Talking Heads

Talk to the Hand

Well I am finally home after three-plus-weeks of working from the road.  I’d like to say I have a profound post for my dedicated eD followers, but I am afraid I am too damn tired to even try to go there.  I did learn a few things, along the way, though.  I’m always looking for perspective, but what I am talking about here has more to do with inertia.  The movement of our surroundings has an impact on us, and we can all garner a powerful hold on our lives if we can somehow influence the world around us.

This last trip I went south, west, east and back west again.  And in my jet-lag induced hysteria, I realized that the influence on our surroundings, thankfully, does not have to be intellectual or philosophical.  Rather, we just have to encourage the behaviors we enjoy to be a part of, and discourage those that put us in a tizzy.  Again, I’m not going deep here.  I’m talking a ground out to first:

Always a Catch in a Ride

I just bought an iceberg.

My cabbie answers the phone, works the radio, and every now and again picks up his fares.  He epitomizes an “owner and operator” and we have built up a repertoire over the last several months. 

His little company is my preferred provider. 

After we dispatched with the latest football news (oh! poor Arsenal), we gossiped about the M’s under his control.  Mike was late on Tuesday because he locked his keys in the house as he walked out to the Van.  And there was Mick, who truthfully I could not quite place.  The owner/operator told me I’d recognize him as his face was really hard to forget.  Poor fella. 

And then there was Marc.  He is the one that looks like Bruce Willis (the 12 Monkeys version of Bruce Willis that would smack Astin Kutcher).

“He’s a millionaire you know.”

What?  All this time, Bruce Willis has been loaded? 

Take Off, Eh?

This post was written in 3B - three beers - and it looks good, eh?

A week on a plane – sounds kind of like a terribly awesome Samuel L. Jackson movie.  Fasten your seat belts because this month, it’s my life.  Okay, I exaggerated a little bit.  A clock-in and clock-out work-week on a plane, is more like it.  I will spend over 40 hours this month on a plane.  Ear-phones and noise-cancellation head-phones are my secret.  But an entire work-week without the water cooler to make the time go by?  Take off, eh! 

Moral of the story – be careful what you wish for.  I always wanted a job that would take me places.  I wanted a gig that would let me meet people from different cultures, nosh on culinary staples designed for worldly pallets, and circle cubicles in unexpected dimensions.

And that is what I am doing – to a certain extent.  But we all know that business travel is not as lavish or glorious as it sounds.  And it isn’t (though I have met a wonderful assortment of people this year).  In the end, nothing is better than eating over-salted popcorn with my main squeeze.  And that is where I would always rather be.  There is a preverbal silver lining, other than perspective: the opportunity four-times over to drain my laptop battery on a tray table while I inch closer towards the final period to that novel I always talk about. 

Happy writing, from Gate 76B.

No hyphenated words were fatigued during this post.

C Our Age

Spoonful of Courage helps my typos go down.

It’s funny how tiny pebbles, each about the weight of an Advil, can be combined and manipulated with other ingredients to create an impenetrable castle wall with the strength of an anvil.   Incidentally, a rock made of predominately pebbles, and concrete, is called a conglomerate.  Okay, perhaps my analogy and loquaciousness is taking me away from my point.  Let’s see:  little things, when added together, can turn into much larger – and more difficult to manipulate – things.  And if you can skip pebbles across a pond, please do not pat yourself on the back when you choose instead to a heave a conglomerate a foot off the shore.   

My real point: courage is often mislabeled. 

If courage is mislabeled (or, rather, used liberally to describe our actions), than what is it?  I'd say whatever it is, it often goes unnoticed when it occurs in others.  Yet, if we truly look for it, I venture it is likely available to our eyes in the same quantity as perspective.  I think we miss it, because we are often mislead to think that we have it ourselves on a daily basis.  And we get caught up in this, and miss it when it's gleaming from the eyes of someone standing in front of us.  

  

If I put things off, and allow them to go-unchecked, a tide of anxiety and even shyness can make their completion look and feel impossible.  Of course, it’s a culmination of things.  It’s not the pebble, it’s the ... anvil.  I don’t really have a problem with all of this, life gets in its own way.  But I often feel slightly more accomplished when I tick off these, let’s call them put-off things.  This slightly more accomplished feeling is sometimes masked as courage, which I know it is not.  I am beginning to think we have an inherent interest in procrastinating, (mis)prioritizing, and perusing (Mommy Bistro) as we see fit. 

Louvre it or Leave it

That's hot.

Often, pre-trip anticipation ranks right up there with the trip itself.  Okay, looking forward to a vacation isn’t as cool as being there, but sometimes it is awfully close.  One thing is for sure, the week before a holiday is always better than the week after.

