Murder Most Foul

I lived in several ramshackle apartments while I was in college. I think of it as a measure of how far I've come that I can look back on these places, places I once viewed as "quaint" or "hip" or "nice," and describe them now as "dank" and "shitty" and "Hooverville-like." It's the same sort of thing with furniture. I think everyone I know at one time or another saved a "perfectly good" piece of furniture from the dumpster. Only a college kid can look proudly upon a living room furnished with a plaid La-Z-Boy, glass coffee table, faux leather couch, wicker love seat, and Wal-Mart TV stand and think, "I am master of all I survey." It's a matter of place I suppose. When you've got no money, "nice" and "perfectly good" are negotiable terms.

The first "nice" place I lived in was a hideous box of an apartment in a sprawling complex well away from campus that was originally built as Section 8 housing. The carpets were forest green and every room was perfectly square. If a German Leggo designer had been asked to create a floor plan, this would have been it. The whole place had a prison feel. The apartment was access controlled, but with the buildings shaped and organized the way they were, 8 foot wrought iron fences surrounding the entire complex, and large grass fields separating the buildings from the fences, one got the feeling it was more about keeping the residents in as opposed to keeping any would be ne'er-do-wells out.

Of the countless ridiculous acts I witnessed or partook in at this apartment complex, the cake taker has to be the time an acquaintance of mine was propositioned by a prostitute in the parking lot of the complex. He was walking home from a bar, no doubt more than a little pickled, and did not have the mental capacity at that moment to realize what was going on. He just thought he was irresistible. After a good five minutes in flagrante de licto, my acquaintance had a moment of clarity, realized he was dealing with a pro, and, moreover, that the pro she was actually a pro he.

My next apartment was actually not bad, save for the complete lack of windows, the halfway house next door, and the attempted murder I witnessed in the parking lot when I was moving out. I knew this place was going to be great the first night I spent there. Pulling into the complex well after midnight, I was a little shocked to see two roaring blazes shooting flames out of the two community dumpsters in the parking lot. Pacing back and forth between these two gateways to hell was a well muscled, shirtless black man with a menacing look on his face clutching a pipe wrench. I guess I should have said, "I knew this place was going to be great the first night I was to spend there," but I just coasted straight through the parking lot and drove to a friend's apartment where I crashed on his couch. John Henry and the Bonfires were just a little too post apocalyptic for me.

After waaaaaaaay too many good times, a record low GPA, and countless other Animal House acts of tomfoolery, I thought I finally got it right when I found an old apartment well on the other side of town. My unit was one of four (just four!) in what looked to have been one large house built sometime around the turn of the century. I knew all of the other tenants well, the neighborhood was quiet, the unit had high ceilings and wood floors, a working Murphy bed, and most deliciously, I would be living there ALL BY MYSELF. I cannot stress how delirious with joy this made me. I loved all of my previous roommates, but the idea of having complete rule of my domain was beyond appealing.

For the first year, I was in love with the place. The commute was a hassle, but it served as an unassailable excuse when my buddies wanted to go out and I wanted to stay in. My GPA recovered its health, I witnessed no more acts of violence or prostitution, and I was generally very, very happy. Then one night I heard a noise in the kitchen. I had immersed myself in my studies in the living room (I was playing Xbox) and from the kitchen I could hear what sounded like a plastic package being opened. I pressed pause on...my studies...and listened closer. The noise continued in spurts, but was most definitely coming from the kitchen. I slowly made my way from the living room, through the dining room, and to the entrance to the kitchen where I stopped to listen again. After a brief moment of silence, the noise started again and I turned on the kitchen light. An explosion of scuffling erupted from the top of one of the kitchen cabinets over the sink and then all noise abruptly ceased.

This was not at all what I wanted to be dealing with at 2AM. My quaint apartment on the other side of town was now a quaint varmint infested apartment on the other side of town. I immediately recalled the story my buddy Mike had told me about the family of raccoons that had lived in his attic and how one of them had pawed a hole in the bathroom ceiling as his roommate was occupied on the toilet. This lead to their landlord "solving the problem" by entombing the raccoon family in the attic Cask of Amontillado style. In the following days, my buddies were serenaded by the raccoon family's starvation shrieks. After they all finally succumbed to what must have been an excruciating death, the stench of a rotting raccoon family tainted the air for many weeks to come. In Disney movies, families of critters are cute. In the real world, they get murdered by a dimly lit college slum lord and their decomposing carcasses assault your inner sanctum.

