I never understood the handkerchief.
I'm not adverse to getting dirty or anything, but carrying around snot in my pocket all day isn't something I intend to do. Not only that, but it is used over and over again. At any given point in time, a handkerchief may be the most disgusting piece of cloth for miles around it, underwear included.
When I was much younger, I remember my father used to use a handkerchief when we'd go to church. If I had a stuffy nose and was disturbing other people around me, he'd unfurl the horrible thing--which my own eyes had watched him use multiple times that morning already--and force my face into that slimy sheet so I could add to the mess. When I'd recoil from it, I felt as if I was worse off than before, with mucus on the outside of my face as well as in. When I'd try to use my sleeve to fix the situation, he'd knock my hand down, forcing me to wear it as some sort of twisted point of pride. When we'd stand for a hymn, I'd quickly brush it all off while he towered over me, concentrating on the song and surveying the religious landscape. Perhaps he was looking for other noses to clear.
There's a man driving a brand new Audi next to me right now who has whipped out his custom monogrammed snot blanket, worthy of only the finest gold-threaded Old English lettering. He's proudly blowing and picking and wiping at his face, trying to get it all clean and presentable. Most likely off to some important meeting it seems and needs to look his best. His hand is nonchalantly tucking it back into the inside pocket of his suit jacket now. For his colleague or client's sake, I only hope his buisness cards are kept somewhere else.
What bothers me the most, I suppose, is the fact that his car costs more than I make in a year. It's got an advanced, computer-controlled, self-adjusting suspension that can read road changes in milliseconds. The car came standard with a sound system that has more speakers than my home theater amplifier has places to plug speakers in--and I have a very nice amp--and every second, every instant of his lovely and comfortable drive, is charted by a system that constantly monitors his position by decoding digital signals beaming down from outer space...
...and he carries his snot around in his pocket.
With all the advancement, all of that vivid technological evolution that surrounds him, he hasn't come to grips with the fact that tissues have advanced as well. Wonderful, lotion-infused tissues that give the experience of blowing your nose into a clean, puffy cloud instead of a sticky stale patch of pocket swamp.
Try as he may, he does not exude that refined, cultured attitude that his Audi and expensive suit are supposed to. That supple, climate-controlled cabin could be filled with the newest symphony that is caressing his ear drums from twelve different finely-tuned and precision-aimed titanium-dipped tweeter dome speakers and I will still feel more advanced as I blow my nose into a Dunkin Donuts napkin while listening to Howard Stern, knowing full well that the napkin will never touch me or anything I own ever again.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Tuesday
I woke up this morning and thought I had died in the most metaphorical way possible. The oversized clock in my room ticks with a strange, anthropomorphic melody--a TOCK tick…TOCK tick--and this ambient heartbeat just stopped at 6:15 right when I had come out of a lighter stage of sleep.
While I laid there contemplating the odd sensation I had briefly felt, I wondered, as if by some final stroke of morbid mortal curiosity, why there are never seats on bidets. It seems like there should be.
As I hit the on-ramp now, I can't help thinking about the way that felt--a strange and momentarily empty wave going through me--as the clock stopped. It's depressing to fixate on death, but on a road like this, which employs a front-end loader to remove deer and other woodland animal carcasses from the pavement every day, it becomes difficult not to. You do get numb to it though. By the time you see the sixth set of anlers or hooves hanging out of that metal mouth, you just hope that the meat is fresh enough to butcher and give to the homeless. As long as it's clean, a little highway chili might do them some good while the mornings are still cold enough to leave a layer of scrapable frost on the windshield.
