...And I Don't Feel Any Different

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self-assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

A Commitment to Excellence

Sometimes I just really identify with the Oakland Raiders of the 2000's. The early years of the decade had some highs but everything since then has been a laugher. Every season begins with some hopes and dreams but they always end up in the pits. Even when it feels like we're making progress, it's hard to say for sure because the end result is that nothing really changes. It's demoralizing and discouraging but there's really nothing else to do other than to keep stubbornly trying, even if there are no guarantees that next season will be better no matter how hard we hope to turn things around. Things could very well turn out even worse.

That's what I think of when I look back on the last decade of my life. The autumn wind is a pirate. But I feel a nocuous chill in the air.

Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys

http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=301207006

I'm not gonna rail about how we keep losing games. I just feel compelled to point out Alexis Ajinca's quote at the end of the recap article.

"I guess French guys don't like Golden State," Ajinca said, laughing.

It angers me that a French guy would laugh at my team. I still haven't forgiven Mickael Pietrus for those missed free throws in Game 2 of the Jazz series back in '07. And that incident was capped off by his infamous (in my mind, at least) decision to take his puppies for a walk in Golden Gate Park so as to get his mind off his errors. Gah. (You can't see me, but I'm shaking my fist in rage as I type this.)

A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing...

I've learned a few things over the past few days. On Sunday, during lunch, I learned that the female counterpoint to "bromance" is "womance." Look up "womantic" on Urban Dictionary. It's legit. I don't think it is as good a word as bromance, though. Saying "womance" out loud just makes me sound like I have some sort of lisp.

We also determined that "rotic" is a one-person romance. (Romance without the "man.") I hesitate to use this word as well. It's only one syllable away from erotic.

On Monday night, I went to the Warriors game with Justin Travis and G.Woozy. It was totally spontaneous; when I woke up Monday morning I had no plans to go to Oakland. I had a job workshop thing from like 8:30AM-3PM all the way in the heart of the Tenderloin, so I took public transportation. Now usually when I take the bus I bring my backpack to carry my stuff. When I drive myself, I usually don't bring my backpack unless I need it for some purpose. After the workshop, I got a ride from someone to go to work. From there I bussed it over to the BART station and met up with the other guys.

So what I learned when I got to Oracle Arena is that there IS an advantage to having a purse. Garland also came straight from work and he was toting his manbag/murse/whatever you wanna call it. I still had my backpack.

Did you know that you have to check in your backpack at a claims check before entering Oracle? But they let people bring their purses right in! So I had to check in my backpack, but Garland was allowed to enter with his murse. It wasn't like it was a tiny murse, either. I'm sure it could fit just as much stuff as my backpack. But they let him right in. I saw women in there with purses that were even bigger than his, too. It just ain't fair that they were allowed to bring those in there.

Ever since the whole metrosexual thing became trendy and guys started sporting the murse, I've had nothing but scorn and derision for manbags. Just didn't see the appeal of them. Now I have learned a valuable lesson.

I ain't saying that I'm gonna go out there and buy one for myself. I can't justify spending the dough right on such a frivolous item right now. And I ain't saying that I have a newfound respect for the murse, either. I'm just saying that I've learned a valuable lesson.

So it's like they say, Knowledge is power. And with each passing day, I only grow stronger.

I Is for Imagination

Sometimes, when I am sitting in the passenger's seat while someone is driving on the freeway, I imagine what it would be like if I grabbed the steering wheel and swerved into the divider. I wonder how hard I would have to swing the wheel to cause us to hit the divider at an angle to do some real damage. I wonder how much it would hurt.

I imagine scraping against the divider for a few meters before wildly spinning around and getting slammed by the cars behind us, who don't have time to react. I imagine metal smashing into metal, glass shattering, fuel tanks leaking, and someone's lit cigarette landing on a puddle of spilled gasoline. I imagine being trapped by a malfunctioning seatbelt, with a few broken bones in my body, in a burning wreck of a car. Would I die with my eyes opened or closed?

