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Mr. Know-It-All

Tue, 12 Apr 2011, 08:20 PM (-06:00)

Phone home, I texted him. (I wonder if he got the reference.)

Ok soon, he responded.

Hours later he did.

We talked about his classes. We talked about his friends. We talked about the weather and his plans for next semester and for the summer. It always makes us smile ear-to-ear to hear him talk about this stuff. And we made some reference to the latest news from Fukushima.

“Oh the upgrade from 4 to 6?” he asked.

I thought he was referring to the TEPCO dithering of a few weeks ago in deciding whether the plant failure was less serious than Three Mile Island or as serious.

“No,” I said with a certain tone in my voice. “That’s from 3 weeks ago.”

I am so up on the news, you know, reading BBC and my news feeds. That news was oh so 3 weeks ago.

And then I wake up this morning to the news that TEPCO has upgraded the disaster from a 5 to a 7. Off by one, but he knew exactly what he was talking about. And Mr. Know-It-All owes his son an apology.

Running at Arbor Trails

Tue, 12 Apr 2011, 08:08 PM (-06:00)

1. What Does He Think He’s Doing?

We were eating breakfast tacos at Torchy’s, sitting outside in the sun watching people come and go, watching the traffic, watching the joggers running on the Arbor Trails trail.

I was really enjoying my bacon, egg & cheese, captivated by the taste, by the protein coursing thru my veins lifting the veil of grim that floats about me in the morning.

My brother pointed at a guy running by.

“What does he think he’s doing?” he said. “He’s not jogging. You could walk faster than that.”

I looked up and thought that I couldn’t walk faster than that, or at least wouldn’t. And I thought that at least that guy’s out there trying.

2. You’ve Been Running All This Time?

That was a little more than a year ago. Soon after my brother’s visit, I started walking short distances and then walking longer distances and then jogging, although truth be told my jogging is more like trudging, but … whatever. I am finally out there again.

In the afternoons, I’ll push the keyboard back and put on my running gear and take the dog out for a jog around Arbor Trails. Today I did 3.5 miles. And as if the jogging isn’t slow enough, the dog and I make a point to take regular walking breaks.

These walking breaks are, frankly, key. Guinness likes the chance to do some sniffing around. I like the chance to … stop jogging. It’s a little reward for getting out there.

So on our way home today, down the final stretch in fact, up the slight grade that seems to be such a drag at the end of the run, I passed a guy whom I had passed on the way out. He looked at me and smiled.

“You’ve been running all this time?” he asked. “I saw you going out, and that was a long time ago.”

He was all impressed by how long I’d been at it. He didn’t know anything about the walking breaks. Or about the trudging. And let’s just say that I let it stay that way.

I Didn’t Know That

Tue, 12 Apr 2011, 04:12 PM (-06:00)

“So, you got summer plans?” John asked me as he cut my hair.

“Actually, we do,” I said. “We just made a motel reservation in Florida for the last Shuttle launch.”

He was silent for a moment.

“What do you mean, last?” he asked.

“The last Shuttle launch. We’re going to try to see it.”

“But what do you mean the last launch? They’re stopping the Shuttle?”

“Yes.”

I was nodding. He was silent again.

“You mean for all NASA?“

I wasn’t sure how to answer the question, but I knew what he was trying to ask.

“The Shuttle flight in June will be the very last one.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. There will be no others.”

“But … how will … what about getting astronauts into space?”

“The plan is to launch them on Russian rockets.”

He was silent yet again.

“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

Too Much for the Man

Sun, 3 Apr 2011, 01:15 AM (-06:00)

It was Friday. It was evening. The week was done.

We were sitting outside on the patio at Austin Java sipping iced teas. The dog was alternately drinking from a bowl of water, sitting on the wall behind us watching the traffic on Barton Springs Boulevard, and contentedly lying in my lap.

A group of guys was sitting at a table not far from us, pointing across the street at Flipnotics and watching the cars as they drove by. A college girl was working on a research paper just across from us. Her boyfriend had given up and left a few minutes after we arrived, but she was still at it, reading papers on her laptop, sipping her tea, listening to music on her iPod. A grandmother who had just arrived was desperately trying to scrub clean the patio chairs and table before her grandson sat down.

Our food arrived.

Trudy had pasta. I had a chicken satay sandwich and mashers. The iced tea tasted really, really good. And then Gladys Knight and the Pips came on singing Midnight Train. I took a bite of my sandwich and looked over at Trudy with tears in my eyes.

She smiled.

You know, the news is so bad today. The horrible stories kicked off the front page of BBC are superseded by ones even worse. I can’t bring myself to talk about them. But…

Friday. Iced tea. Cool breeze. Good food. A content dog. And Gladys Knight.

A small, welcome miracle.

Fukushima

Tue, 29 Mar 2011, 08:49 PM (-06:00)

At lunch we talked about the earthquake and the tsunami. And we talked about the power plants and the explosions and the evacuation zones.

“Imagine if,” he said. “Imagine if it was thousands of years ago and they cut a tree down in the forest—a log to cross a gorge.”

“And imagine if the log broke and people fell and died.”

“Imagine if because of that broken log all such logs were banned in the future, and they rejected any other kinds of ingenious ways of crossing the gorge. Imagine if because people died thousands of years ago, they rejected all efforts to build bridges, rejected any effort to improve the technology, to find a better and safer solution.”