We are a week and a half out from a weekend in Paris: the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, baguettes with stinky cheese, and, if I’m particularly convincing, Moulin Rouge await.  Who wouldn’t be excited?

Amidst the anticipation, the worst thing happened: I had to go to Paris for an overnight business trip.  I know what you are thinking, shut the front door that is not the worst thing that could happen.  I can understand that, it wasn’t that bad.  It was only the worst thing as it relates to our upcoming trip.

It's Not Just a Hobbsy

If you post, they will come.

My posts stretch further across the calendar, lately, and part of me hopes that at least some of you have noticed. You are my thirty-two, after all. I have certainly taken note because it is within posts that a nagging feeling finds its way onto my shoulders. Usually this feeling surfaces right before I fall asleep, after I have processed the list of other things that have to roll over to the next to-do. It is after a long day of not-posting, right before I drift off to sleep that my conscious plants its mantra: if you post it, they will come. 

You see, I used to have a back-log of words scribbled here and there that ultimately found a home on eD. The beginning of the blog was a different time, for me. I was writing every day, my attention was driven by curiosity and characters. And there were characters, everywhere. There were notes and ideas scribbled on insets to writing books, flagged pages within the works of fiction that I admired and flew through, draft e-mails addressed to me with my own rants, and a notepad on my iPhone filled with rambles and sketches. It was out-and-about where words found me. 

Between a Locke and a Hard Place

It’s the fourth of July and I am on the other side.  I am no carpetbagger or scallywag, I am just a Yankee downhill from the divide.  I am a long way from the fireworks and the distance makes the times I did see them even that much more special.  Why is it that you always feel the most pride when you reside in the belly of the beast?    

Scuse me mam, I can't see the works.

Thomas Jefferson’s piece of fiction earned a non- and our country went from thirteen siblings to thirteen United States.  We even dumped tea in the harbour, without adding milk.   We drove our horses on the right side of the angry mobs.  We combined hot and cold water in one spigot so we wouldn’t burn our hands when we washed ourselves clean of taxation without representation.  We fought the law and our law won.  We gave the United Kingdom of Britain the finger, yet here I am on a train steaming towards work, just a stones throw away in any direction from a county that ends in shire.  What gives?

Well we broke up, the US and the UK, and though there were hard feelings we remained friends.  It took a while, no doubt.  Apparently Thomas J.’s declaration wasn’t signed until August, and the UK didn’t formally admit that it was okay to see other people until the Treaty of Paris in 1783 (wikipedia is so good when you have nothing but it and the back of a headrest to stare at).  And all these years later, here we stand like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.  We fight over little things, baseball and cricket, but we can all agree that Ashton Kutcher is a little creepy. 

Our small quibbles aside, it seems we both celebrate cheap beer, mullets, cheeky elementary school plays, fireworks, and small town parades on the 4^th of July.  Believe it or not, the belly of the beast was adorned with Red, White, and Blue this weekend.  There were celebrations all over London, and though I did not take part in any of them, it was pretty cool to see that we can just all get along.

On Saturday, July 2^nd the three of us (my niece is here studying) joined awkwardly dressed crowds and watched the headliner in Hyde Park declare that the night was going to be a good night, a good good night.  And it was, but mostly becuase the celebration of our country’s independence found us, through family, friends, music, and cheap beers.  We sang out loud and danced to rhythms of an American band while our country slept in the time zones behind us.  But rest assured, at no time were we anything but Americans having a damn good time, a damn good time, 235 years after the day our Congress told the Crown, it’s not you, it’s me.

Happy Independence Day!!!!

Seat A Perspective

Now that Lot is Bananas!

I have talked about perspective before (PC Load Letter?, What is Love?, and Chance Encounter) – but where you may find it never ceases to amaze me. It hadn’t occurred to me, until yesterday, that I prefer the latter half of the alphabet. Okay, let me clarify as that is a little strange. When I choose a seat on an airplane, it is usually with window seat on the right side of the plane (looking from the cockpit towards the tail). The right side of the plane usually has F,J, or K as a window seat. And that is where I like to sit, not in A. 

Well on my flight yesterday I sat in A. And I gained an entirely new perspective upon my decent into Heathrow. Seriously, it was  like an entirely different country from A. If I had dirty hands, I would have left my prints all over the little oval of a window and the stewardess would have told me to stow my jaw with the tray table. 

