It's Quittin' Time, Again

My soul has been a bit sad lately, my heart a little achy.

Do I know why?

I think it’s because I’m human.

I also think it’s my smartphone…  (I’ve never typed that word before in my life.)

I’m not going to tell you why, you already know.  You’re very likely reading this on one.  That’s why I’m trying not to use long sentences or paragraphs, nobody wants that on a teeny-tiny-ass screen.  Dammit, that was long…

You already know how bombarded one can feel on social media. 

You already know the hollowness of comparing yourself to others in your circles.

You also know the emptiness that digital communication leaves in us, the ice between the ones and zeros.

You know the isolation of the so-called connectivity - head down, shoulders in – lost in absolutely nothing.

Listen, maybe I shouldn’t assume you feel the same as I do.  I’m sure many of you use your phone with great care and prudence.

You know what?  I can’t maintain this style.  I can’t continue on with these short sentences and I love long paragraphs and I like to juxtapose them to short ones.  It’s a balance game writers like to play, to visually move the reader’s eyes and encourage them to move along in the narrative, an impossible tactic on a three by five screen.

***

As all boys do, I watched my father a lot growing up.  He whistled and I learned to whistle.  He put his hands in his pockets, I still do.  He crossed his right leg over his left, so did I.  And, he smoked and so did I for over thirty years.

I don’t have many moving-picture-like memories, I tend more towards polaroids and panoramic landscapes, Dutch still-lifes and a nude or two.  One of the few I do have is a short scene of my dad getting up from his chair in my childhood home.  He is dressed in a suit, a charcoal one, as was the fashion in the late fifties and well into the sixties when this takes place.  He is slim and the suit fits him nicely, he has a muted maroon bowtie on and brown loafers and belt.

The light is morning like, I’d guess we are headed for church.  His chair has a footstool which he likes close when he puts his feet up.  My mother calls and he brings his knees up and gets his feet on his side of the stool and pushes it out so he can stand.  His hands go to his knees, I can still see his turquoise and gold ring, he makes the dad grunt and sort of rocks up still bent at the waist, he straightens up slowly.  I don’t think he sees me watching him even though I feel close, close enough to smell his Old Spice, black coffee and Camels.

As he gathers himself he absented-mindedly taps his hand on his left breast.  The hand, not satisfied, then reaches inside the coat, first into his shirt pocket, then the inside pocket of the jacket.  Now, both hands, in tandem, quickly shoot into the outside pockets of the jacket – they worked back then – and then into the front pockets of the slacks.  These jingle satisfactorily, but the dance goes on to the back pockets where they linger.  He looks silly, in fact, it all seems silly.

Dad looks perplexed, I am straight-up confused.

Finally, he looks down and over at me.  He smiles at me and cocks his head as he sees them out of the corner of his eye, a pack of Camel’s and a white book of matches.  His face is pleased, relieved.  He chuckles at himself, as men do, and winks at me as he put them in the inside pocket of his coat, pats them knowingly a couple of times, deftly buttons his coat with one hand and walks towards the kitchen.

End scene.

***

More than anything, what impressed my little eight- or nine-year-old self was his satisfaction at finding them and, to some extent, the matching anxiety at not having them.  Years and years later, I worked in a restaurant where, as a bartender, I wore a suit and tie every day.  I probably did that cigarette dance a dozen times a week.  I caught myself at it one time in the mirror behind the scotch and bourbon and saw my father, I gave myself the same wink he had given me that Sunday morning past.

Why, I wonder, am I bringing this up?  Because, I see this same dance these days, but now it’s for a phone.  Just last week at the grocery store I saw a lady do the extended version of it.  As she stood just outside her car, door still open, with growing anxiety she checked all her pockets and rifled somewhat madly through her purse, finally ducking back into the car and coming back up with that satisfied, relieved look, and… a phone clutched triumphantly in her hand.

