Yet Another Typewriter

"Decrepit Underpinnings"

“The decrepit underpinnings.” Bill put his pen down upon the centerfold of his composition book and looked away in thoughtful silence, across the dingy and littered street, to a group of students huddled together for warmth, the vapor of their exhaled breath and smoke diluted into the winter atmosphere like the remnants of some passing storm. He took a sip of tepid coffee, full-flavored and sweet, and took up pen once again.

He had been trying, ever since being reunited with Barney the Cigarette Guy (who was no longer in the smoke-selling business, though nicknames have a way of sticking tighter than glue), to formulate in proper terms his own personal interpretation of Barney’s photographic work. This was a point he found crucial to understanding the deeper meanings present, that however his opinion of the work might resemble Barney’s, each person comes away from an encounter with art possessing a unique, personal viewpoint, the result reflecting each one’s unique experience. To be certain, the frame lines that serve to define each of these images possess an editorial stance unique to Barney’s perspective, but the deeper, hidden implications of such imagery are implicit and therefore susceptible to a variety of interpretations, with as many variations as there are individuals.

It therefore seemed important to Bill, this cold, wet morning, as if taking on the spirit of a mission, to define the parameters of his own reflections upon the body of Barney’s work that constituted a stack of silver gelatin prints, galvanized from a series of marathon printing sessions that seem now to have been the aftermath of some mad frenzy of psychic proportion, as if someone else had labored in that tiny, cluttered darkroom, forgoing sleep and food, energized by nicotine, caffeine and an inexplicable internal drive. 

And yet, something had been missing, which he couldn’t put his finger on until now.

The creation of a photograph had always been, in the “classic period” of film photography, a collaboration between photographer and darkroom printer, both requiring the skill of the craftsman melded to the vision of the artist, either skill taken individually of sufficient difficulty to do well so as to require the application of all of one’s talents to master. Only a few of the great photographers were both masters behind the lens and also in the darkroom. More often than not, the photographer took most of the credit for the art of the photograph, leaving his darkroom collaborator with the moniker of lab technician. 

In this case, Bill was more than happy to remain the anonymous printer of Barney’s images; honored, in fact, and could now understand more clearly how such a craftsman could remain satisfied in the shadow of the camera-wielding artist. Bill was humbled by Barney’s results, but also left inexplicably perplexed as to how Barney could have possibly made this body of work that he, in fact, did make. One doesn’t merely order undeveloped rolls of the finest documentary and street imagery from who-knows-where; they have to be personally exposed in-camera, on-location, of which Bill had the raw film negatives to prove it. 

The mystery was really about the speed with which Barney seemed to have mastered the technical aspects of handling what was an entirely manual camera, devoid of any automation, lacking even a light meter, with no prior experience. Not only did the technical aspects of Barney’s work remain an endless source of fascination to Bill, but also the subtle and sophisticated manner in which he pointed the lens that served to define those frame lines, able to separate out of real life those fleeting glimpses into the hidden mystery, the decrepit underpinnings, that make this life, and the human condition in general, so much of a perplexing riddle.

That’s it, he thought. “Decrepit Underpinnings” was a good enough title for Barney’s work, now he just needed to finish the introductory piece. Being in the position of Curator was a new experience for him, a role that he unexpectedly found himself in, after spouting off with this great idea he had, and now he felt the burden of the entire project upon his shoulders. That’s the way life is, you take the good with the bad.

It seemed just like yesterday when he had walked into Loser’s Blend, for a morning round of coffee and perhaps some writing, and had stood there by the door transfixed by the vision of Barney, sitting at the counter by the coffee roaster, as if he had never left, that cynical smirk on his face along with a deeper look of knowing, as if he had actually been gone and had come back, somewhat different yet essentially unchanged. 

It was a spirited reunion, fueled by endless cups of coffee - so many that they had to pay for extra refills - and a change of venue out to the sidewalk tables for a smoke and a cold brace of winter air to clear one’s head for more discussion.

“I had some people to visit, some unfinished business,” Barney had explained. “People from my past, whom I had kind of forgotten about, abandoned when I was finally able to scrape a bit together and work my way up to opening the smoke shop, then thinking that I was better than them, had moved up in life.”

“Where did you go?” Bill had asked.

“At first I hung out at some of the usual sites around town where the down-and-out congregate, providing the cops haven’t driven them away. Which they do, from time to time. Met a few of the old-timers, heard some sad news about a few of the others. Then spent a few nights at the Mission. In between all of this, I was taking photos, of course, but trying to conserve my film and make each shot count. Which I think I did.”

“You sure did. You did great.”

“And then I hit the road. Hitch-hiked out west to Fresno, to finish some old business.” Barney had sat his cup down on the metal table and looked off into the distance, a clouded countenance surrounding him.

“None of my business, really. Unless you feel like sharing.” Bill knew how to pull things out of Barney, just patiently keep talking, keep him at ease, one small step at a time.

