Indelible

entry_203How many individual things are we able to remember at once–without resorting to unholy trickery, that is? At any given time, the experts will tell you, we can keep between five and nine things in mind, on average. That’s another interesting piece of trivia to tuck away, but it’s actually not what I’m talking about. I mean what is the sum total of things that we can know? Is there an end to it? We must assume there is an upper limit, owing to the brain’s finite mass. And if a brain is like my attic then we must also assume that, as it reaches maximum capacity, it’s not so much the size of the object you’re trying to stuff up there, but the shape of it as well. Any new thought, in other words, would have to be able to fit in among the other notions, in form as well as size. It follows then that at some point you can only accept certain types of information, which, considering my elders, is just about as accurate a theory as any other I’ve been able to devise.

Regardless, the reason this thought is occupying so much of my mind is due to a list that I can’t forget. Because I am a slothful creature by nature, I’ve always clustered tasks–those things that must get done–into as short a time as possible, the better to have done with them. As I run my internal audit, which usually happens while I’m in the shower, I string together an unwieldy list of activities that I’ll try to maintain by repeating them like a mantra. “Marinate the tempeh, add memory to the Palm, necklace for sister… Marinate the tempeh,” and so on. Invariably, when the list grows too long, errors begin to creep in. Words cannibalize themselves, and I am subject to involuntary spoonerism episodes. This must be what dementia is like.

The sheer bulk of information necessitates that I pare back to bare essentials. “Marinate, memory, necklace,” et cetera. These optimized lists are much more manageable, and sometimes they’re even catchy. But that’s the problem, see. If they’re too catchy then the lists can bridge the gap between short term memory and long term memory, and suddenly I find myself weaving these one-time lists–agendas shortly to become obsolete–into the very tapestry that makes me who I am.
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Enemies

The turbulent tides of high school were a shock to the system after a languorous summer spell. I had meant to prepare myself by visualizing just how different life would be there, in contrast to the easily-mastered halls of the lesser junior high across the way. But it didn’t strike me just how lost I would feel until I found myself, textbooks in hand, wandering through a maze of twisty little passages. The few friends I’d cultivated at the previous school seemed scattered to the winds, so when I spotted Robbie Osberg sitting alone at one of the lunch tables I hurried over.

Robbie wasn’t one of the main characters from the small group I considered friends, but then neither was I. We were the background characters–the ones who took part in other peoples’ stories–serving only to round out the group, to give it that stable cohesion. So naturally I asked Robbie if he’d managed to spot one of the primaries. “Hey,” I said. “Man, this place is big. I haven’t even seen Jeff or Ari or Mike. Have you?”

“Oh no you don’t,” Robbie said. “That’s it.” And he proceeded to gather his books and tray and slide them around to the next table, his back to me.

I was dumbfounded. He had reacted as if I were covered in the blood of his parents, certainly not the kind of greeting one might expect after a three month absence. He was joking, that was it. I picked up my books and sat down across from him. “So… did you have a good vacation?” Cautiously.

“I’m not talking to you,” he said, and ate his tater tots with joyless eyes.

A girl at the next table flicked a glance toward us, then instantly looked away. Now I was frustrated, and a little scared. Had I done something to him and forgotten about it? Had I disparaged him in some way without realizing it? Or had I allowed for a lapse of some kind? But no, that wasn’t possible. Robbie and I had barely had a relationship of our own. We’d simply been part of the same group, and had always been friendly toward one another. So why such a violent reaction? “What’s going on, Robbie?”

He only shook his head dismissively, rolling his eyes.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked. “Because I haven’t seen you since last year, so…” Nothing out of him. He’d put up a wall a foot thick, and I was on the outside. I tried one final time: “Are you okay?” Still no response. I might just as well have been talking to myself.
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Friends

entry_201The first time we visited the progressive suburban creperie, we’d allowed ourselves just enough time to eat before the late evening movie. Nestled in the crook between the faux rusticana post-antique used junk store and the self-consciously over-exotic soap and bong shop, the restaurant was the most convenient place to grab a bite, since it was right across the street.

The front of the restaurant was so completely open as to seem abandoned, and indeed, there were no staff to greet us. Such lack of structure tends to give me a kind of social vertigo, which can result in extreme bouts of self-doubt, leading to panic attacks if not promptly seen to. “Should we sit down, or do we stand? Where should we stand? Is there a queue? Do we order up at the front, or is that just for paying? Should we ring something? Are they even open?”

