Day 8 - This is a Story

It starts out when our hero was very young, not even six years old. That morning it was sunny and by noon the temps were topping 95 according to the man announcing the minor league baseball game on the AM radio broadcast. Our hero's father had a shiny silver transistor radio sitting on the glass-topped patio table. The game crackled as his hand tapped the half-empty can of sweating beer resting on his bermuda-short clad thigh.

The girls and their brother, our hero, were splashing in the lake one hundred yards out from the green expanse of lawn unfolding before the lax legs of the man slouched in a folding chair holding a can of cold, watery beer against an area not nearly far enough from his groin to be considered acceptable amongst polite company.

The bug-zapper zapped and sweat rolled down the man's tanned, approaching leathery neck. His shirt stank of aftershave and accumulated wetness from nothing more than the day's swelter. Work; he laughed at the word these days, ruefully. He watched the paddle boat bobble, his family just out of audible range, their laughs and squeals mixed with ambient noises of boats and lawnmowers and birds and bug zappers. And the wind. He felt the wind on his back, making his damp shirt momentarily cool.

The boat, faded red until parts looked distinctly pink, was slick with invisible scum and lake water. It bobbed in the current and from the discharge of another leaping twelve year-old diving from the bow into the water. The radio announced the end of the game, the local team winning the game five runs to three. Not much of a game this time, the man thought.

His relaxed legs required more exertion than he expected to rise up and begin running towards the water's edge upon hearing the screams from the paddle boat. Where was it, he thought as he ran, nearly stumbling down the sloping lawn in his rubber jelly shoes. He still had the beer in his hand. He discarded it, picking up pace.

By the time the man arrived at the boat, having waded out the distance in the four-feet of water, the boy, our hero, was already dead. Drowned in less than a minute. How did happen? The diving and playing; the current and waves; his swimming was getting better, they had remarked that morning over pancakes and the funny papers. She had him on the front deck of the boat, the girls crying on either side. They would never forget this day, that time one summer when their little brother died while playing Marco Polo with his two sisters.

* * *

Self-portrait of the Artist on Leap Day.

Days 6 & 7 - Catching Up to Mad

I admit it. Sometimes, I get mad.

That's right; I said it.

Mad.

The word we equate with crazy - he's a MADMAN! - a complete fucking lunatic.

Or it's sexy, in a nostalgic, forbidden, revisionist kind of way - a la Mad Men of the telly's AMC. Good on ya if you like it; nary an episode watched, myself, mainly for a lack of time.

But, back to me (it's always about me, isn't it?): I sometimes get mad. I don't know if that's the same as angry. Is it? I think it might be.

Sometimes that makes a person feel... well, out of line from "acceptable" in this world of so much control, courtesy and decorum.

We all are part of a society increasingly governed by specialists diagnosing more and more of us - and especially more and more of our children - as anti-social, AD-HD, bi-polar, and the list goes on describing different forms of, well, for lack of a better term, madness. We diagnose and drug away both the legitimate ill and the original. When abnormality becomes a disease, we are in serious trouble.

After he did enter college, one professor told [Albert] Einstein, “You have one fault; one can’t tell you anything.” The very characteristics of Einstein that upset authorities so much were exactly the ones that allowed him to excel." 

The preceding quote comes from a post by Bruce Levine called Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill on the blog Mad in America. This is one of those interesting sites the great World Wide Web is inevitably bound to (literally) throw up on your screen from time to time when your lifetime net-browsing hours begin to roll over on the 100,000 mile mark. It's an interesting and mostly unusual collection of views and opinions from people speaking out against the modern practice of psychiatry, psychology and the role of professional care in the arena of mental health.

There's plenty to be mad about in the world today; we all either are or should be mad about something; otherwise, as the saying goes, we're not paying attention. Does your madness make you work harder or give up?

Self-portrait of the Artist looking mad.

This post represents another entry on my part in a "40 Days of Writing" project entered into voluntarily and without coercion. 

Day 5ish - Time to Ride

It's a beautiful morning in Portland, Oregon. The frost on leaves and car windows gives way as the sun rises above the trees and houses in the neighborhood. My daily commuter bike, pictured above, sits ready for me to ride it the 30 minutes each way takes; downhill in the morning, which helps. I've outfitted it with new saddle-bags (aka "panniers") in the hopes that this added convenience will help motivate me to forgo the bus or carpool options and instead brave the 37-degree morning bite. Ready or not; time to ride.

This post represents another entry on my part in a "40 Days of Writing" project entered into voluntarily and without coercion. 

Day 4 - Title Forthcoming

Another self portrait for Carrie Ferrence, as requested. I'll write more later.

* *
Update: I never wrote anything else. I look happy in that drawing; that's nice.

This post represents another entry on my part in a "40 Days of Writing" project entered into voluntarily and without coercion. 