I watched smokers for years as a bartender and waiter, back in the days of smoking sections and lounges.  I’ve watched, as, mid conversation a hand reaches for a pack and, with seemingly no concentration or effort a smoke was acquired and lit.  The same way I see folks so absentmindedly reach for their smartphones these days.  I’ve seen the agitation of a guy out of cigarettes concerned about when he’ll get another mirrored in the look of someone whose phone is out of power or, worse, not connected.  I’ve watched as one person at my bar lit a cigarette and the whole bar lighting up at the scent of the first just as I’ve seen one person check their phone and watched as those around them looked at theirs.

I read an article I can’t find right now that said something to the affect that in fifteen or twenty years we’ll all be wondering what the hell we were thinking giving iPhones and androids to children, just as we wonder now what society was thinking when we let – encouraged, really - young men and women begin smoking in their teens.

I know you may be thinking that this analogy is a little dire and, seeing it here in black and white, I’d tend to agree.  However, I know what addiction feels like, I know its ups and downs, its desire and relief.  I know the dopamine rush as well as the physical anticipation of that next hit.  I know how good the ritual of an addiction feels, how true and real the desire for a thing can be.  I know.

And, as God is my witness, my smartphone feeds that cycle today just as surely as those Marlboros did for all those years.

I don’t like it.  What’s weird is, truth be told, I liked smoking and damn near every cigarette was enjoyable, honest.

Not with my smartphone.  It mostly just pisses me off and disappoints me.  The news is so dire, so ugly mean and intense.  So much so that, for me, even a decent, happy story, a “feel-good” story I think they call them, can taste saccharine, treacly.  Facebook consistently disappoints me.  In the early years I really enjoyed it, but now so few friends even post anything, it seems a bit pointless.

There’s one more thing I’d like to say:  I am not on this earth to be advertised to…

Well, that’s not a very good sentence.  Listen, that smartphone is specifically designed and coded and programmed to advertise.  “Sponsored” posts on FB, ads in every video, Amazon notifications out of the blue.  Ads on the games we play, the blogs we read, the podcasts and vlogs.  I won’t go on. 

Damn, I completely forgot you were reading this on your phone.

I’ll let you go.

I’m gonna turn my Facebook off later tonight, Fat Tuesday.

I will set my phone down where the house phone used to be - it's a pretty spot - and turn up the ringer and hope for the best.   It'll be right here, on top of that wooden box, nestled under the shamrock which I noticed has two hidden blooms:

You see, I still need a communication device, I like texting and I need to get phone calls.  That’s the insidiousness of the whole thing, something you need, something useful, paired with this lame entertainment device that just wants to separate us from our money.  That’s fucked up.

(My apologies again to those using great care and prudence with their phones, and those few who still read things on their computer.)

I plan to keep writing here, but I won’t be able to promote them by posting on FB, so ya’ll won’t know it’s here.  Oh, well…

Keep in mind these are just my observations, my responses, my feelings.  One cannot qualify every statement and sentence with an “IMHO” or “for me” or “I can’t speak for you, but…” in a bit of writing, it becomes tedious.

I’ll probably return to FB after Easter, but, I hope to get rid of this phone for good.

It sorta burns my hand…

Peace.  

Look me up sometime if you think of me.

I’ll be here.

On Being Time

Nick’s had a lot of watches, I think seven, maybe eight.  Here’s the first I think he had, a cute, sporty analog job and a digital one:

Here are some of the rest, both digital and analog, all are worn and weathered, some have broken crystals – though none of them are glass.  He chose them all himself.  The gold one down near the bottom is the one he wears now, unless he’s doing something sporty then he wears the “ref-watch” they both have to ref soccer.

He still looks at watches.  He likes to stop at the counters in department stores and I see him looking online at them from time to time.  He was once with me when I went into a high-end jewelry store to get my dad’s vintage Citizen cleaned and batteried, he couldn’t take his eyes off those thousand-dollar timepieces and the store owner - recognizing, perhaps in the glint of N’s eyes, a future customer - showed him some and let him try on a beautiful gold and silver Rolex.

