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soon to be...adrift in time
Mar. 18th, 2010
02:57 am - The Bug
Been sick as a damn dog for the past two days. After getting up to drive her nurseliness home and get breakfast for the little boy, yesterday, I went back to bed until the afternoon. Started feeling better, then, so cleaned up the kitchen and made dinner.
Symptoms are flu-like and made me wonder if spending the weekend in the hotel pool might've been the source of the bug. But the little boy, who was with me for all of that and usually drinks about half the pool while coughing and sputtering, seems fine.
And as I contemplated all the things left undone, these past two days, I reflected on the self-reliant toughness of my Dutch/English forebears who let nothing keep them down because they simply couldn't do that and still survive...
Feb. 23rd, 2010
12:41 am - Disaffected Days
Two nights ago, I had one of those dreams in which our lips touched briefly and then parted. And I woke up wondering if in those moments there'd been something more than physical contact or if I'd somehow been mistaken.
Then, as the day wore on, I learned once more that there's an ambiance to dreams that can seldom be recaptured, and never held for long, in the cold light of disaffected days...
Feb. 19th, 2010
07:57 am - No Consolation
Ever since that afternoon in late summer, when my grandson and I watched the rusted, algae-covered buoys being hauled ashore at Verona Beach for the season, we've both been thinking about the day when we'd again see them, tethered and afloat, on Oneida Lake.
This winter, in Central New York, has been unremarkable for the amount of snowfall we've received, either cumulatively or from any single storm. Until recently, I'd been able to keep open a narrow walking path around the nearby high school track. And it's only been in the past week that the accumulation on the picnic table behind our house has exceeded a foot in depth. Which is nothing special in a town where the record annual snowfall stands at 193 inches.
Still, by mid-February, the perception that this has been a long, dreary winter has had ample time to build, like so much blown and drifted snow, between the walls and across the walkways of the collective subconscious.
"Poppa," the little boy would say.
"What?" I would query.
"Don't you wish it was summer so we could go to the beach again?" he would ask.
"Yes," I would answer, "I think those days were the best I've ever had."
"Yeah, me too," he would say.
Which probably says something about the way we manage to survive, those of us who live about a quarter of our lives under the winter-darkened skies of the northeast. We do it by remembering those warm and pleasant days of seasons past and by promising ourselves, and each other, that there are more of them ahead. Which is what the little boy and I have done, with increasing frequency over the past few weeks.
For myself, there's also been a sense of other things concurrent with these conversations. For instance, there's a feeling I've gotten every time I'm on a highway that heads northeast out of the city. A feeling that, in some way not yet clear, another circle is irrevocably closing, that something, within reach of my feelings but beyond my control, is finding its way toward an inevitable conclusion.
It is, perhaps, a question of existance brought into focus by the extension of my own life into its sixth decade and my father's recent passing. It is a question of history, both personal and communal, discernable to those who have both length of years and awareness of legacy.
And then, against the backdrop of these existential meanderings, came whispers of a political snowstorm of potentially epic proportions. I was scanning the news out of our dysfunctional state capital the other day, when I learned that our visually-challenged governor is considering the closure of a number of state parks as a gesture at fiscal responsibility in the face of a massive budget shortfall. It was also said that, although a final decision is yet to be made, a number of those parks would likely be in the Central New York region.
I haven't mentioned this to the little boy and likely won't unless and until it becomes clear that the burden of this supposedly shared sacrifice is to fall upon us and our shared aspiration for one more memorable summer.
Still, even if it does not, some of us will live with the understanding that someone, somewhere, another grandfather and his grandson or a single mother and her daughter, maybe, will feel their lives diminished by this means, will know with painful certainty that something has been taken from them for which the balancing of a budget in a far away place will bring no consolation...
Feb. 14th, 2010
11:16 pm - Deciding to walk
For the second time since my forced layoff from running at the track, I considered what my body has been telling me and walked my daily two miles in the snow.
