I'm generally okay with washing dishes. My problem, though, is that like most things, I have trouble getting started with it.
Once I get into it it's a different story. I think I actually like doing the dishes more than most folks do. It's a nice, almost meditative sort of task. Maybe that's because it's hard to do other stuff while you're washing dishes.
But getting to that point is hard for me, cause I'm very good at procrastinating. My creativity here is an asset; I can find all sorts of good reasons not to do something. It's not that difficult with dishes, though. The thing about dishes is that they're just going to get dirty again. If you really think about it, washing dishes is a never-ending task. An exercise in futility. Eventually the sink will be empty and shelves will be full, but in a matter of days it'll be the other way around.
So why bother with dishes? They'll just get dirty again.
And then if you think about it even more, there are a lot of things in life like dishes. Similar chores come to mind: laundry and keeping your place clean. You can do it, but they reverse themselves in a pretty short amount of time. Jobs work in a similar sort of way; you clock out just to clock in again only a day later. There's school. Keeping healthy: eating, showering, getting to bed, waking up. If you think about it, nothing really ends.
At first glance, this is kind of depressing. (To me at least.) There are very few things in life that are ever completely and totally done, never to be revisited again.
After too many never-ending tasks I start to crave leisure time. I like doing nothing, especially after having done a lot of things. Having a break is important.
Things get difficult for me, though, when that break starts to get really long. My body and mind tend to fall into a state of disuse when I'm inactive, like a car that just won't start after having been left to rust for a couple of years.
This is when I need to start doing things. And this is where the things that never end come in handy. They're reliable. They're doable. They're there. The dishes will never end, but at least they'll keep me from going comatose.
And so I'll do the dishes, clean my apartment. Get stuff done. And then I'll get tired of it. I'll need a break. Then I find leisure time.
Sometimes it's not just the dishes that seem never-ending.
9/19/2011
9/18/2011
Family Reunion Dream
I wake up in a big bed. It's in this room that's full of water. The bed's floating on the water. Waterbed? Anyway, I get out of the thing and trudge out of the room, though, strangely, I don't get wet.
Somehow I know that there's a family reunion going on – a Mom's-side-of-the-family family reunion. I make my way to a nearby bathroom. One of my uncles is there. He's got dirty gray hair and messy facial hair somewhere between the stubble and beard phase. (He's not an uncle of mine in real life – nor do I know anyone that looks like him – but, again, I understand that he's my uncle because in dreams things are just the way they are.)
I look in the mirror. My hair's looking a little messy.
My uncle stares at me.
"Are you trying to look like a fag with that hair?" he asks me.
I'm silent for a moment. I'm not offended, but I'm shocked by what he's said; trying to process just what exactly this guy's saying and why he's saying it.
"Uh, no," I say. And then I notice that he's wearing cutoff jean shorts. Sort of like Tobias from Arrested Development. So I say, "What about those pants?"
He glares at me. This is a low blow.
He points at his crotch.
"I lost this in the war," he says. I feel kind of bad.
And that's all I remember.
Somehow I know that there's a family reunion going on – a Mom's-side-of-the-family family reunion. I make my way to a nearby bathroom. One of my uncles is there. He's got dirty gray hair and messy facial hair somewhere between the stubble and beard phase. (He's not an uncle of mine in real life – nor do I know anyone that looks like him – but, again, I understand that he's my uncle because in dreams things are just the way they are.)
I look in the mirror. My hair's looking a little messy.
My uncle stares at me.
"Are you trying to look like a fag with that hair?" he asks me.
I'm silent for a moment. I'm not offended, but I'm shocked by what he's said; trying to process just what exactly this guy's saying and why he's saying it.
"Uh, no," I say. And then I notice that he's wearing cutoff jean shorts. Sort of like Tobias from Arrested Development. So I say, "What about those pants?"
He glares at me. This is a low blow.
He points at his crotch.
"I lost this in the war," he says. I feel kind of bad.
And that's all I remember.
9/16/2011
Things I Have Done Recently (September 2011)
Film/Video
- Made a few rough and dirty videos for YouTube, including Meditation on Crown Fountain (in Wobblevision), Assembly and Be A Man. Also Vanna, an embarrassing video from my childhood that I'm secretly proud of.
- One of my short films, Toothbrush is Jealous, will be screening at the PDNA New Visions Film Festival in Chicago. Tickets are $10.
Music
- Two new songs on my sparsely-populated SoundCloud account: I Am A Boo Cat, and C Minor Ambient. Two very different types of songs, too.
9/11/2011
Where I Was
I can't believe I haven't written about this yet.
I went home sick on September 10th. I went to the nurse with a low fever, which was just enough for my aunt to drive to the school and pick me up. I don't remember what happened the rest of that day, but I do remember that by the end of it, I was feeling pretty good – and my temperature was gone, too. But it was my mom or the school's policy (I don't remember) that if you had a temperature the day before, you'd best not go to class the next one. And so I stayed home.
I woke up at about 9:30 AM on September 11th. Upon doing that, I did what I've done for most of my life. I started my day by browsing the internet.