I finally saw the “allotments” that I had heard some much about. Certain Brits, according to some old rule of law, are allotted a piece of land in the country. It is a little square, rectangle, or L shape tidy piece of land, and they plant veggies and herbs (pronounced like Herbie in Herbie Goes Bananas), and work the soil on the weekends. It is just the coolest thing to see these plots, connected like several layers of a Tetris game, from 15,000 feet. Compared to the incredibly large and UFO inspired crop circles I remember scoping on my descents into Chicago O’Hare, these little plots just make me want to buy a knit sweater, a wee shovel, and random packets of seeds. 

Perspective, I love it.

Twain Tables Up for Landing

Vanity, definitely my favorite sin.

Post from a LOT Airlines napkin: 

When I have the displeasure of leaving this world, I at least want to leave a quote behind. Or maybe a witty saying. Quotes are awesome, and I want one. Maybe something I write down on a napkin. I don’t even need my tray table; I have a knee, a napkin, and a blue pen. Better yet, I can just say something really witty to my neighbor. But he is Polish (i.e., doesn’t speak English). 

Kids may say the darndest things, but adults say the damndest things. Hey that is good. Not going to do it though, keep practicing. 

Post continued, off the Napkin onto the back of my boarding pass: 

Wiped Out: Tale of a Bad Mood Turned Right

"That's where the guy who invented the windshield wipers lives," we'd all say on our way to the T.O. Mall.  I never saw the guy, assuming it was a guy who invented what now seems obvious: automated and opposing squeegees.  I wondered if he let the invention get to his head.  

"The man who invented the windshield wipers can be such a jerk," his over-worked employees would say.  He'd overhear them and ask, "do we see in the rain?"  He would pivot his head like the wipers, from shoulder to shoulder, and then ask again.  "Do we?  Hunh?" Then he'd point at the worker with his head down and ask, "how about you?  Hunh, you see in the rain on your way to work today?" They would all go back to work and pray for a drought.

A Hippy Tree: Finally a label I can support.

Why the thought?  I was in a bad mood and I saw windshield wipers on a pair of Mercedes headlights.  That used to make me giggle, but not today.  I sighed, and if wondered if the man in the mansion that we used to drive by got a piece of those sales, too.

H2 Oh?



My Mama says that alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush.

The familiar smell of water can take you back to just about anywhere –but only if that locale has water with an odor.  And this is not exactly a good thing, but at the same time it ain’t exactly all bad either.



This is not an excuse for my absence from eD.  Okay, it is.  I was on a business trip to South America and I failed my 31 followers.  No soy culpable.  I am back.

On this trip, I was reminded that water in developing countries generally smells different than what we likely grew up with.  I’m not sure if it is hydrogen sulphide, heavy levels of bacteria, or just maybe the lack of chlorine and other chemicals.  I have no idea – I drink the stuff, I don’t study it. 

Hanging With Newton

I've had a weird thought that has been nagging me to no-end lately.  It isn't a clear thought, like for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Rather, the thought is always a little hazy, like it needs a cup of single-serve coffee.  I can't pin-point it, but it is something like for every bad deed committed by a young kid hopped up on Mountain Dew and Chewy Gobbstoppers, there is an unequally painful and drawn out period of payback period that commences upon his or her adulthood.   

You want pillow?

I'm not sure how old I was, probably around Junior High School age.  I was at a hotel, somewhere.  I was hopped up on sour candy.  I was with some sort of team.  We jumped on elevators, pressed the buttons to every floor, and threw ice at each other as we ran around the halls.  We giggled until people opened their doors and our faces turned red.  And then I did the unimaginable.  Okay, it wasn't that bad.  But I still feel bad about it.

What Is Your Number?

How About Them Apples?

Numbers make me tick (and tie). Hey, I never promised that I wouldn’t make accounting puns so please hear me out. When I say numbers, I do not mean dollars or pence. I mean real numbers. Numbers like 26.2, 100, and 50,000. 

For me, numbers are an easy way to represent my goals, and an even easier metric to identify when I have reached them. Numbers, they are like handle bars on a shiny new bike. You can reach towards them and grab a hold. You can use them to point yourself in the direction of your goals and desires. You can squeeze tight around them and even point uphill when you are really feeling it. Handlebars and numbers, you can really own them. 

The Big Squeeze



“You go to da box for two minutes, ya know, by yourself … you feel shame … and then you get free.” - Denis Lemieux



Jet-lag is legit, and it makes your first cup of coffee back in the office that much better. I set my company mug in the appropriate spot and turned the dials. The beans told me, “son, you are going to be okay.” An older woman, head of HR for some region or another, worked her way into the small kitchenette to fix a cuppa. We exchanged awkward glances, as if to say “should I know you?”

It was a look that I had become accustomed to in my new job, so the awkwardness didn’t catch me completely off guard. I was surprised, though, when she reached her arm out to shake my hand.