He’s annoyed when he’s forgotten to wear one.  He was the first of the boys to conceptualize the complicated ‘half pasts’ and ‘quarter-ofs’ and transitioned from digital to analog with little effort.

I, too, have long worn watches, in fact I just went to look in my drawer of memories and found four forgotten ones.  Here they are with the two I currently use, the Citizen, which needs a battery again, and the Casio, which is built like a brick:

If this were a different post, and I had few day’s more hours, I’d tell you the why and when of each of them.  It’d be a good one, too, cherished things harbor beautiful stories.  But, I must continue on the road I started, which is about to get convoluted and complicated and may make little sense.

I wonder what is N’s fascination with watches?  Timepieces really, because he once chose this off a table in his Nana’s basement of things to be given away or donated:

 

I wonder what is mine, fascination that is?  Anyone who’s been around these pages for a while will know that I’ve cast Time as my nemesis, my rival, my Moriarty if you will.  But, you know what?, if I think about it, that’s only been in the past decade or so.  Up until then I think we were friends, Time and I.  Perhaps ‘friendly rivals’ might be better.

But, what of Nick?  I don’t think he’s had time to personify time, to capitalize it as I have come to do.  So what is his interest.  Well, it’s not like he has a lot of appointments or meetings or dates, he relies on us to make sure he gets somewhere on time.  He does ask about how long it takes to get places and always seems to know when we need to leave for church or games and such.  He seems happy with time, understands it.

So what links he and I, why a dozen or more watches between us?

It seems to me that there are three approaches people have towards time.  (No, no, I am not a theoretical timeologist nor a theolosopher or philosologian, hell, I’m not even a social anthropologist.  I’m just a guy looking out the window and thinking about time.)  I see them as marking time, passing time, and taking time.

What links Nick and I is that we are time markers.  I never don’t know what time it is.  Nick is the same way.  We know when we have to leave a for a meeting, we know when to start dinner, when to go to bed and get the right amount of sleep (a lot for both growing boys and aging men), when to wake.  We anticipate seasons, notice the days shortening.  I always know the lunar schedule as well and I’m sure he will someday as well.

It’s a good way to go, but, honestly, it gets a little stressful.  Whenever I am writing, I am constantly aware of how long I have to do it.  I’ve heard Nick lament the shortness of a practice or the time he has to get his homework done or watch yet another video.  Sometimes, late night, as I’m listening to music on the porch or watching a ballgame or the evening fire die down, I, too, lament the passing of time and the coming dawn, just as he does when time is running short when he and his brother and friends are building forts down by the creek or playing video-games of an afternoon.

I find myself envious of those I call the time passers like Nick’s twin brother, Zack, and my wife.  For them, time can go unmarked.  Z can go for hours just learning algorithms for his many Rubik’s cubes and solving them.  Marci can immerse herself in a book for endless hours, caught in that timeline, unconcerned with this one.   Back in olden times, BSP (before smart phones), people all over did silly, time-passing things like knitting and model-building and quilting and whittling – all things that I’d love to do.  Those all seem so arcane today, but many folks still do them and I admire that.

Time passers seem less stressed and more patient with time, less worried about the next thing on the timeline and can stay much more focused on the task at hand.  I am always afraid of running out of time, while they seem unfettered by the kind of constraints I put on it all.  I actually put things off because I don’t feel I have enough time to do a thing, a task or such.  The passers don’t do that, they figure it’ll all work out and, for them, it usually does.

Finally, there are the time takers - the schedulers, the calendar keepers, the preparers.  They seize time, putting it into boxes and checking the hours off as they get their tasks done.  I truly admire these people… but, I’d hate to be one, honestly, I’d suck at it.  The time takers I’ve known are, most commonly, successful go-getters.  They are the bosses, the CEOs, the administrators and politicians, the lawyers and physicians – all of whom need to vet their time with great care.

