Poetry & Blindfolds

Ah, Friday.  That magical day of rituals.  I have never been one to say ‘thank god it’s Friday’ – and not because my personal belief system is secular.  After all, I say ‘oh shit’ without having to necessarily believe in excrement.  No, I have simply found ‘thank god it’s Friday’ to be the weary moan of a working class that I cannot identify with.  I work when I work; I don’t when I don’t.  To champion a deity’s input for a five-day workweek followed by a two-day respite is absurd.  I have never been the type of employee to cheer the end of a working day, nor am I one who delights in seeing how many employees can fit in an elevator at 5:01pm.

 

Efforts to chip a crack into the sadness that has dominated my mood over the last fortnight have been met with quasi-success.  I’ve taken to grabbing books at random from my bookshelf in the morning en route to the train.  As a result, I have read respectable segments of Henrik Ibsen’s final play, ‘When We Dead Awaken’,  as well as the journals of Sylvia Plath.  Remind me never to recommend books to those who are depressed.  For some reason, though, I have found slivers of comedy in choosing such maudlin, distressed pieces by such beautifully damaged people during a time of personal sadness.

 

A brief note on Plath’s journals: I love her voice, I hate Ted’s.  Ted Hughes, her husband, was a principle editor of Plath’s journals, and as a result, his British overbearing is felt in most entries.  “I dislike Ted sometimes because he has a tiny [omission].”  That’s not a direct quote, mind you, but merely an illustration of why a former spouse is not the best choice for editor of the writings of his dead wife.

 

A further brief note on Plath’s journals: it is fortunate or unfortunate, but I tend to write in the style of the last author I read for a few hours, so I apologize if this entry is paraphrasing Plath’s style too keenly.  Too keenly?!  Yeh, I said it. 

 

I have also taken to bringing my Mac to work and forcing myself to have full-hour lunches.  Usually my lunch hour lasts as long as it takes to get food and bring it back to my desk; I occasionally think that I am an ideal employee because of it.  Rare lunches, no ‘thank god it’s Friday’.  Still, if management notices such behavior, they are experts at keeping it to themselves.  But I digress.  I have been writing and recording an album of trance-like music (if for no other reason than I never tried) on my Mac.  So, this week, I have hidden away in the corner of my workplace’s library and spent an hour tweaking, editing, chopping and channeling.   The results have been pleasing to the point where I had to share some with the wife, poor thing.

 

When my worldview becomes so coal-black that sadness becomes a bit of a comfort, the best I can seem to do is squeeze it for all its worth and hope a diamond comes out the other side.  Still working on that.  In the meantime, I’ll continue reading Plath’s diaries and maybe pick up a few hints (preferably not involving stoves).

 

 

 

 

 

I confess I was looking forward to 2010, if only so I could write a piece about how much I disliked 2009. Three weeks into the new year, I have had to euthanize my cat, say goodbye to one of my closest friends who is transplanting herself to California, and help another friend say goodbye to his mother, who passed away last week. I almost miss the soul-draining debacle of 2009.

 

Nowadays, I feel hollowed out like an old tree. In the elevator at work, I used to enjoy hearing the conversations of friends and colleagues on our way up or down. Now I hear not their words but my imagined intentions behind the words.

 

“I’m acknowledging I know you,” I hear one person say.

 

“I acknowledge I know you, too,” says another.

 

“I am asking how you are, with the least amount of interest,” says the first.

 

“I reply with the shortest answer possible,” comes the reply.

 

“Here’s a platitude,” says the first with a chuckle.

 

“I acknowledge I heard you, with a slight chuckle myself,” says the second. “Well…”

 

The doors open and one exits.

 

As an extension of this imagining, I also feel equally uninteresting and dormant. My regular 9-to-5 is increasingly brutal, with my duties becoming increasingly mundane and those I work with increasingly incompetent. Even a task of order 2 packs of legal pads comes with a tug-of-war.  “How about if I send you one and we’ll see how long that lasts?” my contact in Purchasing states.  I’m not sure if they have a shortage of paper, or they think I’m merely trying to horde legal pads, but I cannot for the life of me understand why any tug-of-war has to exist at all.

 

And I think of my colleague, who noted, ‘you’re quiet lately.’  When I respond that she, too, has been quiet, she says, ‘I’m busy.’

 

And I think of another colleague, with whom I had a good rapport.  I suggested grabbing coffee during the afternoon sometime; she said she didn’t drink coffee.  I suggested lunch.  She said, ‘maybe’, and never talked to me again.

 

And I think of a former colleague.  Lorraine and I were great friends back in the late 1990s and early 2000s; she did marketing and I made jokes.  We lunched often.  Talked deep about everything.  Advice and martinis.  After years, I ran into her recently.  “Lorraine!  OMGz!  How are you?”  She looked at me, screwed up her face, and said, “Wait a minute… …. … … Steve?”

 

And I think of theater.  My 5-to-9, if you will.  My fifteen years of producing, directing, writing and acting have seemed to earned zero dividends. I never have been able to gather a team, or at least a dedicated team – I know quite a few artists who are on numerous teams, which isn’t unlike a guy with ten wives. For me, I am just as much of a solo artist as I ever have been. I suppose I could be completely in it for myself, but that defeats the purpose of any theater work, at least for me.

