cat abuse; or people are scum

I can count the number of times I've been "together" enough to be proactive. For instance, most of my life I never had car insurance--or health insurance. Once, during the mid-nineties, I had my shit together enough that when my younger brother tossed me a tip on some financial advice...an investment... I was able to capitalize on it. I met with this broker in the watering hole downstairs from the office builiding of Ditech, an up-and-coming mortgage house in Orange County. I bought into an IRA that folded into the 401K Ditech offered. It wasn't long before my ability to hold onto that "luxury" became negligible and I had to funnel funds toward more urgent matters. Nonetheless,  it was during this time of never-before-seen-prosperity in which I decided to get a cat.

I've always been a cat person. Dogs require too much attention.

So, I had this sweet pad three blocks off the Belmont Heights beach between Long Beach and Belmont Shores. It was Southern California's sweet-spot...white people were moving into LBC in droves on the heals of Snoop and Sublime popularity and The Shores was already established aristocracy, and, upon my due-diligence, settled into one of the last bastions of "ghetto" left in the neighborhood.

I was working at Ditech doing the 405 hustle back and forth to work and my pad was a sweet one bedroom and a patio with enough dirt to have a small herb and tomato garden my mom'd helped me put in over one thanksgiving holiday. I found a cat shelter online and "mapquested" the address, drove over and knocked on the door.

The job I had was sweet. I was recently single, my pad was decorated minimalist. I was drawing and writing a lot. I walked into this two bedroom town-home up on Junipero--your stereotypical "crazy cat lady." I don't really know why I chose Walt--except that I wanted a cat who reflected my own personality and it wasn't until after we'd gone over the entire house and she shuttled me into the last room of the house that must have contained 15 cats all lounging around and only bothered enough to look up from whatever under-arm they happened to be licking to notice someone had entered the room, when I noticed a shy, under-sized black and white cat nervously peering out from behind a cat-trap--I knew this was the one.

"Can I see him?"
"He's a shy one."
"Hey buddy...what're you doing?"

He ducked behind the cat-trap simultaneously looking at me...a wondering look. As tenderly as possible I kneeled down and patted his soft head. He purred and let me pick him up.

"I like him. His name is Walt."

She wasn't happy about the name. I gave her a hundred dollars and she gave me paperwork. I put Walt in the cat-carrier and out to my truck. That was on a Wednesday, by Friday night, Walt wasn't eating or drinking and was huddled underneath my bed. By Monday I was worried and by the Wednesday after I'd gotten him, I was calling around to local vets offices.

The place was down off the PCH; a five minute drive from my apartment. I put Walt in his carrier. He was subdued of his own accord...he was sad and beaten. I talked to him all the way to the vet's.

"I know what it's like buddy."  "Lotta people'll tell you they understand Walt, but they don't."   "Everything's gonna work out little buddy, ain't no other way for it."

"So, I got this cat from some crazy cat lady off Junipero a week ago. I don't know what's wrong with it, but I don't have a lot of money to fork out for this so if you could just figure out if there's anything that can be done..."

"Ok sir, slow down...." and then fill in the rest with first-time-visit-rhetoric and about fifteen minutes later I was carrying Walt into a patient room.

Walt was disagreeable. Several "doctors" came in rotation, then together, then separate again, then assistants all asking questions about the cat--and me--and my relationship to the cat--and would you mind stepping out into the waiting room please sir....sir, please, just step out into the waiting room. It wasn't until after that I realized they were trying to figure out if I was an abusive owner. Which doesn't make any sense. I kept trying to explain to them that Walt is not the friendliest cat and that when you try to hold him down like that he was sure to rebel in the only way a cat knows how. The fact that I'd only known the cat for a week and understood this about him and could actually handle him in his distressed situation gave me pause only to recognize the veterinarians' incompetences...that they were secretly casting aspersions regarding my treatment of Walt was an incredulous notion. Had I recognized this, I surely would not have a cat. I would have demonstrated the typical behaviors of an abusive parent and declared that the entire lot of them wasn't worth the paper their degrees were printed upon. They would have declared me unfit because of the way I was getting "defensive."

I never understood why our society demands reservation. A friend of mine told me once that it's a wonder people aren't just walking around the planet screaming their heads off at the outrageousness and absurdity happening all around us. It's a hilarious image and one I often visualize. Sitting on the bahn in Berlin is particularly fitting to this hallucination.

You see this quality of behavior demanded of us in many places. Work, bureaucratic offices, restaurants, in public and in broken relationships, all propagate civilized behavior, otherwise you're likely to be disregarded as hostile. Like when you're calling any corporate customer service, your cell company for instance, will quickly threaten to discontinue the conversation if you---say verbally assault them or swear spells reinforced on the souls of their cowardly ancestors.

The other day I was sitting on a bench at this little spielplatz. Mostly I see people walking little dogs, never have I seen any kids playing on the little spring-loaded toys or in the sandbox. It's a bank of six benches--two rows of three facing each other on opposite sides of a walkway and you can see a bus stop and a busy street corner. On this corner is one of the places I go to in Berlin that has micro-crafted ales---IPA's no less. It was after work and I was trying to grade essays, it was a beautiful spring-like day. This old German guy comes walking across the street and he's yelling--shouting at the world. I couldn't understand him. A big pink bedsheet was bundled up like a sack of trash and hung over his shoulder and he stumbled. I wish I could've understood what he was shouting. He was angry as hell. Many people walking or biking by would look at him...much the same way I was looking at him...and then glance around for anyone else paying mind to the crazy old guy. People's eyes met other eye-witness's eyes and eyebrows would raise, small smiles of appreciation exchanged. As if to say, "Thank god! Thank god someone's willing to say it."


Sometimes when I'm talking to people, I see the glaze forming over their eyes and I just stop talking in mid-sentence and walk away. Sometimes I feel my own glaze frosting my vision and I've come to recognize it and it forces me to awaken and consider my own developed-biases...I try to let them go.