Eary Feeling

I'm sorry I can't hear you. 
I have been physically abused in the ear.

It’s my last night on a business trip to a familiar place. I have returned to the city that I just moved away from and it feels, well, funny. It’s exciting, it’s sad, and most of all it is just odd. I know, two posts in a row on items that I find strange, but I really think that returning to a previous home town is a confusing phenomenon that you, my dear followers (c’mon 29 going on 30), will understand. It is great to be back in the Bay, but it just ain’t the same.

First of all, I have friends and family right across the bridge that I can’t see. Second of all, I have restaurants and bars I want to go to but just don’t have the time. Third of all, some of my dearest friends and famimly have already moved on.  And finally, oh yea, I live in London now.

What do You Want, a Plaque?

There is something terribly odd about the fact that I repaired my toothbrush.  True, yesterday I had to turn my book off during take-off and landing, and that is odd too.  But repairing a toothbrush is just bizarre when you really chew on it. 

What came first, the little bags
or miniature toothbrush sets?

It is true that for several years I walked out of the Dentist's office and felt like a fraud.  How could it be so?  No cavities?  I'd think about my love for sour patch kids, licorice ropes, and automic fire balls and think, that can't be right.  Was this a scam?  Did I laugh so hard at the man in white's jokes that he just decided to let me get away without a single cavity (years later, my movie-theater choices would come to light)?

Pace Yourself Chippy

I hurried along the footpath from Putney Bridge station towards home, eager to flip between the stream of a Dodgers day game against the Cubs and Manchester United's walk-a-bout over an inferior German side in UEFA action.  I neared the halfway point on the path and a gaggle of runners rushed past me.

New York City?  What's your Pace?

Let me point out, that these runners were quite proper runners and they carried a pretty good clip.  Two men in very short shorts (I am hesitant to comment on how cold it was outside) approached and I was fortunate to overhear their conversation.

"This is a tad bit quicker than my natural pace," said the tall British man.

"You reckon," asked the short British man.

"I reckon it is, yes."

"Oh."

That was all I heard, because they ate up path like chips on Cinco de Mayo.  But it got me thinking - what is one's natural pace?

A Punk With Luck and Dim Sum

The morning sun had just crossed the promenade and we knew it was time to hit the road – the final leg and an unwelcomed end to an amazing road trip that lead us through Belgium and France. But before we left, we decided to plant our backsides on a rounded concrete ledge that surrounded a simple fountain. After over fifteen hundred miles of driving, imbibing, and dining (not together, and in no particular order), we were about 200km from where we would catch the ferry back across the channel. 

Do you feel lucky punk?  Well, do you?

Eleven days earlier, the fountain may have been impressive. But on this last day, I must say it did not inspire me to throw in a Euro-cent (hey, that is a cent and a half to you yanks). I was more impressed with my wife, and with us.  We just sat there and listened to the random collection of feet navigate the loose stone that made up the pedestrian path. We watched the people walk around and away from us; we thought about what we had just done and what we had just seen.  

Happy Easter, A RoadTrip

The wifey and I are hitting the opposite side of the road, at least until we hit Dunkirk!  I'm afraid it has not been a busy couple weeks here at eD, and now posts will likely be few and far between until after the Royal Wedding.  

I swear I had it on the roof!

Please feel free to catch up on a post or two you may have missed.  You may want to focus on  Trains, Planes, and Minions, as I have already started to write up the much awaited sequel about the boy and his new minion.  As I type this I am reminded of a one-liner I just read from Tim Sandlin's Skipped Parts, "If you don't know anything about people how can you tell when they're exaggerating?"  I'd like to think that readers of eD can tell when I am exaggerating or being sarcastic, but I am starting to realize that with four million readers this may not be completely possible.

Happy Easter my good friends!  I leave you with a quick story from Paulo Coelho:

A Chance Encounter with a Lesson

We ran across an old man in a busy pub.  With unsteady hands, he took his pint from one corner of the bar to the next but each seat was covered by a backside.  Our bag from the park with our Kings blanket hadn’t yet settled on the hook beneath the two-top table just off the bar, and with a couple of connected eyes we willed the elderly man towards our table.  Truthfully, we wanted something by the window anyhow.

“You’ve found a spot now,” I said.  It took him a while to make his way over.  Just below a generous amount of grey nose hair, his mouth seemed to stay open even after his smile gave way. 

We shared a table with a couple gents and dug into our Anchor Steam and cider.  Before long we had two empty chairs across from our half-filled pints, and who else to show up?  The old man, of course, with his stayed smile and now in an even more crowded pub.