Erroneous! Erroneous on both counts!

This has little to do with this post--it just a picture of a building in the Old Market. Image via Wikipedia

I’ve already had an interesting morning. When I say “interesting”, what I mean–if you can follow the intricate language pathways to follow–is that it has been bad. In a meeting that has now taken the coveted #1 position as Worst Meeting I’ve Ever Had, not only was my own job ability mocked and ridiculed, but my publication–The Onion–as well.

Only a person of limited mental faculties would think that The Onion is, as the person with whom I met this morning put it, a “small and worthless operation”. In fact, I would go so far as to say that only a severely misinformed and moronic person would think that I am not particularly good at my job. Where then lies the hostility?

Despite my proclivity for writing about personal matters (in fact, I love writing about personal matters when they relate to books I’m reviewing or whatnot; anytime an anecdote can help my point or add interesting flavour, it’s fair game), this is not a post purely to vent. I have a lovely and amazing redhead-who-is-not-my-sister (amongst others, including my sister herself) to whom I can (and will, no doubt) exorcize my frustrations. This post, Dear Reader, is about ignorance. My inspiration for this topic came directly from my thinking about what went wrong at The Horrible Meeting.

A rather large part of my current position is client contact. You see, in order for a publication to make money, it must solicit advertisers (take notes; there will be an exam!). Much to the surprise of many, businesses typically do not seek out publications in which to run ads, mostly because–I find–business owners hate that they have to advertise.

Allow me a brief second to aside: There are very few businesses that do not, under any circumstances, have to advertise. It’s just a plain and simple fact that, after a certain point, a business of any kind needs to get their name out there. Examples of places in Omaha that don’t need to run ads, in my opinion: La Buvette, M’s Pub…and uh…that’s it. Maybe there’s one or two more, but aside from them, it’s a fact of life that one has to market.

In the interest of making contact with new potential clients, I am talking all day; every time I go anywhere, I could potentially be working. Going to bars and restaurants has the potential to turn from fun to work in .5 seconds if I see a business owner, or if someone recognizes me. I’m a pretty social guy to the outside world, but those folks on the inside pretty well know that there’s a nerdy, dorktastic homebody at my core. That said, talking to new people in social settings or in their own businesses is a fun, easy and natural-to-me way of making new client contacts. At the opposite end of the spectrum is just picking up the phone and cold calling a business. In doing this, not only is there a sort of art in getting to a decision-maker, but you oftentimes find yourself directed towards an independent agency.

Unpleasant or brisk interactions while doing this job are caused only by one of the following things:

• Being familiar with The Onion and disliking the content
• Knowing just enough about The Onion to know that we’re an alternative weekly publication, and going no further

Another brief aside: There are plenty of businesses whose marketing decision makers–agency or not–are aware of and even love The Onion, but their business simply doesn’t fit in the demographic. That is 100% fine with me. I understand if it’s not for everybody, and if you, as a marketer, are in possession of all of the facts and stats and demographic info and know it’s not a good fit, then godspeed. I have had extremely pleasant and rapport-building interactions with people and owners who get it and love it, but know it’s not for their audience.

The first bullet point there is one that’s almost impossible to overcome. If I speak to an easily offended or extremely conservative business owner who has no desire to overlook their personal objections to see how powerful the readership is, then that’s more a less an insurmountable brick wall. Despite the fact that I’ve been told that The Onion is “filth” and asked how I could “in good conscience publish this garbage”, I generally don’t hold any ill will, and in fact, I tend to set aside a little pity for the close minded. It’s interesting to note that one of a couple locations of a franchise as well known for their misogynistic approach towards wait-staff as they are for having an owl on their signage decided that we were too inappropriate a publication to distribute. How’s that for cognitive dissonance? But I digress.