I learned this a long time ago. I used to live in this house outside of Kent, Ohio with a bunch of friends. People came and went and we had a lot of parties, get togethers more aptly and our neighbor would be over all the time. It was one of the coolest places I've lived simultaneously one of the worst. But we had this one party that literally almost brought the house down. Someone ended up getting sued over it. I was doing a background check on myself a few years ago and in my searching found that I was named on the suit. Walls were stripped down to the frame and electrical work, antiques destroyed, flags burned and this old black and white TV I'd had since I was a ten year old boy was smashed against the fire-place. When that happened I really haven't held on to very much. Always kept it simple and when people would ask me why I don't have anything I'd say, "it makes it easy to move around when I want."

It's a good philosophy and acquiring Walt was flying in the face of it. I remember thinking what sort of burden I'd be putting on him. Would I be able to feed him, how would it go if and when I decided to move, was I ready to take care of another living creature...it meant always having in mind a place for him and the notion was a warming one.

The doctors gave me a saline bag, a needle and a long hose with a valve-like contraption attached to it, and some kind of pills I was to sneak into his food. They didn't know what was wrong with him but that he was dehydrated and since he wasn't drinking on his own, I had to get him water intravenously, which meant sticking him with this needle just beneath the skin at the back of his neck.

I recalled as a kid growing up in Ohio, we had several cats roaming around our little farm. The cats would give birth and as the kittens got big enough my sister and I would help my dad take care of them. I learned from watching him handle these cats. He'd grab a fist-full of fur at the back of their necks and maneuver them around like a street-grifter playing the shell-game. That's how I handled Walt when I'd slide the saline-fed needle under the nape of his neck-fur. A cat I hardly knew at all, I'd grab a fist-full of neck-fur and pull, sliding the needle as simply as a tooth-pick slips into room-temperature-butter and hold him in my lap as the bag slowly fed him the much needed drink. He was scared--more than I was and he'd somehow impress himself deeply into my lap and look up at me, his little soft head stuffed onto the little mounded hill of his body, eyes clearly hoping that I wasn't going to hurt him and we'd do this for the next four nights after I'd come home from work.

In reality, I barely thought about what I was doing, otherwise I probably couldn't have done it. I only knew he had to have water.

And he got better. He was flea infested when I got him too. If you'd pet along his back in the opposite direction your hand'd kick up a spattering, like lawn clippings behind a push-mower. Riddled with fleas. I gave him baths. Giving a cat a bath is like witnessing shame and fear of death at once. A cat's truly exposed during a bath, but it was for his own good. It was a losing battle because I didn't really know the extent of his flea problem for a couple weeks after he'd been living in my flat. The place was lousy with 'em. My girlfriend at the time was a saint. She must have been getting eaten alive whenever she spent the night--but she never complained. Well, not until we were breaking up four years later and on top of everything else I'd fucked up, she tacked on this little ditty on her way out the door...."And I hated that fuck'n cat too!"  That hurt. What bothered me more was that I never picked up on it. I mean, I must have been blind. How could I never have felt that vibe from her.

I believe people. I need someone to tell me if they're bothered, or reveal themselves in an deliberate manner in order to see them. I'm an English teacher and a colleague once told me, "Our jobs are looking beneath the surface. How can you not notice what people's motives and issues might be." I've considered this observation. Of course it took a virtual stranger to point this out to me. It says something about people and relationships that someone close to me doesn't have the courage or the inclination even to say something. Maybe I'm thinking about it for the first time and people have tried to tell me. I used to have this conversation with my friend Dave. I would try my best to avoid making an impact on others lives. Be transparent...you be you. Don't let anything I say or think sway your actions or thought process...I'm over here existing, you exist too, and let me know if you want to talk.

Everyone's sat on a park bench and played that game where you make back-stories up regarding people walking by. This guy Patrick, I've known him for about twenty years I suppose. I would say he's on my short list of friends, even though I haven't seen or talked to him in over three years. He could figure people out. When I met him he was just walking down the street. I was over JJ's place in Kent and we were standing on the sidewalk in front of his place talking to Scott who lived across town and this guy comes walking down the street toward us. Scott knew him from a philosophy class and Pat joined our conversation as if we'd all been friends for years. It was so seamless and fluid I didn't believe Scott or JJ when they told me they hardly knew him. That night Pat showed up and we got drunk and in the course of all the talk, I kept thinking how amazingly accurate his assessments of us all were. He knew people better than anyone I'd ever come across.

Patrick was an artist then--and one of the best most original artist I'd ever known personally. And that's saying a lot. I knew at least three other artists whose art was unparalleled. The subjective nature of appreciating art dilutes such a claim, but I have studied art, art history, critical theory of art and I have my own tastes that gravitate now, toward the real...the art I liked as a young man, before I knew anything about art, was more abstract. Over the years I've come to appreciate the realistic nature of art, with an eye toward surrealism, abstraction, and impressionism. When I met Pat, I knew Dave and Conrad and loved their works. Their art made me want to know the person who could make this...to talk to them and listen to them. I wished I could make what they'd made. Pat's work had the same effect. In my life, I've had dreams about each of these three artists' paintings.

I don't really talk to any of those guys any more, but I'm sure if we met it would be warm and more than pleasant. I did meet up with Pat years later in Portland a few times. He was in a jam with a girl he'd fallen in love with. I remember sitting and having coffee with him and Scott and JJ on a bright sunny Portland morning. We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes into the early evening. He'd concocted this crazy notion that the FBI was watching him. I wanted to believe him...he was forthcoming on every front...an honest man before me. So few people have this quality. It had taken away his confidence...his chi or center. His experiences and intelligence were still intact--he was still Pat, but he questioned himself--more precisely I think he questioned his reality.

He'd gone away from art and went to law school and passed the bar in Washington and was scraping together a living, he'd explained, from basically meeting people randomly. He was substitute teaching at inner-city schools in Seattle and hatching jobs, seemingly from thin air whenever opportunity presented itself. I looked at him and thought, this person should be a giant, not what he was presenting me. He should be 10 feet tall and striding down the street, not staring back at himself and doubting.

At my apartment later that night in Portland with Pat, Scott, and JJ:

"Oh...hey. So this is Walt," Pat went right up and pet Walt on the head. Walt flopped onto his back and Pat rubbed his belly.

"Otter," Scott said. "Show Pat your coffee table." I'd made this coffee table with a flip top. It was rustic and raw but pretty sweet for a hand saw and a few carving tools.

"It's a work in progress," I said and went on to this little braggadocios spiel where I take on this high-falutent persona and explain the finer points of hand-crafted furniture making.