Moreover, I've decided that this is what I'll content myself with - for the rest of the winter and likely for the rest of my life as well.
To be honest, I do so with profound regret. I loved the challenge of it and loved even more the possibility that I might once more do what I had done as a young man.
Because inside I'm still that person who's always needed to find and secure a place where he could win in a conspicuous way against life.
Now, however, I know that the journey can be long and I've decided that I want to be on my feet as close as possible to the end of it.
I don't plan on taking as long as my father took to get there. But I'll likely be walking from this point on...
Feb. 7th, 2010
01:10 pm - Damage
Ran at the track yesterday but taking today off due to excessive pain in left knee. Gonna lay off stretching/strengthening today for the same reason. Just giving the machine a rest.
Did do some leisurely water play with the little boy in the hotel pool. That was in the evening after his B'day party at Chuckie Cheese. He'd said before the party that he wanted to go but after seeing the birthday loot had second thoughts.
But he did go and we had fun. Late evening swim, an even later movie and then video games in the morning. Then breakfast at the Emerald, followed by five bucks worth at the arcade, and then home.
Later this afternoon, I'll be heading back out for the Superbowl Party and to drag Grandma home. Tomorrow, I'll get back on the track to start working off the damage...
Feb. 5th, 2010
01:56 am - Hardcore v. Dumb*ss
Have successfully confirmed, during the past 24 hours, that there's a fine line between being "hardcore" and being a dumb*ss.
Am also satisfied, based on same data, that being "buried under it" is a goal well within my present reach.
In the interest of not reaffirming status of d/a to the world-at-large, I'll leave it at that...
Feb. 3rd, 2010
10:39 pm - Hardcore
For the past few days, the snowfall has been light and the temperatures moderate - for this time of year in Central New York. The track has gotten a fraction of an inch or so every other day, so it remains covered.
Still, I've managed to run on it without much problem except along the east side where it's drifted in front of the home seating. In some ways it's like running on loose sand - the muscles fatigue more quickly with the extra effort needed to maintain balance.
I've decided that my goal for the spring will be to run every other lap. By the time the others come out of their winter shelters, I want to own this track - or be buried under it. Hardcore, eh?
Jan. 27th, 2010
10:54 pm - A consideration of the relative circumferences of concentric circles
During the past week, the snow had nearly all melted from the streets, sidewalks, and lawns of Central New York. Which meant that the high school track where I walk/run had been bare as well. We even had a couple of days of sunshine, rare around here any time of year, along with the warmer temperatures.
Unfortunately, I spent those days on the process of getting new running shoes. So by the time I got to the track, today, it was once again covered with snow. Still, with a little concentration, I was able to make out the lines for all eight lanes which allowed me to go back to my old routine of starting in lane 8 and walking each lane for a nominal total of 2 miles.
I say it's a nominal 2 miles because, as the math whizzes among us would point out, the farther you are from the center of a circle, the farther you're traveling to get around it. So if lane 1 is actually a quarter mile, lane 8 is quite a bit longer.
When you're walking, that distance doesn't make much difference. But when you're 65 years old and running for the first time in twenty or so years, it makes a big difference. Which is something I hadn't confronted until today because, with barely the outline of the infield to guide me, I'd added the running laps to my regimen while confined to using lane 1. And counted laps by making a tick mark, for each completed lap, in the snow beside the track.
Today, by contrast, my first running lap was lane 5 and my second was lane 1. Which wasn't really that daunting except that, as I ran, I was thinking, "Gee, I wonder if over the next couple weeks I could add a couple more of these. Maybe make every other lap a running lap, eventually."
Then I started thinking about the various walk/run patterns that would accomplish this, sticking with my old method of counting laps. The easiest way would be to make even numbered lanes my walking laps and odd numbered ones my running laps.
