Sunday, September 24, 2006

Good Days

“It was a good day.”

This is what I say to my 23-month-old girl every night; it’s become a bedtime ritual. It changes slightly with the events of the day, but the general process is the same each night.

Usually, I begin the dialogue.

“Did you have a good day?” I ask after the lights are out and we are in the rocking chair.

“Good day,” she says, her head against my chest.

“Did you go to the park?”

“Go to the park,” she repeats.

“…and play with friends?”

“Play with friends…”

“…and play in the fountain?”

“…play in fountain…”

“…and took a nap?”

“…nap.”

“…and went for a walk?”

“…in the stroller,” she adds.

“And what else?”

“Hot dog,” she says.

“Yes, we got free hot dogs from Home Depot. Then we played in the yard.”

“Play in yard.”

“It was a good day.”

“Good day.”

Of course this omits anything unpleasant that happens during the day, and sometimes there are unpleasant things. The Crowned-African Crane pecked her in the head at the zoo once; she falls and scrapes her knees now and then; sometimes the computer-controlled fountain at the park shoots water from a new direction when she’s not ready and it freaks her out a little. And then there’s the occasional tears when she doesn’t get what she wants when she wants it, but we don’t focus on those things at bedtime.

It’s almost just the opposite of what I do when I go to bed. I think of the mistakes I made; I wonder if I’m damaging any children in my classroom and hope I’m doing a good job; I worry about the war in the Middle East; I worry that I might not have enough insurance or that I might have too much. I’ve really got to review that insurance file sometime.

There’s just something about the dark that brings out terror; conversely, morning light always seems to scatter those cobwebby fears.

Lately, I’ve been trying to apply the nursery bedtime routine over at the other side of the house. Did I have a good day? I went to a job that I love. The coffee was really good. The weather was perfect.

But that doesn’t cut it for me. I’m too old to determine if my day was good or bad based on events. The fact is the day is good, regardless. As the Psalmist wrote, “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” If work was especially frustrating today and the coffee was burnt, I could still have a good day. It’s my decision; my reaction to the day is what I choose it to be.

It was a good day.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Time is of the Essence

“I am bionic man.”

It was three in the morning and I was thinking this because I was strapping a watch to my wrist. “I am strapping a time-keeping device to my arm,” I said, “and I’ve done it everyday for at least 15 years.” My sleeplessness was due to the fact that I was not feeling well, so I was moving my resting quarters to the futon in the music room to keep from waking my wife. The watch has an alarm built in, which would get me up in time for work. As I pushed the little metal prongs that produced lights, beeps, and a wake-up time of 5:30, I mumbled again, “I’m like 1/1000th machine.”

Hey, I realize how cliché this is to begin with, and millions of people are much closer to being classified as bionic people than I am. I mean, I don’t have an internal pacemaker in my chest or a cell phone clipped to my ear, nor can I operate a PS2 or N64 controller like it is some extension of my body. But at three in the morning, I think about the dumbest things in the weirdest way.

And I did begin to wonder about it. When did I institute watch-wearing and why? The watch I had on my wrist now is comfortable enough that I just might be able to drift back off to sleep, but as a kid my watch-wearing episodes were always thwarted by the discomfort of having it on my arm.

Mom gave me my first watch when I was in Kindergarten, probably as a way to teach me time-telling skills. It was also about the time that mom put a fat old log, a box of nails, and a 16-ounce hammer on the back porch and told us we could hit nails into the log as much as I wanted. And I wanted. I nearly gave that log a metal sheathing while unknowingly building gross-motor skills. Anyway, I loved the first watch; it had a tiny white analog face with miniscule black hands and band and silver trim. I wore it for quite a while on my right arm because I am right-handed and it made sense to me that the right arm should get all the privileges. But, it was not perfectly comfortable and I never really needed to know what time it was. I’m sure it wasn’t very long before that watch disappeared.

Throughout elementary school, though, I always wanted watches. I would use my allowance to buy a cheap, black plastic digital watch at K-Mart for around three or four dollars. I especially liked digital watches that had a timer feature. It would always last for a few weeks or months; I would forget to put it on sometimes and then the watch would disappear.

When I was ten, Dad told me that I should be wearing my watch on my left arm, which I tried and found to be uncomfortable and counter-intuitive. Dad wore his the opposite way than I did—on his left arm with the watch pressed against the inside of his wrist. He would have to turn his hand palm-up in order to see the watch’s face. There is a picture of me somewhere in my Cub Scout uniform holding a hamster, and you can read the time on my black plastic watch that is strapped to my right arm. It was a little after four in the afternoon, if I remember correctly. But I digress.

So how do people develop the habit of wearing a watch so faithfully? 100 years ago, pocket watches were primarily status symbols and wristwatches were for women only. Some men back then actually said they would wear a skirt before they wore a wristwatch. However, handy time-keeping devices were becoming increasingly useful in war tactics, so by the time World War I came around, soldiers almost universally wore wristwatches. With a little advertising work by the Rolex company, it was a short step from soldier wartime essential to everyday fashion. I guess that’s why you see camouflage in Wal-Mart and bright yellow Humvees on Main Street.