I’ve known a few in my life and, actually, they’ve always intimidated me to some degree.  Those of us who generally mark or pass time stand, often, in awe of these folks.  These are the people that always know what’s next, where they are going.  These are the individuals who work between things to do, who listen to podcasts as they exercise at five in the morning and check their schedules as they get out of bed.  I knew by the age of ten that I was not one.

Now, to be fair, I think we all do some of all three.  There are times when I, as a marker of time, can truly let myself pass some time, like when I play guitar or get engrossed in a good book.  Also, we all at times, must take time – busy weeks, busy lives, important events - all must be scheduled, and time must be accounted for.  I get that these categories may seem stereotypical, but, hey, it’s just my observation as I mark my time watching all of you other folks passing and taking it as you will.

One final thought and then I’ll let you go:  There’s a lot of time in a lifetime.  There are hours in childhood where the clock seems to literally stand still.  Even as an adult I notice how long a day can seem.  Sometimes I marvel at the number of books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen.  In my life I bet I’ve learned to sing and play five, six hundred songs, most forgotten.

So, you've got to do something with all that time.  I guess maybe it’s a matter of choice or, perhaps, just a fated sort of thing.  Maybe, it is determined by personality or circumstance, upbringing or…

Hell, I dunno, it was just something I was thinking about as I marked my time.

Tomorrow, school begins here in our corner of the Ohio Valley, and time will need stronger reigns and I’ll, more than likely, start cursing it more, evil-eyeing the whiteboard calendar we keep and marking the time before bed and soccer practice and homework and…  I’m gonna need a bigger watch.

I’ve taken up too much of your time today, or possibly, I’ve given you the opportunity to pass some of your time.  Any way it goes, I’m glad you stopped by.

Peace.

Random

Nick did this one time.  All he said when I asked him why was "I felt like it."

Life's like that, ain't it?

He also made a cake for a dinner we made for a meeting at the church.

He's a good boy.

Zack is a deer boy as well.

That's all I got.

Peace.

I Had a Bad Day

I had a "bad day" yesterday.

I remember when Nick was in first or second grade he came home one day long in the face.  One of the very special things about young boys - children in general, I'd guess - is the sleavedness of their emotions.  I asked him what the matter was and he answered, simply and quietly, "I had a bad day."

I pressed a little, maybe to see if something big was bothering him, you know, bullying, workload pressure, math problems, the ever looming proficiency tests that seem so important but aren't.  I guess I wanted to fix, to make better, to solve.  I know better than that, I really do, but little souls are so damn vulnerable.

"I just had a bad day, Dad!"

Yep, sometimes that's all that needs to be said.  I reckon he did all the figuring in his head, understood where the day failed him, knew why his day was bad.  And that's the whole of it, don'tcha think?  Understanding why your day was bad?  I think inherent in a young, growing mind is a concept that, embarrassingly, eludes me sometimes - Hope.  Nick knew better days would come.  In fact, if I'd had cupcakes or cookies or salami or pie at the ready, I could have quickly made his day good again.  I'd bet after his bath, in cozy pajamas, reading a chapter of Narnia or whatever we were reading aloud that evening, he probably forget all about his bad day.

But, this morning I was still hanging on to mine.  Oh, I try not to let it trickle down to Marci and the boys, I mean, it's not like something awful happened yesterday, in fact much more awfuler things happen all the time.  No, it was far more selfish than that.

For instance yesterday I played a set of maybe ten or twelve songs on the old Alvarez, new Ernie Ball strings a-janglin'.  It's a little known fact that artists and craftsmen and hobbyists and enthusiasts must work on their thing - "practice" we call it.  Honestly, I sounded good, didn't make too many mistakes, nailed a couple of  Slaid Cleves songs I've been struggling with.  It was a good session.

But for some reason, as I cased up my guitar, I wondered why I go to the effort?  No one hears me, really - occasionally my family, a couple times in firepit season around a campfire for some friends, a few Christmas carol singalongs, that's about it.  Yesterday, I couldn't help but seriously think that if I shelved the guitars away for good, well... nobody'd even notice.