“Long story, would bore you to tears to hear it. Besides, it’s old history by now. Done and gone.”

Bill paused a spell, silently enjoying the banter but also people-watching the nearby tables. Finally he broke the silence. “Did I ever mention that my great-grandfather was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders?” 

“You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“No, it’s true. He rode with old Teddy.”

“What was he, some kind of gunslinger? Soldier? Walk tall and carry that big stick?” Barney had that look in his eye, that fiery look that showed he still had some life left in him.

“No, not a big stick. A big tripod.”

“Huh?”

“He was a surveyor, for old Teddy, not a gunslinger. Just a surveyor. I had you going, didn’t I?”

Barney just sat there, across the table from Bill, coffee cup up to his lip, one eye full of the devil’s fire, just eyeing Bill with intensity. And then he couldn’t contain it any longer, and spewed tepid coffee across the table and upon Bill as they both had the biggest laugh that each could remember, tears flowing, those at the nearby tables looking on with curiosity.

“A surveyor...!” Barney would exclaim, which would set them both to laughing all over again.

Finally, they both settled down, spent from their mutual spontaneous outbursts, and Barney got that serious look again, the look that said he was ready to talk. 

He spun a tale of a mother that had died, leaving a work-weary father and two young boys, and how the father had struggled to make ends meet but couldn’t, in the end, keep the family together, sending the younger boy - Barney’s little brother - back east to live with an Aunt, while Barney left school early and learned quickly the meaning of hard work, until the Old Man’s health failed, the result of a hard life and constant drinking, which slowly wore away at his sanity until he was a mere shadow of the strong and vital father he had once been, and events took their course and the last feeble threads holding the family together had finally parted. It was a tragic story every bit unique yet all too common, repeated endlessly across the land. Nothing is ever as neat and tidy as it’s made out to be in fiction, real life being messy and unpredictable. When he was done Barney just sat there fumbling with his cold and empty cup, staring down into nothingness.

“Damn,” Bill finally uttered after an appropriately long pause. “So, that shot of the headstone in the graveyard...”

“...was my mother’s,” Barney answered him. “And the one of the tattered suitcase was my Papa’s, all that was left of his worldly possessions after he’d been put away into the State Home. I got there too late, you know.”

“Too late? You mean, he was still alive all this time?”

“Alive physically is all. His mind had gone completely, he never would've known if I’d gotten there in time. Was a blessing, really.”

“The funeral shots, that simple pine coffin, those world-weary pall-bearers, that was your Papa’s funeral, then?”

“Yea. I just found folks off the street, regular folks, you know, my kind of people - the down-and-out - and invited as many as I could to the funeral, promising them a free meal afterwards. A lady friend I met, who worked down at the Mt. Calvary Mission, promised me she’d have a whole spread ready to go after the funeral, which she did, and it was great. It was the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Bill wiped away a tear with the tattered sleeve of his jacket, and then looked back at Barney, directly at him, deep into his eyes.

“What?” Barney met Bill’s gaze.

“Decrepit underpinnings. That’s who those folks were, the ones who did your Papa’s funeral.” 

“The salt of the earth.” 

“The keepers of the flame.”

“Of which this world was not worthy of them ... Or so The Good Book says.”

“I have an idea, about how to finish this whole photo project, the right way. Are you with me?”

“I’m listening. But we’re gonna need a refill on coffee, first.”

And that was how the idea for The Project came to be.

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Previous stories in the Bill Series:
Pigeons
Interface
Barney the Cigarette Guy
Healthy Respect
Winter Crows
The Guy Who Came in From the Cold

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Silence is Golden

Silence is golden, or so we have been told. Today provided a great example of this maxim, while at the multi-dozen-screen Cineplex, located out by the interstate highway along Restaurant Row. I was there to see a movie. 

You see, I don’t go to the movies very frequently, and when I do it’s usually at the smaller neighborhood theatre that’s frequented by middle-aged types such as myself, where there’s less of the popcorn-on-the-floor-and-teeny-boppers-yapping-on-their-phones syndrome, though the carpet’s a bit worn and they don’t have those tiered, captain’s-chair seats. I must be picky, or something, but the typical over-hyped Cineplex offering is a bit too - cartoonish? So today, I went to see something a bit different, John Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”

I’ve read most every one of Le Carre’s novels, and consider him the master of the cold-war espionage genre. His stories aren’t studded with spectacular special effects, explosions and heart-pounding, nail-biting action, but instead offer insight into the inner thoughts and motivations of those on both sides of the wall who choose to spy, through an atmospheric portrayal of the drudgery, ambition and fear present in such a lifestyle. His stories are masterpieces of understated subtlety, as opposed to overhyped, superficial violence, and his typical characters are the anti-James Bond, an attribute I believe he set about purposefully to create in reaction to the cartoonish characterizations present in the Bond series of movies, and of which he has every right to claim some degree of intimate knowledge, having himself worked in British Intelligence in a former life and thus knowing more than just a little bit about the inner workings of the spy business.