Status symbols and soldier idolatry. So now it is Saturday morning and I am surrounded by time. The computer monitor has it in the lower right corner, the phone reports it, and believe it or not my VCR is always set to the right time. Despite all this, I have already habitually strapped on my wristwatch even though I have not taken the time to put on some pants yet. It is 5:17 am.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Paint Buckets and Bucket Seats


This just cracks me up.

Sherwin-Williams has used the same logo of a blue globe actively being covered by red paint and the slogan “Cover the Earth” for over 40 years. This might be a good slogan for money-hungry executives to chant at a sales meeting, but it does not speak to any particular consumer. For many people today, it is a disgusting and offensive idea. Although the logo may have been catchy in the baby boomer era, conservation awareness and societal values have shifted enough that the logo has gone past the point of not communicating effectively—instead, it is communicating a totally different message very effectively.

Speaking of communication, Sherwin-Williams isn’t the only one who could use some coaching. This one is not so funny:

When Chrysler lost a court case involving their collapsing seats resulting in child deaths, they publicly replied that their “seats performed as designed” and they met government standards. That is not a message that sits well with an audience of consumers who transport their children. Were they designed to collapse and kill children?

I mean really.

We were in the market for a van a while ago, and Chrysler was the only company my wife and I marked off our list. At the very least, a stronger message would give more consideration to the audience in an attempt not to alienate us. For example, what if Chrysler representatives said, “The people of Chrysler grieve for the loss of these children. We have invested a great deal of money and time in research and development of safe vehicles because we care about the families who use them. Even though we have surpassed government standards, we are dedicated to improving these vehicles further so that this will not happen again.”

I could live with that. Probably. (And since when does "meets government standards" act as a reasonable defense?)

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Skill

Two years ago this month, I got stuck in construction traffic on Signal Mountain Blvd. While I sat, I saw this:

A backhoe was scooping gravel out of an enormous iron bin and dumping it in a ditch. At first glance, I took no real notice, but then something caught my attention. The fluidity that this backhoe operator managed was simply outstanding. There were no jerky movements at all, but rather, it was like watching a one-armed giant slowly playing in a sandbox. The backhoe deftly swung over the bin, which was nearly three times as big as the dumpster behind the school. It was massive and solid, but next to the backhoe, it looked like a paper cup. Over the bin the backhoe came and gracefully dipped into it. The apparatus on the end of the back hoe barely fit inside the iron container, but he never scraped either side of it. As the backhoe dipped into the bin and scooped up gravel, it scooted the bin back and forth about a foot, so lightly that it looked like the wind was performing the actual movements. That is how powerful this backhoe was. Then, the operator skillfully lifted the full backhoe, dripping gravel like sand through fingers, and arched it over the ditch before letting the gravel pour out. It was a cycle, but only one continuous movement, with no stops or corrections. I could not believe it. There were many men working around the backhoe, sometimes inches from where the operator was swinging the giant, hydraulic arm. One slip from the operator, and a man certainly could be killed. Yet, no one paid him any attention as he worked, not even looking or flinching when the gravel came arching over, mere feet away.

Behind the backhoe, a crane was setting down a gargantuan cement tube, I think to be used as a underground drainage pipe. But when he set it down, and the hook on the crane came completely clear, it began to lumber towards the road and the rows of cars stuck on it. A worker on the ground saw it and shouted, followed by another worker's shout. The backhoe had just released its gravel and was making its way back to the bin, when the operator must have heard the shout. Without breaking momentum or his pace, he continued to swing the entire backhoe around, past the bin, and towards the ambling drain pipe. At the same time, he backed the whole machine up and extended the arm of the backhoe, reaching out towards the traffic. The arm reached out, human as possible, and touched the tube with its metal fingers. Then, the backhoe rolled the tube back towards itself, lifted its arm and came down behind the tube to nudge it into a safer place. Still, without breaking stride, the operator moved the whole machine forward to its previous location, the arm extending and dropping simultaneously into the bin for a new scoop of gravel.

It was like some kind of choreography or dance.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Dear Diary

I should have been keeping a journal for the last 15 years. Apparently, anyone who is great in life keeps a journal.

I realized this yesterday morning at about 4:30 after I had been awake for nearly two hours. I was in the music room, if it can still be called that; it would probably be more appropriate to follow the example of a school at which I used to teach and call it the Multi-Purpose Room. It used to be a full-fledged music room, but when our baby was born it whelmed the office and library much like an amoeba eating paramecium so that we could have a nursery. Now, it’s the guest room, too, except that our guests are increasingly opting to shell out money for a hotel room.

I tossed the two down pillows that I had brought with me—just in case—on the futon and turned on the computer. There is something about the light of a monitor as sole light source that is still a little chimerical. The first time I experienced it, I was 16, and it seemed magical, futuristic, advanced, civilized. My brother and I had brought our meager resources together to build a Compaq 386 with a whopping 4 meg hard drive. We loaded it with a flight simulator for my brother and a driving simulator for me. It was kept in my room, and sometimes I would stir in the middle of the night and—instead of turning over—I’d fire up the computer. The cold, monochromatic, unidirectional light of the computer screen would wash my room in flickering gossamer. Like a television set, but somehow better. Once, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I was lit by monitor. Half of me floated out of oblivion; I could see part of my face, my ear, the white of my t-shirt and the front half of my arm. The rest of me had dissolved into obscurity. Very cool, I thought.

