Dad would have celebrated

02. May 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: america, dad, death, disgust, family, fatherhood, fear, frustration, gratitude, hope, incongruities, marriage, media, mortality, rants, struggles, television, thoughts, time, tragedy · Tags: ,

Papa Don's Little GirlDad would be celebrating today.

He was horrified to see his brethren die on that tragic day when the towers collapsed.  We talked in the days after the events of 9/11 about the job that the men of FDNY were doing.  I could hear the pain in his voice.

As a nation, we rallied around each other.  Many of us reacted in ways that we didn’t fully understand.  In retrospect everything seems different.  Ten years of war and a recession have changed my views.  Becoming a father has changed my views.  Meeting my wife changed my views.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about the death of Osama Bin Laden.  It’s almost meaningless to me.  There is an entire army of new recruits that has been formed over the past ten years.  And now to find out that he’s been “hiding” in a populated area?

I cannot celebrate.   The chest thumping is ugly.

I long for a day when the “threat level” is not orange.  What will a day that is “green” be like?  Will we ever see one?

When will it be safe to move on?

Real Work

21. February 2011 · 4 comments · Categories: daily life, good things, home, homeowner hell, incongruities, thoughts, work · Tags:

Stevens Hardware, Annapolis, MDReal work requires effort. Real work is made of pitchforks and wheelbarrows. Axes and hammers. Real work is physical.

Or, is it?

I spent the morning laboring with a pitchfork and lawn and leaf bags. The work was physical, somewhat onerous, repetitive, slow and methodical. I was picking up leaves from the gutter that have been sitting there since October. Despite the fact that I’d been lazy about getting around to the task, I was very alive. The crisp, damp air reminded me of my physicality. The sharp pain in my lower back reminded me that I was not young and limber. The earthy smell of the decaying leaves reminded me that I would someday become dirt. I was alive and keenly in touch with my primordial existence.

This afternoon I presented on a network access solution to a well-known university in Washington, DC. The work was mental, somewhat onerous, somewhat repetitive, fast paced and far from methodical. I was peppered with questions. I was thinking on my feet. I was very alive and yet it didn’t feel like work. It wasn’t physical, I wasn’t aware of the temperature of the room, nothing hurt.

Was this really work?

Of course it was work. I was not presenting on the solution out of a genuine love of the customer — indeed, I’d never met the customer before. I was presenting because it was the task at hand. I was going to get paid for it.

Does getting paid for performing a task make it work? Or, more directly, if you don’t get paid is it still work?

The answer to both questions is maybe. Sometimes, getting paid for performing a task constitutes work, other times, I believe, we get paid for things that really, when it comes down to it, are not worthy of cash.

So, what is real work?

At the end of the day, defining work is difficult. What I did this afternoon, was certainly work, but it was far from strenuous even though it was rewarding. What I did this morning was certainly work, it was strenuous, rewarding in some respects, but I certainly won’t get paid for clearing the gutters.

Though, I’m pretty sure the neighbors will appreciate it.

Everything happens for a reason?

20. January 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Buddhism, chaos, daily life, fear, incongruities, rants · Tags: ,

Does everything happen for a reason?

Are you kidding me?

Anyone why says this and means it is fooling themselves.  They are trying to account for the fact that we have absolutely no control over ourselves or the world around us.  We crave control, but in the end, life is completely random.  People die for no good reason, and others live for no apparent reason.  We are fragile.  Completely fragile, and out of our fragility we create constructs intended to make us feel in control.

No, my friend, there’s a whole lot of shit that happens for no reason at all.  Trust me on this.

Life is chaotic, random, and out of control.  In order to come to peace with this notion, we must let go of our desire to control everything.

The only thing we have control over is how we respond to the chaos.

