General Posts that don’t fit well elsewhere.
As I was riding today, I remembered part of an old WWII era joke I heard one of the old men at the VFW tell.
I always understood the German for horse as Pferd. I was doing something online and came across Gaul as an alternative.
And all of the sudden the half-remembered punchline of this forgotten joke made sense. It had to do with riding a Gaul (Frenchie) as if she were a Gaul (horse).
And there you have it. A joke I don’t really remember that I just figured out after a 20 year comic pause.
I rode again today for the first time in a while…
Here we go!
My horse was Kayla, a chestnut Quarter Horse with (what seemed like) an even disposition. Even until we got out on the track, that is. She was pulling me this way and that and then started cantering to the barn.
View to the North as I got dragged along the track.
We eventually came to an understanding, but not before a couple of scares. Once we began to understand each other, we really had a nice time.
Riding in the practice field.
Like Cyndi was saying: Horses just want a leader. The herd mentality is strong and they need that direction. If they don’t get it, they assume it for themselves.
Out of the Gate!
So we rode for a while in the heat and it was really nice.
A lot of the time I will talk to myself in a kind of broken piginy German. In this case, I kept repeating “Reite Das Pferd! Nichts Das Pferd Wird Von Mir Geritten!” A real German would laugh at that, I think… They would rather see something like: “Gerittente Pferd” or something, but whatever. I use the word Tagleuchter too, so what do you want?
I know what you want. You want more pictures from Getaway Farms.
Well, here you go:
I think I made my Uncle Roger mad.
He is the beer expert in the family and I asked him what made Miller High Life beer taste so specific. There is this kind of astringent peak-i-ness to it that I can taste and smell from a mile away.
My Uncle Gary (his brother) used to drink it all the time. He was not a very nice person and was pretty hard on me and my brothers in the name of “manly fun”. This included being picked up by the ears, being thrown around, and any number of other fun things… all while surrounded by the distinct bouquet of MHL.
So I asked Uncle Roger what made the flavor so different so that when I am talking about Miller High Life beer I can say “oh, it is the yeasts” instead of “it tastes like child abuse”. In my mind, the smell of child abuse isn’t whiskey and cigarettes or leather or rope. It isn’t duct tape or the basement closet with its mold and slightly damp air… it is MHL.
Roger said that it probably IS the yeasts. He did not comment on the child abuse.
These people can DRINK.
For real. I grew up with rabid teetotalers on one side and just as rabid alcoholics on the other* and have NEVER seen this much booze consumed.
So prep your liver before you come, cause they start early and run late.
*Why yes, extended family gatherings were very interesting, thank you.
I can see the light. It is dim and distant, but I see it.
Almost done putting Greg’s stuff up on Ebay and then begins shipping it out and off to the four corners of the world.
Catharsis or something like it.
I wrote before that this kind of full-body grief is like being punched in the stomach.
You know what else is like being punched in the stomach?
Love.
The record producer and his wife across the hall from the workroom have a little girl, Elizabeth.
This was nice.
Wow.
Besides being just about the best baby EVER, I find myself being super protective of her. She just turned one in April and has been walking and trying to talk for a while. So I walk her around the neighborhood and help out when I can.
So she is starting to get into things here and there and today I helped Mary, her mother, clean a cut on her finger from a pair of scissors. Elizabeth wasn’t happy about it, but she stood still while I talked to her and cleaned it out and put a bandage on it. She still wasn’t thrilled, but stopped fussing and met my eye solidly the entire time. When we were done and she smiled and started dancing.
My little heart just sang.
It is odd to feel so strongly about a child who isn’t yours, but there you go: It takes a village and all that…
Here is a pic of us when I was best man at her parents’ wedding:
Now this, THIS will brighten your day!
They came over and got me (I had been in pretty bad shape for a while – you can see my face and how beat up it was from all of the crying and emotional stress lately) and I was best man and head-baby-wrangler for the afternoon.
Wow. You have to remember what makes your life really sing sometimes.
Hundreds of pictures. Hundreds.
Not even 30% of the way through the tables of stuff from Greg’s and am getting tired.
I really want to get everything except the antique glassware, books, albums, and cds done tonight.
If I can get those listed, then I can list the rest of the things over the course of the next two days.
