Can’t read the paper (not a problem of eyes.)

Posted December 7, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: news, News Media, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Lately I just can’t make myself read the newspaper.  Everything turns my stomach.   The New York Times especially.

I’ve even begun  to wonder whether the paper is following its ordinary lay-out; nothing holds the eye.

 This is not because the news is sad–some of it, such as the death of Elizabeth Edwards, certainly is.   Oddly, I can stand to read that story even though I  feel terribly sorry for Mrs. Edwards and certainly her children; there are elements of courage, strength, tragic loss.

Is it just me?  My over-stimulated ADD?

Or are stories laced with greed, posturing, and self-righteousness more sickening than stories about cancer? 

All the tax business, all the Wikileaks business, all the posturing, self-righteous business, all the posturing in the name of ‘small business’ business, all the greed.

I don’t think I would mind it so much if people flat-out admitted their weaknesses—if the New York Times, for example, in connection with its publication of all the Wikileaks stuff, said, “look, we want readers.”   

If the Republican leadership flat-out said, “look, we serve the rich.”   

 If Obama just said, “look, they’ve got me in a stranglehold.” 

Actually, I guess Obama is kind of saying that.  My eyes, heart, stomach, simply find it very hard to take.

 

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Behind Bars at Airport?

Posted December 6, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Drawing at Airport

Very late in life I am learning of the pleasures of airport bars.

The music tends to be a bit loud, and this time of year has incongruous Christmas connections, the little drummer boy’s “rumtumtum”, for example, humming with the thick vibration of some kind of electric bass.

But there you are.

The food’s not great, but the plane is delayed.

That line doesn’t really rhyme unless you have been in an airport bar for some time.

Which rhymes better (but doesn’t exactly scan.)

One of the great things about airport bars is that they make you exceedingly indulgent towards security checks, the pat-downs that people have recently complained about so bitterly.  (Perhaps they should have stopped at the airport bar first.)

PS– in this airport bar, which is truly an italian restaurant (that uses some awful bromated flour in pizza crust – there really is no pizza like Eastern Seaboard Pizza i.e. New York, New Haven)–there is a woman wearing a navy baseball cap that has a large rhinestone cross embossed above the brim.  She carries a Minnie Mouse doll.  (Florida?!)

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At Cross(Word) Purposes (With Elephant)

Posted December 5, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants, Stress
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Crossword In Bed (With Elephant)

When discipline has worn down, the brain is charred, but you are a purposeful sort who hasn’t quite succumbed to late night (or all night) television, thank heavens for the New York Times crossword puzzle.  I’m not talking about the Sunday puzzle, which is somehow too long, quirky and shiny (the paper stock not plain newsprint) to be truly satisfying.

I’m talking about the mundane, smudged, predictably cycled offering of the daily paper–the Monday refreshingly easy, Tuesday harder but still pleasingly finishable, Wednesday involving some gimmick or joke (the kind one hates/loves to chuckle over), Thursday just possibly doable without cheating (except for this past Thursday grrrr….), the Friday a puzzle you can sometimes manage with only a few hits of the Internet, and the Saturday (forget about it.)

Dear Will Shortz, thank you for many a pleasant hour spent without, and especially, with company.    (The crossword is a great paired activity as long as the other person will let you hold the pencil every once in a while, and, eventually, stop erasing and re-writing your E’s.)

Thank you for this activity of wonderfully-seeming purposefulness.  (How good it is for our brains!)

Thank you for this terrific way of forgetting the present moment while trying to remember everything else one has ever ever learned.

BTW, who was that shipyard worker fired in 1976?

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Yanks Re-sign Jeter (Hurrah!)

Posted December 4, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Baseball, elephants
Tags: , , , , , ,

Baseball elephants are happy.

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Benefits of Obessiveness (Visiting Parents)

Posted December 3, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants, Uncategorized
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December Eve in FL

Sometimes it’s good to have lifelong obsessions.    One of these times is a visit to parents.   My parents are, frankly, pretty undemanding.  And yet there is something amazing about how time, plans, routines slip away when I visit them.  To some degree, this is exactly as it should be, since I really am here to spend time with them, not to write (i) a novel (ii) or blog (iii) or tax memo, or (iv) to hang out extensively at the beach.