But before I could immerse myself into the story at hand, I had to first sit through the preview commercials for other upcoming Cineplex offerings. These previews have ratings, I noticed, one for the preview itself, and another, afterwards, for the movie having just been previewed. For instance, an R-rated movie might have a PG-rated preview, etc. I suspect that behind all of these peculiar notifications (yes, I’ve been away from the movies for a while) are teams of lawyers.

Another thing revealed by the nearly twenty minutes of previews (a bonus entertainment of sorts), and one that reinforces my suspicions about the veracity of the typical theater offering, is the preponderance of what I call the “comic book effect” in present-day moviemaking, where video graphics technology has merged so successfully with the action genre that the two are indistinguishable from any story found in the typical super-hero comic book of youth. They’re animated comic books, these movies, and assault one’s senses with the wall-of-noise soundtrack that delivers a never-ending barrage of explosions, gunfire and ecstatic orchestration. They leave a person with no space to think, ponder or barely even breathe. But they are exciting deliverers of adrenal gland secretions, I will admit.

Le Carre’s stories, in contrast, demand that the reader intently ponder the meanings behind every word and turn of phrase offered. There is present little superficial language (“low redundancy,” in the Information Theory-speak of cryptography), no filler to pad out the volume of the work in order to fulfill some publisher’s contract. In these tales, characters subtly turn from loyalty to disenchantment to despair to treason in the same pace as the seasons turn from spring to summer to autumn to winter, the changes happening slowly, inexorably yet with a certainty revealed only through the depth of the language provided. Le Carre offers us the spy novel as literature, rather than as pulp fiction.

And so it was that, as I sat in that darkened theatre, in my steeply tiered captain’s chair, I witnessed art unfolding before my eyes in a manner that I’ve seldom seen in years. I saw pure, unspoken thought transpire between the characters of George Smiley and his old boss Control, for instance, that could not have been possible without the interplay of silence into the pace of the film. Just like musical rests play as much of an importance to a score as do the notes themselves, the pace of silent contemplation in this film served as a conduit for a type of communication to transpire between characters that would not have been possible otherwise. It reminds me that without spaces between letters there can be no words, and without spaces between words there can be no sentences, and without spaces between sentences there can be no paragraphs. The very structure of writing itself is built around a silence that divides an otherwise meaningless string of symbols into concrete idioms of thought. This also reminds me of that old saying about silence being golden, which is where I started this piece.

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” has a similarly mysterious and quiet pace as the Deep Throat parking garage scenes in “All the President’s Men,” or that of “The Conversation” (one of my all-time favorite films). Now, I must rate “Tinker, Tailor” up there with the very best of them.

You might not like this film, I will admit. Its pace might seem to drag on at the beginning; but never-mind, for that is just Le Carre once again weaving his magic, one that starts out like every good parlor trick does, with sleight-of-hand character-building and establishing backgrounds as smoothly effortless and believable as any you’ve ever encountered. The characters in Le Carre’s stories don’t inhabit steel and glass modernist palaces, but dingy, cluttered old decrepit pasts filled with the detritus of imperfect, half-lived lives, leaky steam pipes and all, and amidst all of this ruin there are those moments of silence, those golden gems, that serve to speak volumes, that bring the silver screen to life. 

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Time

Time. We have only so much of it. 24 hours per day, per person, in fact, regardless of who we are in life. I’ve been humbled by the thought that the greatest people throughout history, regardless of who they were or what they’ve done, had only the same amount of time each day within which to accomplish all it is that they’ve managed to complete. Think about that: the greatest artists, poets, scientists, theologians and leaders throughout human history were each given no more time within each day to manage, as a gift of sorts, than am I.

This is a sobering thought, and also one replete with promise, for it implies that what I need is not more time (that being a hopelessly futile quest) but rather a more efficient, purposeful, focused intent. 

We live in an age when our tools of productivity are at their pinnacle, and yet our propensity to whittle away the moments on incessant distractions are also at their peak. The technology of the computer both multiplies our man hours of work and also offers instant escape into the nether world of the Internet or some entertaining diversion, limited only by our employers’ server firewall. The much-promised increase in worker efficiency brought about by the computer is at times very disputable.

In the age when the clerical office worker was known as a typewriter, could take dictation via shorthand and knew the ins and outs of the finer art of business correspondence, the knowledge worker could specialize and focus on the task of the business at hand. Contrast that with the present-day multitasking employee who must manage to not only perform their primary function for which they are employed, but must somehow also manage to create business correspondence with a skill not based on formal clerical training but rather on a software application that has been fashioned to mimic the skill of a trained secretary. The results can often be startling in their lack of refinement.

My wife was lamenting to me about this very thing, concerning so-called trained professionals who know virtually nothing about how to format a business letter intended for a client. Intervention is often required, by persons such as her who gained their experience not through dabbling with a word processing program - a do-it-yourself, pull yourself up by the bootstraps apprenticeship - but by good, old fashioned clerical instruction.