As I've mentioned before, this road is dangerous. One of the most dangerous in the country, actually. I think it's been in the top ten for a while now. There are no lights, no shoulders, the lanes are thin and slightly winding, everyone drives like Mario Andretti (if he was blind, tired, and slightly intoxicated), and since it slithers through some seriously wooded areas, the animals become a problem for any driver. One time, a moose was spotted wandering down from a northern part of the state. Animal control and police had been searching for it, but couldn't track it effectively. About a week later, the evening news was reporting about the runaway animal and an anchor said something to the effect of, "God help everyone on the road if it makes it to the Merritt Parkway." The next day, he made it, and met his end when a Chevy Malibu tried to put its thousands of pounds up against the moose's hulking 1400. Neither the car or the moose came away from the incident. The driver was hospitalized with some broken bones, I think. They were very lucky.
Moose aren't common at all in this area, but deer have become highway assassins on the Merritt. It seems to me that they take pleasure in running out on the road in front of you. Like moths drawn to the eerily-hypnotic blue glow of the bug zapper, deer are thus drawn, by instinct, to the sound of spinning rubber, the blinding blaze of sealed projector headlights, and the soothing, near eardrum-caressing noise of car horns. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
They've become IEDs on this wooded highway; popping out with no prior notice. Their terror tactics have drivers planning contingency situations. "If you're going to hit a deer, let up on the brakes before impact so they don't roll up on the hood," is what my parents always said. They held back the "...so the coroner doesn't have to pry the horns from your face," to avoid emotionally scarring me.
I've never hit a deer and I expect my perfect record to continue through this morning drive as well. I've seen seven dead deer so far, so I think the road has claimed its daily quota. I had a dream that the road would actually coax the deer onto it so that an unsuspecting car could make the kill. Once the accident was cleared, the pavement folded up around the animal, like a venus flytrap, and consumed its meal.
Then my clock stopped and I had to start my day.
While I laid there contemplating the odd sensation I had briefly felt, I wondered, as if by some final stroke of morbid mortal curiosity, why there are never seats on bidets. It seems like there should be.
As I hit the on-ramp now, I can't help thinking about the way that felt--a strange and momentarily empty wave going through me--as the clock stopped. It's depressing to fixate on death, but on a road like this, which employs a front-end loader to remove deer and other woodland animal carcasses from the pavement every day, it becomes difficult not to. You do get numb to it though. By the time you see the sixth set of anlers or hooves hanging out of that metal mouth, you just hope that the meat is fresh enough to butcher and give to the homeless. As long as it's clean, a little highway chili might do them some good while the mornings are still cold enough to leave a layer of scrapable frost on the windshield.
As I've mentioned before, this road is dangerous. One of the most dangerous in the country, actually. I think it's been in the top ten for a while now. There are no lights, no shoulders, the lanes are thin and slightly winding, everyone drives like Mario Andretti (if he was blind, tired, and slightly intoxicated), and since it slithers through some seriously wooded areas, the animals become a problem for any driver. One time, a moose was spotted wandering down from a northern part of the state. Animal control and police had been searching for it, but couldn't track it effectively. About a week later, the evening news was reporting about the runaway animal and an anchor said something to the effect of, "God help everyone on the road if it makes it to the Merritt Parkway." The next day, he made it, and met his end when a Chevy Malibu tried to put its thousands of pounds up against the moose's hulking 1400. Neither the car or the moose came away from the incident. The driver was hospitalized with some broken bones, I think. They were very lucky.
Moose aren't common at all in this area, but deer have become highway assassins on the Merritt. It seems to me that they take pleasure in running out on the road in front of you. Like moths drawn to the eerily-hypnotic blue glow of the bug zapper, deer are thus drawn, by instinct, to the sound of spinning rubber, the blinding blaze of sealed projector headlights, and the soothing, near eardrum-caressing noise of car horns. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
They've become IEDs on this wooded highway; popping out with no prior notice. Their terror tactics have drivers planning contingency situations. "If you're going to hit a deer, let up on the brakes before impact so they don't roll up on the hood," is what my parents always said. They held back the "...so the coroner doesn't have to pry the horns from your face," to avoid emotionally scarring me.
I've never hit a deer and I expect my perfect record to continue through this morning drive as well. I've seen seven dead deer so far, so I think the road has claimed its daily quota. I had a dream that the road would actually coax the deer onto it so that an unsuspecting car could make the kill. Once the accident was cleared, the pavement folded up around the animal, like a venus flytrap, and consumed its meal.