I stumbled about like a lummox, and nearly knocked over the beverage machine before a waiter finally intervened. Maybe my lack of coordination endeared me to the staff, but our anonymity was compromised either way. Still, after we were seated the evening progressed in a manageable enough fashion.

Partially owing to our first positive experience, we called on the creperie again the following weekend, at the same time as our first visit. We had the same waiter, who said we looked familiar. “Yes, we came last week too.” Ah, that’s right. Same table? Sure, why not.
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Secrets

entry_199Several years ago the print shop I worked for went through one of its “employees first” episodes that typically develops in the fertile valley between layoff seasons. In an economy classified by irrational exuberance, the shop’s management were the very embodiment of giddy generosity, which I likened to a congregation of apple-cheeked uncles, fresh in from abroad, whose pockets were filled with all manner of exotic gifts for their favorite nephews. It was complimentary bagels every morning, and pizza for lunch on Fridays. Of course, during such periods of cherubic generosity a long memory would serve the employee well, in particular the understanding that a jocular manager should be treated with the same respect afforded to a freshly-fed pit viper: they’re only docile for the time being, but when that first hunger pang hits…

Desperate to avoid the euphoria overtaking them completely, management quickly set about the production of our annual performance evaluations, and the attendant reports were presented to us as nothing less than the revelatory maps with which we would ford a path to new personal insights and spiritual growth. And, in order to reassure the staff of the utter informality of the review process, the meetings would be held one-on-one, manager to employee, at the stations of each respective employee.

I felt like a buoy buffeted by the tide, helpless to extricate myself from the pomp and circumstance of the corporate friendship campaign. At a kindergarten field trip to the zoo, an animal handler once used my name when responding to a question I had asked, much to my shock. Recognizing my confusion, the man reminded me of the large magenta name tag affixed to my shirt, and my shock turned quickly to humiliation. When one is made to wear one’s name emblazoned so prominently, it does make one vulnerable to such forced intimacy. Similarly, there is no audience so captive as the employee set upon by her manager.

To the extent that there’s any explanation at all, this background may account for why I shoved a small ceramic penguin in my mouth moments before my manager paid me a visit. To be sure, nothing else could come close to explaining my deed, I simply felt the need to assert myself decisively. Very little forethought had gone into it, other than, “I wonder if I can sit through this entire performance evaluation without Klaus realizing that I have something in my mouth.” The ceramic penguin–one member of a suicidal penguin family that lives on my monitor–was simply the closest item within reach.
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Small Steps

Jakaranda.tifIt began like everything begins: with laziness, which is the true mother of invention. Let me just say that there came a time when I was tasked with moving a small appliance from one room to another room, and by sheer coincidence I realized at that exact same time that to subject myself to said mission would literally liquify my brain. What could be less engaging, after all, than picking something up from one place and putting it back down in another place? Material transferral has got to be the most cripplingly banal task a person could ever perform.

So it was only a matter of time before the light of reason revealed an alternate path: if carting items from one spot to another is the absolute dullest thing one can do, then carting an item only half way to its terminus must be merely half as dull. Of course it doesn’t completely solve the problem, but it does allow one to take a break from one’s vapid existence long enough to participate in, say, a distracting game of Tetris.

But, armed with an obsessive nature, I’m never fully satisfied until I’ve exhausted every opportunity for behavioral refinement. That’s not about laziness, but it has everything to do with efficiency. In fact, because of my aversion to inefficiency, I quickly devised a way to perform the most meaningless tasks in such a way as to be transparent to my otherwise enthralling existence. Here’s how: If the new door hinge needs to get from the garage to the bedroom, and I happen to be on my way to the dining room anyway, then I’ll carry the hinge half way down the hall–to the point where our paths would naturally diverge–and just leave it there, and then continue on my way. The thinking is that if I move things in very small increments I can actually get work done without expending a precious ounce of surplus effort. The only flaw with this is that it can take a tremendous amount of time before any given task is complete.
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Agent of Change

entry_197The Physics professor takes his place at my side five minutes later than usual. If the rest of the crew at the metro stop notices Nathaniel Whippingposte’s tardiness you could never gauge it from their outward appearances. Acknowledgement would be crossing that delicate social boundary that keeps a morning commuter safe from commitment. In all honesty, I can’t be certain that the man next to me is a physics professor at all, nor even that his name is “Nathaniel Whippingposte,” because I’ve never actually spoken to him. It’s not to say that we live in a society of strangers. In fact, I call this motley collection of characters “the crew” because we’re that tight-knit. We’re the regulars. Sure, there are the travellers through, the one-time companions, the sight-seers, but the core group remains. More than that, we all tend to stand in exactly the same spots from morning to morning, scattered, and equidistant from one another. Physics professor might call that a stochastic diffusion.