Correspondence itself is another confusing miasma within the business environment. There are such mountains of useless data within the typical electronic inbox that some businesses have taken to enacting moratoriums on email, instead forcing workers to physically leave the four gray walls of their cubes and engage in face-to-face communication with their peers down the hall. It’s that ages-old problem of time, and how best to manage it.

There are by now entire industries dedicated to improving one’s time-management skills, so much in fact that the term “time-management” has itself entered the lexicon of the business environment as another in a seemingly endless barrage of buzzwords that cycle through periodically in the form of philosophical management fads. We’ve got to “get things done,” we are told (which itself has become the acronym G.T.D.). Or, alternatively, “getter done.”

I recall the lyric to the Pink Floyd song that goes “kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown, fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way; the sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.” The song, in fact, was named “Time,” and reminds me of the fact that my work schedule is structured around what is known as a “compressed work week,” meaning that I put in longer hours each work day in exchange for a contiguous block of time off on the other half of the week within which to do those other things that I like to do besides punching a clock. This is the virtue of the modern work schedule, it brought about enough free time in one’s life so as to permit more creative endeavors to be pursued. No longer did one require the benefit of a wealthy benefactor in order to succeed in some creative outlet, as in the day when people slaved six or seven days a week to merely survive. The modern work schedule brought about hobbies and other pastimes to the masses.

Recently, however, the economy seems to have permanently changed, as our culture has evolved into what economists call a post-industrial climate. More and more people are engaged in longer work hours at multiple low-paying jobs with fewer benefits, leaving one such as I with the impression that we have passed the apex of western culture and are now in some long, interminable downward slide into a new serfdom of sorts, where there are the extremely rich and the extremely poor, with little or no middle class between.

And yet, there is that time, ever-present, ever ticking its way into the unknowable future at its ever-steady pace, gifted to all, rich and poor alike, at a rate of 24 hours per solar day per person, with which we are left to deal with the challenge of how best to spend our finite resource of time as best we can. We can spend our minutes and hours in frantic gesticulation and frenzy, or we can spend it in quiet contemplation and prayer, the outcome depending on the wisdom of our choosing; yet time marches on, inexorably.

There is also this thing called biological time that interests me. It differs from chronological time in that it remains purely subjective, the duration and pace of the ever-unfolding present determined by the quality of our experiential condition. In some euphoric states time seems to fly by, while in misery and suffering it barely passes at all, just crawling by while the minutes barely tick and tock. Contrast this with relativistic time, which Einstein informed us depends upon our inertial frame of reference and our absolute velocity of motion as measured against the universal speed limit of light itself. We blast off the planet in some rocket ship, in these typical thought experiments, at a sizable percentage of the speed of light and return, decades later, having hardly aged a bit, while back on earth events have transpired at their normal pace and we find ourselves in a different age, out of sorts, out of time it would seem, yet with more time than most remaining.

The deepest mystery of time seems to me that it appears to be flowing in only one direction, from the past, through the present, into the future, and we seem unable to slow or halt or even alter its inexorable flow. Is this a figment of our physical bodies, and in some mystical afterlife called eternity we would find all events in history happening simultaneously? Or is the seeming linear flow of time a result of the ever-expanding universe?

It’s probably best not to dwell too deeply on these things. Or, alternatively, perhaps we don’t spend enough of our precious moments in this sort of deep contemplative thought. All I know is that, right now, the evening is drawing to a close, I’m getting tired, and running out of time.

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"The Guy Who Came in From the Cold"

There's a line of cars outside at the curb, even this early in the day; near the holidays, the parking meters are free. Inside Loser's Blend the day is picking up, with a few of the regulars straggling in for their first cup of the day, and perhaps a bite to eat.

The winter sun, just peaking above the low buildings across the street, casts long streaks of warmth through the dingy windows and onto the worn wooden floor, stained from countless decades of foot traffic, spilled food and sloshed coffee, a patina of archeological proportion. Next to the door, in a corner of the room segregated by a well-worn counter, is Dub, manning the coffee roaster.

Dub hails from nowhere, and everywhere; just ask him and he'll tell you. As he works his magic at the coffee roaster, there is a constant banter between him and some of the regulars, seated at the counter with their cups of coffee and plates of food and computers and notepads, as if he were some piano bar entertainer, working the cocktail crowd, holding court. This is Dub's element, his stage from which he works his art. Behind him, as he expounds on the recent Occupy Movement that had brought in lots of new business to the shop, hot roasted beans pop and sputter in a smokey haze. The shop espresso roast, legendary for miles around, is being cooked up.

The door creaks open and, along with a waft of frigid cold air, enters a portly figure attired in nondescript street clothes, a dark blue, stained backpack hanging from his shoulder. The regulars have this way of sizing up a person without appearing to be paying any attention at all to them, as if they sport some sort of periscopic vision, able to see around corners and behind their backs. A couple, seated at a table near the middle of the room, cloister in secretive conversation, whispering and pointing at the figure by the door.