Aiming to have the whole workroom empty by 6 July. A tall order, but I think it can work.
The nice thing about this much mindless focus is that it really takes you out of yourself. It is the one thing I liked about a corporate job – you are called on just to do. Format, template, rules, just do. Do. Do. Do. So this kind of thing is not making me tear up like something that forces my creative side.
OK. If you want to look at the mess I am in, check out my Ebay profile.
No crying today. THAT, my friends, is a very good thing.
And you bask in the cliché of it and realize…
Sometimes things are going along and then something happens out of the blue that completely changes your tone for a while.
It happened to me today. I was re-hashing all of my (very) first-world worries with a student* who dropped by for a bit and then my email pings and I get this:
Hi there!
I LOVE everything I’m seeing about your life. If I were in Chicago, I would be taking your classes! And I drool over the culture you’ve created in your workroom.
I know the years in between are overflowing with joys and sorrows that make us who we are today. But I look at pics of your workroom and I am transported back to that slow moving train from Italy, walking through tunnels of hydrangeas, and a place and time where critical thinking and classic theoretical exploration were encouraged. And I miss it.
I’m starting my European job search because it’s time to get out of the desert. My brain dries up a little more with every passing year. THANK YOU for keeping me focused! Please keep the blogs and pics coming.
Macht’s Gut!
Erin
I kept re-reading that first line again and again.
“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”
“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”
“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”
Let me copy that again…
“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”
Because really, I haven’t been loving my life.
In fact, there has been very little about it lately that gives me any joy at all.
Erin and I went to college together and then spent time in Switzerland at Franklin College in Lugano. We have lost touch (almost) completely over the years, but she saw the class blog I just revived and felt compelled to send that note. And what a difference it made in my day.
And that did it. I have been able to create this thing – with my own hands – and make it work. Sometimes it hasn’t been pretty, but there is something to this.
Something real. Something outside of our ridiculous consumerist culture. Something that makes a difference. Something that teaches people and makes them think!
AND I DID IT.
MYSELF**
And it was hard and I suffered and had setbacks and thought I would lose it and that it didn’t matter.*** But it does and was really good to hear.
* Who is turning out to be a friend – who knew?
** Not really, but it is a nice illusion when you are trying to pump yourself up.
*** To get the proper cadence of that sentence going through my mind you should really read it:
“AnditwashardandIsufferedandhadsetbacks
(and inhale)
andthoughtIwouldloseitandthatitdidn’tmatter.”
That is how I talk to myself in the morning.
Short and simple commands. Like a German shepherd.
If I am tempted to linger in bed past 4 or 4:30: UP!
If I am tempted to dawdle and wait for the next bus: MOVE!
I get to the workroom this morning and force myself to open email: OPEN!
I’m functioning, but in the simplest way possible.
More Ebay today, then resurrecting the blogs, then a former student is coming by for a bit.
I can’t wait for September. I have always wanted a Summer off. I haven’t had one – ever – because I was always being forced to play baseball or I had a job. I did not, however, want a Summer off under these circumstances.
Be careful what you wish for when the genie asks you what you want, I guess.
Have been video recording blog entries, but they are so dark and involve a lot of crying and fear. Maybe I’ll post them once this all passes over. Maybe.
MOVE. OK, time to try to get stuff done.
As I emptied Greg’s apartment I was having to, for the first time in my life, say goodbye to someone with whom I have no romantic relationship and to whom I am not related.
Try explaining that to a client while you are falling apart and can’t do the work you need to do. They have no reference point for it and end up thinking that you are just screwing with them.
In any case, as I was having to decide a week or two ago exactly what I was going to do with the things that were important to him. I had promised him as he died that I would do things right and that I would try to make it all as right as I could.
When I said that to my mother she said “What the hell does that even MEAN?”. She was right, of course. Making things right is such a weird way of putting it. For me it has more to do with a lot of post-death apology than it has to do with any Platonic sense of Rightness.
In any case, the piano. I put the ad up and waited. No one bit. I wanted to see $300 out of it, but it wasn’t forthcoming…
Then out of the blue I get an email from a woman who wants it for her son. He is three and his father is a composer. There really was no better customer than that.
Greg had gotten the piano for his high school graduation and it just seemed right that his life-long passion should be passed down.