If I did that, and started with lane 8, my first lap would be a walking lap for warmup and my last lap, lane 1, would be a run. After which I'd be walking home for my cool-down. Except that this scheme would add up to a lot of extra running. The thought of which is not really conducive to convincing myself that I can sort of ease back into all of this.
The alternative is to abandon my current method of counting laps. So maybe what I really need to do is to start promoting my need for a lap-counting watch because, in a couple months or so, I won't be able to make tick marks in the snow for completed laps. At least not after mid-June. If our luck holds...
Jan. 25th, 2010
11:23 am - New Kicks
By the end of last fall, the tread on my Saucony running shoes was completely gone. Not to mention that several extraneous trim pieces had fallen off, been re-glued, and fallen off again during the preceding spring and summer. And the not-so-extraneous padding at the achilles tendon had been worn away before that.
Still, I hadn't given serious thought to replacing them until several recent excursions down the ice and snow-covered walkways leading to the high school track. That is to say, the several times I nearly fell on my a** because I wasn't even leaving a discernible track in the new snow.
The clincher, though, came the day after I'd integrated a second quarter mile of running into my two-mile daily walk. Several weeks prior, I'd made my last quarter mile a running quarter and, having done so with no ill effects, decided to make the fourth quarter one as well.
The next day, I felt like the ball of my right foot had been beaten with a baseball bat. My mother used to say, referring to my father, that "You can't hurt a Dutchman by hitting him in the head." Apparently the foot is another matter.
Genetically speaking, I'm only about 1/4 Dutch myself but haven't let that deter me from numerous bone-head decisions. The next day, I went back to the track and did it again. And the next day as well.
By the fourth day, I was ready to say "Uncle Dietrich [expletive deleted] Knickerbocker." I would apologize to Washington Irving for that, but he did use the family name for monetary gain and without permission.
My wife, on the other hand, would've let him off the hook if he'd just shared the money. Her reply, when I explained my immediate and desperate need for new running shoes, was that I should consult one of the catalogs where she gets free shipping on cut-rate sneakers.
You know, the ones you NEED free shipping on because you send them back 3-4 times over a period of as many weeks before you get the right fit. I'd have been a double amputee by the time I completed that process. Don't marry a nurse if you're someone who expects sympathy more than once or twice in thirty-plus years.
Finally she relented but only after I agreed to not b*tch about driving her to the casino for the third time this week. At first she tried to tell me they were offering a pair of Nike Pegasus as a grand prize on the electronic slots. But I told her I couldn't picture anyone being excited about that in a place where half the clientele is dragging around portable oxygen tanks while puffing on duty-free cigarettes. I know, another astonishing failure of the imagination on my part.
Anyway, the next day I drove to two of the bigger shopping malls in town. I first tried the Shoppingtown Mall in Dewitt because that's where I'd gotten my Sauconys at a FootLocker a year and a half earlier. But the FootLocker was gone and its former storefront was among several that now stood empty. Nothing quite as depressing as an semi-urban mall that's so obviously on borrowed time.
In fact, one of the surviving anchor stores is a Dick's Clothing & Sporting Goods. But, having been treated with an indifference bordering on contempt the last time I tried to buy shoes there, I decided not even to bother. Because I'm pretty sure I can get THAT kind of treatment without leaving the house.
Instead, I opted for the Finish Line where a young girl tried to sell me a pair of Brooks that had a curl in the toe of the right shoe which needed only a bell on the end of it to look like something worn by the fool at the court of Louis XIV. When I pointed it out, she just shrugged, put it back in the box and took it back to the stock room where even now it awaits the arrival of someone about 5' tall with big nose and feet and bells sewn on his pointy hat.
After that, I tried a couple other stores before going to the Carousel Center where I had similar luck. (However, I did meet a real salesman at the Sports Authority. This guy made a determined effort to sell several pairs of high end sneakers that had been drastically reduced because they wouldn't have sold from the trunk of the neighborhood fence on "Everybody Hates Chris.")