Dub is multitasking now, in mid-conversation with a young fellow at the counter while simultaneously scooping out hot beans into a large plastic tub, when he abruptly pauses in mid-sentence, frozen in position, the hot beans beginning to burn his gloved hands. "Well, hell..." his voice trailing off, "...look who the dog drug in. I'll be damned if it isn't old Barney. Barney the Cigarette Guy. Man, how you been?"

Barney stands there by the door, silent but with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye, scanning the room for familiar faces, then finally locks eyes with Dub. "Busy. Yea, been real busy. I've been fine, thanks. Say, you haven't seen that Bill fella anywhere around here, have you?" Barney teeters on his worn shoes, then leans against the window sill in an air of uncertainty and doubt.

"Man, you okay? Here, let's get you a cup of joe." Dub leaves the half-filled tub of beans to cool, carefully placing his gloves on the counter, and heads over to the serving line to pour a cup.

Hesitant at first, Barney finally sits himself down at an empty stool by the bar, backpack at his feet, head down, his elbows heavy upon the counter like the weight of his soul and all of its baggage have finally somewhere to rest.

Dub places the hot cup of coffee at the counter with a friendly "here you go" and resumes his roasting, stirring the still warm beans in the roaster with a large perforated metal paddle, beans smoldering with hisses and pops, eying Barney every so often with an air of fatherly concern concealed behind his long braided beard and rainbow-colored spectacles.

Barney, hands around cup like a moth to flame, sips his coffee silently in grateful solitude, slowly melting, slowly unfolding like a flower ripening from its bud. "Bill. Have you seen him?"

Dub pauses, staring into the dark, oily shine on the beans like gazing into the heart of a raven's eye, haunting and bewitching. "No, man, ain't seen him lately. Why, what's up?"

"Aw, nothing really. I've been away, is all. Far away." His voice, thin and reedy, trails off into some thousand yard stare of foreboding silence.

Dub stirs his beans, checking the temperature gauge on the roaster, then suddenly remembers. "Hey, man, there's a package up front, with your name on it. Here, I'll get it." He returns a moment later, placing a coffee-stained manilla envelop on the counter next to Barney's cup. "You need a refill? Yea, you're going to need a refill, I can tell. It's on the house, today."

Dub walks back to the serving line, Barney's cup in tow, while Barney sits staring at and fondling with the corners of the envelop like it were some ancient papyrus scroll, foreign and mysterious. Finally, he picks it up, flipping it over and over in his hands as if weighing some evidence, and finally builds up the strength to unwrap the string binding that secures the flap. The envelop is unmarked, aside from "Barney the Cigarette Guy," lettered in flowing fountain pen script on the front side, and a small, printed product code on the reverse side along the bottom edge.

"Here you are. Hot and black, right?" Dub places the cup down at Barney's elbow, eying the envelop and its contents, now spread on the counter before him, with curiosity. Before Barney is arrayed an unruly stack of silver gelatin, black-and-white prints, images that he instantly recognizes as those he had made off and on during the last few months, when the window had opened and he had made his escape.

Escape. A funny word, that. In retrospect, it seemed easy, giving up one's livelihood, abandoning one's dream to pursue another, exchanging the toil and drudgery of utter certainty for the thrill and excitement of the unknown, a vision-quest of sorts, on the road for months in search of something so intangible yet solid enough to be felt now in his well-worn fingers as silvery shades of emotion on feathery paper, like one's soul poured out in full upon a fine printer's paper, fixed and solidified for all to behold, tangibly real yet pure dream-stuff, as real as memories can ever get, wondering if the memories imbued within these subtle silvery hues could be implanted within whomever else would behold them, like little 5 by 7 time machines, each one, able to bring a person back to another time and another place.

"These are wonderful. Whose are they? I mean, did you take these?" Dub is now totally engrossed in the images, ignoring the tub of beans and the sideways glance from his mates behind the serving line, who simultaneously wipe the counter, wait on customers and wearily watch Dub and Barney over in the corner, wondering what it is that could be so important.

"No. I mean, yes. I mean, I took the pictures, mailed the rolls of film back to Bill as I took them, and he must have developed and printed them." Barney's voice trails off into a whisper as he picks up one particular print that brings back a peculiarly strong memory, not so much staring at the print as into it and through it.

"Where did you take all of these, if I may ask?" Dub has now walked around the counter and is seated next to Barney.

"Oh, various places. Streets, bus stations, towns, cities, that sort of thing. Here, take a look at this one." Barney hands Dub a print of a lone figure, half in and half out of the stark light near an alley's entrance, hunched down in a near-crippled walk, knapsack slung over hunched shoulders, head turned toward the lens, eyes like penetrating fire.