I imagine how simple and easy it would be to grab the steering wheel unexpectedly from someone. I imagine how tidy and tragic death would be. I imagine going home.

I don't have a deathwish. I just like to imagine. Sometimes, that's all I can do. It's all I can do to feel alive.

Even Wolverine Does Not Have an Adamantium Heart

I'm strangely moved by these three panels.

Bullseye

One of my all-time favorite short stories is "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff. It's particularly short, but it's a real gut punch. It's about what happens in a man's mind when he gets shot in the head. For such a short story, it's richly textured, thoughtfully crafted, and carefully executed, appealing to my senses on multiple levels.

If you enjoy reading a good short story, check it out here:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/LiteratureandMedicineInitiative/20080304/bullet.pdf

There's a whole lot I love about this story, but one of my favorite bits is the end, when the main character, Anders, relives a summer memory from his youth. Anders remembers playing pickup baseball in his neighborhood, and a boy who says, "Short's the best position they is."

Anders can't get over that phrase. He wants to ask the boy to repeat the words but doesn't ask because he thinks the others will accuse him of mocking the boy's grammar. They is, they is, they is. But the truth is, he is "strangely roused, elated by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music."

That line reminds me of this conversation I had with a custodian at my workplace. This conversation was probably almost two years ago, but parts of it have been ingrained in my mind ever since. The guy was telling me how he, when he was much younger, was once in a car accident where his car flipped over a few times into a ditch off some lonely freeway.

Now, I can't remember all the specifics of how he had survived. All I remember is that he talked about how lucky and blessed he was to have survived. With great relief, even years after the fact, he looked me in the eye and said, "I coulda been took."

When I heard that, I wanted to ask him to repeat it, too. Like Anders in "Bullet in the Brain." But I didn't want him to think I was making a thing of his grammar. So I just replayed it over and over in my mind. What a beautiful phrase.

I coulda been took, I coulda been took, I coulda been took.

I thought about this tonight, about "Bullet in the Brain" and my acquaintance the custodian. There's something poetic, something nakedly honest and even humbling about these grammatically broken phrases.

I often pride myself on my fine grammar, but the truth is that I am not a real master of grammar. Nope. I know some stuff, sure, probably more than the average bear, but I dare not consider myself a master. And yeah, I've most likely corrected people on multiple occasions (usually in jest, although I wouldn't be surprised at all if people didn't understand I was joking). But I am not a master. I can't explain all the rules of it and if there's a grammatical rule I struggle to grasp, I'm more apt to just rephrase the sentence into something that still means the same thing without having to learn that grammatical concept.

But I thought about this tonight because, as I was praying, I realized how messed up my grammar was. Is. Was? Is? Man, I don't know.

When I pray, especially out loud, I don't really premeditate the words I speak to God. I think of what I'm praying about and then I just pray. This often leads to awkward sentence structures, stuttering, run-on sentences, and starting way too many sentences with the word "and."

It makes me wonder how my prayers would sound if I took the time to write them down and then recited them. It makes me wonder what God thinks of my busted grammar. I hopes He finds a humbled spirit prostrate before Him.

I hopes, I hopes, I hopes.

Automatic, Baby

Whenever I go to the bank, the workers there always go out of their way to greet me and be friendly. They must be trained to do so. Soon as I walk into Wells Fargo, someone standing near the door welcomes me. Then there's someone like 20 feet away across the room, sitting at her desk, saying hello and offering me assistance. It's rather disconcerting.

Then, when I get to the teller to take care of my business, the person usually asks me how my day is going. Sometimes they ask me about the weather, or what I did that morning, or if I have any further upcoming plans for the day or the weekend. It seems like the people who work at the bank are obligated to make small talk to customers. They always go out of their way to have a conversation with me but mostly I just wanna take care of my stuff and get out of there.

I ain't opposed to being friendly with the workers there, but the way they try to talk to me about the weather when they can look out the window makes the whole situation feel rather contrived. Or when they ask me how I'm doing, they know I'm just gonna say that I'm doing fine, and how are you? I hear them ask the same questions to everyone in line ahead of me.