Then my clock stopped and I had to start my day.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Wednesday
My knee hurts, and this rampant commuter traffic, this stop-and-go repetition, is only making the issue worse. These other drivers don't seem to mind drifting all over the place, either. Their every move is a miscalculated stumble into the other lane as they occupy themselves with other, more pressing things.
There's a man shaving three cars back. He's singing something, Bruce Springsteen, maybe--he looks like a Bruce guy--and his back and forth movements on the road are mirrored by the way his Norelco razor sweeps left to right under his chin to get those harder to clip whiskers. Another woman is apparently blessed with the ability to steer her car with a highly evolved clitoris because it appears that she's propped her cell phone on one knee and is feeding herself an everything bagel with the other, all while keeping both hands busy doing her make-up in the rearview mirror pointed at her face. She's been coming into my lane periodically for the entire trip. I'd give her the finger, but she wouldn't notice anyway. Her baby-on-board placard would be blocking the view.
My knee is clicking--hard. It's got an unpleasant rice crispies quality about it this morning because I jammed it into a toilet seat. A toilet seat... I think I might try out for the Strongman competition sometime next week. I'm clearly ready. I went to put up the lid, but stupidly just kind of tossed it upwards off of the porcelain instead of making sure it was set in its upright and locked position. As I realized that it was coming back down, I had a knee-jerk reaction--literally--and went to block it from crashing back in place and waking up my girlfriend. Instead of stopping it, I caught it at exactly the right point in its descent to jam it right into the tendon between my knee cap and shin bone. It made a pop that I heard and felt and I quickly recoiled in agony. Naturally, the seat continued to fall and the noise woke her up, ousted her out of what would've normally been a decent night's sleep and put her in the strange position of having her boyfriend explain to her, at three in the morning, just how he managed to injure himself with a toilet seat. She's a saint, but even that pushed her buttons. Not that I blame her, though. If I was jolted awake to find her in the same condition, I'd like a better explanation than, "I'm such an idiot," too.
While spending time in the car, I've thought about how many dumb injuries I've had over the course of my life and how I'm lucky to be in one, mostly functional, piece. Some incidents were bloody, some were cleaner, but a glorious lack of forethought on my part is what they all have in common. I've had over half a dozen concussions from incidents ranging from bike rides into palm trees in Florida, to aluminum baseball bats striking the back of my skull. One of my favorites was when my oldest cousin and I were pillow fighting. I was armed with a decorative throw pillow, complete with an orange crocheted flower. He had a sofa cushion, donning burn marks on the underside that were probably unknown to my aunt. At one point, he popped out of the utility room in their nearly pitch-black basement and clotheslined me, sending my feet flying and my head smashing into the concrete floor. Without any hesitation, he came rushing over to put his hand over my mouth, which was open and catching tears but had no sound coming out yet. "Shhh shhh shhh, you'll be ok. You're ok. You're FINE, right? Don't tell my mom." That was concussion number three, I believe.
There are others that I can't really remember, though I'm told they were hilarious. I guess that's just how it goes. You keep the memorable ones, the real stupid ones, and the rest just disappear like the cars around me that may have swerved into my lane a few times but were bested by those that deserved a good honking. The ones being steered by a vagina.
It's tough to not think of stupid accidents on this road. This particular highway doesn't allow trucks, so cars seem to compensate by driving ninety miles-per-hour. A while back, I was curious to find out what kind of carnage took place on this two-lane chute in a given time period. Apparently, in a two year span from 1997-1999, there was an average of roughly 100 accidents per mile of this 37.6 mile highway. That was ten years ago, now. I can't imagine how that's progressed with the dawn of handheld GPS, iPods, and cheap Subway footlong sandwiches.