Dub just sits there, staring into the print as if there were present some depth of understanding out of proportion to the mere angstrom-thick emulsion's metallic tones, as if it were some portal to somewhere else entirely unseen. Hands slightly trembling, he finally sets the print down gingerly upon the pile of other prints equally as enticing and stares off into space, through the dingy windows, past the foot traffic and parked cars and low horizon of shops across the street, past the sky with winter clouds beyond, past the troposphere and stratosphere and ionosphere, past the sun's coronal delight, into the heart of the matter.

There is a lone, haunting singer's voice penetrating the quiet chatter of customers and clatter from the kitchen, and the sun is rising higher in the cold air above the shops across the street as a flock of black crows fly north against an arctic breeze, and streaks of early morning light now shorten and brighten along the patina-stained floor, as Dub and Barney sit at the counter and silently contemplate a pile of photographs, when a cold breeze suddenly interrupts the room's warmth as the door slowly opens and in walks Bill, camera in hand, just wanting a cup of hot coffee.

It's going to be a good day.

Plastic Inflatable Christmas Blessings

Tacky is as tacky does. Or something like that. No? Okay, how about this: judge not lest ye be judged. A bit better, perhaps? Okay, I’ve been guilty of harboring some rather shallow thoughts on such a pleasant Christmas day as today was, I must admit, and which I now find necessary to share with you. I’d like to think that I can just blame it all on old age, or the cold, dry weather that’s seeping into my bones.

You see, we didn’t put up lights or yard ornaments this year, as we’ve done in years past, and also had the day to ourselves, the kids and grand kids going off to the in-law’s for Christmas get-together. It was the nicest, quietest Christmas we’ve had together in many a year, and we both enjoyed it immensely. But in my long, slow decline into maturity I’ve noticed little things changing, like the superficial things seem to hold less sway, and I seem to be less patient with those pitiful distractions that seemed to have captivated me in my younger days.

For instance, I’m less inclined to zip and zoom around town well above the speed limit just because I’ve got an appointment. Now, I seem to just enjoy the ride more, let the traffic pass me by, watch the fuel economy gauge slowly inch upward as I creep up on that line of traffic stopped at the red light just ahead, cars that had, moments earlier, zoomed past with some utter sense of urgency. It’s the journey, not the destination - that sort of thing. I do notice, in my new-found self-righteous patience, that those behind me in traffic are less inclined to share in my comfortable exuberance, which in itself provides more opportunity for mature patience-building on my part. The maturing process, you see, is so filled with wonder.

A person gets a bit more narrow-minded with increased maturity I’ve found, having observed the phenomenon in myself as well as others. While I’m less enthused about spending hours tending to the minutiae of the yard, I seem to be in equal measure more critical of those neighboring yards that might, shall we say, be in less than well-tended condition. “Renters,” I’ll probably mutter under my breath. “Don’t have no vested interest in the neighborhood.”

And so it is with these thoughts in mind that we were driving through the neighborhood toward home and passed the house that we’ve come to call The Red Neck House. I do realize that the term has come to harbor suspicions of in-breeding, cluttered yards and primer-gray trucks up on blocks (and source material for an entire comedy industry), but in this case the house in question seems to fit the description with surprising accuracy.

First, the so-called red-necks moved in a few years ago and proceeded to quit watering the lawn and mature tree out front (water being, in the dry southwest, of life-giving importance to one’s landscaping), which we then sadly watched die in the ensuing months of observant (but not necessarily nosey) neighborhood walks. Then, months later, and after having cut the old, dead tree down to the trunk, they began to dig out its root ball, but only succeeded in leaving this half-unearthed carcass of roots and rot to fallow in the midst of their front yard like some War-of-the-Worlds Martian canister that had crash-landed with a thud, blast and spew of dirt and rottenness. The crater sat in that condition for months or longer; the Martians, it would seem, were in no mood to alight from their root-ship and set foot on this primer-gray, motor-oil-stained terra firma. Where the lovely, verdant lawn once rested were now parked various behemoths of the off-road ilk, jacked-up and monster-tired and gray-primed to the hilt.

In the ensuing years since, we’ve relinquished all desire to see vengeance wracked upon such heathens; rather, we’ve retreated into a resigned sense of the inevitable, helplessly watching the decline of our own neighborhood, like maturing towns and cities alike that seem to age in much the same way as do their inhabitants, like the running down of the universe via the Second Law of Thermodynamics, like the decline of Western Civilization (of which I’m reminded by an Irish friend is an oxymoron), and all of that. We’d just walk or drive by on our errands and mutter under our breath about The Red Neck House and how they seemed to have magically collected another primer-gray vehicle, and a jet-ski, along with a smattering of newly-rusted barbecue grills and coolers and plastic lawn chairs scattered about the property, another miracle to behold at Christmastime. The dirt front yard, whose Martian crater has by now been filled in, sports some permanent, oddly discolored hue reminiscent of those old oil fields back home.

I don’t think I’m being too unfair toward those neighbors who’ve chosen to live near us by necessity rather than by choice, because some of our closest friends are or were neighbors who rented their houses rather than paid a mortgage. But there are more data points to consider, if one is to be entirely factual.