The next day, I decided to swallow my pride and limped into the Dick's at Shoppingtown. That was Sunday, it was early, and the sales people were actually quite nice. Probably hoping for someone to write them a decent recommendation, having seen the handwriting on the vacant walls of the adjacent wing.
Anyway, as I was perusing the various shoe displays, I came across the latest incarnation of the Saucony Excursion, the very shoe that had seen me through those painful post-surgery days when I was struggling to keep up with my daughter on our first few walks around the block.
Now, if I were a serious runner, or aspiring to be such, I might've had second thoughts. At best, though, I'm at the beginning of my running days and, being a bit older and wiser as well, I'm not quite as prone to let aspirations outrun physical and financial realities.
So I told the guy I'd wear them home and dumped my ratty-looking sandals into the box. Those would be the hiking sandals I'd bought four years before my now-defunct running shoes and had worn all over Key West, San Francisco, North Tahoe and East Syracuse. When I went through the checkout line, the girl at the register opened the box in case I was one of those white, sixty-five year old, middle-class shoplifters.
The second she opened it, I knew I'd struck a ringing blow for racial profiling. You'd have thought she had a bottle of two-dollar gin under the counter the way she dove for the hand sanitizer. After which she seemed a lot less friendly. Apparently, even in hard times, folks'll only do so much for a decent reference...
Jan. 18th, 2010
10:30 am - A conversation with the Resident Nurse after her night shift at the hospital
RN: "Did you see that young-looking security guard who walked past the car when you stopped here last night?
Me: "Yeah, what about him?"
RN: "Well, he's really, really friendly. Says hello to everyone and knows everyone's name."
Me: "Yeah, so?"
RN: "Well, I always get this feeling that deep inside he's about to explode."
Me: "Oh, brother. They don't allow those idiots to carry guns, do they?"
RN: "Nope, just handcuffs."
Me: "So, when he goes off, it'll be like, 'Hospital employee goes berserk, handcuffs dozens to used bedpan...'"
Jan. 17th, 2010
11:25 am - Euphoria
Been feeling these odd and fleeting symptoms of change recently, tiny hints, I'm inclined to think, of something momentous. Like absolution, maybe.
And then, this morning, it came to me. With my father's passing, I'm no longer the middle generation.
I'm no longer the tipping point for familial despair, the weight-bearing fulcrum of all personal and communal disasters.
I'm all about the way forward, now. I'm now absolved of all those things that being in the middle seemed to require of me.
Then again, it's a diabolical thing, this post-liberation euphoria. Because we are, after all, still embedded in the machine. Alive or dead, we are still embedded in it...
Jan. 13th, 2010
01:53 am - The weather outside is frightful... not
Just got back from bringing "her nurseliness" home from the casino. Wouldn't have been this late, but I fell asleep watching TV with the little boy and slept past the time when I was supposed to pick her up.
On the way back, she told about hearing a woman in the restroom who called home to say that she'd be spending the night at the hotel because the weather was so bad. My wife said she was about to call home to let me know but then checked outside and found it was totally clear.
Guess someone's got a gambling problem. Not us, of course...
Jan. 11th, 2010
03:09 am - Night Freight
I used to hear the night freight, as it passed through the crossing gates in Erie, Pennsylvania, at 5:30 in the morning. "Whoo-woo, Woo-woo-wooo," it would say as it raced along the corridor between Syracuse, Buffalo, Erie, and Cleveland.
I'd been hearing that sound, at varying distances, ever since I was a kid. I was born within spitting distance of the bay on Lake Erie where Oliver Hazard Perry launched his Great Lakes fleet during the War of 1812, although by my time the bones of his flagship "Niagara" had mostly rotted into silt at the foot of State Street.
