“My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.” ― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” ― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Renner School House desks.
I’m plugging away with my thirty pages (minimum) per day on The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami. The book is interesting in that it is written in very simple and straightforward language, yet contains a wildly unusual, complex and subtle story.
On the other hand, today’s short story tells a very simple and straightforward story in a wildly unusual, complex and subtle way. It takes place in an elementary classroom (more or less) in 1960 – only a couple years before my own experience in same. There are a lot of similarities… and a lot of differences. It makes me think of what I remember… which are odd snips of memory – unrelated and seemingly random.
The story is not very short and is not all that easy to read… but take your time, keep at it – see what it brings back for you.
“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.” ― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
Birth II, by Arthur Williams, Dallas, Texas
The library sent me an email, a book I had reserved was in. It was a new(ish) novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami. Over the decades I have read a good bit of Murakami and written a bit also. It’s a massive tome (and popular, so I won’t be able to renew it) but I’m going to read the thing, nevertheless. I’m happy because I had been scrambling for my next fiction book to read.
In honor of my new reading task, here’s a Murakami short story to read – it’s crackerjack (it seems familiar, I may have read it before, but I don’t think I’ve linked to it).
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.” ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
M41 Walker Bulldog
Liberty Park
Plano, Texas
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Wednesday, February 12, 1997
Cold, hard, rain
Rain. Cold Rain. H2O, Dihydrogen Monoxide. Two little spheres stuck on a big one, not on opposite sides, but in a V shape, lopsided. Untold numbers of little tiny 3D Mickey Mouse heads, only Avogadro knows how many. Mickey and his two little ears, sharing electrons. The uneven charge, the Mickeys want to stick together in crystalline order and sure enough, lumps of ice are falling, mixed in.
The clouds disgorge their burden, called up from where? Where did this water pick up its heat? Its half a thousand or so calories for every little gram, leaving the warm languid sea to travel on the tradewinds. Cuba? The Caymans? Key West? The water vapor rising from the tropical ocean, born aloft in Barnard cells of air, driven by the sun’s starry furnace. Riding north only to meet a frigid army of the north. Air chilled in Minnesota, maybe in Fargo, moving south. The two clash over Texas, right over my head, and the tropical steam gives its borrowed heat back to the icy northern air. The moisture congeals and falls, falls and falls.
The streets are full, flowing rivers of muddy water. To my left there’s a waterfall, a torrent of muck flooding out of a lumberyard. The sky is gray, the mud is gray, all color sucked out, washed away, flowing downstream. The water is stealing the colors, it’ll all flow down the Trinity, down to Louisiana where it’ll slink between the cypress knees, between the mangrove roots out into the gulf, back to the tropics, where the colors will be traded for warmth, for heat, for another trip on the convection express.
Leaving work, I carry my possessions protected from the deluge in a plastic bag. Two and a half boxes of Girl Scout cookies and a quart of tequila. In school I remember napping on my cot on a male section of the dormitory. “Bill, get up!” someone cried, “Go buy some Girl Scout cookies.” “Waaaa?” “Don’t ask why, go downstairs and buy some.” I stumbled down the stairs to the lobby, only to find a long, snaking line of male undergraduates. At the head of the line was the oldest, most developed Girl Scout I’d ever seen, stuffed into a uniform about three sizes too small. She was selling a lot of cookies.
Nowadays, of course, I buy them from coworkers, hawking stuff for their kids. A couple days ago a fellow chemist announced he had to go see a customer in Harlingen. “Hop over the border and get me some tequila”, I joked. Days later he came back and said, “Got your tequila!” I didn’t think he’d really do it, but five bucks for a quart of Jose Cuervo Oro, I won’t complain. So I leave work with a bottle and two and a half boxes of cookies. Why two and a half? I have no willpower.
The family goes out for dinner. We run from the van through the icy deluge. Cars dart around the dark parking lot, no safe place for a little one so Lee rides on my shoulders. “I’ll keep you dry, daddy,” he says, and cradles my head in his firm little arms, covering me up, protecting me from the wet and the cold. and the darkness.
“Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.” ― Truman Capote, Local Color
Tony Bones painting from the Kettle Gallery, For the Love of Kettle, Competitive Shopping Event
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Sunday, November 15, 1998
Bowling alley
I spent the morning by going on into work. It is especially odd when I’m the only person at the huge factory. The parking lot empty except for my gold Taurus.
Tons and piles of paperwork I wanted to attack undisturbed, but I only chewed off a fraction of what I wanted to accomplish. Ambition and motivation were hard to find today.
Then I drove on down to meet Candy and the kids. Today was the Wildcat’s end-of-the-outdoor-season soccer party. We decided to hold it at a somewhat rundown bowling alley not too far from my work. We chose it because it was cheap.
I drive by this place often, you probably don’t. It has seen better days, the street it is on has seen better too. Displaced by newer roads it is now a backwater, a byway, only frequented by folks like myself that are constantly seeking back ways, shortcuts around the nearby railroad tracks.
The entrance to the lanes is flanked by two large plaster lions. They are often repainted in garish colors; today they were a tawny beige and shit brown. Between their outstretched paws each cradles a bowling ball, these were painted a bright blue. I rubbed one cerulean orb for luck as I passed by.
When I pushed the door open and entered the alley I was assaulted by the stench of cigarette smoke, some fresh, some echoes of ancient puffing. It didn’t take long to get used to it though, and the place was clean and well-run. And it was cheap. The neighborhood must be run down more than I thought, one feature was public surveillance cameras trained on the parking lot so you could keep an eye on your car while you bowled. The kids liked watching their friends arrive on the monitors.
Everyone seemed to have a good time. We rented four lanes for two hours. The kids played on three lanes and the adults on one. For those of you that don’t hang out in such places, there has been a big change in bowling to accommodate small children and recapture the family bowling market. There is a selection of lightweight balls for kids, with no holes in them. The kids simply heave these down the lane the best way they can. There are folding bumpers that are extended out to fill the gutters, so the kids will almost always be able to hit at least a few pins.
Lee really bowled well and had a blast. Nick did too, though he whined and griped the whole time. “I’ll never get the hang of this!” “I’ll never get a strike!” He had his premature teenager disease bad today; which is frustrating for everybody around him.
The adults had fun too. Candy bowled on one of the bumper lanes and ended up with a respectable score. For me, of course, the primary attraction of bowling is the thrill of wearing rented shoes.
We bowled, handed out trophies, ate cupcakes, the usual stuff. We found out that the team the Wildcats beat yesterday in indoor had never lost a game before.
As I was standing around I noticed a glass covered, framed letter mounted on the wall. It was from some bowling consulting firm congratulating the bowling alley owner on his modern, impressive facility. It went on gushing for several paragraphs before concluding with the sentence, “And we are confident in saying that your bowling facility is one of the top one or two percent of all bowling centers in the entire country.”
I looked closer and the yellowed letter was dated 1985.
“Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.” ― Yasunari Kawabata
Tony Bones
detail
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Saturday, November 28, 1998
Thank goodness, you forget
Nick and I were hiking, we were somewhere along a trail between here and there. I wasn’t sure how much farther we had to go. “I’m tired, Dad!” he’d complain. I’d carry Nick on my shoulders for awhile, then he’d want down. He’d walk and say, “My feet hurt! My legs are tired!”
Not too far along after that we popped out where the trail crosses a road, we knew where we were, found it on the map. Nick said, “Now it doesn’t seem so far.” I told him that was always how it was. When you’re in the middle of it, it seems so difficult, so long, so far. But after you’ve done it, you forget how hard it was.
That’s it isn’t it? How many times every day do we get to the point where we don’t know if we can take it any more, if we can take another step. But we do, we stick it out. Later, we forget how bad it was. Thank goodness.
