Fighting Basics for Artists

There is a blessing and a curse to being in a family of creative types. We can’t turn off the creativity and it seeps into everything, from our doodles and humor to, in the case of my brother, sister and I, how we fought each other.
It wasn’t just a slap here or a tripping foot there; it was hours and days spent figuring out a way to accidentally kill each other. We were viscous. Knock down, drag out, attempt-to-throw-out-a-window viscous. My mom wouldn’t let me take karate in 6^th grade because she was sure I’d permanently damage my little brother; she knew I didn’t need the edge that karate would have given me. I was shocked and disappointed she didn’t believe in me/saw through my plan. She tried strict rules but the three of us would figure out ways to de-tangle what she saw as a water-tight web and still manage to inflict the maximum physical harm. Mom said we weren’t allowed to hit each other so instead we’d pick up our sweet, mild-mannered cat, Sam, shake her up and then launch her legs-first at whoever had incurred our wrath in hopes that she, in her airborne panic, would latch onto their faces. Usually, this worked splendidly. Sam would screech in mid-air and then land with her claws wrapped around my brother’s head. And I didn’t cause the injury, Sam did. I didn’t touch Elliott’s face, I don’t know how those scratches got there, Mom.

And you thought you and your siblings had cat fights....

Dunno

This was Summer, 2004 and it was Dave and Shelby's wedding. Dave is in the red vest, Elena is being the tiny goof between Dave and I and on the end is our boss, the reason we all know each other: Anna B. Later on we tried to roll and run on the hay bails behind us. It was a good wedding.
The scary thing to me is out of everyone in this photo, I am the only one who hasn't had cancer since it was taken. Anna found out that fall she had precancerous growths; she was 33. This past fall Dave came down with a softball-sized tumor in the middle of his chest. He did six months of chemo and just had surgery last week. He's weak but he's fighting. He just turned 30.
Yesterday afternoon Elena called me saying she had news. She's been with the same great guy for close to three years now so I was expecting the usual, "I'm engaged!" call I've fielded dozens of times. Instead the call revolved around cortisol levels and the hypothalamus and thalamus and the words "tumor" and "pituitary" together. Elena is 26.
It isn't like I know a whole bunch of people from AL; 30 at the most. And then three come down with tumors? At such young ages? I don't understand it, and I'm scared. It is early, she still has a lot of tests before she knows the extent of the tumor and whether to be scared, but I can't help it. She's one of my closest friends.
How does that happen?

That's Bleepin' Fantastic

Special thanks to Ian and Tammy, who shared this gem this weekend and has had me laughing for about four days straight. I mean that's funny stuff right there.

Dreaming (your) Dreams

My friend Seth just sent this to me and it cracked me up...

"In a dream last night I came to a rather disturbing conclusion as to why there were so many hippies/[our high school] grads that had congregated in the same place (Asheville). I dreamt that you all had become part of a dissident school for the performing arts that based its recruiting off of facebook friend lists. You all had built a stronghold in an old castle and had even tricked the us army into giving you all your own rotc branch with which you were building your army. It was like "red dawn" for 20 somethings with makeup and tights. And there were many people there from our graduating class. Apparently rush limbaugh has invaded my dreams and is accessing my facebook friend list. I'm nuts."


HAHAHAHHAHA! Love it.

Up and At 'Em

Now that I sit at a computer most of my day, I’ve gotten back into Pandora. I need something background, some little bits of ambience. Besides that, I’ve been mulling over the same few songs that have been the only thing that has the ability to get me up and going in the morning. I haven’t posted a musical list lately so here it is.

What Drags My Ass Outta Bed, April 2009 edition:
Kids—MGMT
My Only Offer—Mates of State (this one especially)
Carpetbaggers—Jenny Lewis
Nothing to Worry About—Peter Bjorn and John
Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby—The Islands
Sugarlumps—Fight of the Conchords
Road to Joy—Bright Eyes
Myriad Harbour—New Pornographers
Hard Worker—Avett Brothers
This is Not a Test—She & Him
New Soul—Yael Naim

Chestnut-ing

I'm on a business trip but spent the afternoon riding on a farm cart covered in hay bales, looking at squiggly chestnut shoots. These are the future of the American chestnut. Some have died, some are weakened by cankers, some shoot up toward the sky.
In the fall, the chestnut trees drop thousands of spiny pods, each containing three seeds. They feel like an urchin and at the farm they litter the ground.

Some are from the trees that are now the parents to the blight-resistant strain currently in testing.

In that little spiny urchin could be history changed. I picked up a chestnut seed and put it in my pocket. It'll remind me what hope can look like, no matter the odds.

Where'd You Park?

I go to Staples for work.
A lot.
It seems like every time I come out of Staples, there is a new, more odd vehicle in the parking lot waiting to greet me.

Today it was this:

And last week it was this:

Thank you, Staples. Not only do you supply all my office needs (according to your riches and glory, as per the company Visa) but you bring entertainment as well. Bravo.