I wonder what would happen if I decided to be a jerk one day and told the teller that I'm feeling like crap. I wonder if they're trained to deal with that sort of bluntness.

Me personally, I'm wary of asking people, "How are you doing?" Sometimes I might not like the real answer, and I don't wanna make anyone lie to me and say that things are "fine" when they're not.

You might think it's inconsiderate of me to not ask you how you're doing, but actually it probably just means I care too much. That's what I tell myself, at least, whenever I walk away from a friend without really exchanging pleasantries.

The Saga Continues

Anticipation is the joy of the journey.

(I don't know if anyone smart ever said that, but that's what I say.)

So much of my life is spent pursuing things, objects, that don't matter. I can spend hours surfing eBay, looking at things I know I will never bid on. I can spend hours at a bookstore or music store, just browsing. (Why is "bookstore" one word but "music store" two? Someone answer me that.) I can spend hours tracking down back issues of comic books that were never collected into trade paperbacks.

The search itself is an adventure of sorts. When I'm on the prowl, hunting for something I yearn to possess, my energy is focused on obtaining my heart's desire. Digging through dusty longboxes in a stereotypical comic book dungeon is the closest I ever feel to being a treasure hunter. (Well, either that or digging through the bargain bins at Green Apple.) I lack the vocabulary to sufficiently describe the feeling of anticipation, the anticipation of finding what I want. But I think everyone knows this feeling. It feels exciting to know how close you are to discovering treasure, to obtaining it, to winning it once and for all.

The funky thing is, when I find something and buy it and take it home, I am usually no longer as enticed by it as I'd imagined I would be.

The actual sense of anticipation leading up to the possession of the prize is more vibrant and meaningful than owning it. And I know this. Been through this process so many times, mulled it over in my mind countless times. I know this.

But like a sucker - no, like a chump - I keep on living the same way. I keep on searching and searching for more treasures, thinking they will satisfy me, telling myself that after I own just this last one, I can stop and rest. But I am such a chump. It's like I never learn; or maybe I do learn, but never apply what I learn. Either way, it's pathetic. And that is the very definition of a chump. I honestly think it's one of the most denigrating words in the American language.

You come to my house, you can look at all the books and comics and CD's I've hoarded over the course of my lifetime. I can look at most of the things I own, and still kinda remember when and where I got them, and maybe what I was feeling at the time, and generally what was going on in my headspace. But there are just stacks and stacks of books and comics I haven't even read. I spent so much time looking for that stuff, trying to find great, cheap deals, just wanting more than anything to HAVE them for the right price... And what's the point? Sure, I know that if I ever get trapped in my house during a heavy snowstorm, I won't be bored. I have an arsenal of things with which to entertain myself. But beyond that? What?

Even armed with this knowledge, I still go out and seek cheap deals, trying to satisfy the bargain-hunter within. My stacks of (unread) books and comics get larger every month. Let me put it this way: I have a lot of issues. Literally. (And possibly figuratively.)

Psychologically, I think most people enjoy the pursuit of happiness more than they enjoy obtaining what they think will bring happiness. I probably do. Thus, I simply continue to chase after things that I think will make me happy, not really comprehending that such a lifestyle is a vicious ouroboros.

Every day I chase the wind.

Why do I constantly look for the rush of seeking something? What is the point of desire for its own sake? I wish I could overthrow all the false idols in my heart.

I know that the prize I should long for is not something worldly. I know that I ought to press on, not dwell on the past and bygone failures or even victories. Worldly things can't satisfy my soul. Even if I do enjoy the things I possess, they don't redeem the blackness of my heart. And that makes the pursuit of such things so utterly meaningless.

There are two dogs in me. They battle constantly. One represents my willful lust for the wind. The other represents my desire to submit to Christ. Which dog wins? The one I feed the most.