And yet…  and yet… there is also something about the atmosphere of the parental home (and I don’t think it’s just my parents’ home) that seems to crumple discipline, will, even in those moments in which we are not actively “visiting”.  (I find myself, in other words, reading old Readers’ Digests late at night.)

These are moments when even more deeply ingrained obsessive conduct is very welcome.  In my case, it’s a mania for exercise.

I’m not systematic or forceful enough for true fitness.  But I have, since my teenage years, been pretty obsessive about moving my body around every day, shaking things up, as it were.

I can’t somehow do my regular yoga practice in Florida.  Astanga yoga is a practice involving a fair amount of bouncing (jump-throughs) and it doesn’t really work on carpeting (rug burns), or concrete (fractured wrists), or even sand (sand).  (And then, of course, there’s that whole will/discipline problem here.)

But running around on dark streets lit with Christmas lights works pretty well.  Even an occasional Tree pose.

Thank goodness.

 

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Going To No Down Florida, Cold

Posted December 2, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Brrr.....

I wake up in a very chilly bedroom this morning–no heat and a big window always slides open at the top, only closing again through some precarious sill-standing and serious neck-wrenching–with a need to pack for Florida.

Ah.

There are moments when the waterlogged air and smouldering concrete of the Sunshine State really do seem to beckon.  Not to mention the deep blue expanse on hatted head, the warmth on bare arms, the crunch of Bermuda grass under Birks.

Then I read that the temperature at my planned destination (the “Space Coast”) is currently 43 degrees!

That’s not much better than my bedroom!  Where I have down!

Who has down in Florida?  There’s something about even wool in Florida that feels icky.  Sticky.  Thick.  (It’s not exactly sheep country.)

I don’t mean to be hard on Florida but, well, it’s more like fleece country.  (You know, the stuff made out of plastic bottles.)

I’ll stop.  The state is really tremendously beautiful, or would be, if you took away some of the houses and banks. drive-in medical facilities and strip malls, golf courses and SUVs, beach side condos and hotels, and even a couple of bikini shops.   (Maybe not bikini shops.)

It will also be in the upper 60s during the day, maybe even higher.

Ah.

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Julian Assange and Client-9 (Not Trojan Warriors?)

Posted December 1, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: news, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Hmmm....

What is it about pale arrogant self-anointed “bastard-crushing” men and condoms?

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, is now subject to a “Red Notice” issued by Interpol for arrest and extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on suspicion of “rape, sexual molestation and coercion.”   The possible sexual misconduct charges have arisen in connection with encounters Assange had with two different women in which a condom broke or was not used by Assange and the sex (according to the women) became clearly nonconsensual.

Does this remind you of anyone?

Maybe you have to be from New York.

I’m thinking of Client-9, Eliot Spitzer, another self-righteous accusatorial type who seemed to have a penchant for casual, and unprotected, sex.

What is wrong with these guys?

Okay, okay, this isn’t fair.  You can’t really compare Spitzer’s attacks on the New York State legislature (or CEOs) with Assange’s egomaniacal onslaughts.  Spitzer didn’t put peoples’ lives at risk.  Sure, he didn’t do much for trust in government, but he also didn’t burden diplomatic channels between nations.  (And for what, Julian?  The fact that something is confidential doesn’t actually make it secret.)

It’s also unfair to compare Spitzer and Assange on a sexual level.  Spitzer’s payments to high-priced prostitutes do not place him on a high moral plane, but they do seem to raise him several steps above rape and coercion.  Plus, in Spitzer’s case, he seems to have come around (pun intended) on the condom issue.

So, actually, these guys may have nothing in common.  Except perhaps arrogance.  And hypocrisy.  Only in Assange’s case, these seem untempered by any kind of caution, self-doubt, and also an ability to hear others’ pleas.  (Especially when it comes to the word “no.”)

Certainly, it seems unlikely that Assange will get a U.S. talk show.