The other bullet point is the one that most cheeses me, and is the one about which I write today–for it can be boiled down to ignorance. It’s been said that having no knowledge about something is bad, but having a little knowledge about something is dangerous, and that’s very true in this case. The person this morning, with whom I had interacted in the past a couple times, was not originally familiar with my product. However, the places which this person represents would be extremely (in my humble opinion) well served, marketing wise, by appearing in our pages. Their inability to look past any of their initial impressions is ignorance on the highest level. To this person, we are a fly-by-night, underground operation with papers printed on dad’s Office Depot Lasermax 5000, instead of what we really are, which is a nationally syndicated publication that also prints in New York, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Washington DC and Minneapolis–to name a few (and we also print in an extremely nice, modern facility).

Maybe we aren’t a good fit for their clients, I have to allow for that–but the fact of the matter is that, due to what must be stubbornness and what is surely ignorance, we’ll never know.

There are so many instances in modern life where people hold to steadfast, preconceived notions without so much as a nod towards the idea that those notions could be incorrect. For some, the act of being wrong or realizing they’re not as well informed as they could be is an invalidation of ones self as a professional and as a person. I’m definitely a person who likes to be right–I like to keep well informed, and I’m awfully stubborn if I think I know something that is challenged; I understand the mindset that causes such severe reactions as the one I suffered this morning. However, I’ve learned to see through that self-induced echo chamber thinking and realize that we can’t know everything. It’s why I love to learn, and it’s why I love to be taught. I long ago abandoned the idea that I know everything, and have embraced the truth that in the big scheme of things, none of us knows anything. It’s why I get so engrossed when the people in my life wax poetic about their passions and obsessions, and why I get all doe-eyed when I learn about genetic mutation.

Maybe it really struck home for me–dealing with that person this morning–because I saw for a second what I could have been on the track towards at one point: yelling at someone who was just trying desperately to allow for deeper understanding.

Despite how offended I was at some of the personal attacks on my own character and professional ability, I find myself in the position of hoping that that person simply learns how to learn.

(By the way: For whatever reason [probably because the movie is hilarious as hell] a lot of stuff from Wedding Crashers jumps into my head. For instance, the title of this post is brought to you by Vince Vaughn http://www.hark.com/clips/zbhjzpzqvm-erroneous )

This Just In

I’m settling into a rhythm at my new job, folks. I haven’t read a word of a book that wasn’t a manual of some kind in something like a week!

Big, big changes are happening within my reality across the board. It’s surreal. It’s cool. It’s a lot of thing.

I’ll be back to reading and writing in no time!

Project Foosball, Part 1

While driving back from the gym, I was struck with inspiration for a project I want to start. It will not only occupy my time, but it will help me learn some new skills and allow me to come out in the end with an awesome and fun finished product!

May I present the very, very first stage of: PROJECT FOOSBALL

As you can see, my drawing and handwriting are fantastic.

Humbled, Part 2

Cover of Freedom, if you have access to the dust cover! Ha ha!

Hello again, ladies and gents. Sorry about the severe length of time between parts 1 and 2, but, aside from my inane forced morning writing (most of which–unless its good–goes into completely private entries on this to be stored IN THE CLOUD), I’m really a sort of “when the mood strikes me” writer. Frustratingly enough for all of you readers waiting with baited breath for the next morsel of written word from Waffles Incorporated, my writing energy this last week has been funneled into staying afloat; I feel down, but I’m gonna write my way out!

Another development that falls into the good/bad dichotomy is that, due to circumstances that I foresee to be temporary, the ingenious and awesome book swapping program is currently on hold. This means a lot of things to me personally, but the way it effects you, readers, is that your long anticipated write-up of Bossypants is probably going to take quite some time. However, the “good” side has to do with the fact that I have to funnel my thoughts and feelings and whatnot into something, right? So I can only imagine more writing coming your way.

In the meantime, let’s talk about Freedom a bit! I said in part 1 that I felt “amazed, humbled, stunned and inspired all at once,” and that couldn’t be truer. I was looking forward to really kind of workshopping this book and talking a lot about it, but that opportunity has passed by until my brother-in-law reads it, so my thoughts are a bit scattered since I haven’t play-tested them.