They came and picked up the piano and I was thrilled. The little boy was SO EXCITED. It was great. They sent me a video of him playing, but he was so excited that his dad played while he just hit every key.
So before they got there, I was feeling a little maudlin like I have been since the 8th of March, and so I recorded a video of me playing the piano. I am not very good. I only remember a few things here and there from childhood. But it will be nice to click on this link and see it on Youtube as long as they are around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMU3wd9FMM0
And here is the video that she sent me the day they came and picked it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muSQJv3nH00
The piano held its tune pretty well through the move.
Ok. That is two posts in one day and I think I am done until tomorrow.
More Ebay fun awaits.
T
Today has been pretty good so far.
Yesterday, as part of my purge of the workroom I sold my Singer 31-15 Industrial sewing machine.
It made me sad, but it went to a good purpose:
Matt and his boyfriend James picking the machine up from the workroom. They were super excited about it. Mat had been texting and emailing all morning so that he could be the one to get it for James. We spent some time talking about what they do and the machine. In all, I think that the history of the piece will carry on. It will certainly get more use than it was getting up at the workroom. You can read more about what James does here:
That is James on the left and Matt on the right.
The history of that machine, just in case it gets sold and someone looks up the serial number:
I bought the machine from a guy named Petar on the near West side of Chicago. Here is the text of the history he knew of it:
We acquired the machine when my mom bought a cleaners located at 3521 W. Fullerton Ave. We moved to the space in 1966. Before that someone else owned the cleaners throughout the 50s and early 60s. Around 1970 we were forced to move because we lost our lease and the building was sold, so we moved next door to 3523 W. Fullerton Ave. where the machine stayed until 1979 when we sold the business. Fortunately, my mom took the machine with her to our home in Park Ridge, Illinois and had an alteration business going in the neighborhood – we lived at 1029 S. Prospect – we had a completely finished garage – it was a story and a half and the first floor was carpeted – the previous owners had 8 kids so they had made the garage into a family room. So the machine was there until 1992. After my moms death in 1988 and my father moving to Italy and getting remarried, we sold the house and I took the machine to my apartment at 8654 West Summerdale Ave Apt3s. It was there until 2000, when I bought a town home in Round lake Illinois and moved it along with the rest of my things there. I was there until the fall of 2003, I sold my town home and moved back to the city, however I was renting a room from a women and didn’t have room for most of my stuff, so I put it into storage with Midway Moving and Storage – they have a warehouse around Pulaski and Lake Streets. It was there until November 2006 when I purchased my current place and put it into the storage room. The machine has essentially been unused since 1988 when my mom passed away, however I really tried to take care of it. That is about all the history i know. it has been moved around a bit – would be interesting to find out what it was doing pre-1950s; I guess that will remain a mystery.
The serial number is: G521375
It is a Singer 31-15
I am especially happy that yet another creative gay guy owns it. Keep it in the family, so to speak.
And that is it. The things we surround ourselves with have these rich histories. Sometimes they are mundane and work-a-day like this and sometimes they are more exciting. The point is that we are connected to each other by more than just our humanity. We are connected through our tools and artifacts. They are tangible things that tie us together as human beings.
One of the biggest problems and biggest fall-outs from all of this has been my professional life.
My personal life? All I have is totally internal, so there isn’t much of an external one to notice change.
But my professional life tends to be my connection to others. I may not have friends like most people, but I have roomfuls of people who chit-chat, make nice, and then I teach them a stitch or make them a dress. And there is the rub. Making the dresses.
See, the entire Spring session was a disaster. It began when I was at my worst. I tried to soldier through it. I really did. But I wasn’t at my best. Luckily my third or fourth best is better than most people’s first best so it seemed ok. OK as far as the classes went. It seemed.
But how many times can you catch yourself screwing up and making terrible mistakes – or in a classroom setting not catching others and stopping their mistakes before they happened.
See, I have always said that my students and clients deserve my best or something close to it. That hasn’t happened for months and now I have everyone pissed. Well, not everyone. The students are pretty good about it. But the clients aren’t.