I climbed on top of the kitchen counter and peered toward the back of the top of the cabinet. Sure enough, there was a small hole in the wall and littering the top of the cabinet were old roach traps gnawed around the edges. I went immediately into panic mode. The hole was clearly only large enough to accommodate a squirrel, mouse, or rat. In my thinking, at that hour any self respecting squirrel would be sleeping amongst his collected nuts in a tree somewhere and a mouse could not possibly have the chompers to make the sort of racket I had been hearing all the way from the living room. That left one possible culprit: A rat. And said rat had been gnawing on roach traps. Roach traps?!? This meant a further few things: 1) The rat was not eating plastic for sustenance which meant he/she could only be nesting. 2) If he/she were nesting that meant he/she was expecting a family to be moving in some time soon. 3) Roach traps?!? I must have really let myself go if my potential roommate list was now comprised of rats and roaches.

I sprang into action, my mind awhirl with possible IMMEDIATE solutions to my new rodent problem. My eyes darting around the kitchen, a large, gleaming knife caught my attention. This was it! I could position myself on the kitchen counter, knife pointed motionlessly at the rat's hole, and when he/she showed its little rodent face, I would stab it in one incredibly gruesome thrust. The idiocy of this plan occurred to me only after I had been standing on the kitchen counter for a good five minutes. How could I be sure I killed the rat with one fell swoop? What if I only mortally wounded it and it escaped back into my walls to die and rot thus filling my living space with the stench of decomposing rat? What if I merely succeeded in pissing off the rat and instead of flight, he/she decided on fight? I could think of few worse things than having my face gnawed off by a recently stabbed rat. Clearly, the knife solution was not going to work.

I started to scan the kitchen again for a more effective murder implement. At one point, I noticed a book of matches and an aerosol cleaning can. I could strike a match and flame throw the rat to death. Brilliant! Again, I started to climb the kitchen counter when I realized that a flaming rat scampering through the walls of my wooden apartment would not be the best thing in the world. I could imagine trying to explain to the Fire Marshall as we surveyed the smoldering ruins of my apartment building, "Well, there was this rat, right?" In addition, there was the very real possibility that I could experience a repeat of scenario number one and be attacked by a flaming rat instead of a recently stabbed one. Clearly, the impromptu flame thrower option was not going to work either.

By this point, it was approaching 3AM and I was out of ideas on how to kill the rat. I would have to wait until morning to solve my rodent problem. But what to do for the rest of the night? I would have to leave the rat to his/her own devices. What was to prevent the rat from crawling out of my walls and getting in to my food? Or bedroom? And chewing my face off? I found a beer bottle and shoved it in the rat hole. Then I placed a heavy book behind the beer bottle to make sure the rat couldn't get out for the evening. I didn't sleep a wink.

The next morning I had to leave the apartment early to go to my work study job. After work, I had a seminar class that lasted three hours and got out at 5PM. With each passing minute of class, I imagined the rat waking up somewhere in my walls in his/her half made nest and stretching his/her little rat arms and yawning a devious rat yawn. I had to get home before the sun set, lest the rat complete his/her project before I could get to the business of killing him/her.

As soon as class let out, I sped to the grocery store and found the pest killing aisle. So many choices! At first I went for the sticky trap but then remembered my sister's own collegiate rat issue. She too had opted for the sticky trap and woke up one night to hear the rat becoming successfully ensnared in said trap. The following morning, expecting to walk into her kitchen to find an exhausted rodent with a "You got me" look on his face, she instead found a right rat arm and a left rat arm but no rat. I put the sticky trap back. The next option was the poison rat pellets. This seemed a good idea at first as it would excuse me from the actual business of killing the rat. Plus, it seemed a little more cerebral and civilized. But then I realized that I would probably wind up with a dead rat in my walls again and I didn't want to endure the whole rotting rodent thing. Eventually, I opted for the tried and true rat trap...three tried and true rat traps to be exact. Marching proudly toward the check out counter, I passed through the shampoo aisle and, remembering that I was about to run out, grabbed a bottle. While I was at it I thought I would grab some toothpaste and deodorant as well because I was pretty sure I was running low on those two things. Approaching the check out counter with my shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, and rat traps I realized why the exceptionally attractive check out girl was giving me an exceptionally revolting look. Clearly, I was a guy with a rat problem. And clearly, I had decided the source of my rat problem was a total lack of personal hygiene.