I've been doing some writing lately.  I'd guess you wouldn't know it as the tumble weeds roll over the crickets on this blog, but I have been.  I've been working on longer stuff - memoir style pieces, longer short stories and fiction, some songs and even some prayers - all of which take cajoling and tweaking and mistaking and deleting.

Yesterday, I was working on a story about my own seventh grade year of school as the boys start theirs.  Well, the phone kept ringing, the text kept blooping, the chores kept interrupting.  I considered driving over to the old Junior High school I went to in the seventies, now an administration building, and bullshitting my way in and taking a tour of the old place, smelling it and tasting it, realigning myself to the perspectives of size and time.  But, all I could think was if I go out I'll need to stop by the library and Nick needs reeds and I'll have to get some groceries and then the timer went off and the boys would be home soon and I'd better this and that and the other thing and... I shut down the computer.

And, I choked back a sob as I did.  It felt like I was casing up my thoughts, boxing them.  I thought, well, maybe that's where they belong.  Boxed.  Stored.  Offcast.  Sequestered.  Abandoned.  I know this feeling well.  I've let go a lot of dreams and wondered if this was another.  Somewhere in one of the Corinthians in the book labeled "King James" it says:  When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Yeah, but what defines a "childish thing?"  And, perhaps if we all "understood as a child" this world might...

But, it still echoes in my mind, this verse and I often feel childish, writing and singing into the wind, into the trees and ashes and dust.  Perhaps, aside they should be put.


This morning, I was making breakfast and packing lunches.  I'd purposefully avoided opening FB or The Post on my phone, I could think of nothing better to make a bad day worse, and, well, I wanted to have a better day today.  I did register, as one will do these days, that I had a new email.

After the boys left, without any real forethought, as if instinctively, I grabbed my coffee and opened my phone and just before I opened FB I saw that email notification again, and, risking spam or more things to put on the new whiteboard calendar we've had to hang as times get busier, I opened it.

It was a note from a writer friend of mine who said he was looking through my archives (only available on the desktop version of this site) and stumbled upon a couple of posts he very much liked. Well, that alone was enough to make me glance over at the pile of boxed memories and dreams I'd just yesterday set aside.

It is a silly little post from my first year of blogging - actually, my eighth piece ever - that exactly forty-seven people have seen.  It's called, complicatedly, Inexplicable Instructions and Flow Charts.  He used words like "clever" and "wise" and "meaningful."  I'd not thought of it in years but remembered being pretty proud of it when I wrote it.  It did exactly what I was trying to do back in those early days.

He said he'd jumped to it from another post he'd seen called "Simple Gifts." He called that post "purposeful" and "sweet."  The boxes rumbled a bit.  My friend said other nice things, said I'd been supportive and kind to him, he said I'd influenced him in his early days, said he'd hoped to have as clear a purpose as I had.  He said that I had a sense of...  not really the point, Bill.

I needed his encouragement this morning, I really did.  I had to get to an early morning oil change appointment for my truck, so I showered and headed out.  I put a box on the table as I left, no dust was on them, yet.

The repair shop is next to a coffee shop in my old home town of Mason so I walked on over there to wait for the truck to be done.  The place is a local place, not a soulless Starbucks, and I walked in the front and through I few rooms set like living-rooms, and headed to the counter.  I ordered my extra-bold with heavy cream and sugar and, well, I heard an accordion. Yes, you read that right.  And then... a banjo.  And then, some sort of percussion and what seemed to be another, or was it two, accordions warming up.

The shop, Kidde Coffee, has a sort of sun-room patio out the back door, where they have live music of an evening.  In fact, I've played a couple open-mics there in the recent past.  I opened the door and what to my wondering eyes did I see?  An accordion band.  Three older guys on the ivories, a very wizened Gandolf looking dude on cowbells and washboard, and a guy maybe my age claw-hammering a five-string.