Oh, sure, make the dresses, teach the classes, whatever… how hard could it be? What is your problem? But when you are your own worst critic (it isn’t really that much of a cliché… some people aren’t) it is overwhelming. You make ridiculous mistakes and then spend hours crying about them. In a corner. You lose time, you lose money, you lose the little spark of inspiration that makes it all worthwhile. I thought I understood depression before, but until I caught myself NOT going to Greg’s 23rd floor apartment because there were no locks on the windows and what if… well, you know you have a real problem.
Wellbutrin seems to be helping, but I won’t know until nearer the end of the Summer. Right now I am trying to stay out of harm’s way. It is a real pain – in every sense of that word. It feels like someone punched you in the stomach the night before while you were blackout drunk – you have the pain and the cramping but can’t explain it.
I had experienced a broken heart before – once – in my early 20s and it wasn’t fun. But this. THIS was something else. Something profound and life-altering. It is one of the worst things so far and I am someone who has plenty of battle scars. YOU can’t see them, but they are there.
Have been telling myself for years that if it came down to it I would go back to the country raise tomatoes and ride horses. That may just happen.
But the title! What the hell does all of this have to do with the title?
Ah, glad you asked. I have been sick to my stomach for months with three projects that just aren’t going to happen. I don’t want anyone’s money and have offered refunds because that’s what I do, but so many folks are pissed and I just can’t do it. I hate to disappoint them. I hate it that I can barely pick up anything creative or build something without it turning into some nightmare-fueled sob-fest.
So you can’t please everyone. You can try to explain, you can try to deal with it, you can try to keep things to yourself and let people in on an as-needed basis, but it is still going to smack you in the face and you have to decide. You have to decide if screwing up that dress and sending yourself into some dark hole for a dress just so someone won’t be upset with you.
ramblerambleramble… You can’t please everyone. It is good to try. But at the end of the day, you can try to make it as right as you can and then you have to accept that not everyone is going to be ok with it. You can hope they see what you are trying to do, you can try to explain, but in a professional setting it isn’t really appropriate to say something like: “Well, I have been crying for six hours and that is why there are water-spots on your taffeta. Sorry ’bout that.” People think you are a drag (and you are).
One thing the past three weeks have taught me, though: I will never go three weeks without checking my email again, that’s for. damn. sure.
So, you know, at least there’s that to gain from a horrible month. Gotta hold onto something…
What was I doing last time I wrote?
I had just gotten the call from my friend Greg’s sister. He was in the hospital again and I was pissed.
Well, I’ve changed my tune now, that’s for sure.
See, March 6th started me on a terrible roller coaster. I wasn’t in a great place to begin with. I have been like a schizophrenic drunk with vertigo on some horrible amusement ride. Does that color it properly? Yes, I believe it does.
So for a while I will write about lessons and how life kind of smacks you around a little sometimes. I have a friend who would say: “Be more Stoic!”. What he means is: “take it like a man”. He doesn’t realize that if one is really being stoical he would fall on his sword tout suite.
My little ride has almost cost me a business, has worn me down to nubs I have never been worn to, and yet has still given me a couple of cherries.
Remember: It is not all bad.
Until it is.
Throughout the Summer I am going to be posting about some pretty personal stuff. Don’t be too hard on me. I am trying to live my life in the open and help folks out. Don’t read it if you don’t like it.
So stay tuned and read me rant. Hopefully I can make you laugh or think.
Or cry. Sometimes all three.
It is something I’ve never been able to master. This need to do and be (whatever) balanced with the need to care for others and make things right. I am either running around trying to fix things, being the martyr that no one asked me to be or I am working on my projects for months on end. Alone.
It is hard being a Secular Mother Theresa and/or a Spiritual Howard Roark. I don’t advise it.
I found out this afternoon that a very good friend of mine is in the hospital (again) and will probably not make it through. He is 61. This is the same friend I nursed from the beginning to end of his last hospitalization four+ years ago.
I couldn’t do it then, but did. It almost killed me, but I did it. I ended his extended hospitalization and rehabilitation for 4-6 months and dropped everything. I almost lost everything as well.
When he started drinking again it made me sever ties. I couldn’t cope.
And now this. Some part of me, the younger more maternal part, says that I could have stopped this. It tells me that just giving enough will fix things. But I think emotional energy works like scientific energy: It cannot be created or destroyed – it just changes form.
