I l-o-v-e hearing words mispronounced. It is usually a sign that someone has learned a word from reading it. I devised this couplet to remind people to encourage language and vocabulary instead of mocking it. English “rules” are arbitrary and devised with no rhyme or reason. We owe it to the stupidity of our language to mess with every aspect of it. Think about the magic of language. We translate little squiggles into ideas in our heads. And then we argue how the imaginary and arbitrary symbols are supposed to look or sound. As I age, my tolerance for supercilious and snarky attitudes has plummeted. Say it wrong. Spell it wrong. This language belongs to all of us. All the rules we claim will one day be meaningless. Since I speak and read more than one language, I am comfortable and fearless in navigating all the errors I make when communicating. Most people are nervous when speaking or writing. There’s no reason to be. No matter how careful you are, you’ll sound or seem a bit ignorant to someone, somewhere. You have permission to break the language. If you run into someone who is a bit of a wet blanket about your right to do so, look them in the eye and say, “I’d like an eXpresso.” And prance away.
Yesterday, I unintentionally scared the hell out of a pedestrian in a crosswalk. I was doing taxi service around 4:00, coming up the dreaded hill on Appleby. It bothered me today. She was obviously physically fit because she instinctively employed a combination of a windmill defense and a double time step inspired by bad ’80s music. What she didn’t know were two things. First, it was exactly at that point several years ago I was rear-ended and it totaled my car, after I had experienced the worst couple of weeks of my life. Second, yesterday a car behind me had been engaging in aggressive driving. After I made the right turn onto Appleby, I had foolishly hoped that he focused his attention on his next cave drawing. Instead, he had accelerated much too quickly behind me after making the same turn. There is no way he would have avoided hitting me if I hadn’t gassed my little vehicle very quickly. I made a turn with a wider arc to give myself just enough space to avoid the idiot behind me as well as not scaring the pedestrian. But I hadn’t accounted for her instinctive reaction. The cretin behind me sped up the hill on his way to whatever nonsense such people get involved in. All the pedestrian saw out of the corner of her eye was a little blue cloud of a car apparently heading toward her. I tried to wave an apology profusely but she was already making her way across the crosswalk shaking her head in disgust. Today it was back to normal and instead of worrying about somebody hitting me from behind I kept an eye on the vehicles coming down the hill at 70 mph. I wish I could apologize to the woman. And also congratulate her on both her dance moves and physical agility. X
Güino is 16 now. He may look scruffy, but I brushed him 5 minutes and then petted him until I got carpal tunnel syndrome. I think he’s planning on having a rough day. He’s learning Excel. X .
Before the storm rolled in, I paused on the landing outside my apartment. Below me, I listened to a downstairs neighbor animatedly talk on his phone. Along the fence, another neighbor walked his adorable little dogs. From another apartment came the melody of a beautiful song I hadn’t heard in a while. I love the moments when the universe isn’t looking at me at all. But it certainly seems as it is. The piano of the song and the melodic voice combined to freeze time for a few seconds. I think I dreamed of the melody because I woke up with it in my head. I repeated my presence on the landing. This time watching the shutter lightning off in the distance and listenimg to the rain dripping from the dilapidated gutters. At 2:00 in the morning, I could still hear neighbors burning the midnight oil. Though there was no melody emanating from any of the apartments, I still heard it in my head and felt it in my bones. X .
I just had an awesome interaction at the inconvenience store. There was a gentleman there talking to the clerk. I’ve seen him before. He turned to me and said he really liked my purple glasses. I just so happened to be wearing my purple-themed dashiki shirt as well. He said his wife would really like the glasses and that color. Without missing a beat, I took them off and offered to give them to him. He initially was very reluctant. But then he said he would love the color himself. So I took them off again and told him that I insisted. The clerk knows me and knew that I wasn’t offering them out of politeness. Because he had told me that he loved the color, I wanted him to have them. He wiped them off and put them on and then mugged for me and the clerk. He asked me, who gives away their glasses like that? He was smiling and laughing. We traded jokes about what his wife might think, especially if she saw them on the nightstand and assumed they were another woman’s glasses. He asked if he could have a picture with me, so I leaned in and smiled as he took our picture. The clerk watched and laughed. We stood there talking for a couple of more minutes. I told him the magnifications and where to get them without spending a fortune. He hadn’t realized that he was wearing the wrong magnification before. He was shocked that he realized that the pair I gave him would allow him to drive with them on as well. When I went to my car, I got my almost neon green ones and put them on. I went back inside so he could see that I did, in fact, have multiple colors. We all laughed again. At his age, it never had occurred to him that he might enjoy such a novelty color of purple glasses. But he certainly got a kick out of the pair I gave him. I might not be telling the story well, but it was a nice way to start my afternoon. Even laughing with strangers and bearing unexpected gifts. Love, X
PS That’s me earlier in the picture. Since it’s April Fool’s Day, I alternated the Band-Aid on my forehead about every hour to see who might notice. And gave various explanations as to why I needed the Band-Air in the first place. You gotta keep’em guessing.