The Fear

One of my greatest fears in life is a painful death. It's not something I necessarily think about very often, maybe only one or two times per day. As a child, I feared being kidnapped, tortured, and mutilated. My parents taught me to lock the doors so that bad guys wouldn't come and get me. It's definitely a lesson that I learned well.

I always had an overactive imagination (probably a side effect of being an only child) so I never had trouble imagining all of the horrible outcomes of being a victim. As a child, I feared monsters under my bed, the dark, creatures of myth, vampires, werewolves, zombies, deranged animals, kidnappers, and nuclear holocaust. As a teen, I feared getting physically injured, gang-bangers, drowning, being burned by intense fire, destructive earthquakes that would either swallow me into the planet itself or bury me under tons of rubble, plummeting off a skyscraper to my doom, and talking to girls.

As a man, I find that most of the fears from my youth are buried deep within in me still. But I gained a new fear that still has the power to grip me with relentless might: serial killers.

Around late high school/early college, I started getting more interested in crime. (Crime stories are still one of my favorite genres of fiction.) But the reality of crime paralyzed me with fear. True crime is something that I am endlessly fascinated with despite the fact that reading (or watching) stories about true crime would increase my heart rate and make me sweat in trepidation. I am repulsed by violent death but also intrigued with it.

I think it was the first time I read Watchmen when I was in high school. Watchmen is a comic that had a profound effect on my life. Realistically speaking, it's probably the second most significant book in my life after the Bible. There are myriad ways Watchmen impacted my life but one was simply the origin story of Rorschach's mask. Alan Moore made it tie in to the story of Kitty Genovese, a woman who was brutally murdered at her apartment complex. There's a couple of panels that I pored over, that I reread over and over. Here's Rorschach's narration as he speaks to his prison psychologist:

"Kitty Genovese. I'm sure that was the woman's name. Raped. Tortured. Killed. Here. In New York. Outside her own apartment building. Almost forty neighbors heard screams. Nobody did anything. Nobody called cops. Some of them even watched. Do you understand? Some of them even watched."

The first time I read this, I thought it was just a fascinating story. I read the words over and over. "Some of them even watched. Do you understand? Some of them even watched." That part has always stayed with me.

Maybe a couple months after reading Watchmen, I was in my A.P. Psychology class and we were talking about diffusion of responsibility. The teacher mentioned (or maybe it was in the textbook, or both) the story of Kitty Genovese. I never forgot that name. But I learned, in that class, that she was a real person and what happened to her was real. That kind of blew me away.

That led me on a search to learn more about her. I found some websites that detailed her story, and then that led to me reading up on other true crime stories. I started reading a lot about serial killers and unsolved murders.

I remember having a lot of trouble sleeping after reading stuff like that.

When I was in college, I read another Alan Moore comic, From Hell, which was about Jack the Ripper. Eddie Campbell's scratchy art really triggered my imagination, really brought me into that era of Victorian England. I have a really powerful memory of coming home from class one afternoon, and relaxing in my room as I finished reading this very long comic. Just reading about this creep chilled me. Anyway, I finished reading the book and I was trying to digest what I could, when a loud chime surprised the crap out of me. Apparently, I had left my computer's audio speakers on full volume and someone sent me an instant message. That really shocked me and it was the one time in my life when I fell off my chair.

Then there was the time my buddy Kenton and I watched the movie Zodiac at my house. For some reason, we decided to watch it in the dark. Poor decision. That movie scared me more than any horror movie I've ever watched. There was a part when the protagonist was being stalked and toyed with by the Zodiac killer, and it was intense enough that I swore out loud at one point, purely out of irrational fear.

Even just thinking about the Zodiac killer right now makes me look around the room and make sure that there's no one near me. I hate serial killers. Why is it that I'm just inflicted by primal fear whenever I think about them?!

I am not afraid of death. It's the pain that scares me. I do not want to be murdered in a ritualistic manner by a psychopathic, ax-wielding serial killer. That's not how I wanna go. It sounds ridiculous, but I think that really is my greatest fear.

[My ideal death, if I can't die peacefully in my sleep, is to die surrounded by the corpses of my greatest enemies.]