The last time it drained everything I had emotionally, financially, and physically. I am still feeling the effects all these years later. And yet I sit here thinking, thinking, thinking.
He never changed his condo admittance papers, so off I go tonight to find his will and business papers for his sister. I am the only one allowed in the building unattended without a power of attorney.
It reminds me of a story of a distant cousin…
He worked out West for a widow as a ranch hand. This would have been 30+ years ago.
She was a hopeless alcoholic, and as such was too much for him to deal with. He tried, but it got to a point where he just had to go.
As he was leaving, she said: “You may have lost your loyalty, but I WON’T lose mine!”
He thought “sure, whatever” and cut out.
Fast forward 10 years. He gets a notice. He finds out that she has died and left him everything. Every single thing.
Not that I am interested in my friend Greg’s things but there is some part of me that wants some kind of grand movie ending like that. Some part of me that wants to show off how, even though he never stopped drinking, never straightened out his act, never did any of the things I thought he would when he essentially got a second shot at life… that… I don’t know. Validation? Vindication? Admiration? What?
Then the hyper-rational side of me kicks in. It has been my dominant side for the past few years. It tells me that this has all (all of it!) been a lot of effort invested in someone to whom I am not related and with whom I don’t have a romantic connection. A LOT OF EFFORT.
Sigh.
So I’ll go to his condo after class tonight and find the appropriate papers. I’ll think about where I want to go from here. I haven’t been there in two years, so it will be hard to do it, but I will.
My personal blog is up and running. At least I think it is. All of the posts so far have been filler to get it configured properly.
If you stumble on this and see something wrong, let me know with an email or a comment.
I am going to switch gears now and work on my other personal blogs:
After I get all of my personal blogs up and running I will start adding more content and then post it to Facebook and to the Projects page at Metafilter.
Hopefully this renders properly – I have been putting it together on an old PPC Mac Powerbook G4 which has been a little draggy.
If there are two things I rely on too much when I write they are ellipsis and exclamation points.
Sorry. I know better. I really do. But they are so tempting when I am trying to convey my tone of voice.
So here is an image I took the other morning when I noticed the mirror in the dining room had blushed a little more.
This was the mirror that my grandma used to get ready in. It is missing this tiny piece of walnut trim and so she never had it hanging up in my lifetime.
She did say, though, that is was interesting to have a mirror that was so obscured when you remember it being clear.
Her mirror aged with her.
On the way home this past December, I stopped off in Sullivan, IN.
Sullivan itself isn’t anything to scream about, but they do have an Amish (I believe they are old-order, but don’t quote me) population. They pull their buggies up to the hitching post in the parking lot of the main gas station and pick up members who have taken the Greyhound bus to Chicago.
These people always have to deal with being someone’s thing. They are always getting their picture taken because of their horses, buggies, and clothes.
So when this guy saw me with my camera up, he looked away.
I don’t think he realized that my motivation wasn’t to fawn over his simple life and gawk (although my real motivation probably wouldn’t have set well with him either).
Growing up when, where, and how I did all of that stuff is old-hat to me.
Gentle reader, I will tell you right now that he was hot. I wish the pic had come out better.
I named the blog what I did because I seem to always be surrounded by conspiracy theorists.
This may be some kind of sample error, or it may be that my sense of the crazy is heightened from growing up with them. In any case, they are steel to my magnet.
If there is someone in the room who subscribes to any number of crackpot theories (they would balk at calling them theories) they engage me in conversation, and then before I know it *BAM* “Of course that was before the Masons and Oprah started stealing all of my ideas.”
Some of these people have ended up being good friends, but I have learned not to poke the bear in the cage as far as this stuff goes. So Oprah and why your business aren’t going well are conversationally off-limits.
I do, however, like this image and may as well throw it up while I am fixing the images on the site and getting everything in order.
Stay asleep.
I have classes to teach from noon until 6.
I went to bed at 5 p.m. and got back up at midnight.
This is what I am going to feel like by 7 p.m.
And not like the guys I hear on the sidewalk going home from the bar (it is 3:45 a.m.).
Background image:
I was playing around with a beautiful watercolor paper and seeing how different colors and wetnesses worked with it. I only have a few sheets of it left, so I went from wet to dry.