This was the pre-Google era, so Yahoo was one of my go-tos. And on Yahoo's front page was this big headline: WORLD TRADE CENTER UNDER ATTACK. Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn't that big. It was kind of bold, yeah, but it wasn't like it occupied the top of the page like some sort of extra-extra-read-all-about-it banner. Being kind of a precocious kid, I didn't think much about the headline. I figured it was a metaphor. "World Trade Center under attack." That means that the stock market is down or something, right?
Anyway, I didn't get off of the computer until a couple of hours later.
That's when I sat in the living room and turned on the TV. The footage of the planes crashing, the towers collapsing, was on every channel. The announcers and anchors were nowhere to be seen; it was just their voices spouting these words that didn't really mean anything alongside messages from so-called experts who were just as confused as they were. (I remember at one point one network did a live phone interview with Tom Clancy, who, as a writer of international espionage type thrillers, had some sort of qualification to be talking about what was going on.)
My mom and dad called not long after that. They were in California, supposed to catch a plane that would take them home only a couple hours after the first tower went down. They asked me if I was okay; I was. I asked them if they were okay; they said they were, but my mom requested that they be moved from their 10th floor hotel room to something a little closer to the ground. They told me that it was probably going to be a little bit before they got home. I told them that was okay.
We all seemed to realize how stilted the conversation was, that there wasn't really anything to say, so we hung up.
My aunt called a few minutes after that, on cue like my life was a television show. She told me she was going to be getting off of work early. She arrived home about an hour later with chicken sandwiches from B-Bops. I'm not sure if I've been to B-Bops since. But before she came home it was just me and the TV.
As bright as I was, I didn't really have the cognitive or emotional maturity to really realize just what exactly was going on. I couldn't really imagine how the thousands of family members and friends of the victims would be effected. I couldn't really imagine how our future as a world would be effected, nor could I even conceptualize of such a question. The reality of the situation to me was that something really terrible had happened, but I'd seen it happening over and over and over on the TV so much that it felt more like images on a screen than a terrible thing that had happened.
Eventually the images were too much for me. They finally started to weigh down on me as I tried to think about what this all really meant, hitting mental and emotional brick wall after mental and emotional brick wall.
And so I changed the channel. It was this network that I don't think exists anymore – Nickelodeon GAS, this channel where they aired nothing but old Nick game shows 24/7. I watched an episode of this show called Finders Keepers – it involved tearing a fake house apart in order to win prizes – and tried to guess whether or not contestants would win that new set of sneakers or a trip to Space Camp. It was the perfect thing to be watching then. Watching that frantic gameshow from the eighties, I felt as if the events that'd just happened would never happen.
This is what I remember most about 9/11. The brief moment that my eleven year old self completely cleared my mind of it, just for a few minutes.
I went home sick on September 10th. I went to the nurse with a low fever, which was just enough for my aunt to drive to the school and pick me up. I don't remember what happened the rest of that day, but I do remember that by the end of it, I was feeling pretty good – and my temperature was gone, too. But it was my mom or the school's policy (I don't remember) that if you had a temperature the day before, you'd best not go to class the next one. And so I stayed home.
I woke up at about 9:30 AM on September 11th. Upon doing that, I did what I've done for most of my life. I started my day by browsing the internet.
This was the pre-Google era, so Yahoo was one of my go-tos. And on Yahoo's front page was this big headline: WORLD TRADE CENTER UNDER ATTACK. Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn't that big. It was kind of bold, yeah, but it wasn't like it occupied the top of the page like some sort of extra-extra-read-all-about-it banner. Being kind of a precocious kid, I didn't think much about the headline. I figured it was a metaphor. "World Trade Center under attack." That means that the stock market is down or something, right?
Anyway, I didn't get off of the computer until a couple of hours later.
That's when I sat in the living room and turned on the TV. The footage of the planes crashing, the towers collapsing, was on every channel. The announcers and anchors were nowhere to be seen; it was just their voices spouting these words that didn't really mean anything alongside messages from so-called experts who were just as confused as they were. (I remember at one point one network did a live phone interview with Tom Clancy, who, as a writer of international espionage type thrillers, had some sort of qualification to be talking about what was going on.)
My mom and dad called not long after that. They were in California, supposed to catch a plane that would take them home only a couple hours after the first tower went down. They asked me if I was okay; I was. I asked them if they were okay; they said they were, but my mom requested that they be moved from their 10th floor hotel room to something a little closer to the ground. They told me that it was probably going to be a little bit before they got home. I told them that was okay.
We all seemed to realize how stilted the conversation was, that there wasn't really anything to say, so we hung up.
My aunt called a few minutes after that, on cue like my life was a television show. She told me she was going to be getting off of work early. She arrived home about an hour later with chicken sandwiches from B-Bops. I'm not sure if I've been to B-Bops since. But before she came home it was just me and the TV.
As bright as I was, I didn't really have the cognitive or emotional maturity to really realize just what exactly was going on. I couldn't really imagine how the thousands of family members and friends of the victims would be effected. I couldn't really imagine how our future as a world would be effected, nor could I even conceptualize of such a question. The reality of the situation to me was that something really terrible had happened, but I'd seen it happening over and over and over on the TV so much that it felt more like images on a screen than a terrible thing that had happened.
