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Jul
4th
Mon
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CAT STUFF/TIME STUFF

Got my dad on the horn the other day. He described a scene from the previous day wherein he’d been “Window Shopping for Motorcycles” and on the way home he’d witnessed a horrific motorcycle-related wreck unfolding, why, not six feet from his very car. A man in a leather coat flew over handlebars and smashed himself right the fuck into oncoming traffic, making all kinds of other causal domino-type stuff unfold in tow. My father pulled over in order to “deliver a statement.” No ambulance appeared (only police and a road crew) which signified (to my dad) that this motorcyle-man was so thoroughly dead that he had merged with the pavement, entered the jurisdiction of the road crews rather than that of your more human-related cleanup. This probably sounds insensitive.


AND: 

I tend to take the same bike path to work each day and have done so on most weekdays for about three years now. Back and forth and back and forth, etc. wearing substantial grooves in my personal map and really getting some thoroughly biological-type knowledge about the place (road surface conditions, potholes, possible dangerous intersections, where to power up before a large hill, etc.) But so anyway, when you tred a path like this over and over, there is a somewhat duplicitous sense of SAMENESS, as in “every day is the same” and there is an illusion of a cycle or something, rather than the sense that you are in fact careening forward in time at breakneck speeds past irrevocable milestones.


SO:

The other day I came to a cross street between 38th and 45th street. Pretty residential/quiet stuff. I spotted a small gray cat with a little jingle bell tied around its neck. He stood on the curb
thinking, “Maybe I’ll cross the street, maybe not. maybe I will, maybe won’t” and I was going (outloud): “No no nonono” in my approach.

The little gray cat with the jingly bell then darted out with the suddness that most small-beans mammals often do in road-related scenarios (thinking now and dogs, squirrels, and especially the slightly larger-beans Pennsylvania White-tailed Deer.) I braked in time to miss the cat but then witnessed it get utterly fucking destroyed by the small Japanese pickup truck, making a very slight sound thump type sound. It was shocking and I had to dismount the bike and stand there for a minute and go “woah woah woah” breathing and looking.

But so I think that in moments like this you snap out of cycle-illusion stuff and are reminded that you are in fact careening forward in time at incredible speeds past un-undoable stuff. The cat, like the aforementioned motorcycle-man, had merged with pavement and moved its own physical presence into an entirely different jurisdiction. Standing on the curb and huffing and puffing and going “Woah. Woah woah woah,” viewing the DEAD/ALIVE binary makes the brain think: NOW IS NOW IS NOW IS NOW.

Feb
20th
Sun
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Becomeable Grownups

There’s a definite “SPRING HAS SPRUNG” feeling in the air today – windows open, dog asleep under the coffee table, wife on the computer, me sitting at the ALL PURPOSE MEAL TABLE examining my shoes. ”Whirring Domesticity,” as it’s called. And what it’s also called is: “FULL-ON, BALLS-TO-THE-WALL GROWNUP LIFESTYLES”.

Personal childhood projections of “WHAT GROWNUP LIFE WILL BE LIKE” (and, thus, what Grownup Life more or less tries to be like) were largely informed by TV Grownups. This is maybe because the parents seemed less like role-models and more like Big Talking Buildings. Nothing foreseeably becomable. No discernable evolutionary chart illustrating a path leading from “LI’L BILLY” → “BIG BILL: REALTOR, BOAT OWNER, ESTEEMED COMMUNITY MEMBER.” 

In retrospect, the TV Grownups probably seemed more becomable because they were (for the most part) big jobless kids amid purchasable stuff. (Thinking now of Jerry eating Dorritos, the Friends of Friends enjoying Pepsi Products, Fraiser partaking of Kodiak Ice. Chewing tobacco starts to seem like a REALLY good idea when you see someone as cool as FRAISER doing it.)

AND:

Sitting at the ALL PURPOSE MEAL TABLE now, surveying our big-ticket electronics acquisitions. Out of nowhere, I remember: Years ago, we were house-hunting in South Philadelphia at 2pm on a Tuesday in the summer. The man who lived in the house invited us in to have a look around. He was sitting on the couch watching old Simpsons on an enormous flat screen TV and eating King Vitamin (open box on the coffee table). He told us to go have a look around. The place was dark and air-conditioned and this guy seemed like a Genuine Serial Killer – young but weathered, old-looking, or at least passable for middle-age. (Maybe it was cynical to assume based on his appearance that he was a Genuine Serial Killer but I was probably like 22 years old or something so come on cut me some slack for crying out loud. Plus maybe he WAS a Genuine Serial Killer and so then wouldn’t you feel like a real horse’s ass for accusing me of being cynical?) We surveyed the amenities. Washer/dryer. Hardwood Floors. Central Air. Nice. This guy had a pretty impressive Sea Captain bedroom too: Fish net hanging around the walls, fake paintings of fish and waves and boats everywhere. Bust of a Sea Captain on the dresser. I remember there was also a circular bed, which we thought of as Weird and Sexual for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe it is. 

LIST OF KNOWN GROWNUPS:
a) George
b) Chandler
c) Monika
d) Agent Cooper
e) Jean Luc Picard
f) Fraiser