#124: wastelands

Little more than nothing done this week. What does that mean? It means that for the last five days I've not done anything beyond work, watch "The Wire," think about life while watching "The Wire" and think about "The Wire" while I watch life, and work. Also, I've been eating ramen which means my sleep has been weird because I'm not getting nourishment and I've been exhausted during the day, but that could also be because I've been watching "The Wire." I'm currently fighting an impulse to get the second season tonight. No, Wilson. Retreat, retreat. Run from the devil. Although, if "The Wire" is the devil, he's a fine-looking evil man.

I realize my existence is in wasteland mode--although "Under Pressure" is playing right now so how bad is it all really? Not too such. I wake up a mere 15 or 20 minutes before I have to leave for work. I eat randomly throughout the day...if at all. I've stopped eating breakfast, arguably my favorite time of any day also favorite meal. The apartment wavers between tidy and disaster. I don't even speak with the kitchen anymore. When it can be civil, I'll be civil. Laundry is likewise always in flux and I since I'm throwing clothes on hastily in an effort to be out the door on time, fashion is almost non-existent not that I've ever been especially fashionable, but at least I've put some degree of thought into my appearance before.

As long as I avoid any bit of personal contact with myself, life goes quite smoothly. But then I slow down enough to realize I'm not accomplishing anything, personal growth-wise. Some of this is because I haven't had a day off in a while. We go into survival. I wish I were fine-tuned-machine enough though to have a plan to deal with this and still be human in the midst. Surely it can't be so hard.

I think one key is to get out of my creature of habit ways. Shake things up. Instead of dreading dishes all evening and guilt tripping myself into seriously considering, but ultimately not washing them...I will...find...um...a different approach.

---

While I figure that out, here's what went in today's paper:

1. This is my contribution, results of yesterday's courts: guy who's avoided justice finally gets some. You can never hide from the Batman. Right?

2. Colleague, writing on Haiti. Read it. It's good. Because, though we often forget, life goes on even after the media has stopped going all bunny-happy on a disaster event. The New York Times has had some really strong follow-up stories too.

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Portland this weekend. I'm excited. It'll be pretty busy what with a bridal shower and meeting up with Liz for ironing out some wedding stuff and, of course, watching "SpongeBob" with the male siblings. Saturday will be my first day off in a while so I'm going to soak it all up until it comes out my eyeballs. And then I'm going to figure out a way to fit my bike into my car.

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Proof that God exists and loves us:

1. Coffee with half+half
2. David Bowie
3. Breakfast foods
4. "The Wire" -- God loves drug dealers too. Truly. No one's perfect and technically we're not dead until we're dead.
5. Star Wars novels
6. The invention of the shower
7. Our legs are constructed so that we can sit cross-legged

I'll crush you like worm

"FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

(that's how the photographer suggested I begin the story...either that or put "e" on the ende of every worde which sounded great at firste and then, upon reflection, a kniffe to the eye would be more pleasante)

JOUSTING! Tall manly men! So exciting, the audience will stop and cheer--So delighting, it will run for fiiiiiiiiiiifttyyyyy yeeeeaaars!!!!!

And, yes, a slideshow.

Check it out. My crowning achievement...never thought I'd top the elk poop coverage. Boy, was I wrong.

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Today was fun. And by fun I mean, I sat in municipal court for an hour and a half with the lights flicking on and off every few minutes while police officers scurried around with tables trying to position the judge somewhere where the light from the hall windows could illuminate the docket properly. Meanwhile, traffic offenders sat in the dark plotting Lord knows what.

Power was out here and there across the entire north coast all morning. I got ready for work in the dark. You can tell.

Also there was the windstorm and the rainstorm and the hailstorm and now there's sun.

Said Sandra, at her desk, lowering her head into her arms after the news meeting, "Oh why do we have to live here?!"

#122: never never gonna hear the ring of school bells

Am I? Yes. Yes I am. Looking at schools, yes. Wait...school? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo. I hate school. But here I am: one tab open at GRADUATE programs at U of O (Literary non-fiction, communication and society) and another at (of all things) Environmental Law and Criminal Law at Lewis and Clark. Law school?! The horror. I'm not nearly clever enough. While we're on the subject, just school in general was never my strong point. Yes, I got good grades. Mostly. We'll ignore the time I failed "info gathering" or that one D in Music Theory. My argument: both those classes were in winter term.

Which brings up another subject about how this winter is the best one I've ever had. Nobody died, was on the brink of dying, or had a huge, disastrous, suicide-inducing personal crisis (that I know of). Do I want to bring that all back by going to school? Current theory is that winter term school=the end of joy and fruitful existence.

But...professors...graduate school. HOLY COW! I have a bachelor's degree...such things are no longer beyond me (if we pretend money is not an issue for a minute).

Hastily I add: this means nothing. NOTHING. All and absolutely nothing.

Just some thought I had.

I am where I am for the conceivable future (barring complete economic collapse or being fired). School might be in my five year or ten year plan. But it also, as easily, might not be. It's an interesting daydream. And that, of course, is the problem. All daydreams are doable and all daydreams are nice. Do not be fooled, do not allow the beguiling, weaving, the lure of a plan drive you to something mad unless the madness is desirable above all other gods and good to make one wise. And even then, stay back a bit before jumping any cliffs.

