Speaking of ducks...

Speaking of ducks (...which I actually was in the last post, but really "speaking of ducks" is probably a pretty good conversation segue anytime. In the grand scheme of things, all of life is just an ongoing conversation about ducks, isn't it?)

Anyway, speaking of ducks, I just came across this picture on my camera from a couple months ago in Rochester and it cracks me up.

 

There's a pretty nice lake about 400 yards east of here, but these two aces picked a 1-inch-deep driveway puddle basking in the neon glow of a sketchy gas station instead.

Location. Location. Speaking of ducks. Location.
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It perches in the soul

Have you ever had a totally visceral response to something? Pure amygdala? One moment you're minding your own business, then the next moment -WHAM- you're responding to something before you even know what hit you.
Just by chance, one evening last week I walked past two things that gave me the -WHAM-, but  at completely different ends of the spectrum.

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There's a long-term rehab facility/nursing home about halfway between my apartment and the grocery store. It's a low-lying concrete building on the north side of the street, with a design clearly inspired by Soviet block countries during the Cold War. Apathy seeps from its frigid, dead walls. I usually avoid looking at it but on this particular walk I glanced up, and when I did I saw two of its inmates facing toward me.
Blank stares through bald windows, with slacked jaws and glassy eyes, like something strange and shriveled that doesn't recognize itself anymore. As though they themselves aren't sure if they're still people. It hurts to see them, it hurts to think about them, and then it hurts to feel guilty for hurting. It's the same feeling that comes slowly creeping in when I watch my mom walking with her twisting hemiplegic body, or when I pass the ICU waiting room and a cluster of people are melted into each other sobbing, except the feeling is delivered all in one jolt just by looking at that nursing home. 

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There's a memorial fountain on the hospital campus. It was built in memory of a woman who lost her brave battle against cancer, designed with a smooth mirrored water surface and floating lily pads surrounding a landing that's inlaid with lights that twinkle in the pattern of the stars that were in the sky the night the woman was born.

In May, there was a pair of ducks in the memorial fountain. In June, there were none. Then when I walked by last week, there were six ducklings swimming and bobbing around all over that fountain with reckless abandon.

WHAM. Pure dumb joy. Like a dog chasing a tennis ball or Harry Carey limbering up for the 7th inning sing-along or the kid at the top of the rollercoaster with a giddy laugh caught in her throat. It is wonderful.

And appropriately enough, the fountain is edged with this poem:

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

 

And sweetest in the Gale is heard.

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm.

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

           

- Emily Dickinson

 

The scandal that you never heard about (nor did you care)

The summer after high school graduation, I worked at Taco Bell.

(That's not the scandal.)

Even though it was the summer of The Second-Worst Haircut Ever, the Definitely Worst Unisex Employee Uniform ever, and the Newest Employee Always Has to Clean the Men's Restroom policy, I still have a soft spot for Taco Bell. I even eat there once in a while. (That's not the scandal either.)

 

Taco Bell uses cellulose to bulk up its taco meat.

Translation: Start with logs.

 

Throw them through a wood chipper.

 

Then, grind them to dust in a rotating drum full of steel ball bearings for a dozen hours. 

 

Mix that finely powdered wood pulp in with a bit of hamburger and pass it all off as meat.

(That's still not the scandal. Most people really like woodpulpmeatmash as long as you flavor it right and stir in some yummy greasylardproduct.)

Here's the scandal:
Sometime in the past month, the Taco Bell woodpulpmeatmashgreasylardproduct alchemy has been failing for some reason. The meat looks woody. The grease dribbles right out of the taco and onto your lap. The Taco Bell powers that be blame the pulp-makers. The pulp-makers retort with "Dudes, we never said this was food anyway."

The taco world is brimming with controversy and you didn't even know it.
 (((cue the ominous music)))

Weekend Blitztrip

Since there's no way to make it all the way home for the 4th of July, I drove out to my brother's in Kentucky last weekend for a quick mini family reunion.

I got in late Saturday evening. Bonnie got in even later after flying from Salt Lake to Philadelphia to Cincinnati with two kids and a bag. The two kids made it to Cincinnati with her, but the bag didn't. (More on that in a bit.)

 

We all collapsed in a tired heap on two air mattresses a little after midnight.

At dawn the next morning, I woke Bonnie up by poking her in the arm relentlessly (per standard youngest sister protocol). Meanwhile on the next air mattress over, unbeknownst to me, Bonnie's daughter Natalie was waking up her sister Lauren by poking her in the arm relentlessly (also per standard youngest sister protocol).

 

Natalie proceeded to get tragically stuck between the air beds.

Welcome to Sunday morning, kid.