Now, though, it's slow-going and twenty miles an hour gives you a chance to really think about this stuff, especially since there's an accident up ahead and I already know that it's not even on my side of the road. People are checking out the crash remnants, surveying the debris and the anger and anguish of those involved. Their faces get lit up as they ride past those red and blue lights and they bask in it like some spring shower that caught them while they were jogging. They feel refreshed by it almost. Maybe they're refreshed because it's not them who's climbing out of the jagged metal. Or maybe it's just refreshing to see someone else suffer for a change. With all the narcissism that floats around a commuter highway, the latter wouldn't surprise me.
I stop and look along with them, though. If things are already moving slow anyway, I might as well see why. As far as accidents go, it's a large one. There's a new Toyota that's flipped over. It's silver with a baby-on-board sticker in the window. "Toyotas are safe cars," I say to myself. This is based on nothing, really. The car is inverted, with windows broken out and bumpers missing, but it just looked safe. It looked like it cradled that baby in its padded steel arms while it rolled over time and again. It's refreshing to think about that as I drive past and see the tear-streaked mother bracing herself on the arm of a police officer as she watches firemen ready the jaws of life to get into the rear passenger side of the car.
Over another hill, which my father once told me used to be the rolling mounds of a landfill, and the scene is gone and replaced with snow-covered pines and dormant hardwoods that line this especially beautiful stretch of road. My knee pops and throbs but it's better than it was without the quick start-stop. The man shaving and the woman mysteriously controlling her car are long gone. They're off to endanger other drivers on fortunately slower roads. They'll be back after happy hour though, I'm sure.
There's a man shaving three cars back. He's singing something, Bruce Springsteen, maybe--he looks like a Bruce guy--and his back and forth movements on the road are mirrored by the way his Norelco razor sweeps left to right under his chin to get those harder to clip whiskers. Another woman is apparently blessed with the ability to steer her car with a highly evolved clitoris because it appears that she's propped her cell phone on one knee and is feeding herself an everything bagel with the other, all while keeping both hands busy doing her make-up in the rearview mirror pointed at her face. She's been coming into my lane periodically for the entire trip. I'd give her the finger, but she wouldn't notice anyway. Her baby-on-board placard would be blocking the view.
My knee is clicking--hard. It's got an unpleasant rice crispies quality about it this morning because I jammed it into a toilet seat. A toilet seat... I think I might try out for the Strongman competition sometime next week. I'm clearly ready. I went to put up the lid, but stupidly just kind of tossed it upwards off of the porcelain instead of making sure it was set in its upright and locked position. As I realized that it was coming back down, I had a knee-jerk reaction--literally--and went to block it from crashing back in place and waking up my girlfriend. Instead of stopping it, I caught it at exactly the right point in its descent to jam it right into the tendon between my knee cap and shin bone. It made a pop that I heard and felt and I quickly recoiled in agony. Naturally, the seat continued to fall and the noise woke her up, ousted her out of what would've normally been a decent night's sleep and put her in the strange position of having her boyfriend explain to her, at three in the morning, just how he managed to injure himself with a toilet seat. She's a saint, but even that pushed her buttons. Not that I blame her, though. If I was jolted awake to find her in the same condition, I'd like a better explanation than, "I'm such an idiot," too.
While spending time in the car, I've thought about how many dumb injuries I've had over the course of my life and how I'm lucky to be in one, mostly functional, piece. Some incidents were bloody, some were cleaner, but a glorious lack of forethought on my part is what they all have in common. I've had over half a dozen concussions from incidents ranging from bike rides into palm trees in Florida, to aluminum baseball bats striking the back of my skull. One of my favorites was when my oldest cousin and I were pillow fighting. I was armed with a decorative throw pillow, complete with an orange crocheted flower. He had a sofa cushion, donning burn marks on the underside that were probably unknown to my aunt. At one point, he popped out of the utility room in their nearly pitch-black basement and clotheslined me, sending my feet flying and my head smashing into the concrete floor. Without any hesitation, he came rushing over to put his hand over my mouth, which was open and catching tears but had no sound coming out yet. "Shhh shhh shhh, you'll be ok. You're ok. You're FINE, right? Don't tell my mom." That was concussion number three, I believe.