Day 3 - Another poorly written and culturally insensitive attempt at a Haiku by a white dude

Steps bending grass wet,
Feet dragging Hell's spent wreckage,
Onward, Littlefield.

#thismakesnosense
#gradschool
#uptoolate
#fuckhashtags!

This post represents another entry on my part in a "40 Days of Writing" project entered into voluntarily and without coercion. 

Day 2 - Life is a Laboratory

For business school, which I am in the midst of wrapping up over the next four months following 2.5 years of diligent study, our Operations class (technically "Sustainable Operations") is using the now-famous (in biz-school circles) business simulations called Littlefield Labs. This web-based simulator has teams compete against each other in a sort of "beer game" environment (they use blood labs, but it's the same concept) to put people in scenarios requiring them to make uninformed (or partially informed) decisions. Over the course of 168 "weeks" (in the sim, one real life hour = one day*), each team attempts to forecast and predict incoming jobs, queue sizes at three stations, and overall output of the system in the form of completed jobs and revenues earned per job.

We've been through one round already. My team came in 15th out of 20 teams; or as I like to call it, finished in the top three quartiles. After some reflection and review in class, the game has been reset with a few addendum items tweaked (inventory control, etc and other exciting business school stuff) to force some new learning on the fly for the second round. We're still flying blind, which is not at all unlike real-world business - or just life in general of the real variety. We'll most likely end up with a small profit or a small loss, but the process will hopefully be both entertaining and educational. I am paying for this experience, after all.

Just like a simulation, we drive our own lives pushing and pulling different controls. We make what we imagine are informed choices understanding the ramifications of our actions and anticipating positive (or sometimes negative) outcomes. Are outcomes different than results? I'm unsure. Regardless this factoid, we expect that we're in control, or if not, that something kind, benevolent and loving is pulling strings and shaping events to lead us to that place that made all the difference.

I like to walk around the neighborhood here in Portland, Oregon USA. The lights inside homes tucked behind landscaped walls and ornamental trees or towering cedar or spruce hint at warmth and love inside. A cat wanders by, whipping its fluffy tail, seeking one more pat on the head - or hand to bite. A dog raises his head on a front porch. New cement has been poured for the sidewalk; first replacement since 1913. The roots break the solid seeming pavement over time, but ninety-nine years isn't too bad of a lifespan, either for concrete or human.

* corrected from "week" 


This post represents another entry on my part in a "40 Days of Writing" project entered into voluntarily and without coercion. 

Day 1 - Glasses Half Full

A friend laid down a challenge, friendly like, and now some other people are writing. I'm one of them. Forty days, forty posts, any topic. Go. If you're the type, here's the Facebook page.

It's the best of times. It's the worst of times. It is the winter of my discontent. I feel as though I'm coming up for air after a long, deep dive into cold, dark waters. The death of a family member, as they begin to rack up, means you re-live each previous loss with even more pain inside. Now, on the other side of those experiences, I'm left feeling both vulnerable and invincible; able to shoulder this burden and about to collapse from the weight of it all.

Life goes on, interrupted but still the same. Ongoing. Like a river. Or a rock in your hand, smooth and about to be thrown. The anticipation of the moment it leaves your skin and sails through the air. Never as far as your imagination envisioned, never. Splash it hits as you retrieve another from the riverbank. Washed down from a mountain miles away.

The transitions of work, school, life and love lay out on the table before me. Graduation. Wedding. Travel. Job. Hopes and dreams. The stuff of legend. The more you want it, the less you control it. It's a funny place to be a person "without faith" putting so much faith in the continued good fortune of your life; the luck and happenstance that have led you to this moment, this place, this choice, this decision, this unknown consequence of other choices, less important though they may have seemed at the time, yet so influential to the current course.

Self portrait of the Artist, February 2012.

This post represents another entry on my part in a "40 Days of Writing" project entered into voluntarily and without coercion. 

There is some news worth reading

From the NY Times: The so call "Prop 8" law in California has been (partially) stricken down by that state's Federal Appeals Court, assuring it will move on to the big time - the Supremes - sometime... oh, I'm just guessing here - around the time the 2012 Presidential election rolls around.

Favorite quote: "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California."

From Grist.org: Two young women continue to push for "sustainable cookies" for the Girl Scouts of America; proof that leadership doesn't have a minimum age requirement.

Favorite quote: "But, as [Madison] Vorva said, “they’re never going to be super healthy; they’re cookies. They’re meant as a treat."

And, from the Guardian, Bill Gates thinks we should go all in on Geo-Engineering.

Favourite quote: "[Richard] Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through his Carbon War Room charity."

Well... two out of three ain't bad. I believe we should let adults choose their intimate partners; we should keep shitty food out of our food network (and especially children's charity fundraising); but I'm not at all sold that humankind knows what it's messing with when it starts tinkering with global weather systems. Gates (and Branson and the rest) need to climb down off of Mount Hubris and recognize that some things are truly out of our control.