 

Then we ate breakfast and smiled cheesy smiles.

 

Did some crafts and smiled cheesy smiles.

Ford stood next to his daughter, Melanie, and they smiled cheesy smiles.

Then Melanie had a startling growth spurt.

It was really rather disconcerting for all parties involved.

Then we had some quality girly time and smiled cheesy smiles.

Then the dog licked the floor. A lot.

 Bonnie's daughters discovered the wonders of a high-powered fan.

 

Okay, fine, I discovered the wonders of a high-powered fan, too.

 

 Then we jumped on the trampoline and smiled cheesy smiles.

 

Wait a second. What's that shirt Bonnie's wearing?

Could it be the oddball thing she got stuck with because she lost her luggage and had to borrow a shirt from me? coolest shirt on the planet, which she wants to wear every day from now on?



Then we had more girly time and Bonnie braided my hair with a serene look on her face.

Until the braiding got difficult, at which point she flexed her beefy biceps

and exacted her revenge finished the styling job, unfazed.

 

And then the dog licked the floor some more.

 Seriously, should we get that dog some help?

Ironic Trash

After spending the last 2 years trying to convince my parents that St Louis is a clean, safe, tranquil, idyllic place -- nothing like the trash-filled urban nightmare they imagine it to be -- the following is definitely going to be counterproductive.

 

First, when I came out of the VA today and saw this on the ground, my initial thought was that it was a sad little road-killed animal. St Louis is full of adorable little fuzzy squirrels and bunnies like a Disney cartoon.  ...except for the fact that the cute little fuzzies of St Louis unfortunately run in front of cars sometimes, whereas Bambi's friend Thumper never made that mistake.




But I digress.

It's not a sad little road-killed animal.

It's a weave, presumably torn straight from someone's head and stomped to the ground in an epic display of inner-city emotion.



Now that's the classy St Louis I've grown to know and love.

Second, another gem I found on the ground today. This might be the single most ironic piece of litter in the history of littering. It was laying on the sidewalk a few feet from a sizable stack of spent cigarette butts:

Littering the cigarette butts even though the paper asked you not to: Merely defiant.
Taking the paper that asked you not to litter and turning it into litter: Almost Kafkaesque.

 

The Circle of Life

Once again, I find myself here:

 

This time there's no bitterness; just honest sadness and if-only. Sometimes, without provocation, life kicks you in the guts and runs away laughing.

 

The last several times I was here, I eventually patched myself together again and got back out into the world.

 

The world has this guy:

I know he was out in the world last time...because he asked me out.
We're obviously soul mates.

This time, I've stared at a wall absently for a few weeks and I'm just not sure what comes next.

Suffice it to say that if I ever write another dating profile (in the distant and unthinkable future), I'm starting it off with

   "im also a leo so i got some freak in me so was up..." 



176 Feet Per Second

I went skydiving this weekend! Ergo, this post should be about an adrenaline rush.
But it's not.

Instead, it's about a little airport in a field near Interstate-55. Next to a pothole-scarred dirt road, there's a hangar with its floor covered in carpet scraps. Inside that hangar the feeling in the place is almost like a commune: bright colors, an occasional cigarette, worn-in furniture, people who aren't family but seem to know everything about each other. It's a group with inside jokes to tell and an endless supply of high-fives to give out. It's a group that makes newcomers feel comfortable and strangers feel a little less strange.

 

What's striking, though, is that they're a group of people who have mastered the art of being relentlessly meticulous while managing to seem completely carefree. Somehow in the background of all that fun (or actually in the foreground, so blatantly right-in-front-of-you that you miss it if you're not paying attention), they are laying out every line, inspecting every inch of rigging, and folding every bit of fabric perfectly. They are thinking about how my life and their lives depend on it. That's a heavy job. And they're making it look easy.


 

In my day-to-day work at the hospital, it's so easy to get swallowed into the noise of other people's pain and fear compounded by my own doubt. Sometimes, I feel absent. The joy and wonder get lost because of the intensity of what's at stake.

 

But here in the hangar, with its beat-up old couch and its barbecue grill in the corner and its rack of jumpsuits in every cornea-searing shade of neon known to man, the joy and wonder are practically palpable because of the intensity of what's at stake.

It's hard to explain, but somehow all of that accounts for why, when I stepped out of an airplane two miles above the earth and hurtled into free-fall (with a tandem instructor strapped to my back doing all the actual work), I didn't feel any fear. Instead of a rush of nervous adrenaline, it felt like a tingling wave of total calm. I felt alive, but not in the wild uncontrollable way that acts as the flipside of the coin stamped "facing death."

I felt present.