There are others that I can't really remember, though I'm told they were hilarious. I guess that's just how it goes. You keep the memorable ones, the real stupid ones, and the rest just disappear like the cars around me that may have swerved into my lane a few times but were bested by those that deserved a good honking. The ones being steered by a vagina.
It's tough to not think of stupid accidents on this road. This particular highway doesn't allow trucks, so cars seem to compensate by driving ninety miles-per-hour. A while back, I was curious to find out what kind of carnage took place on this two-lane chute in a given time period. Apparently, in a two year span from 1997-1999, there was an average of roughly 100 accidents per mile of this 37.6 mile highway. That was ten years ago, now. I can't imagine how that's progressed with the dawn of handheld GPS, iPods, and cheap Subway footlong sandwiches.
Now, though, it's slow-going and twenty miles an hour gives you a chance to really think about this stuff, especially since there's an accident up ahead and I already know that it's not even on my side of the road. People are checking out the crash remnants, surveying the debris and the anger and anguish of those involved. Their faces get lit up as they ride past those red and blue lights and they bask in it like some spring shower that caught them while they were jogging. They feel refreshed by it almost. Maybe they're refreshed because it's not them who's climbing out of the jagged metal. Or maybe it's just refreshing to see someone else suffer for a change. With all the narcissism that floats around a commuter highway, the latter wouldn't surprise me.
I stop and look along with them, though. If things are already moving slow anyway, I might as well see why. As far as accidents go, it's a large one. There's a new Toyota that's flipped over. It's silver with a baby-on-board sticker in the window. "Toyotas are safe cars," I say to myself. This is based on nothing, really. The car is inverted, with windows broken out and bumpers missing, but it just looked safe. It looked like it cradled that baby in its padded steel arms while it rolled over time and again. It's refreshing to think about that as I drive past and see the tear-streaked mother bracing herself on the arm of a police officer as she watches firemen ready the jaws of life to get into the rear passenger side of the car.
Over another hill, which my father once told me used to be the rolling mounds of a landfill, and the scene is gone and replaced with snow-covered pines and dormant hardwoods that line this especially beautiful stretch of road. My knee pops and throbs but it's better than it was without the quick start-stop. The man shaving and the woman mysteriously controlling her car are long gone. They're off to endanger other drivers on fortunately slower roads. They'll be back after happy hour though, I'm sure.
Tuesday
Monday came and went like Mondays tend to come and go. I seem to just sort of ride through them on my slow-going carnival rollercoaster, catching bits and pieces of interesting things here and there, but for the most part everything just sort of blurs together and I end up back at home again.
I read something last night about lent and another slow-moving stream of commuter traffic brought me past a church just long enough that it reminded me. I was brought up a Christian so I know what lent is all about. Jesus was in the desert for forty days being tempted by Satan and we're supposed to give up chocolate; or something like that. If I worked for Cadbury's marketing group, I'd be amping up my spring campaign to keep product moving in these risky times.
I always thought that lent was really contrived. It's like Valentine's Day, made up to promote something that people should, and usually already recognize. I'm hardly the model Christian, seeing as I am now a complete non-believer, but shouldn't you just not be tempted by sin all the time, just like you should love the people that mean something to you all the time instead of only on February 14th? Do forty days of not eating chocolate really mean anything when Easter comes along and you're filling your mouth with those delicious Cadbury chocolate eggs? And really, Chocolate is what you're giving up? Get creative and give up something major, like using your sofa or third gear in your car for forty days. It looks like this guy in front of me gave up third and fourth. I'll gauge how happy Jesus is with this man's devotion by how much he doesn't crash.
I, for one, am excited for lent because I'm going to give something up that I have been carrying with me everywhere. It's been on me for months and I feel like it will be strange to rid myself of it for so long. But, I have to give it a shot. Goodbye, static electricity!