Ten Views of Myself

26. September 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: creativity, daily life, family, fatherhood, fear, hope, incongruities, information, rants, self, sidetracks, storytelling, struggles, thoughts, work, writing

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Ten views of myself:

  1. A Father
  2. A Writer
  3. An Artist
  4. Detail Oriented
  5. Strong
  6. A Survivor
  7. A Leader
  8. A Critical Thinker
  9. A Strategist
  10. Alive

Circa 1996: Green Peppers and a Bandaid

06. August 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Baltimore, community, cooking, daily life, good things, hope, incongruities, maryland, time

When I lived in Fells Point in 1996 I cut the tip of my finger off chopping green peppers.  Mike fixed me up. I’m pretty sure he’s still there at liquid earth.  Here’s a story from those days.

Some day I’ll lean how to chop. Then I won’t hack parts of my fingers and thumb off anymore. I have been working on it for several years actually. Somehow, I just can’t ever seem to get it right. It took me months to learn to rock the blade of the French knife across the flesh of the peppers on the board. I would slip up on my angle; the peppers would come out different shapes and sizes instead of all even diamonds.

It’s not that I’m new to cooking or using knives. I’ve been cooking for close to twenty years now and I was playing with knives when I was at least five. But I didn’t ever learn how to handle a knife appropriately until I lived with Chris and he taught me to hold it by the blade, not the handle. It gives you more control. Still I lack the control needed to dice up a mess of peppers.

Peppers seem to be the ones that give me the most trouble. I don’t know why; perhaps it’s their slick skin. The damned grocers always wax them up to make them look unnaturally beautiful in December. Two years ago, shortly after I was given my French knife I was cutting peppers one afternoon in March. The day had been an ordinary day. I had arrived home a little early I recall.

I lived on the corner of Aliceanna and Bethel in Fells Point, Baltimore, Maryland. It was a quaint little place that the landlord could have done better at repairing. He had bought it when the places were selling cheaply and folks were renovating them. It had been part of one of the Mayors’ attempts to make Baltimore a better place. Nevertheless, there wasn’t a straight line in Karos’ place.

Around the corner was everything that a young man in his twenties could need, a liquor store and a city market. I stopped into the market to pickup some things for the meal I was planning to make for myself.

The stands were closing down for the day. I walked hurriedly up to the produce stand to spy out some peppers and an onion. The local supermarket was worthless, even the project people avoided it if they could. Invariably the produce was already rotten by the time it hit the shelves there. I often wondered if the son of a bitch who owned it had just taken one hit on a load of produce would he have caught up and been able to sell vegetables while they were fresh; before they started to rot.

I found a pair of peppers and some onions. I asked the old polish lady how much they were. She looked me over; she’d seen me before I was sure of it but I don’t know if she knew I was local or not. She looked at the scale for a minute. Then she said, “ninety cents,” with out weighing the produce. I was amazed. In the supposed supermarket, I’d have paid three bucks and gotten rotten peppers. On the way home I stopped by the liquor store and got some smokes.

I was busily chopping the peppers not really paying attention when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my middle finger on my left hand. I looked down and there was blood gushing out of the tip of my finger all over the white cutting board, mixing with the peppers. I grabbed a wet towel from the counter and wrapped up my finger.

Of course there was no first-aid kit in the house. I was a single guy living alone in the city. I had to make a dash up the street to the Rite-Aid for some supplies. The walk was quick. As I struggled to get my wallet out of my pocket, the clerk noticing the blood said, “Are you alright? Do you need to go to the hospital?” I assured her that there was nothing that the hospital could do for me. And there wasn’t. It was a tip of a finger cut off, not much bigger than the head of a Q-tip, but painful for sure. The nurse at the hospital wouldn’t be able to give me stitches, there was nothing to stitch.

I hurried down the street toward my house, intent on getting things squared away and cleaned up. I was getting really hungry. As I rounded the corner to my house I noticed Mike standing out on his stoop. Before I could even stop him, Mike had me inside and he was cleaning up my finger himself.

We made some small talk and smoked a butt or two. After he had bandaged up my finger, holding up his index finger he said, “Hold on I’ll be right back.” He dashed upstairs. Soon he was back down with a brownie in hand. “There man, almost as good as if mom had fixed it up.”

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