It was almost dark now and I had just made it home. In the final moments of sunlight, as the rat was no doubt waking from his/her filthy slumber in MY WALLS, I prepped the killing field atop my kitchen counter. After initially setting only one rat trap immediately opposite the rat hole, I figured overkill was better than underkill so I set all three rat traps in a semi circle of death facing the rat hole. I coated each rat trap spring with irresistible peanut butter, then, deviously, I moved the gnawed on roach traps to the opposite corner of the cabinet top. Admiring the precision of my work, I shut off the kitchen lights and took up residence in the living room waiting to hear the delicious SNAP of the rat traps doing their business.

An hour later I heard the roach traps being gnawed upon.

Impossible! I snuck into the kitchen and turned the light on. Silence. I carefully climbed atop the kitchen counter and peered over the edge of the cabinet. The roach traps had indeed been further gnawed. The tasty peanut butter and rat traps? Untouched. I was dealing with a pro. I repositioned the rat traps to IMMEDIATELY in front of the rat hole, coated them with more irresistible peanut butter, shut off the lights, and went back to the living room.

10 minutes later I heard the roach traps being gnawed upon again.

This was getting old. I marched back into the kitchen, flipped the light switch on and listened. Again, silence. Again, I climbed atop the kitchen counter and observed exactly what I had previously observed. Rat traps and delicious peanut butter? Untouched. Out of frustration, I moved one of the roach traps to one of the rat traps. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. I thought I would either finally get the rat, or I would kill the hell out of a giant roach. Again, I climbed back off the counter and shut off the lights.

5 minutes later I heard the roach traps yet again being gnawed upon. Rigoddammeddiculous!

I ran to the kitchen yelling and flipped the light on. The metallic SNAP of a sprung rat trap echoed through the kitchen and a hideous flopping and scurrying sound emanated from atop the cabinet. I froze in the kitchen listening to the gradually slowing death throes of my rat nemesis. After things were good and quiet for a few minutes I carefully climbed back on to the kitchen counter and leaned over the top of the cabinet. There, with a roach trap still clenched in his/her jaws, was the biggest rat I had ever see. Seriously, you know that rat from The Nutcracker? It was a least as big.

I decided to leave the rat king on top of the cabinet that night. Why did I do such a disgusting thing, you ask? As a warning to other rodents who might have become emboldened when this rat started nesting in my walls. I was no longer the college kid in apartment B. I was a stone cold killer and I wanted the world to know it.

Benjamin Busch Essay

I heard the author read this essay on NPR today and I was struck by how eloquently he articulated such a delicate point. It is written by a Marine responding to the recent revelation that a company that makes rifle sights for the military has, for a long while now, been stamping the rifle sights with Bible verses along with their serial number. Any point involving religion in the public discourse is rife with the opportunity for misinterpretation, reaction, and offense. I am always struck by how easily we make religion support our conquests and fight our battles without thought to how anathema the idea of killing one another is to most world religions. As a Christian I have grown to believe that the simplicity of Christ's message is its beauty, but probably also why it is so easily perverted and clouded by our own experiences, prejudices, and particular political/social bent.

At any rate, this was an interesting and touching essay and one that touches on a fundamental difference between our world and the one that is envisioned by Sunni terrorists.

Benjamin Busch was an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps. His memoir, 'Bearing Arms', recently appeared in 'Harper's' and his photographs from Iraq have been featured in 'Five Points', and 'War, Literature, & the Arts'. His newest essay, 'Growth Rings', is in the current issue of the 'Michigan Quarterly Review'. He lives in Michigan with his wife and their two daughters.

As a Marine invading Iraq in 2003, I thought we actively separated church and state from our motives.