And I think of a guy I worked with for years in theater.  We had a good relationship; he used to make me uneasy and I used to squirm.  It worked quite well - until I make a joke about him which, once related to him by someone else (in great high-school drama-club style), and he disappeared.

 

When I head out for lunch, I find myself disappointed and depressed as well.  After I order what I want, which I do because I know what I want, I am ambushed with a series of questions, asking what other product I want.  These dialogues, all ending with me saying ‘no’, have gone from surprising to amusing to irritating to unavoidable and trivial.  I sometimes speculate how more often I would go in __________ Restaurant if only I didn’t have to justify my choice in food.

 

And I think of the distraught woman and her son who accosted me while I was taking an infrequent cigarette break.  She just needed $8 to get her and her boy home.  I gave her $10.  And then watched her accost person after person, asking the same thing.

 

And I think of a friend of mine, who contacted me two weeks ago suggesting we have a beer.  Just what I needed, I remember thinking.  He just had to check with his missus to find a good day.  Never heard back.

 

And I think of the US.  Madness.  The conservatives constantly belittle the liberals, as if that was more important than anything else.  And the liberals fight back.  And these people are the leaders of the country.  Again, it’s gone from surprising to amusing to irritating to unavoidable.  And I find that very sad.

 

Even my personal attempts to expand and enrich haven’t met with much success. I recently found my 14-year-old niece on Facebook and sent her what I thought to be a kind note. I made the point of saying I had followed her progress for years and was happy there was someone else in the family who liked performing. She never responded, but her mother – my sister – did, shooting me with the same passive-aggressive tomfoolery that made no sense, the kind our father was known for (“curious you were not interested in her for the last 14 years” she wrote to me). I don’t get it.

 

It seems like life is winning a battle that I didn’t sign up for. It would almost be worth it if some incredible inspiration was borne from all of this. I reach out to my muse, who sends me a note:

 

“I acknowledge I know you, too.”

 

 

 

 

 

In 1997, when I decided it was time that my cat Johann Sebastian could use a buddy, I went to the nearest pet shop that had a pun as a title, in this case, Paws 4 Thought.  There was a new litter of Russian Blue kittens up for adoption, so, being unable to decide among them, I decided to use the New Age philosophy of letting the cat decide to adopt me.  One kitten found me quite interesting, and an hour later, Johann and I had a new roommate.

 

I couldn’t figure out what to name him for a long time.  The cats I had in adulthood all had musical names; before Johann Sebastian, there was Wolfgang Amadeus (or “Foofus” as it eventually devolved into), who went on to live on a farm and terrorize rodents.  But what to call this little gray, pointy-tailed, wide-eyed little kitten?  Ludwig?  Andy Gibb?  Somehow, I stumbled on Anonymous.  Anonymous had written some great songs, as well as a book or two, not to mention he was a great contributor to the arts.  It stuck.

 

Anonymous was feisty from Day One, wanting to play with and then fight Johann.  Johann would tolerate his antics for a while, and then, almost as an afterthought, kick his ass.  Eventually, the two became good friends, with Anonymous being Johann’s muscle, especially when I moved in with my girlfriend Tina and her two cats, Hunter and Zoe.  And in Johann’s declining years, Anonymous stepped up and took care of his elder feline with a lot of care.  Oftentimes, I would return home and find Anonymous spooning Johann.  They had a great bond.

 

When Johann died, not long after my relationship with Tina also died, Anonymous and I were on our own for a while.  He still maintained his role as second-in-command, waiting after food was poured to let Johann decide which bowl to eat from, sleeping slightly towards the foot of the bed.  Eventually, he seemed to accept that he was The Cat.  He was marvelously behaved and very social.  When he was being a bit evil, all I had to do was say ‘you know!’ and he would make a whispery ‘eh-eh-eh’ sound, like cats do when they look at birds or squirrels.  And his name inspired a series of nicknames: Not-a-mouse, Not-a-bus, Not-a-buscuit, etc., all of which he responded to.

 

When Jennifer and I got together, Anonymous found himself faced with two MORE cats in the figure of Nicky and Holly.  Nicky and Holly are as close as Johann and Anonymous were, only I always felt a little bad that Anonymous was sort of left on his own.  He sparred with Nicky and was the dominant cat for a while, then Nicky was, then Anonymous was.

 

About a year ago, Anonymous got a little sick and then a little sicker.  Perhaps it was because he was on his own a bit, or perhaps his breed was prone to more ailments, but 2009 saw his health slowly and gradually decline along with his weight, until December, when he just chose to lay around.  He even found a place in the closet to be far away from everyone.  His face changed, and there was part of him I didn’t recognize anymore. I knew what was up with that, and so did Jennifer, though she always tried to maintain a brave, positive face on the situation.

 

This morning, January 16, 2010, I had to let my second cat go.  And, like that Saturday morning a few years ago on which I had to let Johann go, I feel sad and relieved.  Tears come almost at random.  I’m trying to focus on certain memories, hoping they will stay put and not vanish over time.  It’s a silly exercise, as Anonymous and Johann, more than any photo album, represent a huge portion of my life.  The memories will fade, but they remain a part of me.

 

Thank you, boys.  Thank you for being wonderful.  It’s been my privilege to know you.