For instance, a couple next door to us, who had owned their home for decades, moved away and decided to rent out their old house. The day that the new tenants moved in was one of those more memorable moments in our lives, because the most immediate indication that our new neighbors had arrived was announced by the portable toilet sitting square in the middle of their front yard. It would seem that they were in the Porta-Potty business. We were overjoyed, as you can well imagine, by the prospect of such lawn ornaments being periodically on display for all the world (and our friends and family) to behold. Sanitation, it would seem, is next to godliness.

And then there was Dorothy. She had maintained, we were told by neighbors more veteran than us to the neighborhood, the most beautiful and immaculate yard on the block, directly across the street from our house. But, that was years ago, before her husband died and something switched off in her mind, and she slowly abandoned all prospect of upkeep and maintenance to her property. We knew something was the matter when, after all the trees and shrubs were but dried sticks, and weeds were waist-high, the old rusted swamp cooler on her roof fell off, leaving a gaping hole, and my brother, looking to help, discovered the entire house filled to waist-high with papers and clutter. She had assumed the life of the cloistered hoarder. A grown son, an ex-convict, would sporadically come around to help, but not often enough. Dorothy finally passed away, and the house was remodeled from inside to out, and finally resold.

Seemingly inevitable, the house’s present occupants also maintain a dirt and weed-strewn front yard, of which we are now also resigned into acceptance. I will spare you the details of their modest attempts at xeriscaping except to mention The Pile (of weeds and gravel) that sat along the side of their driveway for several years, the aftermath of a failed attempt at landscaping. I suppose, in retrospect, that this too is alright; those folks who settled old Albuquerque from back east in the 1880s, after the railroad arrived, transforming a sleepy Hispanic village into a teeming metropolis, didn’t realize that their lush lawns and manicured shrubbery were of a more verdant climate, and that within this high desert of the American southwest one shouldn’t expect anything to thrive without extraordinary effort besides red clay dirt, rocks, gravel and weeds.

You see, I told you that I was in a less than charitable mood this Christmas. I suppose that my depressive outlook upon the state of decline in our neighborhood in some ways mirrors my pessimism over the state of decline of our nation and culture. Yet, in all fairness, my home is nothing but a humble little cottage also; and our landscaping designed more out of convenience than overt moral certitude of the superiority of civilization over wilderness; and my educated sophistication nothing much to brag about, either.

And so, as we returned home this Christmas afternoon from a leisurely stroll along the forested banks of the Rio Grande, north of town, we passed The Red Neck House and noted with delight the assortment of Christmas decorations now cluttering their yard. My dear wife, normally the more cautious and graceful, was overjoyed at the prospect of us hurrying back with camera in hand to document this amazing sight, this mathematically-precise cross-section of American consumer culture known as the Plastic Inflatable Yard Decoration, whose documentation we faithfully attended to like the concerned neighbors that we are, and which we are now more excited than ever at the thought of sharing with our broader readership. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

(Posted via iPad2)

Double Parked

I’m sitting at the desk in my office, and it’s snowing outside. Monday morning, a normal day off for me (I have a strange work schedule), and there’s jazz playing on the radio from the local public radio station (KUNM). I’m writing with a new gizmo (for me), that being iWriter on the iPad2.

Oh, one more thing: the parking meter is counting down, even as I write these words. No, the meter is not out on the street; that would be silly to have to pay for parking at your own residence, wouldn’t it, ha-ha. No, the parking meter I speak of is at my side, on the desk adjacent to the pens and pencils and Corona 4 under its colorful dust-cover.

Not everyone has a functional parking meter on their desk, you see. It’s a long story, best to start somewhere closer to the beginning. Funny thing is, the beginning is kind of hard to define, sort of like deciding where the fog starts.

I suppose I could go back to the mid-1970s, when I was a young lad newly enlisted in the U.S. Navy (a.k.a. “Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club”), where I received some training as an Interior Communications Technician, a rating that’s not around anymore, but which encompassed all shipboard interior comms like telephones, intercomms, sound-powered battle phone circuits, signals and indicators, closed-circuit T.V., etc.

As it turns out, my training in closed-circuit video did me well later in civilian life, while my experience with old rotary-dial telephones stood me well when, a few months ago, my brother-in-law brought me an old, bakelite rotary-dial phone that was in need of some repair. He promised to recompense me in the form of some cool gadget that he had recently acquired. Overcome by curiosity, naturally I bit at the offer, and so a while later he dropped the phone off to me, indicating that it didn’t work.

As it turns out, the phone just needed a replacement earpiece element, the old one having an open coil. I found an exact replacement from an online site in Canada that specializes in old phone parts, and in a matter of a few weeks the old phone was sounding like new, with the additional inclusion of rewiring the phone cord to a modular-style plug.

The next time we met, at a family gathering, my brother-in-law exchanges the now working phone for my payment in kind: a classic, old-fashioned parking meter. Minus its support pole, of course. 