First and foremost, what jumps out to me about Freedom is how completely mundane the plot is. If you’ve read it and found yourself having to describe the plot succinctly, you might be able to relate to the feeling of having a heck of a time summarizing it without sounding like you’re simplifying the plot. To me, that is the mark of a hell of a work of fiction. For instance, one of my other desert-island books is Richard Russo‘s amazing Empire Falls–the plot of which can be summarized as “a small town father deals with his life in a dwindling, recession-hit town in Maine.” Really, while it’s not a detail filled description, it’s not really reductive, either. Books like Empire Falls and Freedom are a great reflection of how our lives, while simple in description, are full of rich and complex detail.

Freedom is about a woman and her loved ones and how they go through, eventually realizing who they are.

I actually backspaced through several renditions of that, trying to parse out exactly what I was getting across. I don’t think that short summaries should editorialize, so perhaps I’m in danger of giving you just one man’s interpretation of the final layout, but I’m gonna go out on that limb.

So why did it inflict in my humility? For the exact reasons stated above: making simplicity into a book a reader can’t put down. By all rights, the only place one would find a bereaved and life-questioning housewife and an aging, hasn’t-changed-at-all rocker is in a soap opera (or maybe one’s own life–who am I to know?). But Jonathan Franzen is able to write these characters and give them real feelings and real thoughts; what they think and experience is so real that I challenge every reader of Freedom to not feel like Franzen was writing about you specifically at some point in the novel. In doing so–in making us relate almost 1 for 1–Franzen does a tremendous job showing us that we all have frailties, because you’re never “rooting” for the same character the whole time. Every character does things that are horrid things to do to a loved one or another person or an industry, but then they have amazingly redemptive moments; no one is a villain, just like in reality. It gives the reader a new perspective on the people in your life and makes you realize that no matter how well you know a person (or how much you love them), you can never read their mind. All we can ever do is trust: trust that our loved ones will let us in their heads.

As far as inspiring? How can any writer read Freedom and not want to write the next great American novel? There’s a trope in the “writing world” that the best writers are the best readers. I say “best” readers and not “most active” readers, because something that’s always stuck with me is the saying from a friend “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.” In that sense, writers “should” read a lot, but in this writer’s opinion, I get a lot more out of books like Freedom–books that challenge me with regards to my own life–than books like Twinkie, Deconstructed, which just taught me things in a boring way. (Allow me a quick sentence to defend my beloved non-fiction: I love non-fiction and the good stuff is exempt!)

I wanted to say a few words about the remake of Arthur starring Russel Brand, and his autobiography Booky Wook, however I think you’ll forgive me if I say that I’m not in the mood where I want to visit some subjects right now. Not because I’m trying to forget, but some things are getting put into a different filing system in my brain. However, I highly recommend seeing Arthur if you like fun and cute.

Also, a closing word on E-Readers. I was asked recently in an interview whether I was a, “Buzz person or a Woody person.” I actually had to think–I really thought about it a lot. I thought about the times in my life when I’ve felt most at peace–when I’ve felt most, I dunno, connected to something. I’m not purposefully trying to be abstruse, I’m just having difficulty describing the feeling. It’s that feeling that Whitman talks about in Leaves of Grass and what Thoreau talks about beautifully in Walden. When have I felt that sort of connectedness?