"Otto man," Pat said while getting his hand clawed by Walt. "This cat's crazy man. He's just like you."

And I told him the story of when I first got Walt. Feeding him intravenously and how it was touch and go and the nurses all thought I was an a cat abuser.

"Yeah, me and Walt's been through a lot..."

I got Walt in the autumn of '99 and in that same year I met the woman of my dreams, decided to go to college and leave LA for Portland. My girl found a job with habitat for humanity and I enrolled in community college. At the time California and Oregon had this reciprocity agreement that said you could forego the residency qualifications and pay in-state rates in either state. I hopped on the Oregon Health Plan and started getting food stamps for the first time in my life. I also bought a '94 Ford Ranger extended cab for six grand, cash money out  the door during this time.

I packed up the Ford with the entire cab left free I figured Walt would have plenty of space and make the trip fine. I wasn't even out of LA and had to pull over for Walt. He puked.

"Hey Walt man, you gotta chill man," I told him. He looked at me confused and a little angry.

"Look, don't give me this right now," I reasoned. "We're movin' up buddy. We're gettin' out of this race riot man. LA's been nothin' but trouble man. We been lucky lately. Sure things have been good, but that was a dead end man. We're lucky Walt. We got a woman that loves us, friends to count on, and I'm startin' school with health insurance and food stamps."

He didn't seem convinced. I put him in his carrier and he was happier. I stopped every hour or so. The Ford was loaded down and I welcomed the stops. Rest areas along the five were nice and Walt liked getting out and walking around.

We drank coffee, listened to Dylan's "Time out of Mind," the whole way up. I smoked weed and kept the speed at a steady 65 the whole way. We stopped at every rest area which worked out to about once an hour. Once we pushed thru San Francisco Walt fell asleep and it was dark and I pushed the Ford to 70 and didn't stop till Mount Shasta.

I remember how hopeful I was. I'd made a few such trips. The landscape always seems to welcome me in these moments. I often think that these images...the times when I packed up and got on the road to a new place...these images will be what I remember on my death-bed.

I've done it six times. Chicago to Yankton, South Dakota: Hartington, Nebraska to Medina, Ohio; Kent, Ohio to Los Angeles; LA to Portland; and Portland to Florida via Chicago; and the last time was Florida to Berlin. That was a little different but I still remember driving thru the South Florida Glades and watching the sun coming up over the horizon and having that same surreal feeling of wide open possibilities.

Me and Walt lived in several places starting in southern California where I had to feed him intravenously. Then we stayed with JJ and his wife and new born baby Ezra. That was trying everyone's patience and I was glad to find a place with my girl at the time off Stark street in SE Portland. Then I got my own little studio on PSU's campus and I had a little garden plot where I could take him outside and he helped me garden and brew home brews.

i don't know how you  write a good research paper kid,
if you don't have a good idea,
you might as well plagiarize.


what are you supposed to write about?
write about what you want to learn
what you want to learn depends
             upon the white wheelbarrow...
                 
the guy at the tabak shop on my street
looks like a guy i knew in florida,
but he doesn't act like him.

there's a woman where i work,
she's respected and wears her credentials
like a hooker wears fishnet stockings.
I'm more interested in the hooker.

A friend of mine stole my shoes.
I was telling him the story
about how I'd discovered my shoes gone.
His sympathy seemed so genuine
I decided the shoes weren't worth the trouble.

I had a girlfriend who understood
how unreliable her initial instincts were
concerning friendships she'd forge.
Inevitably the fast friendships soured.

Teachers who've only ever been teachers
are among the most piteous creatures
roaming the earth. None of them recognize
the caricatures they've written themselves into.

I read an article debunking the grammar rules
that say not to end a sentence with a preposition, or begin one with a conjunction.
Students at my school are required
to make index card note cards. I must
do my best to change this policy.











             

...as if

"The budget isn't inexhaustible."

       as if all
   of the
     human race
         depended on it...

would the late fees really matter then...
can I please get my passport
       stamped "EU"

       The invading race won't
      have a clue
     now's the time,
    let's take advantage while
   the gettin's good,
    now's the time,
      get in on this quick,
        might as well
           it's all going to hell
           anyway.


Should we fight it out,
even when it's all on the line,
when we're facing extinction,
   
     are we going to get a reverse mortgage for these good people Janie.

"The budget John, it just wouldn't allow for it."

as if it was talking
     "For holy sake John
          we created it...I think it would allow for it."

               The invasion is always there,
                  man, why should we pretend otherwise
                     a dying man doesn't pay late fees...fuckers!

            There's just not room in the budget this year....

            as if...
     
            there were citizens of "imminent doom"
            waiting in line at the courthouse....
                   a fool waits in line drawing his last breath....fuckers!

If there were an invasion,
can you imagine...

"That's two dollars and fifty cents sir. You've only got two twenty-five."

As if it's real.

         As if you wouldn't throw everything at it to stay alive.

Dresden or Bust; or, Do These Come With Batteries

I like when I come off the train--eyes forward--keeping track of the people passing, crossing, pausing, etc. When I'm late or pushing it, I get assertive with an aftertaste of aggression. Single-minded. Having to cast glances to the side or even behind me in order to check the time is inefficient and unsafe. The major bahn stations would be providing a great service to its people by placing their clocks in the four corners and as distant from the center as possible at the height where the walls meet the ceiling.

I need to find articles on "Canonizations" of literature and how that whole process works. This kid in class asked why we read Of Mice and Men, and it wasn't that it was Of Mice and Men, it was any book. Why this book? To his credit, he wouldn't let me disregard his question. I think he expected that I would reply with some hyperbolic transcendent rationale typical of a rhetoric suitable for the sort of wind-baggery associated with most English teachers.

"It's on the book list here in JFK's English department," I said. He stared at me...not wholly disappointed but not impressed. "As well, a couple of students in class asked if we could read it," and I thanked them in front of the class and the two kids smiled ear to ear. "And, I like teaching things for th e first time. I make a lot of mistakes but learn a lot about teaching. It's a healthy experience for me because I'm visiting this moment for the first time. The first times of anything always teach us a lot."

Then he asked, "Why these though....this book, I mean, why not Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings?"