The social burden of engagement is a real threat, and I’ve seen it destroy otherwise stable communities. This is how it has to be, because breaching the wall means an ever-lasting commitment to intimacy that no single member of our crew could hope to shoulder. Me, I’m a pocket fidgeter–a fidgeteer–which affords me some flexibility as far as observing my fellow crew mates. I while away the morning minutes by constructing intricate fantasies about them, notions based on the most frivolous of details, the most sweeping assumptions.

Take Mlinzi Majji-giza, a man whom I’ve never seen in anything but a colorful dashiki. He’s the haunted man who stands back by the wall nursing some foul tea concoction and muttering to himself at length, often to the point of self-argument. I’ve seen him miss the train on more than one occasion simply from being so lost in thought. Dierdre Scruggs, standing by the station map, is a reader of prurient romance tomes, their spines invariably broken by her little sausage fingers. She’s a whale of a woman, with frayed orange hair like old yarn, and she looks comfortable as an old sofa. Dierdre is the housekeeper for a dreadfully aged statesman who lies affixed to his bed like a barnacle, and is forgotten to the outside world, save for his bank account. Meanwhile, off to my right is Phineas Boyd, who stares at the concrete sound baffling of the tunnel wall, and doesn’t shift his stance until the flash of the train’s approach lights. But he does listen, I know that. I’ve seen the corners of his mouth twitch reflexively in response to the wails of a tantrum-racked tyke. In fact, he loathes children with such a passion that it’s caused him to be wary of women. As for Nathaniel Whippingposte, he has an unmistakable professorial air, and his hair… well if you saw him you would understand.
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The Arcade Keeper

entry_196If you’ll pardon a momentary break in the narrative, the following is an account of my dream, as I remember it.

I woke up late, alone. Everyone else was already upstairs. It was the reunion, and we were staying at the home of K’s family, and I was disoriented. We’d been given use of the furnished basement. I got up and made my way to the hall, and saw there were three people loitering in the hall by the bathroom. I didn’t know who they were, but I assumed family. I ducked by them into a bathroom draped with wet towels that covered almost every surface.

I was unsure about the protocol in this situation, and worked up the nerve to ask the people if one of the towels was supposed to be mine. They were friendly enough, but laughed and told me there weren’t any more towels left. Just then K poked her head in and told me not to worry, she’d get another towel for me.

As she headed off I said, “Oh… yeah, everyone here uses the same bathroom.” I felt a little elitist saying it, and chastised myself. Different lifestyles were easy to denigrate, but I had to be more accepting. I hoped they didn’t take it badly.

Waiting for K, I wandered out into the hall, through the growing crowd of people, and saw that several more had gathered around a table for an informal meal, even as others stood in conversation clusters. From the kitchen, K returned with a large ceramic plate heaping with food, most of it made with white beans. I felt disappointment that she’d brought me all this food when all I’d wanted was a plate, and frustrated at how dependent it must make me look in front of her family. Did she think I couldn’t handle getting food on my own? She sensed something was up, but I just glowered and retreated through the crowd with my plate, looking for a secluded place to eat.

I headed down an immense wooden stairway that lead into a relatively quiet foyer. I hadn’t appreciated before just how large the house was, but the foyer was fairly cavernous. Still, there were some people about, so I continued to look for an out of the way spot. The foyer was lined with rooms, each behind glass French doors, and several other halls lead away. On instinct I took a left at the base of the staircase, toward a pair of doors beneath a curiously low overhand. In fact it seemed like the ceiling was sagging as if to block entrance, and in the glass of the door I caught a reflection of two figures, one right behind mine. I looked around, but I was alone.

As I approached the doors, I sensed a presence, and a strong feeling of hauntedness came over me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to put myself through this just now, and stood for a moment, and reconsidered. But I heard people behind me, not very far away, so I went with my first instinct.
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Knee Pads

entry_195“Come on, we need a fourth man!” That’s funny. Man. We were no older than eight, and already my friends had appropriated the language of their fathers. But, much as I hated to, I was going to disappoint them on this day. There was no way I was going to run around the playground in the miasma of high-noon, not when I was wearing my Toughskins jeans. I just stared at my feet and remained against the schoolhouse wall in the shade of the eaves.

