughed at Fender’s enormous head of hair. By that age, I had already adopted my short haircut.
Probably because no one else was at the house, Uncle Buck told me to listen to the song with fresh ears. He said that it was one of the best examples of a perfect country song. Just a stripped down love song that wasn’t cluttered by technique.
I don’t know what Uncle Buck was thinking about when the song played the first time. It’s strange to me to think that he was around 57 years old that afternoon, just a little younger than I am now. Whatever look he had on his face, it was 100% nostalgic.
When he played it the second time, he explained it to me as a musician. While I don’t remember specifically everything he said, he told me that it was the perfect tempo to sing or dance to. That it was standard time, mostly major chords, and that it was the perfect example of a verse-chorus song. Uncle Buck was impressed with the fact that Freddy Fender made a hit out of it both in country and pop. Uncle Buck was also impressed that the song included a steel guitar and an accordion.
As the song played a second time, I almost fell out of my chair when Uncle Buck softly followed the lyrics as Freddy Fender switched to Spanish. Uncle Buck loved teasing me about speaking Spanish, but this time, after the song ended, I asked him about it. He told me that because he learned all music by ear, it was just a question of repetition.
We listened to a couple of other songs before Uncle Buck put on Charlie Pride’s “Kiss An Angel Good Morning ”
I don’t remember exactly how he put it, but he pointed out that it was almost perfect too, because it was the type of song bad singers could do reasonably well.
I wish I could remember what song he played next. That part is lost to me. He got up to pour himself another drink. He stood in front of his well-equipped stereo system, thinking. As an electronics tech for Montgomery Ward, he had nice stereo equipment. Whatever song it was, by the time it ended, he had downed his drink.
If I had it to do all over again, I would find ways to sit with Uncle Buck and have him talk about music. When he was younger, he had the chance to play with some amazing musicians in Memphis. Even though he played in a couple of bands that did well, he chose a good job with benefits over the musician lifestyle when he moved to Springdale. Because I’m older now and can relate to the fact that he was about the age I am now, I understand the nostalgia he probably felt that afternoon.
(A man dressed in a black suit stands with his back turned toward the empty auditorium. As he turns to hold the stand mic with his right hand, a soft spotlight highlights his chin, tilted to the ground, obscured by his hat.
As the band hidden offstage begins to play, the man removes his hat and holds it over his heart.
He takes a deep breath as his voice reverberates throughout the auditorium. It’s obvious that his voice is powerful. For this song, however, he holds back, as if alllowing his voice to be free will bring him to his knees.
As he sings, he looks at the stage floor.)
Monday has its Tuesday
The night has the sun
Standing here alone
Feeling undone
Presence is a choice
Time is short for all
I’m losing myself
and becoming small
You shine your light to others
Without a second thought
When I’m here waiting
Slowly losing the plot
(Chorus)
I need your energy
both laughter and desire
smile when you see me
always wanting to know more
I’m losing myself
I feel like a chore
Monday has its Tuesday
The night has the sun
Standing here alone
Feeling undone
(As he sings the last two lines, he raises his head to finish)
I guess I’ll wait
Even though I’m gone
(He bends to place his hat on the floor, flooded by the spotlight. He sighs and shrugs, exiting stage left.)
Everyone is one day or one unexpected moment away from tragedy. One incident distanced from the inevitable humility of needing help. It’s math, statistics, and inevitability. I learned it the hard way multiple times. It’s part of the reason I continue to shake my head at the cruel push to defund any part of our social safety net. Collectively, we are subject to the same uncontrollable forces. Tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, or war. The day comes when each of us will need help, either as individuals or as a community. If we take away the support, life will become even crueler. The FAFO moment isn’t a question of if, but when.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 