I know that Scripture embedded in the obscure numbers on rifle scopes may seem like a small detail, and that manufacturer Trijicon likely intended no particular malice by placing biblical references on its equipment. Like, 2COR4:6, "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." There seems to have been neither marketing nor secrecy associated with the presence of these inscriptions.

But these are not innocent times, and the codes are still messages printed and sent out. These notes have now been read and exposed, and we have the baggage of explaining ourselves to people convinced that many of our actions are motivated by religion instead of self-defense, justice or altruism.

As a Marine, I aimed at Iraq through rifle scopes, my vision amplified. When viewing other cultures, even enemies, I think we should be wary of seeing them through a lens marked by religion.

The United States is fighting Islamic extremists. But we are not Christian extremists. When I returned for my second tour in 2005, we were in the embattled city of Ramadi, and we fought jihadists, tribal factions and criminals alongside almost entirely Muslim Iraqi soldiers. It was impossible to segregate the ambitions of singular religions then.

Although the rifle equipment was stamped as a private act by a private company, it was sold to governments, and therefore unavoidably and knowingly coupled with politics. Biblical quotes were thoughtfully chosen — thoughtful enough not to be allowed as innocent of larger context.

By branding weapons with Christian messages, there is a deep and ugly blending of religion, politics and bloodshed, and it has unwittingly painted our government and military with the embarrassing language of "crusade."

America is largely composed of people who consider themselves Christian, separated by various interpretations of the same book. But I did not go onward as a Christian soldier. I went forth as an American, a Marine. I was sent by my country to fight a threat, and thereafter with the best intentions of democracy, not theocracy.

Our efforts in the Middle East were complicated enough, and small symbols are examined carefully by our opponents. Based on my understanding of the teachings of Christ, he would be very disappointed to see his Gospel assigned to war of any kind in the first place.

I leave you with a verse that has not been stamped on our weapons: "But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you" — Matthew 5:44.

I (Want to) Like For You to Move!

I Like For You to be Still

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.

That Pablo...

Is it cheesy and more than a little emo to have a favorite poet? Especially a tragic Latin American poet of the unrequited loving self-destructive variety? Every time I read one of Neruda's poems and get that twinge of empathy I feel a little like someone who weeps at opera and fight the urge to slap some of the sensitivity out of myself, but in the end, it still gets me.

At one point in life, I read this and thought it was the most beautiful thing; the thought that a simple gesture from a romantic love could, in the midst of a void, swell into this crescendo of sheer joy that rescues you in glowing affection, and in some ways I still view the poem that way. In the context of everyday life with all of its cold, hard edges a smile or an unexpected expression of tenderness can be more meaningful than the most elaborate romantic plans.

But with some experience, I now view a darker side to what Neruda wrote. And I guess in the context of his life it makes a little sense. I mean, let's face it, Neruda is saying he likes to imagine his lover dead. Not much of a Valentine's Day card, is it? He's saying he likes to think of his relationship at the absolute apogee of despair. He makes himself imagine his love in the bleakest terms so that the tiniest sign otherwise becomes as huge as salvation. This all makes for very romantic expression, but it sounds like quite the roller coaster to me. Essentially, what he's saying is that he's willing to imagine his love being completely unreflected in his lover so that he can taste the delicious feeling of being rescued from his morbid imagination.

As much as I find this reading of the poem to be far from what I would want in a relationship, I have to admit, I know a great number of people who have been guilty of this in relationships, myself, unfortunately, included. How often do we create problems where none really exists and test our partners for that gesture, that smile, that word so that we feel affirmed? The thing about it, and in the way Neruda has written this poem I get the sense that he would know exactly what I'm talking about, is that simple gesture becomes addictive; once we've experienced it, we have to have that intoxicating feeling of reassurance. Neruda even says it at the end of the poem. He's happy, but not because the woman he is writing about loves him, but because she's not dead. Whatever he's built up in his head as the worst possible outcome is not true. But that feeling is just a fix, selfish even. The poem even echoes the fleeting salvation he feels. He spends the whole of the poem articulating how awful he's imagined things to be and then only gives one line to the joy of discovering they're not true. If the poem went on, he'd immediately have to start imagining things to be horrible again just to get back to that one brief moment of hollow satisfaction and, as I said before, it's not even happiness that he is loved by his partner. It's a hollow look alike for mutual love. Nothing about this is sustainable and what seemed romantic to me when I first read it seems dysfunctional now. And that's not even scraping the surface of what it must be like to be the one who is made to play dead all the time. Unfortunately, it also rings much truer to me than it did when I first read it.