"That's the big question. And you've hit on a very dynamic argument in academia. You see," and I wrote, The Canon on the board and continued... "The Canon is something that is established in universities around the world and people decide what we'll read. Books that become canonized are usually representative of important and significant ideals...provoke strong reactions as well as evoke the most subtle and invisible emotions. The canon is definitely dominated by "old dead white guys," but in recent decades the cannon is opening up to the not dominant culture...er economic system...not sure which anymore....but this is one of those wonderful subversive phenomenon that contribute to the combine, in Cuckoo's Nest...." is what I wish't I'd said. But the truth is I never rant as a teacher. I save those insufferable, mis-informed, bombastic rants about the culture industry replacing our humanity for my friends, my right-leaning family members, and drunken nights...not necessarily in that order.

"It's really a question, why do we read this book? that can be best answered if  you look inward." Is what I really said and we moved on. Subsequently, I'm locating a few articles on the subject of canonizationing of literature and when we come back from break I'll do a couple of activities and give them some experience with this sort of discourse--maybe even generate interest. Kids are curious...and like good fiction, a little is a lot.

I got food-poisoning for the second time since moving to Berlin. Both times were street food. This time it was bratwurst at a weinachtmarkt after drinking gluewein and rum all night. It hit me at midnight. I lay in bed wondering why I'd had that last cup of wine, If I could stop the nausea or at least ride it out...but no amount of concentration helped. It was touch and go for a while, but by three AM I was certain it was the food. Yeah, three hours like that puts things into an existential perspective. I had to go to the doctor and felt like a gollom. My friend JJ, when he was in his early twenties, he got sick...some kind of flu/cough and he would hunch over and hobble around the place. We used to live in the same house next to this lake outside of Kent, Ohio with Dave and Beeje along with a handful of transient-vagrants. Our neighbor Pom would come over and he and Dave would start in on him.

"C'mon grandpa...." and "Ohhh, man, look at him...he looks just like an old guy." And then one or another would hunch over and hobble around, coughing and hacking into a clenched up fist, cursing like a crooked wildebeast. One time we were hanging out at the laundromat and we convinced JJ to just see if he could fit into the dryer. He got in and we pinned him inside and clunked enough quarters into the slot to start up the tumbler. He tossed around one time and was able to brace himself and keep from tumbling, but the second go around he lost  his foot-hold and dropped an elbow and soon he was tumbling like a thread-bare afgan and me and Dave were hooting like drunken owls.

I guess he's my oldest friend. In Mice and Men, the friendship between Lennie and George is really prominent...like a 3-D projection standing out, forcibly put there by Steinbeck. To some extent the literary critiques of the piece contribute to the mythology he's impregnated his story with by perpetuating and writing to the end of the earth about the sacred friendship between men. Steinbeck's not so subtle seed has evoked responses that are remarkably similar and like a painter uses paint Steinbeck uses words to the effect of a painter. He is an artist. Nonetheless, the friendship they have is based on their mutual fear of becoming cranky old loners with nobody to mind--George doesn't want to end up a bitter old man--and ultimately his is the only opinion that matters.

In my younger years I would say shit like, you're either with me or against me, or I'll trust anyone....once--a lot of this type of sanctimonious hogwash. I would never befriend--forgive a friend--or lower my standards in order to be friends out of any ideology other than both parties would do for the each other without expecting payment or reciprocation in some way. I was never friends with someone because I wanted to use them. And if you didn't follow the am I my brother's keeper, creed, then our friendship was not a significant one. These are good ideals and I still draw from these...allude to these old standards on occasion, but time has made them impossible to hold people accountable to.

The possible rationale for George and Lennie's friendship: They need each other...support, company, defending one another, collaborative budget, lounging, chatting, games.

Lennie's reasons: George treats him fairly and won't leave.

George's reasons: solicit friendships with others, inspire sympathy from others and to promote self-pity for his plight and what a great guy he is for his charity toward Lennie, he needs Lennie to defend him physically.

Looked at it in this way, you can go through and say well George gets more variety from the relationship. If each guy has a pie that represents his capacity for friendship, or simply put, each pie is the elements of the friendship. Lennie has a pie and George has a pie. Each pie contains the reasons why they are friends. Lennie's pie is the same size, but it's got fewer slices, one slice is George's dependability and another slice is the fairness with which George treats Lennie. George's pie is the same size as Lennie's but it's got many more slices. If Lennie couldn't say--beat to death anyone he pleased at George's say so--well, the pie would have less slices. In this way the reasons why these two men are friends are disparate.

George is friends with Lennie for many reasons and each reason is important but take any one of them away and George is still going to survive. Say Lennie didn't inspire sympathy from people toward George--for being such a great friend--George would go on fine, might even remain friends with Lennie, even without this quality. Or maybe Lennie twists an ankle and can't beat up the next guy who wants to tussle...well, George has to bite his tongue occasionally and not mouth off like he's prone to do. But, if George is no longer reliable...well that just leaves one thing to fill Lennie's pie...that George treats him fairly. The phrase, don't put all your eggs in one basket comes to mind. Should friendship supercede this axiom? The only thing left in Lennie's pie is George's fairness while George's pie is still maintained with many slices giving many reasons for him to remain friends with Lennie.

The hitch is Lennie doesn't know any better. Our neighbor at that old lake house outside of Kent, his name was Pom, used to say, If you get to be fifty years old and you haven't learned how to get along in the world on your own, you probably shouldn't bother. I always interpreted this idea as one may as well just end it, cause, I mean, what's the quality of your life. You can't be living a very interesting life if you have no more wit than to sit huddled up in a ball and absorb the swinging hammers of life over and over and over, never doing anything about it...I mean, right, ending it must be better. But, lately, I've begun to think maybe I'm not seeing what he may have meant. Like, by fifty, if you don't know yet, why bother? Why bother trying? The outcome is the same. If you stop trying then you only endure. Endurance on it's own must be like volunteering for animal testing or water-boarding--just because you got nothing better to do.

So while I had food poisoning a couple of friends helped me out. They brought me sprite when it was the only thing I could hold down. I am not so stringent in my dealings with people. Time and experience are excellent teachers if you listen. I thought between JJ and me, I must be Lennie, but it's a lot like these personality tests, Briggs and Stratton or Type-A personality...paying mind or reflecting on your life based on these standards must be like drawing still-lifes without any shading, geometric shapes on a page.