It can be anything. For me it’s usually screaming, misbehaving kids. The constant din, the whining, the griping, the demanding grates and wears ’til I simply don’t know if I can stand another second. I do stand it though. Later when they’re asleep they look so calm, beatific, I forget how tired and angry I was earlier.
Or people asking me to fix stuff. I get to the point that if one more person comes to me with their busted doo-dad or gizmo, confident that I can fix it, I’m afraid I’ll flop on the floor screaming. Their TV’s won’t get the channels they want, their computers won’t do what they want them to, the reports (written by someone else) don’t print in the right order. I have to drop my own work, time that is precious to me, and supplicate myself to their problems. When the solution isn’t as simple as they want, they blame me, as if it was me that put them in the predicament in the first place. The worst is, they insist that I act like I care.
I get through it somehow, then I forget.
When I was younger, I used to dream that someday this would drop away, that the way would suddenly become clear and the daily struggles would become easier. Now I know that this is life, this is what it is. Every day, every hour, something difficult, frustrating, humiliating, presents itself, demands to be attended to. Again and again, all the time, worn out, tired, bored, struggling.
When you get through it, when you reach the road you forget the pain, only remember the little victories.
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” ― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Louise Bourgeois, Spider, New Orleans
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Monday, November 30, 1998
Arachnophobia
I’m not familiar with phobias. Irrational fear maybe, but to the point of debilitation? not really. I’ve always been afraid of the dentist, but that’s pretty common. I get over it. There was that fear of bad mayonnaise that I had for a while; irrational perhaps, but it didn’t really have any effect on my life.
Poor Lee has developed a horrible fear of insects, especially spiders. He has always been goosey around bugs, but on the camping trip it erupted into full-blown panic. There was a tiny spider in the van on the way back home and Lee completely lost it. I had to concentrate on driving while he jumped out of his seat and started screaming at the top of his lungs.
Today, Candy called me at work on the mobile phone. She was trying to take the kids to a friend’s house to see some new puppies but Lee was standing in the alley, adamant, he was not going to get in the van because he was afraid there were spiders in there. Candy finally managed to get Lee in the van but by then she had lost her temper, Lee was freaked out, everyone was at the end of their ropes. I talked to Candy, tried to calm her down, then had a long, long talk with Lee on the cell phone.
It was no use reasoning with him, his fear is obviously not a rational one. I mostly chatted him up, tried to get him back to normal. He did calm down, agreed to stay in the van, but kept saying things like, “I’ll keep my finger on the seatbelt button so I can get out of my seat if I see a spider.” I’ll have to convince him this wasn’t a good idea, he has to stay in his seat.
I’m not sure what to do. Lee is only six, he will outgrow this, but in the meantime we have to get him through. I did agree to take the van and Candy will drive the kids around in the Taurus. Lee was happy with this, but that means Nick and Lee will sit next to each other in the back seat, and that is like storing dynamite with lit matches.
I think I’ll get a book on collecting bugs, maybe that will help him deal with it. The whole killing jar and pins, and waxed cardboard thing is pretty distasteful, but if it helps Lee get over his phobia quicker, I’ll sacrifice a few insects (even some arachnids) in the cause.
Maybe an ant farm too, all kids like those. Except I’m sure they could break the ant farm playing ball in the house, that would be a scary mess. Better be careful.
“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” ― Ray Bradbury
Walkway on the levee, New Orleans
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Friday, May 25, 2001
Tres Rios
As the evening wore on, I slipped off for a walk. The still, hot, day was cooling off quickly into comfortable spring dusk. The blue sky was decorated with clusters of cumulus clouds smeared out like paint-by-numbers oils in the air. The rivers were noisy with thousands of click-croaking frogs, out for the evening. I couldn’t see them, of course, but I could imagine their throats bulging out like balloons as they sang their little songs. The walk along the three rivers was pleasant, at a level below the main park where all the thousands of recreational vehicles were invisible. Only a few tent campers were down there, with their campfires poring out sweet wood smoke – they had the best spots in the park.