If I filter out the contentedness and calmness of a lot of interpersonal moments of the past, I settle on the times I’ve been out–away from everything. I recalled sitting on the hood of a car in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, after having driven through a one intersection town lit by the lights in the windows of a farmhouse on the corner. There was a gravel road that led to nothing, and stars for forever. If you were to ask me in those moments whether or not I would forsake technology, I would be tempted. I’m a Woody person, at my core. A romantic dreamer longing to be connected. But that doesn’t make me a luddite; I love gadgets a ton, and I love technology. But exchanging, swapping, talking and planning about acquiring physical books with an important someone opens ones eyes to the idea that there are a lot of things that are imbued with something more than their intrinsic value. When people swap books they’re not swapping objects or digital data, they’re swapping ideas, thoughts and feelings. If everyone had e-readers and only digital copies could be shared, a lot would be lost. Physical books are things that you allow you to literally breathe them in, to literally touch them, and to mentally absorb them. With e-readers, more than with MP3 players or digital movies, the soul of books are lost. It just took me a lot longer to realize that than it should have.

I’ve closed a lot of entries with quotes from the famous Nora Ephron films, mostly because I love them a lot, but also because the scripts are smart and full of feeling. As such, today’s closing is yet another.

“People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all… has happened.”

Humbled, Part 1

Let me start out by saying this: I LOVE BEING BUSY! I’ve been involving myself more and more in things that have made me feel productive again–not only outwardly, but within. It’s amazing to me how much better I feel when I hop out of my head and delve into life.

As quick side note, I’m going to post a drawing that a random coffee-shop gentleman did of me. Weirdly enough, there isn’t much more to the story than that; I returned from the bathroom, and he wordlessly handed me a drawing.

Heck of a thing, huh?

Books Read:

**

Books Acquired:

Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

Devil In The White City – Erik Larson

Arlington Park – Rachel Cusk

Well! I began typing this roughly an hour ago when I got home, but due to talking on the phone, talking on the internet, making lunch and now Liverpool v. Manchester City, I have utterly lost my train of thought!

Stay tuned because I was gearing up to write about:

• How Freedom has so far made me feel amazed, humbled, stunned and inspired all at once.
• How I want to read Bossypants very badly and why I love autobiographies
• How I plan on buying Booky Wook because I loved the film Arthur
• and why I’ve decided that, ultimately, in a 180 turn, I realized that I really dislike the idea of e-readers
  

Oh My Stars and Garters

SKYLAW!

For those of you who don’t know, the title isn’t a non-sequiter, it’s an exclamation used by none other than Dr. Hank McCoy, aka: the X-Men’s Beast. He typically uses it when he is surprised by something, or something catches him off guard.

This will not be a long post, in fact, it won’t go much more than these next few lines.

Tiny Fey wrote a memoir! I wasn’t aware of this until now. I want to read it so badly I could spit.

Bossypants

Coming to A Waffles Incorporated near you soon!

Egress, Part 2

Twinkies. Grotesquely, I crave one.

I have finally, at last, finished Twinkie, Deconstructed.

The tour-de-force rundown of the Hostess Twinkie ingredient list started out as a hell of a thing. For instance, I had no idea of how complex the production of corn syrup was, or that the reason you see various and seemingly nonsensical vitamin percentages in things like Wonder Bread is because the government enforces enrichment standards. That blew my mind. At its source, ingredients like wheat and corn are enriched with vitamins in a ridiculously complex (and apparently TOP LEVEL secret) process. The reason is, as non-toxic, non-taste effecting enrichment processes are found, government and industry officials see them as a quick and easy way to get obscure but important vitamins (like Vitamin B) into our bodies.

However, for all of the “oh, that was interesting” moments within Twinkie, Deconstructed, there are five times as many moments where my reaction was, “holy moly did I read that last paragraph? I swear I did, but damn I can’t recall anything I just read.” The problem isn’t the subject matter; the reason I bought the book in the first place was because I liked the idea of tracing the ingredients in a famously artificial snack food. However, author Steve Ettlinger didn’t seem to know his audience. Twinkie had a tendency to get bogged down in really specific details. I like knowing how the ingredients go from source to processing to production–those are the things that are interesting to me as a reader who is not a chemist or industry worker. Ettlinger decides to spend pages on $10 words and unexplained lingo, and it not only hurts the flow of Twinkie, but it hurts us, the reader.