At, 7:55 in the morning, of a Wednesday.  Well, once I became accustomed to the sight, I took a seat at a table a ways away.  I mean, what else mattered at this point.  They were bantering back and forth, straightening out their music and getting settled.  One guy had sent his instrument in to be worked on and was trying to get used a spare one of the other guys let him borrow.

"I'da sent it in sooner," he said "But, I couldn't find a ten-foot box."

They all shook their heads in sympathetic agreement.

"Been there," one of them said.

"But then my wife said I might be able to close the bellows and use a smaller box," he said.

They all agreed what a smart and good woman his wife was.

I laughed out loud, never having encountered accordion comedy before.  Later one of them called it "bellows humor," which I again found very amusing.  They waved hello to me and asked me my name, one of them said he thought he remembered my older brother.  I sipped my coffee and smiled.

After a few more minutes, right at eight, the aged wizard punched out a three-four beat on his two cowbell and washboard kit and the accordions started a lovely German polka in three part harmony.  They were wonderful, joking and happily playing for their audience of one - and each other, I'd have to say.  They did standards and waltzes, all of which I knew.  They laughed back and forth, teased each other and were having a grand old time.

About ten minutes in, a group of what one might call "little old ladies" came in and got coffee and sat down to listen, groupies no doubt.  A little later a young woman who'd been at the counter with an eighteen month old little girl, came out to leave and, without missing a beat, the band segued into "The Chicken Dance" a sort of polka thing with choreographed hand and body chicken movements, with a fun little butt wiggle and... it's Cincinnati thing, you wouldn't understand.  She set the girl down and they did the dance, the choir of groupies did in their seats.  I tried as well, but I'm famously bad at it.  Every damn one of us were grinning like idiots.

It came out that they got together every Wednesday morning for what the banjo player, the straight man it turns out, called a "painfully public practice."  They called themselves the "Mason Mediocre Band" but that didn't get any search results, so, I think they were joshing.

I had to go, the truck was ready and I had stuff to do.  I thanked them and headed out and picked up my truck.  As I started it I thought, you know, what the hell, I'll go back for another cup of coffee and a bit more music.  I pulled in just after nine and, well, they were gone.  One of the guys had just finished putting his instrument in the trunk of his late model Buick and was on his way out.  I watched him as I parked.  If I hadn't of seen him I may have wondered if I'd made the whole thing up.  You still might be wondering...

I got to thinking as I drove home - as I'm wont to do - that maybe it's not time to put those old guitars up on a high shelf, and maybe it is time to open those boxes back up - time to uncase the lot.

Honestly, I'd never played and sang to be a big star someday.  I may have lied to myself about that, but... I just wanted to have some fun, accomplish something, impress a girl here and there and maybe a few guys as well along the line.  I've played my share of open stages and and hosted a few backyard and kitchen hootenannies in my day.  It was fun, it's been fun, it's still fun.  The wind, trees, ashes and dust have made a pretty fine audience as well, thank you very much.

I guess what it comes down to, in summary - finally, you might add - is that I'm glad I had a bad day yesterday, it made today that much sweeter.  In less than two hours I'd been reminded of why I do these things I do, reminded of the childlikeness I will not and should not put away.


There's more, there's always more.  Yesterday, Nick had an after school lesson on the bassoon (he plays oboe now), his first.  His dear music teacher let him bring home the instrument and he couldn't wait to get it out and play it for me.  I've had the fortune of hearing some bassoon in my life, a dear friend from a lifetime ago had a friend who still plays as a professional, she was a student at the time.  It's a beautiful and rich and soothing sound.  And as Nick played a low B-flat, it seemed to come floating back through some thirty-plus years of memory.

As he went to bed last night he laid back on his pillows and said, "I had a good day, Dad."

You know what, today, so have I.


Thanks for coming 'round.


Here's something from the backseat...

 "I like thunder and interventions."

Who doesn't...?


Peace.  

(Nick's playing the bassoon right now, I wish you could hear it, you know, to add some verisimilitude...  Lord knows, this piece could use some.)