After WWII, my dad moved us to West 7th Street, a few blocks back from the lake and closer to the tracks which passed through town along West 12th. Later on, when I was seven and Dad's post-war career as an accountant allowed us to move to the new Baldwin development on East 35th, we might've felt like we were finally "on the right side of the tracks," as the saying went, but you could still hear that "Woo-woo, Woo-woo-woo," every night in the distance.
After college, my first wife and I moved out of state and away from the lake that gave our home town its name. We moved to the shore of a much smaller lake, named for one of the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the nights seemed inexplicably quieter. For a while, there was just the sound of the morning tide, pulling back from the breakwall and off the stony shore.
We didn't get back to Erie much - by that time I was marching to that other drummer they talk about - only that one horrible night in early December when my mother was killed in a car accident at the intersection near where my dad was working at the time. She'd driven there from their new place up on the hill where they'd built their dream house, away from the noise of the city and with a distant view of the lake.
Afterward, his heart gone out of him, he sold the place and moved back near the tracks, to a town called Lawrence Park where GE builds the locomotives that haul the heavy freight through eastern cities and haunt our loneliest nights with their call.
My wife and I moved too, away from our lake, into the city and, eventually, away from each other. But that part of it happened over time and likely started the day we first met. And we'd been apart for over thirty years by the time I went back to Erie to move Dad out of his apartment and into assisted living.
It was the morning after that move when I noticed the call of the night freight again. I'd stayed behind in the apartment to do some final cleaning and I'd slept on the floor because all the furniture was gone, some of it to my dad's new place and the rest to other folks who needed it, including the bedroom set that he and my mother had bought when they were first married. I slept on the floor and he slept in a brand new bed and, turning restlessly, we both heard it.
After that, I came back to Syracuse and stayed away again. I had a surgery to fix my back and resumed taking care of my grandson. I called my father occasionally but resisted going back until I was told, quite bluntly, that this was probably the end.
When I did go back, about two weeks before dad died, I stayed with my step-sister's daughter whose husband, coincidentally, had worked on GE's new Evolution engine at the plant in Lawrence Park. And yeah, you can hear the night freight down there. Besides the right-of-way that nominally follows the lake shore between Buffalo and Cleveland, there's the test bed where they run the new engines as they come off the assembly line at the plant.
I took my grandson with me so that he and my dad could see each other one last time and, before we left, my dad asked to shake his hand. As they did so, I noticed that from the window of dad's hospital room we could see the masts of Perry's "restored" flagship out on the bay.
So before we left for home, that Sunday morning, we parked at Dobbin's Landing at the foot of State Street and walked out onto the pier. I'd hoped we could get into the maritime museum that's part of the new bayfront library but it wasn't opening for a couple of hours and neither of us wanted to wait.
I guess we're alike that way, the little boy and me. When the road's out there waiting, you just want to get on it. Maybe next time, I told him, but now that my dad is gone it's unlikely we'll be back there anytime soon. We did make it back for the funeral but who knows when we'll be there again.
This morning, my son had to be at work at 3 A.M. The moving company he works for was sending a crew to New York City so they needed an early start. He's supposed to be buying my dad's car, but the title hasn't been transferred yet so I had to drive him.
The rail yard in East Syracuse is fairly close to us and the tracks run behind the moving company warehouse. It was about 2:55 AM when I dropped my son off and, as I made the turn to come back home, I heard it. "Woo-woo, Woo-woo-woo." I figure it should be passing through Erie right about 5:30...
Jan. 4th, 2010
12:52 pm - Hot
For the longest time, my son has been saying that he wants to move to a warmer place.
Lately, I've become convinced that he's gonna get there.
I'm just not sure that he has a clue about how hot it's gonna be...
Jan. 2nd, 2010
09:14 pm - Colder Still
The snow plow just rumbled past the house without slowing down, stopping, or blowing its horn. Which must mean that daughter Sarah moved her car in time to be on the right side for alternate days parking.
When I stepped out on the enclosed front porch to confirm this, the snow which had earlier been tracked inside crunched like broken glass under foot. Damn, it is cold.