Finishing Twinkie, Deoncstructed was an exercise in what readers have to struggle with on a regular basis: do you finish a book that you’re having a hard time getting through? My policy has as much to do with my mood at the time as it does with how much time I’ve already invested in the book. I started out with a huge interest in Twinkie, I would even go so far as to say that I couldn’t put it down for the first third. However, I realize now that I was running on external forces–my mind wanted to escape mourning and loss, and was devouring anything and everything it could grasp. Eventually, like a marathon runner, I hit a wall. After applying a complex algorithm, I determined that I had invested too much time in Twinkie to not see it through to its conclusion. Also, my determination may have had something to do with the outline of the book–its chapters follow the ingredient list, all the way down to the color dyes. Because of that, I almost felt a compulsion to see it through to the end; I wanted to understand the Twinkie in its entirety.

I’ve already taken a big bite of A Visit From The Goon Squad, so I’m about to be knee deep in good ol’ fiction. From what I’ve read so far, I think I’m going to be in for a hell of a ride. However, weirdly, I’m having trouble really getting a grip on fiction again; my mind wants essays. It’s as if I’m craving a certain type of food, but eating another–sure, it still tastes good, but it’s not satisfying.

A friend said something that stuck with me in typical me fashion: “Maybe we watch too many movies.” It was said because we were all goofing around spouting off movie quotes (a not-exactly-foreign activity to the people with whom I hang), but I’ve been doing a lot of overhaul of my mental state (I’m about a week away from choosing classes and being enrolled in college this fall), and I’ve been toying with “maybe we watch too many movies.” I love books, movies, television and all forms of media, but I wonder if this sort of fiction intolerance is a symptom of this overhaul. I’m getting myself back on the track to becoming real–back on the track to having my own life and seeing where people and things fit in around me. This is just temporary, I’m sure (I do love me some fiction), but in a way, I like it. I’ve spent a lot of my time this year not living my own life as deeply as I could have, and I’m getting a good handle on how to go about enriching myself. I’ve realized that I like where things are going, and I don’t want or need fiction to escape it right now.

To come down from lofty existentialism, I should mention quickly that, in the midst of what became one of the most fun and memorable day-long-hangout sessions I’ve had in a long time (and one in which I really did feel happy and alive and living), I acquired some new stuff from a library book sale. Also, I’ll have Franzen’s Freedom and Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs incoming.

Egress, Part 1

Cover of Eating the Dinosaur

The latest foray into the world of books is brought to you by a series of unfortunate events in my life. Due to all of those current events and my emotional/mental state, I’ve been reading something during every free second of my day, more or less. Here’s the breakdown of books since I lasted wrote about books:

Books Read:

Twinkie, Deconstructed – Steve Ettlinger

Eating The Dinosaur – Chuck Klosterman

Mr. Funny Pants – Michael Showalter

Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

The Grapes Of Wrath – John Steinbeck

Books Bought:

Twinkie, Deconstructed – Steve Ettlinger

Eating The Dinosaur – Chuck Klosterman

Visit From The Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

Sunday was the beginning of what would become a surreal, sad, uncomfortable and lonely week. This isn’t the time nor place to delve, but simply understand that there’s a reason I’ve run away into the comfort of the written word, and a reason I knew I had to buy some new books that day. I knew when I stepped into the bookstore that I needed to find some nonfiction. In times where I want to spend my time drinking coffee and pretending I’m not in reality, I don’t want to meet new characters, I don’t want to become engrossed in another life. My first stop, as usual, was the Society/Culture Commentary section, where I found Eating The Dinosaur.

I’ve been a fan of Klosterman since I heard him speak in Iowa City, and I think I may have been the only person in the audience (including the people I was with) who hadn’t read Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. In fact, I still haven’t, and my enjoyment of Eating The Dinosaur has made me realize that I really should. Friends and allies heed my call: if you have a copy of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, please contact me so I can ask you to borrow it.