This time I learned something frightening while teaching product for the first time. Humans are remarkably similar when it comes to thinking. I took another look at my friendships and what I get from them and what I contribute to them. I thought of my buddy Andres--Oso, he calls himself. Oso is the kind of friend you make that reminds you of what friendship is. He reminds me of my friend Matt...MM, M-squared, double M, from Boston. This guy has fists the size of sledge hammers and a heart of gold. I met MM in Florida on an abandoned disc golf course, leaning on a tee-pad post that demarcated the hole and distance to the pin. He was wearing flip-flops, carrying a beer and a single disc. I felt embarrassed to have a whole bag slung over my shoulder. One time, after I'd known Matt for a few years, we were teeing off from six pad and he whizzed a low-flying zinger down the right fairway and where it hit, a little armadillo scampered off into the woods. When his disc hit the little armadillo everyone standing on the  pad jumped up and started screaming and laughing and after that happened I never again doubted anything he'd ever told me...and he told me some wiz-bangers.

For these reasons I closely associate my friendship with Andres with the one I have with Matt. They would both, for reasons unsolicited on my part, go down fighting for me because of our friendship. They both have kids now, so I suspect that dedication may waver due to larger considerations. Oso was one of my friends that brought me some sprite--two litres--at the breaking point...I was about to lose it. Drinking water when you have the stain of vomit and gluewein and rum in you mouth does nothing but reinforce the bad taste. He came to the door which I opened as a gothic butler might, and he stood in the doorway hoisting the two bottles as if he'd climbed a mountain pass to bring them and I took them unceremoniously. He was not deterred and assured me his services were at my disposal.

Students are like water and wind and pretty much all people, they take the path of least resistance and they've learned how to read their teachers and as a teacher it's difficult to discern between a genuine response to something like Mice and Men, and one that is canned. Students are good at doing things just to say They've done them. I do the same thing. I am given tasks at work and I do them as quickly as possible without much thought and put it in the outbox with a rubber stamp. If I ask the students to ask a question about the text they write down a question and rubber stamp it complete and this is a perfectly natural thing to do. My dad says it's "schemers scheming schemers." My buddy Fred says it's people just doing for their own. Nobody wants their kids to starve so one mechanical task leads to another and another and before you figured out what's going on you're 35 with a wife and two kids. This process begins in school because people have better things they imagine they might be doing--so, a seemingly simple task, like asking a question about a text--which is designed to elicit genuine responses, turns into just another thing to check off the list...mindlessly. Buddhists on a mountain in the middle of  China might not fall  prey to such devices...but I do.

ECIS

Mother/Partner tongue policy in the JFK English department

• A disapproving gasp
• suggested that being allowed to visit the familiarity of their mother tongue in order to decode what they see happening in English
• I have to agree based on my own experiences learning deutsch...if I'm allowed to use my own languages syntax or semantics in order to understand german's then it makes it easier. (i.e., subject verb, adj, adj, adj, infinitive)
• I asked about the best approach for correcting syntax in a writing sample. 
• (my process has been to underline the error and then "syntax" in the margin
• they suggested targeting "repeat offenders" i.e. "The americans felt the urge to make even more organizations to control the living of the japanese, which indirectly forbid them to live at the east coast."
• is changed to, "Americans were urged to make more organizations which directly restricted Japanese people, but these same tactics also indirectly affected where Japanese decided to live."
• which also reminded me that I'm compiling a list of "words we always mess up!" and I will put it in the drive for anyone who wants to add to it.
• the rest was promotional propaganda

Peter Dalglish: UN Habitat

• Vigilante Educator: sends volunteers to remote areas to help disseminate best practices
• results in an organic saturation of "IB" practices throughout a given region
• I've contacted him because of the responses I've gotten from the students in my AP/Leistenskurs to "the combine" and adorno's "Culture Industry."

Google sites: 

• private pages only accessible to you and student
• blogs that are done thru "announcements" tab on GS that are open to the class
• I post student blogs on my site too
• forms
• student foldres

Writing using evidence:

• The use of "I" in an essay. 
• common practice at university level is "you are the authority" of your thesis...follows the IB policy of "Student as Knower," thru the Theory of Knowledge aspect. 
• University first two years professors are assigning 3-5 page research essays with emphasis on depth and specificity
• 5 weeks working on getting a thesis (Specific and Narrow; Researchable Question) SNRQ
• thru a variety of FFW's (Focused Free Writes)

Derivations:

I struggle with helping kids design their own theses.

I realized....

• How much internalizing, digesting, examining marginalized aspects, I am doing while I read a text.
• I come with 44 years of life experiences
• I carry with me my own tools of deconstruction methods, i.e. the critical lens with which I examine a text is finely tuned via education, self-interest, and teaching for 6 years
• I have an agenda when I read and have a bank of "signifiers" that when I see them in texts I know seemingly instinctually how to develop a critique of the text...none of the above are instinctual they are learned....hence the problem a 12 to 18 year old kid has with coming up with a provocative thesis.
• Thesis is something that you have to craft thru introspective interactive prior knowledge experiences (experiences is a verb)
• Diane and Julia (what question do you have?
• FFW's
• Your predicted answer
• an imaginary interview with someone who might have the answer
• an argument you can imagine occurs between you and the interviewee
• an invented news story related to your question
• an invented dialogue in which you discuss your SNRQ at a coffee shop
• your proposal of your SNRQ to an organization for funding
• re-read
• use those insights to write a new SNRQ
• Rinse and repeat (Ideating)
• Should a thesis be polarizing?
• If kids are using the rubric as much as we are...what's the impact of them knowing that a strong thesis is only even considered as part of the score in two areas/aspects/boxes on the rubric?
• A good thesis is invaluable to.......(fill in the rest)

I should have gone to the costume party

I knew this guy Pete, from Austria, a little boxie, blonde haired....hobbit. I'd just moved out to LA in my Buick Regal. It was a sweet ride, and if the damn thing didn't leak oil I'd probably still have it. It was a sport edition of the Regal and had burgundy velour seats and matching carpet, a cool blue digital dash that spread across the entire front of the dashboard and down the middle to where the gear-shifter sat in-between the seats. When I was driving across country, I'd settle back, hit the cruise and prop one knee up listening to Miles Davis or Coltrane and at times it'd be like sitting in one of those IMax theatres...a panorama of the american landscape. Henry Miller called it the air-conditioned nightmare. Emerson painted the picture of an eye-ball overseeing it all. Kerouac watched it all receding from the back of a pick-up. I felt none of that.