I honestly cannot remember the last time I touched something--anything--that can carry an electric charge without getting shocked. It's gotten to the point where I have to plan to touch anything metal. I haven't casually switched on a light in weeks. I'm getting goddamned PTSD from flipping light switches.
I'm generating enough electricty with my pants alone that I may be able to illuminate low voltage LED's with my fingertips. If I were alive at the height of the Egyptian empire and exhibited this much tangible electricity, they would've made me a god. Last night, I went to turn on the light in my kitchen and the spark from the screw below the switch extended out, actually illuminating the switch plate, guiding me in to flip it on. I'm waiting for the day when I just produce rare-occurring ball lightning and vaporize myself as I reach the corona of a door knob.
My pants are the main culprit, the heart of my newly acquired powerplant. They've turned my legs into Tesla coils that periodically shoot visible sparks between each other. I always knew I had power between my legs, but this is ridiculous. At a micro-level, my legs must look like those large towers that held human bodies used to power the machines in the Matrix movies, complete with giant electrical strands pulsing from the bottom towards the top. In the dark, I wouldn't be surprised if my balls were beginning to emanate an eerie glow from the amount of static charge that constantly bombards them in waves from my ankles. I've become my own electric chair, with the positive and negative contacts placed firmly on Dr. Strangelove and Oscar Guzman. I'm a hostage in my own clothes.
Spring starts in less than a month and I can't wait. Shorts, being outdoors, warmer weather, leaves back on the trees--to hell with all that noise. I'll just be glad to no longer be a walking capacitor, a ticking time bomb filled with raw energy waiting to explode off of me next time I get close enough to something it would like to take a lick of.
Believe me when I tell you that if it was socially appropriate to free myself from this electro-sticky prison for the entire winter season, I would absolutely do it. In fact, I change my mind.
I'm giving up pants for lent.
I read something last night about lent and another slow-moving stream of commuter traffic brought me past a church just long enough that it reminded me. I was brought up a Christian so I know what lent is all about. Jesus was in the desert for forty days being tempted by Satan and we're supposed to give up chocolate; or something like that. If I worked for Cadbury's marketing group, I'd be amping up my spring campaign to keep product moving in these risky times.
I always thought that lent was really contrived. It's like Valentine's Day, made up to promote something that people should, and usually already recognize. I'm hardly the model Christian, seeing as I am now a complete non-believer, but shouldn't you just not be tempted by sin all the time, just like you should love the people that mean something to you all the time instead of only on February 14th? Do forty days of not eating chocolate really mean anything when Easter comes along and you're filling your mouth with those delicious Cadbury chocolate eggs? And really, Chocolate is what you're giving up? Get creative and give up something major, like using your sofa or third gear in your car for forty days. It looks like this guy in front of me gave up third and fourth. I'll gauge how happy Jesus is with this man's devotion by how much he doesn't crash.
I, for one, am excited for lent because I'm going to give something up that I have been carrying with me everywhere. It's been on me for months and I feel like it will be strange to rid myself of it for so long. But, I have to give it a shot. Goodbye, static electricity!
I honestly cannot remember the last time I touched something--anything--that can carry an electric charge without getting shocked. It's gotten to the point where I have to plan to touch anything metal. I haven't casually switched on a light in weeks. I'm getting goddamned PTSD from flipping light switches.
I'm generating enough electricty with my pants alone that I may be able to illuminate low voltage LED's with my fingertips. If I were alive at the height of the Egyptian empire and exhibited this much tangible electricity, they would've made me a god. Last night, I went to turn on the light in my kitchen and the spark from the screw below the switch extended out, actually illuminating the switch plate, guiding me in to flip it on. I'm waiting for the day when I just produce rare-occurring ball lightning and vaporize myself as I reach the corona of a door knob.