Goodbye to all that. Thank you, Pablo, you're still my favorite poet, but I'd much rather commit to building something sustainable and real than wallow in imagining disaster in the hopes that the one I love will tolerate me imagining her dead so she can suddenly rescue me from despair. Maybe it doesn't make for world class poetry, but I bet it lasts longer.

Referral

I used to have this student, we'll call him Damien, who, if not number one, was certainly high on the list of all time worst students. His file from the counselor's office was dictionary thick and contained every derivative of the ADHD acronym known to medical science. Some doctor somewhere probably started making up disorders to describe Damien and, I can testify, still fell well short of diagnosing him. You name it, he did it: Tardiness, outbursts, non-existent organizational abilities, sleeping in class, total disregard for the rules, anger. Having written that, I'm sure some of my former teachers are rolling their eyes at the irony, but this kid took it to a new level.

To be fair, Damien was also an entertainer. He was a gifted athlete, reluctantly bright (bright enough to know exactly how to get under his teachers' skin), and genuinely hilarious. I can recall a number of times having to stifle a laugh before disciplining him upon overhearing Damien rag on a classmate or let loose with some completely inappropriate remark during the lesson. Still though, his antics wore on me and, as a coach, I was flummoxed when the nuclear punishment of bypassing a parental phone call and going straight to his coach failed to effect the proper improvement in his behavior.

Eventually, Damien transfered to another school in another district and the other students in his Spanish I class, suddenly free from disruption, actually showed signs of learning Spanish. But as with any problem, foisting Damien onto some other poor educator did not solve the issue. After the Christmas break, I was informed that Damien had worn out his welcome in the other school and, after a brief stint in the "Alternative Center" (this is the Orwellian name given to the lock down boot camp school in the school district I used to teach), would be rejoining my class.

I met Damien at the door on his first day back and read him the Riot Act. One slip up and he was gone. At least, that's what I told him. I had only been teaching for a few months and I had already learned that in a public school short of actually beheading another student during class and running around the room wearing their decapitated head as a hat...naked there was nothing a student could really do to get expelled. Damien nodded his understanding of the new strictures, dropped a few "yes sirs" and took his old seat. As he walked passed me into the classroom, I could see the mischievous grin spread across his lips and I knew nothing that had happened to him in the last few months -check that - years had made any change in his behavior.

Still, I was cautiously optimistic after I had finished the lesson and divided the students into work groups and Damien had not yet done anything untoward. As the students began working orally on their assignment, I settled into my desk to grade a few papers before making rounds among the groups to offer help and instruction. And then I heard it, I'm not sure if you've ever been around a large number of people taking their first clumsy steps into learning a new language, but it isn't pretty. In fact, it sounds like a room of mildly retarded children mimicking animal sounds. I can remember my mother coming to a middle school band concert I was in and, after listening to our efforts to play carols, said as politely as she could that she had never heard Jingle Bells preformed as a funeral dirge. It's like that. So you can imagine, just as an actual rooster might sound in the retard example or how a member of the Boston Philharmonic might sound in the Jingle Bells example, a native speaker speaking his native language would ring out with crystal clarity. It took me a second to process what I had heard and who had said it, but as I looked up and saw the sparkling, devilish grin on Damien's face I cursed myself for not knowing better. Damien had indeed been practicing proper usage of the preterite and imperfect tenses, but what he had said was not Spanish and was most certainly not in the book.

I immediately stood up from my desk, pointed at Damien, and firmly booted him from the class. The other students reflexively hushed and listened as I instructed him to leave the classroom and go to the Behavior Improvement Center (another Orwellian name for what was called detention in my day), a referral would be waiting for him in the principal's office. He reluctantly stood up, threw his bag over his shoulder, and muttered something as he slammed the classroom door behind him. After he had left, I called the BAC and informed them that Damien should be there in a few minutes and sat down to write the referral. The rest of the class slowly eased back in to their animal sounds and the period ended a few minutes later.