At night it was like sitting in the cockpit of the space shuttle. A moonlit, early-winter night in the middle of the Rockies with Coltrane slow-dripping into the veins, makes a young man believe he is a king--and that's what it was like driving that old Buick 'cross country. When I came out of the Arizona desert it was hard to distinguish which impulse was stronger--getting the hell out of Arizona or getting to the Ocean.

I hit the 5 (I-5), right between San Diego and Los Angeles and pulled off at the first exit and stopped at a gas station. Bought an LA paper because the San Diego box was empty and called the first "room-for-rent" advert from a payphone and headed to Anahein where I was to meet Paul at one in the afternoon. The room I rented was one of two rooms converted from an add-on garage. It had a bed, a night-stand, a digital clock and a lamp. I hung a map on the wall...incidentally, every subsequent place I moved to I hung a map on the wall. I had my own private entrance and I'd have to walk over the drive-way and into the house thru the main door where the kitchen was located and down the hall was the bathroom...there were six additional rooms in the house, Paul's master-bedroom had its own bath. Paul didn't need to work, he was an ex-marine--and kind of an asshole, but justifiably so because his house was filled with nere-do-wells, rejects and perverts.

The first night there I was cooking up a bologna, fried-egg and grilled-cheese sandwich in the kitchen when I met Brock.

"I'm Brock," he said and stared at me with his face hanging out. "Wanna come see my big-screen TV?"

I scarfed my sandwich down and he took me into his room. It was dark, the room blacked out with curtains and a giant spacecraft of blue hovered and took up the entire room. His Lay-Z-Boy sat directly in front of the huge TV. Behind his chair was a large cardboard box. From what I could discern, nothing else existed in Brock's room...for that matter, at that time, nothing else in the universe existed.

"If you wanna borrow my porn you can," he said with his face hanging out pointing to the giant cardboard box. I went back to my room and cracked a Mickey's and tuned around on the digital clock radio listening for signs from aliens. A knock on the door and I slid the modified garage door open to my room and Pedro (not the Pete from above) stood there with his hands in his pockets. I didn't know what a sketcher was then, to me he just looked confused and shy and lacking self-confidence. After he explained that he was the tenant who previously occupied my room and that he thought he might have left his jacket here, I offered him a beer.

We drank my supply and I suggested we go get some more.

"Sure," Pedro said. "You like coke?"

That was a long time ago now and trying to convey what that night was like is impossible in this post-post-modern era without being cliched. Tom Waits said that when he writes a song he gives it to his wife so she can ferret out the cliches, which is why I like Waits' music so much.

Southern California in the mid-nineties didn't have cellphones or internet yet. I was typing on this old typewriter that my mom'd given me and had been carting it around with me since high school and it had a defective B and D--the letters would plant themselves slightly higher along the lines and I was writing and sending stuff I'd written to my friends in Ohio (   ) using this old typer. The look of the text was probably the most appealing aspect of the writing, but nonetheless I wrote about the San Pedro and Brock sagas and many more and that's where those things should remain...lodged in time, character flaws and all.

I met Pete, the hobbit dude from Austria shortly after all that madness on a Saturday morning. I'd got a job waiting tables at a family diner across from Disneyland--most of my early days of traveling were funded via this method. Decide a general area I wanted to live, save a few hundred dollars--enough to secure a room and eat for a few days until I could get a job waiting tables. Waiting tables in SoCal was easy pickings for a young white male. I'd walk in dressed nicely, hand my resume over...Kinko's was instrumental in those days, and present myself in the most humble form I could muster, which is quite servile...I have no qualms about being a stooge, and 9 times of 10, I had the job walking out the door. I was so confident in my ability to find work that once I went into a Friendly's restaraunt fresh out of bed, resume in hand, and dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and walked out employed.

I got the job, working the dinner hours. Dinner hours is as good as gold in the food industry...plus I didn't start till Monday. I was looking at the map on the wall figuring out where I wanted to go. I went to get another cup of coffee from the kitchen and ran into Pete.

I can't say enough good things about Pete. The image I have of him is this...us sitting in the living room of the two-bedroom apartment we'd eventually found together and moved into. Pete sitting in this wine-colored, Victorian chair, perched up and leaning forward, one hand grinding into the high arm of the chair, elbow cocked at ninety degrees, his other elbow pressed on his knee and his fist extended out in front of him and he is talking intently about something important. He's wearing his shorts that he probably bought in the '80's and his blonde hairy legs and chest bursting out of his clothes. On the table next to him is a forty of Mickey's and a small straight glass which he is continuously topping off with his beer. He's pinching a tiny joint between his sausage-like fingers and working like a coal-miner trying to keep it lit. We used to talk about anything and everything and we laughed all the time. One time we were in this heated discussion, he believed that the holocaust was a fake and never happened. He was pinching the tiny joint between his fat little fingers and failing to get a draw on it, he finally pulled the thing away from his lips giving up and stared at me.

I looked at him smiling.

"What the fuck are you smiling at?" Imagine that said with a thick Austrian accent.

"Nothing," I said innocently as possible, shrugging my shoulders. On his lower lip, smoldering and smoking the tiny joint was stuck and he was buzzed enough and crazy enough I guess he didn't notice it until it had started to burn and he jumped up, furiously slapping himself in the mouth to figure out what the hell was burning him. He looked at his empty finger tips and by this time I was on the floor laughing.

I had a girlfriend at the time, she was Jewish. I had no idea what was so appalling to her that Pete denied the holocaust. I mean on conscious level I knew...yes, this should be insulting to her, but on another level, a human one, I knew that people can think whatever they want, it won't keep me from being friends with them. This is somewhat robotic. I have a friend of mine who calls it being an alien. He's an alien though and tries to superimpose his experiences onto those he comes across...a perfectly natural thing to do...I wouldn't toss him out of bed because of it, just like I wouldn't un-friend Pete because he thinks the holocaust wasn't real. Besides he's dead now anyway, and what good would I have gotten out of it if I'd ended our friendship because my girlfriend at the time didn't approve. She's still alive and happily married and probably doesn't even remember who Pete was...once again, my case is made by virtue of circumstances.