Centrally, Eating The Dinosaur is my favourite type of non-fiction: a collection of essays on various topics written by a sharp author whom I enjoy. Best of all, Klosterman’s voice is the kind that makes me want to be a writer. We all have authors we love who we feel embody certain aspects of our own personalities; when we read an author we love, it almost seems like they’re talking directly to us–they make you want to listen because it feels like they understand you. Klosterman, at least in his non-fiction, is one of those authors to me. Sadly (I’m sure he’d be hugely broken up about hearing this), I don’t think he would make a top 5 list of my favourite books, but whenever I read his essays they give me a lot of momentum and keep my mind tickled, occupied and enriched; they sneak up on you with enjoyment, like a Disney animated movie.

One thing that I’m grateful to Klosterman for is making it “ok” for pop culture laden leftists nerds (like him, like me) to love sports. There’s always this expectation that people who possess Star Wars memorabilia can’t also cry because of sporting results. In fact, I’ve gotten downright astonished looks from people when they learn that, in addition to being able to give you real names of all the current Justice Society members, I can also tell you the strongest 11 for all of the English Premiere League clubs, or tell you that Ray Hamilton is a great example of the type of recruiting Ferentz can do.

Needless to say, my favourite essay in Eating The Dinosaur is the one dedicated to football. In fact, Klosterman gives us this:

Let me begin by recognizing that you–the reader of this book–might not know much about football. In fact, you might hate football, and you might be annoyed that it’s even included in this collection. I’m guessing at least fifty potential buyers flipped through the pages of this book inside a store, noticed there was a diagram of a football play on page 147, and decided not to buy it. This is a problem I have always had to manage: Roughly 60 percent of the people who read my books have a near-expert understanding of sports, but the remaining percent have no interest whatsoever. As such, I will understand if you skip to the next essay, which is about ABBA.

Then he simplifies the language he previously used to describe the aforementioned play, and it’s hilarious, but I’m not going to type the whole damn book out. However, you absolutely must read this book (I’ll swap it for …Cocoa Puffs!) if you are interested in reading about: Ira Glass, the Unabomber, Irony, Friends, or really anything. In closing my talking about Eating The Dinosaur, however, I am going to transcribe one more bit of the football chapter that clearly shows that Klosterman and I are soul mates. Feel free to replace any instance dealing with gridiron football in the quote with soccer and we’re good to go:

…My obsessional with football has risen every single autumn. I love watching it and I love thinking about it. I want to understand why that happened. I assume it is one of three explanations or–more likely–a combination of all three: Either (a) the game itself keeps improving, (b) the media impacts me more than I’m willing to admit, or (c) this is just what happens to men as they grow older. I suppose I don’t care. I’m just glad to have something in my life that is so easy to enjoy this much. All I have to do is sit on my couch and watch. It is the easiest kind of pleasure.

…I don’t know what I see when I watch football. It must be something insane, because I should not enjoy it as much as I do. I must be seeing something so personal and so universal that understanding this question would tell me everything I need to know about who I am, and maybe I don’t want that to happen. But perhaps it’s simply this: Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.

Almost on cue as I finished typing that, I was brought back down to Earth by the realities of the moment: I have to attend a wake in an hour and hug people who are crying without crying myself, and I have to stop myself from wanting to call and sing stupid songs to an answering machine…so to speak.

In essence, reading and writing let me escape, and I hate these times where I can’t. I’ll be writing about Twinkie, Deconstructed at a later time, along with all that pesky fiction.

On Death

This morning I was woken up by the sound of laughter. This occurrence is highly unusual, since for as long as I’ve been living here with my parents, I’ve had my weekdays fairly regimented with regards to mornings. 10am wake-up followed by a whole routine made up of stretching, coffee, eggs, television and showering. The fact of the matter is that lately I’d been waking up a few minutes ahead of the alarm, presumably my body’s way of telling me just how much it hates the sound of loud, static music. A partial possible contributing factor to my slightly early wake-ups is telemarketers, who seem to make a habit of calling immediately after 9am. To combat this, I decided a week ago to unplug the cable connected to the phone on the table right by the head of my bed.