Erika gave me two window bird feeders. I have a few birds who are loyal. Most of them congregate at her apartment. I looked over a few minutes ago and realized that a bird had been sitting in there gorging itself. Both feeders are in complete view of the cat tower. My cat Güino was too busy at the back window listening to a hundred birds sing and fly past. X .
I used one of the eggs given to me by a friend on my birthday. And the dollar coin a stranger surprised me with. I helped him and he gave me a little bit of story and magic to pass along. So I am. I carried the coin with me several days, waiting for the right opportunity. But I was too much in my head. I’ll leave this egg and others. Someone’s curiosity will get the best of them and they’ll find the egg and open it. And of course I love imagining what they will think of it. I hope whoever finds it is someone with a little bit of capricious magic. The orange sheet of paper contains a little bit of an explanation that I’ll put it inside the egg with the coin. I’m not sure where I’ll place the egg. That’s part of the fun.
In October 2020, I had a gong go off in my head. One consequence is that after 40-something years, possibly 50, I stopped biting my fingernails. The other result was that I lost a chunk of my body. On purpose, even though a sword chop at times is likely.
Recently, I realized that I had transitioned from nibbling my nails to biting them like a rabid hyena. Looking closely at the photo, you can see the ragged mess I’ve made of my fingers. This is an example of the subconscious and anxiety fighting its way through the layers we use to camouflage ourselves. I don’t know if I will get another gong about my nails. So, I might have to resort to old-fashioned and punitive behavior modification. I could go and drive a few dozen nails with a hammer. My dubious accuracy will result in painful fingertips. I’m not proud that I’ve returned to nail biting. Weirdly, though, I don’t keep it secret. My self-image is acceptance. I rarely get self-conscious. It’s definitely not because I look like George Clooney. My spirit animal is much closer to Danny DeVito. I’d rather post a picture of it than attempt to keep it secret foolishly. For anyone young reading this, no matter what you do, age is creeping up behind you. You wake up one morning and realize that you can’t sneeze without risk of injury and that parts of your face look like road maps.
The second part is the date behind my hand. On March 4th, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and revert to my infallible weight maintenance method. While I was only up to 175, I had recently attempted to motivate someone to start the difficult process of reaching their goal. I hit my March 31st goal yesterday. And I’ll be down 10 more soon enough to return to 160, where I belong. I can’t explain how I have so much confidence in one area of my life yet consistently fail in others. Once you realize the problem is you and in your head, the lever is consistency. I don’t count calories – and not only because I lose count after ten fingers. I eat a lot of unhealthy foods when I’m doing my thing. And I hate the word “unhealthy” in this context. During my recent excursion, I cooked my first filet mignon. No one vomited or passed away as a result, so my effort was at least minimally a success.
So many of us fall into the trap of reminding one another that it’s just a question of mindset. But so many things are complicated. Even though we sometimes act like we’ve been recently hit over the head repeatedly, the truth is that thinking and cognitive ability often lose the war to reality. We know, but we don’t act. Or, more likely, we rationalize. Push it off until later. We all know how that works out.
One of my brilliant ideas is to offer someone the right to smack me in the face if they see my fingers near my mouth. (I surmise people would gladly do it for free and often, so the additional carrot of money is a sure-fire option.) It’s ironic that one of my weight loss mantras is “Don’t put it in your mouth,” yet that won’t translate to me not biting my nails like I’m using an old-school typewriter.
In the I-dodged-another-one part of my life, I found out that my equilibrium issue was caused by an ear infection. They didn’t do a brain scan because the last time, it took them 42 minutes to find mine. As most of you will testify, I usually keep it unplugged anyway. I can’t leave it unplugged long, though. The last three times I tried to live without my brain, I received 16 promotion offers. (Something about being the ideal candidate.) Love, X .
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 