“Imagine where we would be today if that’s the way it was back then.”

He sat there staring at us over his glass of iced tea. There was silence at the table.

I sat there for a moment waiting for someone to respond. No one did.

“And imagine,” I said. “Imagine if when that log hit the bottom of the gorge it rendered that place uninhabitable for tens and tens of thousands of years.”

More silence at the table.

It’s hard to find solid information about Fukushima. It’s hard to know what is really going on over there. But it looks like things might not be going particularly well [Japan May Have Lost Race/The Guardian].

This is no mere tree falling in a forest.

A Telecommuter’s Background Noise

Tue, 22 Mar 2011, 05:05 PM (-06:00)

Years ago I worked on a team with a guy who lived somewhere in North Texas. The company was a big supporter of telecommuting, and he worked from home. Periodically he would come down to see us face-to-face, but most of the time he dialed in remotely. In the spring you could hear the Mockingbirds in his yard and sometimes his dog. That was just part of the company culture. People worked from home and were sometimes interrupted by chirping or barking or sometimes whining kids.

Today I work at a different company, and I’m the telecommuter. The kid is at college, but there are Mockingbirds and Cardinals and Lesser Goldfinches and two kinds of Wren and (alas) squawking Grackles. And you probably know that there’s a dog.

Most of the day he just sleeps. Guinness is a dog, after all: they sleep. But in the afternoons when dinner time approaches (approach being defined as two hours away), he’ll come in here all wag-tailed and ready-to-go, and if I’m not careful (on the phone) a bark will come at the wrong time.

In this job, at this company, virtually no one telecommutes. My coworkers all think it hilarious when Guinness barks. It doesn’t make much difference what’s being said, when he barks in the middle of a conversation, there’s almost always some way to imagine him offering commentary.

And so they laugh. Every time they laugh. And I wonder if my reputation suffers.

Sometimes I cloister myself in here with the door closed and the electronics driving up the temperature, giving Guinness free reign of the house and the backyard. But most of the time I just don’t worry about it. My reputation is as I do not as my dogs says, and I figure if he barks, well then … it is what it is.

Besides, there are the birds singing outside the patio door on the first day of spring. No amount of laughter can take that away.

Rummaging About in the Dark

Mon, 21 Mar 2011, 08:26 PM (-06:00)

He sat in the dark gazing out the front door, his brown eyes lit up by the lamp in the corner, his mind on something distant. Who knows what a dog thinks when he sits quietly, his eyes barely blinking, his body still. And who knows why.

I sat in the room beneath the light of the lamp in the corner, a book in my lap recounting Machiavellian observations and Borgian horrors at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. It was slow going, that reading—death, deceit, treachery, mayhem. We have come oh so far since then.

And with that, I set the book down and stood up and limped over to another lamp to brighten the room and keep the two of us from gazing rummaging about in our dark thoughts. And I came in here and read the news of bombing raids and tsunamis and nuclear power plants on the bring, something that contributed frankly nothing to my effort to brighten the room.

And then the fair and industrious Trudy came home.

Full Moon and Someday Rain

Sat, 19 Mar 2011, 11:26 PM (-06:00)

The full moon rides across a cloudless sky, closer and bigger and brighter than it has been for 20 years, casting shadows of budding branches on the ground.

The wind blows thru the branches, shaking the shadows, making the wind chimes chime.

Maybe someday it will rain.

200 Miles Away

Sat, 5 Mar 2011, 11:27 PM (-06:00)

He drove home in the afternoon; leaving behind chilly, rainy skies; looking forward to warmer blue.

He drove home after a week, drove home anxious be home, to sleep again in his own bed with his own pillow under his own blanket. But she had come down the day before to see her mother, and rather than stay the extra day, he hopped into his car and drove home on Saturday afternoon.

She stood in the driveway under grey skies smiling and waving goodbye until tomorrow. And he drove off with her standing there shivering.

After all, there were trees to plant and succulents to pot. And there was a dog to walk and a garden to water. And after all, he would be able to sleep in his own bed, propped up on a pillow reading a book with the dog curled up against his thigh.

… with her 200 miles away.

And now it was late. He was home in bed, under his covers, reading his book. He had finished several chapters and was getting sleepy. He marked the page for tomorrow, switched off the light, pulled up the covers and rolled over in his otherwise empty bed.

… with her 200 miles away.

AIrport Goodbye

Tue, 1 Mar 2011, 08:55 PM (-06:00)

It was a sunny day. The winds of yesterday were gone. The sky was blue. The air was warm. The Irises were beginning to bloom, and the leaves of some trees and woody shrubs were beginning to push out, if you noticed closely enough.

She left on a sunny day for the cold white north. She left without a coat. Needing none in the warmth of Texas, she had sent hers on ahead. What a day to leave: temperatures in the seventies under a cloudless blue sky. What a day to fly back to the thirties and snow and grey skies and leafless, cold forests on the hillsides. Without a coat.

He stood by the curb watching her walk into the airport, her purse and bag over her shoulders, her suitcase rolling next to her. Then she stopped and turned back. With a motherly goodbye smile, she waved and stood there watching him. With a son-ly goodbye smile, he waved back and stood there watching her. You go first. No, you go first.

“I love you.”

“Good bye.”