All of the above has been a quick way to explain why the 4am phone call didn’t wake me, and why I was instead awoken by the laughter of my assembled family.

This morning at 4:25, my grandfather passed away. He was 87. We called him ‘Bop’.

It was quick, we were told. He was having trouble breathing for the first bed check at his nursing home, and then later on towards morning he stopped altogether. They attempted CPR, but the folks at the home were convinced that he was dead by the time he arrived at the hospital.

My parents got the phone call as he was being put on the ambulance, and they beat Bop to the ER. I learned all of this after the fact after several minutes of  in-bed listening to the conversation taking place in the kitchen several walls over. After listening a bit more and fully waking up, I ventured out to find my mother and more or less the rest of the Omaha-area clan, sans children.

“Bop’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked my mom. I knew the answer already. She nodded.

Everyone had been together since much earlier in the morning, and everything had slowed to a crawl as we waited for my dad to return from a hospital appointment for which he had been fasting (getting blood tests done or something of the like).

Today has been my first experience with the business and impact of dying, and it’s been altogether morbidly fascinating, emotional, frenetic and sad. However, everything is imbued with a sort of palpable energy. From the moment I stepped into the kitchen I knew everyone had their game faces on. It seemed so clear to me then how everyone knows what their role is whenever there’s a big life event like a death. Everyone has a purpose about them, and everyone is aware of the goal. But it’s in moments like that very first one, waiting for my dad to come back so we could go on to breakfast, that really speak the most.

Despite all being cut from mostly the same cloth–what family doesn’t have its own unique DNA to it, after all?–in these sort of ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ moments, you could really see how different people take things in. Some compensate to the point of overcompensating with humour, some withdraw inside, and others become even more terse and full of business.

I’ve had moments today, some of which are too personal for me to publish so openly, and others where I’ve been moved by everyone else’s emotion. Within the first few minutes of the day I didn’t think I would be all that effected. The Bop we children knew was never terribly open, and especially in these last years–the years where I’ve been a grown man–he has been more or less a shell of who I’m told he once was. That said, I’ve been intensely struck by the finality of death in a way I haven’t been before–oddly not even when a very close friend passed away years ago.

There’s also a surreality to a day that takes you from Village Inn to a now empty nursing home room to a funeral home to a lawyer’s office and then to a box full of photos older than your parents. All of those photos and letters contain memories: memories of love, memories of loss, memories of old friends, memories of children. These were insights into a person I didn’t know, but more than that, they were insights into being a human. They really shook me in an odd, almost (pardon maybe going over the top with language) existential way.

When I woke up I didn’t quite know how I would feel. I think I know now, after today, and I think I’ll know even more leading up to the wake and funeral: I want to gather up everyone I love and stop them from ever leaving. What I was exposed to today was not only the reality of the death of a family member, but the reality that what I might be afraid of more than anything else is losing the people I love from my life for good. How do people face that? How are my dad and his sisters dealing with not having their parents alive? I want to round up everyone I love and just keep them safe and near forever.

Prose: A Character Study

I’ve been working on this piece for some time now, and I just finished some revisions after workshopping it with a friend.

---

Beth believed in God, to begin with.

The day always starts early for the mother of two, and it always starts with quiet. The neighborhood, despite being one of the corners of a rather busy intersection, is as quiet as the snow falling in front of the still illuminated streetlights. Council Bluffs never has sunlight at 5 am, and some have argued for the existence of it at all.

The first few steps are always the most important to her, as it is with those that she gains the strength to continue on into the kitchen. A younger, less experienced denizen of the town may not have the fortitude to make it out of bed in December. But a Christmas gift from years past makes the trek easier, and much softer. Linoleum floors are one of her favourite things about the house.