Eventually the images were too much for me. They finally started to weigh down on me as I tried to think about what this all really meant, hitting mental and emotional brick wall after mental and emotional brick wall.
And so I changed the channel. It was this network that I don't think exists anymore – Nickelodeon GAS, this channel where they aired nothing but old Nick game shows 24/7. I watched an episode of this show called Finders Keepers – it involved tearing a fake house apart in order to win prizes – and tried to guess whether or not contestants would win that new set of sneakers or a trip to Space Camp. It was the perfect thing to be watching then. Watching that frantic gameshow from the eighties, I felt as if the events that'd just happened would never happen.
This is what I remember most about 9/11. The brief moment that my eleven year old self completely cleared my mind of it, just for a few minutes.
9/06/2011
Sister to College
My sister is in college now. My parents are empty nesters. To affirm the latter fact my dad decided to buy a remote controlled helicopter for my cat.
"For your cat?" my therapist asked. "For him to drive or ride in or...?"
"For them to drive around and him to try to catch," I said.
"Got it, got it."
We moved my sister into the dorms at Wartburg College, this relatively small liberal arts school in Waverly, Iowa. Waverly isn't exactly a college town; it's more like a small town that just happens to have a college smack-dab in the middle of it. It seemed alright but I don't think I could ever live there.
Her dorm looks like a standard college dorm. Not the sort of dorm you'd see in a movie or Target catalog – it should be mentioned that that is not a standard college dorm. A real college dorm looks more like a high school locker room that was built a few stories too high. In the summer, during the move-in process, it feels and smells a lot like one, too.
At one point my dad and I took a break from lugging stuff up the stairs to walk around the campus. It was quiet. Every now and then tentative students would glance at me and smile. It took me a while to figure out why, and then I realized that they were all probably thinking the same thing: I'm going to be seeing a lot of you, so we'd best like each other. They all thought I was a student.
That's what I think, at least, as evidenced by an exchange that took place the first moment I stepped in the dorm's lobby:
GIRL BEHIND TABLE: Hi there! Have you signed in yet?
THOMAS: No.
THOMAS walks away.
You could tell the new students from the old ones from their eyes and demeanor. The old were friendly but firm footed. The new, though, were like kittens: skittish, curious, and trying to hide it. There was this weird innocence to a lot of them – most of them, really.
"There's this story about Steve Jobs, what he'd do with potential employees at interviews in the early days," I told my dad. "In the middle of the interview, he'd just drop in a weird question, like, 'Are you still a virgin?' 'You ever drop acid?' That sort of thing."
Pause.
"And I really want to do something similar to some of these freshmen. 'Have you ever smoked pot? No, wait – do you know what it looks like?"
"Please don't," my dad said.
"But they're just so innocent," I said. "What do you think they'd do?"
"I think they'd say to your sister, 'Are you the one with the weird brother?'"
We left my sister at about five or so. Hugs went all around. My dad teared up a bit, as he's wont to do when he drops off kids at college. (I know this.) And then we got in the car and went home.
"For your cat?" my therapist asked. "For him to drive or ride in or...?"
"For them to drive around and him to try to catch," I said.
"Got it, got it."
We moved my sister into the dorms at Wartburg College, this relatively small liberal arts school in Waverly, Iowa. Waverly isn't exactly a college town; it's more like a small town that just happens to have a college smack-dab in the middle of it. It seemed alright but I don't think I could ever live there.
Her dorm looks like a standard college dorm. Not the sort of dorm you'd see in a movie or Target catalog – it should be mentioned that that is not a standard college dorm. A real college dorm looks more like a high school locker room that was built a few stories too high. In the summer, during the move-in process, it feels and smells a lot like one, too.
At one point my dad and I took a break from lugging stuff up the stairs to walk around the campus. It was quiet. Every now and then tentative students would glance at me and smile. It took me a while to figure out why, and then I realized that they were all probably thinking the same thing: I'm going to be seeing a lot of you, so we'd best like each other. They all thought I was a student.
That's what I think, at least, as evidenced by an exchange that took place the first moment I stepped in the dorm's lobby:
GIRL BEHIND TABLE: Hi there! Have you signed in yet?
THOMAS: No.
THOMAS walks away.
You could tell the new students from the old ones from their eyes and demeanor. The old were friendly but firm footed. The new, though, were like kittens: skittish, curious, and trying to hide it. There was this weird innocence to a lot of them – most of them, really.
"There's this story about Steve Jobs, what he'd do with potential employees at interviews in the early days," I told my dad. "In the middle of the interview, he'd just drop in a weird question, like, 'Are you still a virgin?' 'You ever drop acid?' That sort of thing."
Pause.
"And I really want to do something similar to some of these freshmen. 'Have you ever smoked pot? No, wait – do you know what it looks like?"
"Please don't," my dad said.
"But they're just so innocent," I said. "What do you think they'd do?"
"I think they'd say to your sister, 'Are you the one with the weird brother?'"
We left my sister at about five or so. Hugs went all around. My dad teared up a bit, as he's wont to do when he drops off kids at college. (I know this.) And then we got in the car and went home.
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