My pants are the main culprit, the heart of my newly acquired powerplant. They've turned my legs into Tesla coils that periodically shoot visible sparks between each other. I always knew I had power between my legs, but this is ridiculous. At a micro-level, my legs must look like those large towers that held human bodies used to power the machines in the Matrix movies, complete with giant electrical strands pulsing from the bottom towards the top. In the dark, I wouldn't be surprised if my balls were beginning to emanate an eerie glow from the amount of static charge that constantly bombards them in waves from my ankles. I've become my own electric chair, with the positive and negative contacts placed firmly on Dr. Strangelove and Oscar Guzman. I'm a hostage in my own clothes.
Spring starts in less than a month and I can't wait. Shorts, being outdoors, warmer weather, leaves back on the trees--to hell with all that noise. I'll just be glad to no longer be a walking capacitor, a ticking time bomb filled with raw energy waiting to explode off of me next time I get close enough to something it would like to take a lick of.
Believe me when I tell you that if it was socially appropriate to free myself from this electro-sticky prison for the entire winter season, I would absolutely do it. In fact, I change my mind.
I'm giving up pants for lent.
Monday
I don't think I'm crazy.
A lot of people tell me, "Where do you come up with that stuff? You're crazy." Or, "Your mind is warped. You're crazy." But I don't think that I'm crazy. Or maybe it's that I'm just crazy enough to not realize that I am.
When I think of crazy, I think of a guy I saw in New York one time while I was walking through Hell's Kitchen on my way to the Javits Center. He wore a purple suit and had either filled his hair with gel or had bought a James Brown wig because he looked just like him. He had dark sunglasses on that looked like they might have been gotten from a rack in a CVS and had a 100% UV protection sticker on the lens that left a little glue when he quickly tore it off and headed to his street corner. He held a bullhorn in his left hand that came with an attached handset, the ones that you see on CB radios. I could hear the rings he wore tapping on the plastic.
He stood on his corner, fidgeting with the handset, staring into the glass of the building across the street so he could see the reflections of people approaching on his side. When he spotted his target, he waited until they were almost about to make their turn or begin watching their step as they got near the crosswalk and jumped out at them. "OH LORD, HELP ME JESUS. OH JESUS HELP ME! HELP ME, BROTHER JESUS! AHAAAHAAHHAHHAHA HEYEEEYAAAA!" He had clearly practiced his James Brown impression. He scared nearly everyone that he ambushed and the results after the initial shock ranged from laughter to violent anger. Funny thing was, in the time I spent watching him--roughly 10 minutes or so--he never asked for money. He just wanted to scare people with a bullhorn and a James Brown impression.
Crazy is often connected with severe mental or emotional issues. Issues that pharmaceutical companies make a medicine for. Not Tylenol for general aches and pains, the run-of-the-mill worries, but the drugs created for that specific disease or syndrome. The stuff I won't even pretend to understand. The stuff that you think of when you see a man ambushing people while wearing crushed velvet.
I wonder what a doctor would've said about my street corner friend. Given the chance, would someone try and put him away, reducing his otherwise interesting existence to a series of small cups filled with medicine? I can accept the fact that he was crazy, sure. I can accept it because he was scaring people on the street, dressed as James Brown, with no visible intentions of doing anything but that. But at the same time, his purple suit and spot-on impression allowed his madness to come out with a context and meaning. If he had been wearing a white hospital gown, I'd feel differently. But to me, it just seemed like what he should've been doing. In a strange way, he made sense.
Maybe people are right and I am a little bit crazy to think the way I do and see things the way I do from time to time. But since I'm not brandishing a bullhorn on a street corner, blitzing the sidewalk roamers, or sitting in a ward somewhere waiting to be handed a small cup with unknown medications, it might just mean that there are different kinds of crazy. If there's good cholesterol, there's a strong possibility that there's such a thing as "good crazy," or "stable crazy." Maybe crazy is like snake venom: just a little bit will do ya. You get that bite and it jolts you, skews your perception so that the color of the sky, as the neurotoxins begin taking effect, looks just different enough that you need to stop for a second to write a compelling poem about it before you head off to get a healthy dose of anti-venom and not die. You've got to ride that razor's edge to make it work right.