That Saturday morning I wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo. I like zoos. I know that might piss some people off. I've been to some depressing zoos. The LA Zoo for instance. The elephants in the LA Zoo have this space of about 100 square meters, two or three of them stuffed into it, and the only thing resembling nature is a crooked old destroyed tree. The one time I was there, one elephant was out in this play area and he'd curled his trunk around the last remaining branch of this tree and was banging it repeatedly against the ground like a mental patient and I got depressed and left.

I went to a zoo in the Czech Republic once and they had goats and horses, and these two monkeys that sat unmoved for the entire time I watched them, which was quite a long time, and they had a couple llamas too, and a bunch of chickens and ducks and geese as well. The zoo had  a restaurant on site and the barns were all painted with scenes from children's fairy tales...like crazy images--witches standing over a kettle with two kids slowly cooking away, a wolf stalking a playground from behind a willow tree.

Pete and I went to the San Diego Zoo that Saturday, the first time I'd met him and we had a great time. He was around 50 years old I guess, but he was a fun guy and an interesting past. He'd sort of a fall-from-grace story and was still in love with his ex-wife, a hot little cougar who apparently drained him of self-confidence as well as finance. In the '80's he was an engineer and got into the coke scene, lived in Venice Beach and was flossing a red-corvette when he met his wife. I believed his stories--didn't have a reason not to.

His ex-would call him occasionally and on those days he'd sit in his chair and drink and eat this thick hearty bread. He'd put a layer of butter on the bread and on top of that a thick layer of Philly Cream Cheese and then he'd watch Ricky Lake or Montel and drink and eat. I'd come in and rouse his tail-feathers. He was like that...a peacock...proud and at the same time, he forgave me my youthful indiscretions and he talked with me as if I were a valuable friend. I know people in their fifties who hardly acknowledge your existence because their so wound up in their own worlds they hardly recognize anything else is going on. People who are talking themselves into a cave, people who, if you can get a word in, don't even notice you've said something. It's not like they don't notice you...it's like what you've just said only served as an interruption of what they were trying to say. These people are so weird, and not just relegated to 50 somethings, you see it in younger  people, but a lot of time in these cases it's recovering heroin or meth addicts...these people are so out of tune that in order to break off a conversation with them you need to just come right out and say something like...

"So, I have to go now."

And then they look at you and say ok and continue going on with what they were talking about...Pete was not like this.

We spent the whole day at the zoo, he had some good Cali-gold and we smoked a joint sitting in the butterfly terrarium, an amazing wet jungle of a place that seemed to go on forever, yet closed off from the world. Nobody was here and we sat under the California sun and watched all the butterflies. I was really happy at this moment and glad I'd never again heard from Pedro. I've had a long time love/hate relationship with drugs and I honestly believe fate has had its hand in my ability to stay relatively clean and sane. If I'd had less of a disciplined upbringing or an excess of funds I would have fallen prey to the demonic elements. My dad must have suffered raising me, and I only know this because of age and experience. There's a lot of value in experience...someone said an unexamined life is not worth living and that is a reflection of experience.

You can't have gotten an adequate picture of my friend Pete though. I used to carry around this hand-held tape recorder and record random stuff...conversations, spontaneous street scenes, vagrant ministerial rants, the usual stuff. Once, me and Pete were sitting out on the balcony. We lived in this four-plex and it faced another, identical four-plex and in between was a grass field, closer to what you could imagine, as I did, a courtyard. And in the summer time, 3 of the balconies were friendly and would sometimes convene on one or another's balcony, and it was good fun. Community. A community of the oddest mish-mash of people that sometimes we all laughed out loud about the absurdity of the combination.

Me and Pete'd been drinking the forties and smoking and I started laying out this gag we could do. Pete was such a crazy dude that he agreed to let me record him giving me permission to beat the shit out of him with a broom stick. I wanted it to be a kind of radio drama where this guy is so depressed and wants to kill himself, but his roommate gets this idea that because he gave permission to get beat the hell out of, his shifty lawyer could get the settlement for the assailant---pain and suffering...truth was I hadn't planned the entire scenario out and Pete...the crazy bastard played along and let me record him giving me permission.

Later that night I came rushing out onto the balcony from my room wielding a broom stick and Pete's immediate figurative....possibly literal, pooping of his pants, I couldn't go on for all the laughing I was doing.

One time my friend Dave came out to visit. Actually, it was more like stopped in for a visit on his way from Las Cruces to Tacoma. It was reminiscent of the electric kool-aid acid tests. Pete got just as much a row out of it as we did and it was good fun.

Pete and me'd get in these heated discussions. When he'd start going off on wild ideas like the holocaust was a fake, I'd start making up outlandish tales about shit..."Oh yeah man, they filmed the moon-landing outside Vegas."

Right, I know, the moon-landing was filmed outside Vegas...but the more preposterous my claims the more offended he'd become. We'd push each other's buttons, swilling back beers and the discussions turned to infuriating lashings of character and humanity were slandered onto the other and when he couldn't take it anymore he'd say, "You  know what man?" (again, austrian accent) "You are nothing but a verbal masturbator...you know that...you're verbally masturbating right now...that's all you're doing..."

Mittens are only a metaphor

This is my third autumn in Berlin. I work too much and don't get out much unless I'm on holiday. If I don't work as much as I do, I am not a very effective teacher. It takes me a long time to plan because I can't get in front of a class and pontificate and prattle on about stuff. I do have some texts that I'm better at simply because I've taught them more than twice and know how kids react and respond to them.

It's when I teach stuff for the first or second time that I suffer. I am not a quick thinker which is why I take so much time planning because I try and consider as many possible outcomes that might develop. I know this is futile but sometimes it pays off. I know that good teachers can superimpose and transmogrify content into any given situation and leap across material utilizing their powers of metaphor--applying point of view from text to text. This is not my forte.