Now, turning on the computer in the middle of the night still seems a little otherworldly, but I have acclimated to it on some level. To a very mild degree, it is how I imagine astronauts must adapt. First, being in space literally must be otherworldly, but soon it becomes routine in a chronic way. Yet, no matter how accustomed the astronauts become to their new environment, they certainly must carry other unsorted feelings of abnormality—that this is simply not natural. That is at least how I feel, sitting in my music room, peering into this portal of the world, hunched over in a habitual position that would make my chiropractor cringe.

I should start a blog, I thought. It was only 2:45 in morning; I’d been up for fifteen minutes and this was the thought I was having. The idea of blogging has been pestering me for just over a month now. I figure this is the work of the same little muse that tried to get me journaling ten years ago. I resisted journaling back then for four reasons:
1. Starting a journal in my twenties seemed like starting a story in the middle.
2. Journaling is work and requires time.
3. Journaling is reflective, which seems dangerous to me. It might provoke unwanted changes.
4. People only read journals of famous people. Why write if no one is going to read it?

Before I could journal, I had to answer my own objections. I attempted to do so in the following ways:
1. I won’t start in the middle. I will first chronicle all of my major life events to date and then I’ll continue with the present.
2. I have no children or many obligations. So, I have time to journal.
3. I will avoid reflective journals. Instead, I will only tell stories.
4. I will probably be famous.

I did try journaling, but it fizzled out quickly. The main problem, I believe, was trying to chronicle all my life events to date. It was really boring.

And, ten years later, I’m still not famous, nor am I all that interested in fame.

But I am going to blog*. I’m starting in the middle with today. I do have children now and consequently no time. But, my wife is blogging, too, so we’re carving out blocks of time to write and read each other’s blogs. Also, I have become reflective anyway, and it has provoked changes—all of which I like.

Oddly enough, though, I did not blog in the wee hours of yesterday morning. I thought about it, but then decided it would be a waste of time. So, I edited digital video of my little 23-month-old. Editing digital video is one of those tasks that is at the same time tedious and rewarding. The idea of crafting a psuedo story with visual and audio elements is a lot of fun. The insipidness comes from the amount of video that I have to weed through. Sometimes I let the video camera run for twenty minutes with the hope of catching one or two great moments and the fear of losing something precious. And why not? 60-minute digital videotape is cheap and reusable. I can shoot a nearly infinite amount of video. Sometimes I edit out up to probably 80 percent of what I had captured, and still I find myself watching the videos and thinking that it should have been pared down further.

My dad began taking home movies with his Super 8 film movie camera when he was in his early teens. He would buy three-minute reels, take movies, edit the film, and splice together the film to make up to thirty-minute silent home movies, usually about one theme or another. He made a movie called “My Brothers and their Cars”, which was more interesting than it sounds. Other films were about watching people unawares, his siblings, or local parades. He even managed some special effects. With three minutes of film at a time, he had to shoot sparingly. I know, because when I was twelve, he let me use his old camera. By that time, three-minute reels were running almost $7 at the Ben Franklin. Hearing the rhythmic clicking of the camera’s shutter was simultaneously thrilling and depressing; shooting the movie was fun, but the finiteness of the film felt so precarious and valuable—something to be hoarded. I am so grateful to have the freedoms of digital video, but at the same time it seems like some of the value is gone. With an infinite amount of “film”, I am not discerning with how I use it. There is no effort involved, no reason for restraint or thought.

And I guess that’s part of my complaint with writing in a digital age. In the past, writing took effort and therefore thought. Writers had to contemplate each word before dipping the quill or setting a printing press. Even typewriters—which made writing faster and easier—still tempered the writing process in comparison to today’s tools. In fact, I am quite confident that if I had to use one of those antiquated tools, I would not have expended the energy to write this. It is so easy to forward meaningless e-mails to millions of people several times over, to publish on the Internet, to write, delete, revise, copy, and paste entire passages that words have become cheaper than ever. No one really has to think about what he writes because it costs nothing. It seems like most people have nothing to say, but they say it anyway.

So, this is my first blog. Really. I tentatively named this blog site Pencil Animus for lack of a better name, but also because I want this writing to have purpose. I do not want it mistaken for rants or ramblings or meanderings or digressions. It is first for me, and then for you if you care to read it.
* How many blogs are started in the middle of the night?

The Dog

I’m sorry if I licked your hand too much;

I just wanted to say

Thank you

For the

Bone

It was delicious and good.


And if you have some time to play

In the yard with me

And my

Tennis ball

It is my favorite thing.


And I don’t know if I can do

anything for you,

but if you

get pleasure

from scratching me

behind my ears,

well I wouldn’t mind that.