If you don’t remember the unique bondage inflicted by this particular brand of apparel, then let me take a moment to explain. Toughskins resembled normal jeans in most ways, only they were designed especially for children. The assumption was that the average child, full of energy and free of inhibition, was prone to such daily activities as scooting across gravel, falling from rooftops, swinging from branches, and the like. Thus, the Toughskins were made of an extra-durable polyester, nylon, cotton blend, the end result of which was not so very different from chain mail. Additionally, the inner lining of each knee was fortified with a rubbery patch to forestall holes forming in the most obvious place.

Unfortunately, it was this latter–the diabolical rubberized patch–that was the bane of my stunted existence. For, in the humid southern summer, the atmosphere as thick as broth, the pads would affix themselves to my perspiring knees, bonding at the molecular level, which made the possibility of normal walking nigh impossible. Throughout the day I would pluck at my knee pads, and pull my pant legs straight when they bunched up as I stood. For hours on end I would pinch the material at my knees and tug it out to create twin tents, just to keep my knees from suffocating. Needless to say I could not, so burdened, participate in normal recess activities. This was the real reason that Toughskins lasted until one outgrew them, not because they were well-crafted. I believe that Toughskins were responsible for my stunted socialization. I didn’t feel fully free until I graduated to a private school uniform many years later, but by then we were all too sophisticated to bend our knees anyway.
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Corrections

entry_194Peering over the shoulders of the brothel newsletter’s editors each day, it finally dawned on me that a person’s editing style is a component of their psychological makeup. Based on my observations–field research, if you will–I methodically codified certain basic personality traits by matching my coworkers’ various methods of typo correction to their respective psychological tendencies. Of course only a certain kind of person is drawn to publish a brothel newsletter at all. Through the years there were always those who questioned, right to my face, the legitimacy of a brothel newsletter, but to those people I posed the question: which brothels have you been soliciting? Certainly not one that has to its name three Peabody Awards for Excellence in Cathouse Media. The Receptive Feline is not your father’s brothel, and that’s all I have to say on that matter.

Now, I was speaking specifically about the significance of the manner by which a person goes about correcting typos, as casual a gesture as it is. In fact it’s precisely because so little thought is involved that it’s so illustrative of one’s behavioral model. Insofar as this is the case, there are several distinct personality types worth mentioning.

The first is Annette who, when she notices a typing mistake, simply taps the cursor back to the transposed letters and corrects them. This surgical method of correction belies a confidence of character, but also a certain listlessness of soul. Social conformists, these types have no interest in exploring the circuitous route. Every problem has a single solution. They are moral absolutists, but only out of convenience. They fall down when punished, and do not get up again. They just look up at you from the floor with their resigned cow eyes, as if to say, “I knew it was you.”
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Bedtime Story

entry_193Of my parents I remember precious little, and the memories I do hold are frustratingly elusive. The very act of reminiscing would seem to change my memories over time, and I find myself doubtful of details that I was once sure about. The trick, I’ve found, is to keep these memories far enough away to avoid tampering, but close enough to consciousness to keep from forgetting them completely. I take satisfaction in trusting that they’re there. That’s what I’ve told myself.

The cell I grew up in is but a memory now, but one that’s not likely to fade. For, while the details of my formative world are no longer what they once were, I can remember with great clarity how my cell’s stone walls would sweat on Spring nights. And on windy days, how the chill air would low as it wound its way down the wood plank steps of the cellar.

Were I asked why it was that I came to be locked away in a cell I would have to confess ignorance. Emotionally my adolescence was a tricky period for me, but not for the reasons one might suspect. I didn’t know any better, you see, and so had no context with which to understand my situation. No, the feelings I remember were limited to the most immediate aspect of my confinement: I missed my toys. Of course, now I reminisce and can make out only a small collection of colored objects, so how important could they have been at last? Still, the vision is iconic and tugs at me as I summon it.

My family’s new home–for we’d moved in only recently–was a spacious farm house in a secluded country dale. I was young, and not a particularly curious child, most often occupied by solitary play. A favorite pastime was to watch the dust motes dance in the sun coming through the porch window. I would lose myself in it.

I was quite young when my parents escorted me to the place I would come to know as my room. In truth I’d never been to this room before, but that wasn’t unusual in itself. I had no fear of the unknown, nor an interest in it, and my father took advantage of that on this day. The memory of my father sitting me on his lap has grown diaphanous, but though I’ve lost his words, I do recall a calmness to his voice. When he departed, and I was left alone, I simply waited to see what would happen next.
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