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Tired at the End of November? (National Novel Writing Month)

Posted November 30, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Nanowrimo, New York City
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Horse Cart? Horse Cab? So Much To Brush Up Against

Back in New York City and find myself tired tired tired.

All that physical energy that seemed so boundless in the fresh and cooked air of a Thanksgiving break in the country now seems sadly dissipated.

What has sapped me?

The grind/stress of the job?

The lack of frolicking!?  (Unpopulated spaces somehow lend themselves to dashing and dancing in ways that don’t quite work in most urban settings.)

Or, I wonder, as I drag myself to the subway through all the faces and vehicles, bodies and clothes, concrete and glass, is it the entropy of brushing up against so many different beings and energies–all that collected history, mortar, CO2?

I could point to the end of Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month).  Am I tired simply from having scribbled and typed 50,000 extra words over the course of November?

And then I look about me on the train and see that a whole bunch of people have a slumped (non-)edge to them.    Were we all plotting throughout the past month?

(Is that why we’re plodding now?)

Did they also do Nanowrimo?

Mouse Plotter(?) on Train???

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Restrepo on Cyber-Monday

Posted November 30, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Christmas, news, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , ,

It’s amazing how our culture comes up with new spending rituals– Black Friday, Cyber-Monday, National Administrative Assistants’ Day.  Even traditional rituals seem to have whole new levels of consumption associated with them–weddings planned for years, graduations celebrated from nursery school on.

Then, of course, there are holidays that have become primarily shopping days–Presidents’ Day, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day.

On this Cyber-Monday evening, I find myself watching the very non-festive documentary, Restrepo, a movie by Sebastian Junger and Tim Heatherington, about U.S. forces in the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan.   The film documents a platoon that sets up an operation post some distance from the base camp which is named for Restrepo, an individual soldier killed in the Valley close to the beginning of the deployment.

It’s a very sad movie–so much good will, energy, and, of course, life, spent in an effort that seems doomed from the start.  (In fact, U.S. forces have now evacuated the Korangal Valley.)  The idea that American soldiers, creatures of a culture that invented Cyber-Mondays (a triumph of the insular, yet gung-ho, consumer), can persuade village elders to work against their traditional (and sometimes related) strong men is just crazy.  It’s especially crazy given the relatively short (if interminable seeming) time frame of U.S. deployment; the dual role of the military (fighters/diplomats); and the youth and cultural inexperience of many of the soldiers.

Then in the midst of the fear and digging, drawn faces, gunfire, tension, loss and profanity of the infantrymen comes repeated LEXUS commercials.  “No one ever found a gift too big,” says a voice as a beamingly groomed woman leads an incredibly clean-looking (compared to the infantrymen) guy to a huge wrapped package stationed in (alternately)   (i) a landscaped driveway or (ii) a huge and sparkling living room.  The wrapped package splits in the middle to reveal–tada!–a new car!  For Christmas!

It all has to make you wonder:  what are we doing there?  What are we doing here?

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Nanowrimo Up…. Date? (Made It Through Thanksgiving)

Posted November 28, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Nanowrimo, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

 

So, what time is it?

What day is it again?

Some day at the end of November.

Thanks have been given without unpleasant incident.  Even as I say that, my ever gloomy mind comes up with mishaps and disappointments that loomed large a couple of days ago (a child who couldn’t make it, a parent who fell en route to a video call).  Even so, the holiday came and went with no regret for never having mastered the Heimlich maneuver, and with a fair amount of tap and other dancing.   That has to count as a win.

Speaking of “winning,” I amassed today the 50,000 word count for “victory” in Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month.)  I cannot pretend to have written a novel,  but only a relatively large number of words.  This may account for the lack of ebullience, I feel today (whatever day it is).

Still, I have learned something important this Nanowrimo month:  that I, that you, that probably almost all of us, have a lot more free time and imagination than we generally think we do.

My gloomy side chimes in: ‘yes, and possibly we have a lot less time than we think as well.’    (Darn you, gloomy side!)

So, what time was that again?  Time to get going.

 

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