I see all texts as unique--themes are limited for sure and cut across texts, but characters are all different and require the lens to be focused differently. Another problem I have is that I don't believe in analyzing literature through literary devices. In reality, the only time symbolism is relevant is in poetry. I see symbolism in fiction like Hemingway does, if you're putting symbols intentionally into your work, you're inauthentic. Or Flannery O'Connor suggests that teaching literature by deconstructing symbols is missing the point, sometimes the hat is just the style of the time period and that's why the guy's wearing one.

Read Dostoyevsky and it's clear he's not strategically dropping symbols around to get us to understand.

It's raining out but the sun is trying to find its way and I'm going to go for a ride and do some shopping for Halloween costume materials. I love autumn, always have. If you've ever flopped down exhausted in a pile of leaves and stared up at the sky and breathed in the peppery flavor of smoked earthen leaves, then you understand. Indian summer is one of the greatest gifts a kid can be granted...on the heels of fresh summer memories, an Indian summer is like getting a chance to do it all over again, make up for lost time, fix mistakes and make everything right in the world. I feel the same way now as that old excitement shimmers its way up from my belly and finishes off with a slight buzzing sensation that inspires me to brew coffee, fill my thermos and get out there and blow the leaves off the sidewalk with my speedy bike.

If you're looking for symbolism in that last little bit, in my humble opinion, you're missing the point.

I don't mean to besmirch figurative language, in life and language, metaphors and analogies connect us. They allow us to empathize and understand one another. But making concrete decisions about malleable content dilutes or streamlines, or commodifies it into something contrary to the beauty it should represent. I realize that criticism is necessary. But we should use the texts we have to analogize our experiences, not the other way around.

Freud uses Oedipus to examine why we behave certain ways because it creates a common point of understanding. Nietzsche alludes to Lessing's son's death to give us a shared experience. This is different than arguing the meaning of Big Nurse's orange colored lipstick. If I said that woman is my Big Nurse, then like Adorno alluding to Ford's assembly line to explain the film industry's marriage to advertising is enough to make a connection to how we've become products thru watching too much TV--and you would understand my perception of that woman--and I assure you it's not because she's wearing orange lipstick.

This is only relevant to me and the small number of teachers who I'm true friends with or poet friends, shout out to J-mack and JJ...but the fact is, I'm supposed to be a teacher of literature and because I don't believe in the fundamental element of teaching literature, like deconstructing a story until it's dead, then I reside in an ever-present state of conflict. I know that I should be telling the kids in my class to stop worrying about symbolism and metaphors and get to the point...why doesn't Nick nail Jordan, and who's your Big Nurse, and what hope are we supposed to have after reading "1984," but I know the next teacher they get is going to expect them to understand the symbolism in "The Pearl," and because of that I abandon my true nature for the greater agenda.

So I go out and ride my bike on a beautiful fall Berlin day and it's as if I'm traveling through time. I start to think about the books I've read and why I read and continue to read. I am searching. I read for the same reasons I go to museums and stare at art or learn about history. I talk to homeless people and people who are smarter than me or have had different experiences because I know there's so much more to learn. I do this with my teaching, I expect that I'm going to learn from my students, even the little 7th graders.

The fact is "rebellion" is dead--or more precisely, it's been commodified. You can drink poison but to what end, Socrates already did it and the effect is understood, assimilated and re-configured and now it's on a t-shirt and some kid spent fifty bucks for a cheap shirt made in china for fifty cents. When John threw off the shackles of Soma and society, he became a hero--he was--is a hero to me, but I am a relic. Now when John throws off the shackles of Soma, it's simply a symbol of a cautionary tale--a reminder to people to be-ware but don't get crazy about it and do something drastic, you'll ruin your credit, or mess up your permanent record and that shit stays with you for seven years and you'll never get into the college of your choosing.

When Holden loses his mind, it's ok and understandable because he was an archetype of a never-before-seen demographic of a consumer society that'd mass-produced itself into uber-supply...Holden loses his mind because he sees what's in store for him--vapid supply/demand, production/product, product/consumer. Holden is John the Savage--an American teenager who's parents are busy making money so their kids can get into good schools and get good jobs so they can raise kids of their own and they can get into good schools and have good jobs. Now--Holden's just so negative, is there nothing he can't find to complain about, why doesn't he care about his future or his education, he's never going to get into a school if he doesn't change his behavior...he's just making bad choices.

Bad choices, this is the response our society has come up with. Eventually you're expected to come 'round to our way of thinking...and if you don't, well, we can find an alternative program for you to go to. And that's it man. Socrates, Plato, Raphael, DaVinci, Shakespeare, Douglass, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Dostoyevsky, Camus, Huxley, Miller, Keroauc, Burroughs, Kesey and Carver...they're all just bad choices. Shakespeare was writing to save his life and his material is reduced to the study of iambic pentameter...I didn't give a shit about iambic pentameter then and I don't now. Now Shakespeare's characters teach us what not to do, serve as warnings...I see them as mirrors. When I re-read Cuckoo's Nest I grow increasingly distraught. I see R.P. and Cheswick, Ol' Pete, and Big Chief reduced to symbols and the text commodified into lessons on how not to mis-understand the real issues of mental illness, and Kesey's done more harm than good by presuming these self-institutionalized ding-bats could just walk out and live lives as normal as any ol' asshole on the street.

This is the conflict that sits inside me...like an ancient ghost, or a recurring dream of which you only recall the same short snippet of...it's because I'm learning from being a teacher and I'm starting to doubt, not just my ability or quality of the teaching I'm doing..that's always been a concern, but to what end this "gig" will lead to. I used to think, well, I'll teach these kids how to think critically, to listen, read and watch the news with a critical lens and that will be enough. I try to do that. I gave out Adorno's "Culture Industry," essay as background information leading up to reading "Cuckoo's Nest," and the kids' perspective on it was that it was dated. When I read it almost 15 years ago, I was astounded and felt as if Morpheus had just woke me up, but now, Adorno's ideas are understood...like that goddamn gorilla in "Ishmael" keeps telling the narrator, mother culture has informed these kids about the culture industry...they know it inherently because it's been uncovered now for 50 years and BMW and Mercedes can actually produce commercials in which rebels and outsiders have become their target audience. Kids know so much about the way the world works and they know it when they see it. If you show them the origins, it's only confirmation of something they learned along the way. The really smart ones can put historical contexts to certain ideas and understand the value of history as well.