I was partly impressed and partly thinking “now, what the heck am I going to do with that?” I was also thinking that my dear wife would soon be wondering where, in our cluttered little cottage, would I find room for Just One More Piece of Junk. 

My brother-in-law, he had acquired the meter at an antique store somewhere in Arizona, and it takes pennies, nickels and dimes. It even rattled with a few coins in the coinbox, the evidence of the meter having been tested out for functionality. Yes, Virginia, it did work. Only problem was, I couldn’t open the coin box to retrieve my test coins, and therefore sought the services of a local locksmith.

They were anxious to work on it, the folks at the locksmith shop were, and so I happily left it for them to either pick the lock and rekey, or drill it out and replace it with a working lock. I only had to wait a day when they called that it was ready to be picked up.

When I payed, I thought it funny that the guy asked me if I was just going to use it for decor, but thought nothing of it. Once home, I tested out the new lock and key, noting with satisfaction that the coin box could now be easily accessed. But, what was this? The needle on the dial was stuck at the 12-minute mark, nor did I hear the mechanism ticking away.

I took it out to the shop and investigated further. It turns out that when the locksmith drilled out the lock, he drove too far with the drill-bit and succeeded in damaging the clockwork mechanism. I could clealy see, once I had dismantled my way into the guts of the device, that the little brass cog that drove the escapement was bent and its shaft was off its bushings, along with the fine spring being deformed. There was also, I noted, a plethora of metal shavings jamming the remainder of the gear-train, evidence of the difficulty they had in drilling their way through what was obviously a high-security lock.

I fiddled with the thing for awhile, cleaning out the metal shavings and straightening the bent brass cog, then degreasing the brass parts, but couldn’t get it to reliably work because the brass cog now slipped freely on its steel shaft, as did the tiny actuator pin mounted to the cog.

Then today, because I was homebound by the arrival of a snow storm, I took the clockwork in from the cold shop and began working on it from the comfort of my warm office. I succeeded in making the hole in the center of the brass cog, and that for the tiny pin, a bit tighter by the application of some concentrated force with a steel tool, and was able to get it properly reassembled and the escapement’s timing adjusted so that, wonder of wonders, the dang thing began to oscillate back and forth, making its wonderful little ticking sound once again. What had once been a modest boat anchor was soon restored to its former glory, that of the humble parking meter, normally an object of our scorn and derision when out in public, but now the object of my pride and joy, almost like a proud Pappy and his newly arrived bambino. Almost.

I have a few ideas about what to do with a functional, full-sized parking meter. For one, it’s sitting at my desk right now, counting down the minutes as I write. So, there’s one possible application: as a handy writing timer, a method of disciplining oneself (or one’s grandkid) into so many minutes of uninterrupted study.

Then there’s the idea of a time-out meter. When the little ones get a bit too rambunctious, just slip a penny or nickel into the slot, twist the knob and announce with satisfaction “Okay, mister, you’re in time-out until the red flag pops up.”

I did present to my wife the idea of using it as a kitchen timer, but it just doesn’t go with our decor (which is surprising, given that our kitchen badly needs a remodel, the 50-year-old, original insert-oven sporting an analog temperature dial which once inspired a guest to comment that “it looks like an old car radio...”). No; however impressed Mrs. Van Cleave was with the prospect of owning a functional parking meter, using it within the confines of the kitchen was not anywhere near the top of her priority list. I’d have to find another use for it.

Really, it doesn’t look all that bad sitting here in the office, next to the old manual typewriter. But, it’s not in its original element. Birds were meant to fly, fish were meant to swim, and parking meters were built to reside out-of-doors. So, I figure that I’ll just wait until the weather warms up a bit and mount the old meter out in the front yard, like yard art, on a well-secured metal pole. The kids and visitors alike can have fun putting their spare change into the thing, and who knows, perhaps I’ll be able to save up enough cash to go on vacation (though I’m not holding my breath). 

But, I probably won’t mount the meter at the curbside. Governments, even modest city governments like ours, don’t find much humour in direct competition.

Oops, the meter’s expired, time to get moving on outta here. See you soon, and don’t take any wooden nickels.

(Posted via iPad)

Post-Script: this is my first blog post with my recently-acquired iPad2. I wrote the piece on iWriter, my first purchased app, and shot the photo on the iPad's camera which is, as you can tell, rather point-and-shoot-ish. I also don't yet have a photo editing app (there being, like, 10,000 or more from which to choose from), and so all I did to the picture after capture was to crop it to square format, then upload to Flickr. Which was another interesting challenge. I ended up emailing it to my Flickr account, a rather round-about method because the regular uploader isn't iPad friendly, but it works. Then, grabbing the BB code to link the photo to my blog was also a challenge, the iPad lacking anything that could be construed as a right-mouse button click. And, highlighting individual letters in each paragraph to be bolded is also a bit klunkier, hence the lack of spit-and-polish to this post.