And will be colder still when I drive out at midnight to pick up the resident nurse at work. I think they call it "overtime" because, over time, you forget why the f*ck you're going through this bullsh*t...
Jan. 1st, 2010
07:23 am - A less-than-original-thought wrapped in a borrowed cliche
With my father's passing, there exists one less voice to articulate the lives and hopes of what others have called "The Greatest Generation."
Dec. 29th, 2009
06:47 am - fine print
some things
are apparently worth nothing
unless they are won
at significant cost:
such terms
must be someplace
in the proverbial fine print
when we sign on
(so, next time,
just be kind
enough to grab my
pen away)...
Dec. 20th, 2009
12:54 am - Some Hope of Being
Started for the track late Friday morning and after walking about a block decided I hadn't dressed well enough for the 12-14 degree weather. And I knew that if I was feeling it on the way to the track the wind would push that kind of bone-chilling cold right through me once I actually got there.
So I headed back to the house to change into a heavier base layer, add another pair of socks and maybe get out my fleece cycling pants. But when I got to the house I realized I didn't have time for all that before picking up my grandson at school, etc. Besides which I'd been feeling guilty about skipping my other exercises the past few days.
Dunno why but I've felt really exhausted some days. Part of it's getting up at night to use the bathroom and some of it's from sharing a room with my grandson. The little boy kicks and fidgets in his sleep and I often wake up to make sure he's covered and that he's breathing OK. (He has asthma.)
I'm not sure that's the whole of it but, between being tired and having to fit things in around five other schedules, I've been opting more frequently to do either the walk or the stretching/strengthening. Problem is, I'm not gonna reach the goals I've set for overall fitness and readiness for work (should that opportunity present itself).
Anyway, I've decided I have to get back into the stretching and strengthening so that's what I've done for the past several days. In the meantime, the tree is up and decorated (bah-humbug), the presents have been shipped to the west coast and the house, except for the kitchen, is a wreck.
I've also been signing checks for my dad's estate, gathering the necessary documents to sell his car to my son, and cooking a meal here and there. Given that I've never pretended to be a multi-tasker, life has increasingly felt like a struggle to survive with the outcome seriously in doubt.
And every so often I drift away to one of those places like Key West where I ply the intercoastal highway on a Can-Am Spyder and otherwise work at what I had some hope of being some thirty or so years ago...
Dec. 11th, 2009
06:08 am - Within You and Without You
Two days ago, when I walked down through the woods beside the golf course and out onto the frozen surface of the high school track, it was covered with about three inches of fresh snow. It was early afternoon and no one else had been there, none of the other fitness walkers who most years persist in this madness until the snow is simply too deep to be walked in.
Last year, I was determined to be among the last of them but there was always the same diminuitive set of athletic shoe prints rounding the track before me until the day I finally decided that my lungs were just too totally f*cked to continue.
In the spring, it was the same thing, "ms. tiny two-shoes" had been there ahead of me and continued to be there first until the snow finally melted off and I could no longer tell if she was still laying down tracks just to torture me.
To my knowledge, I never actually saw her and always wondered who she was. There were, of course, a number of women using the track over the course of the year. There was the middle-aged blonde with short-cropped hair who arrived each morning in a white Camry convertible and never smiled and never spoke. Also the slender, tanned and uber-athletic brunette who smiled twice and said hello once.
Why remember these things when I admittedly have trouble keeping track of laps? Maybe it's just that sense that, as the song says, "Life goes on within you and without you..."
Dec. 9th, 2009
10:01 am - Yeah, the Music
OK, so it sounds like slightly bluesy elevator music. But I really liked whatever was rolling with the end credits in the 1987 movie "Forever, Lulu." Didn't even see the movie, which co-starred Deborah Harry, but liked the music. Wouldn't necessarily buy the movie to watch the end credits but, yeah, the music...
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