Careful measuring of her coffee ensures…what, exactly? Richard Simmons and his diet routines quickly faded, but the teaspoon of sugar and 1/3^rd cup of skim milk remain constant companions to the morning coffee.

And then the Bible. Prayer.

The illuminated and memory-laded Christmas Tree in the living room, allowing itself to be displayed through the window to the street for holiday voyeurs to take in, is a sight that makes her both terribly happy and terribly sad. A quick glimpse around the faux-pine pulls memories of her now-grown children calling her “mommy” and needing her. The thought of the Christmas before, when her son carried pain in his eyes that stemmed from his heart, and the smiles he seemed to fake. Why hasn’t he learned that mothers can’t be fooled?

“Why wouldn’t he just let me hug away those tears he hid?”

She was never one to hold tightly to her kids, and only one ever went any further than a drive through Omaha. In addition to that, the family was very close. She would be seeing her daughter later that day, in fact. They would talk about their lives and they would have a good time.

But still.

“But still” is the mantra of those living in Council Bluffs.

Her husband of twenty-five years has finally arisen from their bed, and they smile at one another as he crosses the hallway into the bathroom. Her rock. Her prayers always included thanks for her husband—a terrific father, the breadwinner and her guardian. She loved to poorly sing Sonny and Cher songs to him and recite Celine Dion songs to which he hides his laughter by feigning disapproval. She also prays because she knows it takes him a few steps more than she to start his day. Retirement from a quarter-century in the military was not easy for him, nor was returning to the town he grew up in. There was no fatted calf when he returned from the world, only an ailing father and an interstate that was always under construction.

After her prayers are complete and she is enveloped in her God’s ambiance, the world seems to come alive. The sun has decided it will shine in vain. Some poets have spent their lives describing a sunrise, or the way beams strike buildings in their small towns or their big cities. Council Bluffs has the ability to swallow that light. But she looks happily out her window and past the tree and to the powdered ground and the now constant stream of cars stopping at the sign, waiting, and then hurriedly pressing their accelerators. She turns on the television.

Her husband has dressed and they chatter over breakfast eaten in the living room. He groans disapproval of her viewing choice, and she chides him mildly. It is then time for him to leave for work. They hug. A kiss, as well.

“I love you!”

“I love you, too!”

And they mean it. She thinks for a second how easy the next twenty-five years will be. Her rock.

Eventually, she, too, must leave for work. As she walks out to her car, she notices that the windshield is already scraped clean of ice. Though this happens every morning, her temperament disallows her to become used to small gestures.

She is the receptionist at the Catholic Church she attends. As close to a perfect job as possible for her at this point in her life. She once dreamed of being a flight attendant. “Stewardesses, we called them back then,” she always notes when telling the story.

As the car warms, her mobile erupts with the Carol Of The Bells, a ringtone her daughter had installed. Ringtones were not on her radar, yet she insisted to have a Christmas tune in lieu of a standard tone. She never cemented the habit of checking the caller-ID, nor did she understand the idea behind texting. Accessing the Internet on a cell phone was still a marvelous concept to her.

She knew the Microsoft Office Suite better than her husband and her daughter.

Upon opening her mobile, her son’s voice greets her. The sun is brilliant as she crosses the viaduct in conversation. He is playing at something, being a bit coy. She wonders why he is not in class. Their conversation ends as she passes by a homeless shelter. A Salvation Army store. A used car dealership.

Saint Patrick’s Catholic church is as big as ever, and she parks in the once empty lot and plods through the snow which is to be shoveled by Mr. Greene at 11:30. Mr. Greene owns a hardware store.

The door is unlocked, and Father Dave has left the door unlocked for a reason. Her son and daughter are waiting inside. The semester was over four hours away, and he is back for Christmas.

Those new to Council Bluffs can be easily overpowered by its lack of light. Those who can step from their bed to their kitchen know that light has to be searched for.

But still.