These are the things I think about on my way to work on Monday morning. I'm battling insane multi-tasking drivers and yet the bulk of my thoughts are devoted to reminiscing about a nutjob James Brown impersonator. Perhaps I need to start drinking less coffee, or more. All I know is that when I looked through those barren trees lining the road and that puffy purple sunrise-cloud caught my eye, the only thing I could think of was him, and that I kind of wanted to buy a bullhorn and join in.
A lot of people tell me, "Where do you come up with that stuff? You're crazy." Or, "Your mind is warped. You're crazy." But I don't think that I'm crazy. Or maybe it's that I'm just crazy enough to not realize that I am.
When I think of crazy, I think of a guy I saw in New York one time while I was walking through Hell's Kitchen on my way to the Javits Center. He wore a purple suit and had either filled his hair with gel or had bought a James Brown wig because he looked just like him. He had dark sunglasses on that looked like they might have been gotten from a rack in a CVS and had a 100% UV protection sticker on the lens that left a little glue when he quickly tore it off and headed to his street corner. He held a bullhorn in his left hand that came with an attached handset, the ones that you see on CB radios. I could hear the rings he wore tapping on the plastic.
He stood on his corner, fidgeting with the handset, staring into the glass of the building across the street so he could see the reflections of people approaching on his side. When he spotted his target, he waited until they were almost about to make their turn or begin watching their step as they got near the crosswalk and jumped out at them. "OH LORD, HELP ME JESUS. OH JESUS HELP ME! HELP ME, BROTHER JESUS! AHAAAHAAHHAHHAHA HEYEEEYAAAA!" He had clearly practiced his James Brown impression. He scared nearly everyone that he ambushed and the results after the initial shock ranged from laughter to violent anger. Funny thing was, in the time I spent watching him--roughly 10 minutes or so--he never asked for money. He just wanted to scare people with a bullhorn and a James Brown impression.
Crazy is often connected with severe mental or emotional issues. Issues that pharmaceutical companies make a medicine for. Not Tylenol for general aches and pains, the run-of-the-mill worries, but the drugs created for that specific disease or syndrome. The stuff I won't even pretend to understand. The stuff that you think of when you see a man ambushing people while wearing crushed velvet.
I wonder what a doctor would've said about my street corner friend. Given the chance, would someone try and put him away, reducing his otherwise interesting existence to a series of small cups filled with medicine? I can accept the fact that he was crazy, sure. I can accept it because he was scaring people on the street, dressed as James Brown, with no visible intentions of doing anything but that. But at the same time, his purple suit and spot-on impression allowed his madness to come out with a context and meaning. If he had been wearing a white hospital gown, I'd feel differently. But to me, it just seemed like what he should've been doing. In a strange way, he made sense.
Maybe people are right and I am a little bit crazy to think the way I do and see things the way I do from time to time. But since I'm not brandishing a bullhorn on a street corner, blitzing the sidewalk roamers, or sitting in a ward somewhere waiting to be handed a small cup with unknown medications, it might just mean that there are different kinds of crazy. If there's good cholesterol, there's a strong possibility that there's such a thing as "good crazy," or "stable crazy." Maybe crazy is like snake venom: just a little bit will do ya. You get that bite and it jolts you, skews your perception so that the color of the sky, as the neurotoxins begin taking effect, looks just different enough that you need to stop for a second to write a compelling poem about it before you head off to get a healthy dose of anti-venom and not die. You've got to ride that razor's edge to make it work right.
These are the things I think about on my way to work on Monday morning. I'm battling insane multi-tasking drivers and yet the bulk of my thoughts are devoted to reminiscing about a nutjob James Brown impersonator. Perhaps I need to start drinking less coffee, or more. All I know is that when I looked through those barren trees lining the road and that puffy purple sunrise-cloud caught my eye, the only thing I could think of was him, and that I kind of wanted to buy a bullhorn and join in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)