Holy Day

Easters have gotten less important with time, like birthdays. It has little to do with baskets full of shredded green plastic grass or cheap chocolate molded into fertility demigods; it is the meaning that has faded, not just the trinkets. I haven’t had an Easter basket since I was 10 or 12. Maybe younger. My childhood was spent with more browbeating about meanings than presents and it stuck. Every Christmas and Easter I go through this mental obstacle course, trying to remember to focus on the meanings of the holidays rather than the accoutrement that dress them. And every holiday I fail. I forget, or I remember but feel nothing. I tend to want to spend those days alone; cloister myself into meaning. To be completely honest, I get more emotional about Independence Day than I do about Easter. The brilliant bursts of light in the sky, the hand over the heart, singing Francis Scott Key: this is a holy day to me. This I understand. There is life and bright color and hope and joy.
As my faith has faded to more muted tones so has my guilt about my lack of holy on holidays. I appreciate the day, I get why it is important. I just don’t feel anything about it but a vague sense of gratitude and an even fainter sense of loss.

He's a Race Fan

As seen at the NASCAR race. This is their actual license plate. They love Mel that much.

That's the Best Kind

Every bowling ball should come in size XX-Lager.

Weekly Ponderosa

After 20 months of trying, we finally came in first in Quizzo. We have come in second many, many times and each time we are thrilled, but to finally come out the victor is, well, totally sweet. We didn't know what to do. At the end of four rounds we were tied with one other team, and thus there was to be a shout-out best-out-of-three challenge for all-out victory. Of course the tie was with the ever-present (and ever victorious) Smartypants, a team we revile but a bunch of people we quite like. Doug manned up and took the shout-outs and after a tense few rounds the victor was announced and it was us! If you don't play trivia with the same team week in and week out it probably isn't too interesting, but for those of us who have had this Monday tradition, it is a pinnacle.

Last Saturday I was driving from Wedge Brewery to Nathan's house and there, standing on the corner of Hillard and Biltmore in the pouring rain, was a no-armed midget. Just standing and staring. It was almost 11pm. Ian said it best, “I felt like I was suddenly in a David Lynch movie.”

My old teachers are in town this weekend and I can't wait to take them out.

I can't believe how fast the day goes when I'm working on something I like.

Nathan has the Playstation 3 karaoke video game (as does Ian and Tammy) and for some reason I'm quite good at it. Except after a few hours of beer and singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” I lose my voice.

Jane got new bookshelves and I finally unpacked books that have been in boxes for nearly three years and I swear I could hear them sigh. I love owning books; I have reread most of them at least once and I do use them as references or recommendations. I love the library but there is something so important to me about owning a book.

There is a White Stripes song that has the line, “It's the truth and it don't make a noise.” For some reason I'm been mulling over that for quite a while; wondering what sort of noise truth doesn't make. I guess lies are more the rustling type. I think of them as sound like a bag of chips, where no matter how hard one tries, they are going to make a whole lot of very recognizable noise.

Start Your Engines...

Every now and then I get a few days of outlandish.
It takes on several forms, be it impromptu trips to the beach (for a day), brew tours, a caving trip gone wrong by rednecks or just Waffle House at an ungodly hour. Yet each and every time I am struck with the same feeling of hilarity and awe—hilarity at the characters and situations, awe that I get to live it.
Two weekends ago the outlandish took the form of a ½ mile oval track called Bristol Motor Speedway, which is, I have now learned, is one of the more revered NASCAR tracks out there. Nathan and I first had to stop at Wal-Mart to pick up various sundries for the journey: ear plugs, size-specific coolers, tailgating chairs and the most ostentatious shirts we could find emblazoned with our token driver upon it. After fifteen minutes in Wal-Mart we were both itching to leave as quickly as possible. It was the people...that's when we realized how snobby we were. And how we were judging people by their clothes, their weight, what was in their cart or the rowdiness of their kids. I was sort of OK with snobby because of the stigma of Wal-Mart, the great homogenizer of the US. Hypocritical? Absolutely.
So after our forays into Wal-Mart and our subsequent judgmental rantings we met up with Cara and Anthony, who were coming off of a stay at a cabin near Hot Springs for their anniversary. Anthony's family has property and connections in Bristol and graciously let the four of us crash on various couches and air mattresses.
Saturday night we stayed out much too late at Anthony's cousins house, drinking PBR in cans and smoking cigars in the frigid night. One of the guys kept assuming I was married to Nathan and I/we didn't know how to tell him otherwise. I was keen to go along with it and would have probably made up a fantastic story about our wedding if I was assured the friends who knew better would have gone along with it.
We began tailgating around 9am at a campground less than a mile from the track. We fired up the grill and began to cook our brats and drink our beers and quietly play our music, like every other person there. I was laughing internally because though we were looking mighty redneck, the music we were blaring was bluegrass, not country. Our brats were from the organic grocery and were called things like “bison chiorzo”. Even our beers were microbrewed porters or organic ales. It was like we were just playing dress-up.
What can I say about the race? It was mighty loud, it was dizzying, it smelled like oil and rubber and my driver won. There was no conversing with the people around, no trash talking, no cheering on a team. The crowd was silent. Eerie to be in a stadium of 170,000 people or so and have it sound so ambivalent to the goings on. We did nothing but spectate; it might as well have been on TV.
Would I go again? Maybe not to a 'short-track' race. I have heard that longer track races allow time to actually speak to those around you, and that would be exactly the experience for which I was looking.