It is nice, though, to taste that bachelor's for the first time since I got it.

My nature is a planning nature and I haven't been making any plans recently. This needs to stop and plans must be made even if they never happen. With a plan, I embark on some course and I stop wallowing and I sleep better at night because I have something to think about. Having a big plan gives me chart by which I can make smaller plans because those big plans take a lot of preparation and have their own prerequisites.

So it is time to:

- break out the books about power and government again ("Models of Democracy" anyone? I'm nerdier about this book than anything else I know). It's been awhile since I've read them and I've missed those violent Appalachian coal miners and Augusto Boal and theories of direct democracy.

- write a few essays/lit.non.fic. pieces...maybe try for outside publication??? scary thought

- actually finish that story cycle I've outlined and re-outlined for the last two years

- write those news/feature stories that would be good for the paper and that I actually want to write

- $avings plan

But first. And foremost. I must brush my teeth before I leave for today's assignment: Medieval jousting tourney at the fairgrounds. No, I don't know anything about it either.

#121: tribes

I miss my clansmen.

This one:



And this one:



And this one:



And this one:



And this one:



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In recent news:

- A jail study to end all other jail studies!!!!!!...or so I'm told.

- What's an ROV? Click on: "Clatsop Community College gears up for ROV competition"

- Sometimes this is what I do first thing in the morning. Click on "Logs tumble off truck..."

###

1. Last night, before "Amelie" and after tea, I wrote a song and after I wrote the song I wrote the lyrics which ended up being about men (landlords, the devil, other people) who are looking for things (runaways, rent, wives, and gardens) and the singer has apparently hidden all of these things in the backyard. So don't let him in, the singer says. It's some sad commentary on my lapses into kleptomania I think.

2. Cover story today: the wonderful, wild, westerly, wanton?, woe-begone, wavering world of weaving.

3. Heidi and Josiah are coming up tomorrow. My heart she fills with joy and also I should clean the kitchen.

#119: they were born to go

assignment: vertical orientation, single focus



"let it go -- the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--let it go it
was sworn to
go




"let them go -- the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers -- you must let them go they
were born
to go



"let all go -- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love"

#79, e.e.cummings



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Cover 3/3: How many minutes of watching footage of 800-ft boats crossing and tossing the bar does it take before you get seasick? Answer: roughly 5.

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You never know how past stories will come back to you. I was proofing the Exchange this morning and saw this letter. It is related to this story ("Brothers get 20 months for random beating" 2/8/10). You will see, at the bottom, a comment from their mother. There was also a letter from his sister. They were hard to read. And when I did read them I wanted to defend myself, explain about court and how I'm quoting what is the official record. None of these sentences are my own in that their facts did not originate with me. But I can't defend myself and what would be the point anyway? To tell them I'm basically some kid who spent over an hour phrasing and rephrasing the story to try to make it as anonymous and dry-fact as possible?

It's one of the stories I really didn't want to write because this is how you'd write it: you go to the court, get a rundown from an official, maybe a look at a report and then you sit through the proceedings and hear people with titles retell the story and you write it down because what's said in court is the official record and sometimes you dig and sometimes you don't. It is possible, in this listening process, to think of it in terms of "official." I have to tell myself not to over-think, to ride on the "official," because otherwise I would be paralyzed, neck down, and not able to write anything and the writing is the job, the being there is the job, the human drama is also the job and sometimes the human pain, along with the human stupidity, cruelness, dirt, and heavy hands.

As a reporter, I have discovered, unless you are on trial for libel or scandal or whatever else you can rack up by reporting, no one except your co-workers (sometimes) and your friends (sometimes) hear the full story. Everyone else gets this cold piece of 500 words, 400 words, bald news copy that can't include everything and is trusting people told the truth--or, at least, their real opinion, marked and labeled.

Reporters are not gods, endowed with an innate knowledge of What's Really Going On. We're ditch diggers. We don't always know what it is we're digging up, but we pat it into pottery as best we can and try to be fair, faithful and available at the other end of the office telephone.

---

It's funny. Often the first thing I am blamed for in angry emails is that I wrote horrible things about people I don't know. And here there are the letter writers, to whom I cannot respond, calling me, a stranger, all sorts of things. Primarily: liar, hack, worthless, shameful.

---

In a case like the one way up above, there is no way I can know or tell what really happened, as the letter writers ask me to understand their Real. There are so many versions and there are the men's own statements in court that they did not know the man they beat up. The base remains the same: something criminal happened. Pain is unquantifiable and human beings inscrutable and families are full of grief. How far back should we go now? I could write for years and still not understand it. I could live forever and miss everything while casting nets.

I hate that.

The letter today though made me happy and I hope with all my heart that it's sincere.

#118: Fess Parker is dead

EVERYONE

DAVY CROCKETT

IS DEAD

...there is no more light in the world.



Davy Crockett was my hero. Second only to Batman, though, at certain points in my life, Davy Crockett probably came first.

I loved him: how he could track through the woods as good, if not sometimes better, than the natives; show up all the tight-pants army kids; shoot a gun like Robin Hood could shoot a bow; wear that manky raccoon hat in such an enviable, dashing way; run Mike Fink out of the water; raise Cain* without whiskey; and, in general, be awesome.

* "raising Cain" is right at the top of my list of favorite archaic expressions we probably inherited from Georgia