The reason lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn’t there the second time.
—-Willie Tyler
Dallas, Texas
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Sunday, November 24, 1996
The weather gets nasty
A tremendous storm blew in last night, the harbinger of our first cold front of the winter. We had high winds, and violent lightning, unusual for this time of the year. About five years ago we were hit by lightning. We had only been in this house a couple of months, Nicholas was an infant, Candy was pregnant with Lee. It was about eleven at night, Candy was asleep, I was out in the living room puttering around when the storm hit. I heard about five crashes of lighting, each one closer than the last. It was, “crash, Crash, CRAsh, CRASH—BOOM!” The last one hit the house. It was odd, I was almost expecting it, the bolts seemed to be zeroing in one us, closer and closer, until finally one hit. The bolt burned out everything electrical in the house (except my old XT which was running at the time), you don’t realize how many light bulbs you have until they all burn out at once. It burned some ducts in the attic, and burned a hole in the roof of Nick’s room above him while he slept (I didn’t tell Candy about that for several days, I knew it would spook her).
Ever since this happened, we have been afraid of lightening, so neither Candy or I slept much last night.
“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?”
― Neil Gaiman
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Saturday, February 19, 2000
Too much ice cream
Nicholas had a basketball game today. They played an undefeated first place bunch of third grade kids.
The overall tenor was set when one kid showed up with only one shoe. I had noticed the fancy basketball shoes he wears before. I could hear him talking with his dad. “Are you sure it’s not in your bag?” “Sure Dad, I checked.” “He had it out last night to show Aunt Cecilia,” his mother interjected. “I told you to put it back!”
There it is, he is so proud of his shoes he pulls one out of his bag to show his favorite aunt and then forgets to put it back. His father told him to be sure and put it back without checking it personally, which is a sure disaster, as anyone with children should know. Still, you say out loud, I told you to put it back, knowing how useless and silly it sounds. The trip home to fetch the shoe took ’til halftime.
Then, about halfway through the first quarter another player on Nick’s team stumbled away from the action bent over clutching his gut. The coach and ref walked over to talk to him and suddenly the poor kid started puking all over the court. I was sitting up way high in the bleachers but still was surprised how red the barf was. I found out later that the kid was up all night eating strawberry ice cream; that explains it.
I am amazed at the speed in which a child can go from a laughing, grinning good time to “I don’t feel so good” to spewing vile vomit. It is definitely less time than it takes to pull a car over or to get a kid out of bed and to the bathroom.
They led the kid away but he still managed another good retch right in the path where folks were piling in to watch the girl’s game on the other side of the divided gym. One of the scorekeepers had to be stationed there to warn of the vomit pool and make sure they stepped around it.
The referee and the coach collected some paper towels from somewhere and started some tentative daubing at the mess. The manager of the center disappeared for awhile before returning with a yellow bucket and mop. The three started an inefficient, clumsy attempt at cleaning things up. I was relieved when Candy left the low bench where she was sitting with Lee and properly organized the work.
Men, as a rule, simply don’t deal with puke very well. Blood, they can handle, but not barf. The coach and ref were white as sheets, Nicholas, on the bench had his shirt pulled up over his mouth to stifle the stench. With Candy helping and directing it didn’t take too long before a trashcan was full of paper towels and the court was pristine again.
I saw Lee down on the bench sketching away with his crayons. After the game I checked and was disappointed that he had only drawn some dogs and aliens and hadn’t tried to capture the kid throwing up.
Nick’s team shook off these distractions and played really well. Despite some bad luck shooting they ended up winning 16 to 13.
We stayed awhile to watch the next game, a good friend was playing in it. I told him, “You missed a great game.” “Who won?” “Nick’s team did, but that wasn’t the best part.” “What was that?” “A kid on Nick’s team ate too much ice cream and puked right on the court.” “No, you’re kidding… really?” “Really.” “Cool!” was his enthusiastic opinion.
Bill Chance 