Now, as a teacher, they tell you in instances where a student has said something inappropriate that you have to write down exactly what the student said so that a proper assessment of the crime can occur. This scared me a little as I imagined the principal's secretary, a woman eerily reminiscent of my conservative, Methodist grandmother, reading the referral and immediately going into cardiac arrest. I decided it would be better to deliver the referral first to the counselor as I was going to demand Damien be removed from my class.

The next period was my lunch period. I took the time to march down to the counselor's office and deliver the referral, reading it along the way to make sure I had actually written what I knew I had.

"I want Damien Ragsdale removed from my class immediately," I said as I handed the surprised counselor the referral.

"Well, I can't just do that," replied the counselor, "What did he do," she asked without reading the referral.

"Well, he said something inappropriate."

"Well, Mr. Smith, it takes a lot more than words to remove a student from a class. The student has to have done something exceptionally inappropriate like, for instance...". The counselor trailed off as she unintentionally began to confirm my suspicions that a naked decapitation really was what it would take. "What did he say?"

I took a deep breath and, with a straight face said, "So, I was in the shower this morning, right? And I was beatin' my meat with the two handed technique. You know, 'cause my dick's so big."

The counselor stared back at me with her chin on the desk. The office that had previously been a whirring hive of activity, crowded with teachers' aides, copiers, and administrators, fell totally silent.

I continued, "And he didn't say it in Spanish."

Damien was removed from my class.

Indecent Proposal

I was driving down the interstate today and, as I passed under a railroad bridge, I looked up to see "Will you marry me Lauren?" scrawled sloppily in dirty pink paint on the iron side of the bridge. I couldn't quite wrap my mind around this marriage proposal. Who drives down the interstate in a major city, surrounded by traffic and urban sprawl, and thinks, "This is the perfect setting in which to propose to my girlfriend!"

All sorts of things seem wrong with this. Firstly, what if Lauren doesn't look up to see what you've written on the railroad bridge? This was a tollway. How do you explain exiting the tollway at the wrong exit, paying the toll, turning around, paying the toll again, exiting, paying the toll AGAIN, and driving the same stretch of highway to give Lauren a second chance at eternity? If Lauren is anything like my girlfriend, I think she'd be pretty pissed at this point to have wasted a good twenty minutes on her travels for reasons that you, for obvious reasons, cannot divulge. God help you if she misses it again.

So what if Lauren does catch your proposal the first go around? It's not like you can stop and put a ring on her finger. I mean, you are in heavy, highway traffic. Do you settle for a peck on the cheek and then pull over at the next truck stop to get on bended knee? Do you high five and keep driving? Do you pull over to the shoulder and get a picture with the bridge in the background? I can't see any good answer to the logistical quandary proposing to someone on an interstate presents.

And that's just if you decide to go through with the interstate proposal in the first place. I know a lot of women and I'm pretty sure none of them would, given their druthers, want to be proposed to via highway graffiti. It's unromantic, illegal, unsightly, and the sort of half-baked idea a high school Casanova would dream up. Which, I suppose, could have been exactly who came up with Lauren's proposal in the first place. Still, I can't imagine dangling upside down from a railroad bridge over a torrent of speeding traffic with a can of pink paint thinking, "This is gonna be GREAT!"

And what if it didn't work out with Lauren (and I have a sneaking suspicion it may not have)? Both of you, unless you're seriously committed to avoiding an entire thoroughfare, have to pass under "The Bridge" until someone puts the final nail in the busted relationship coffin, scales the bridge, and dangles back over the tollway to blot out all those bad memories. Somehow, erasing railroad bridge graffiti to mend a broken heart seems even more ridiculous than creating railroad bridge graffiti to win one.

I say that...I can think of one thing more ridiculous: The guy who thinks, "Damn, that was a great idea! All I have to do is climb up there, cross out 'Lauren,' write 'Amy,' and I'm set!"

But The Ground Pulls At My Feet

My father is fond of telling me that as you age opportunities to make "easy decisions" fast begin to fade. Clear choices get muddied by commitments and intricacies and complexities and fear. I guess you sort of wade into life, taking steps confidently, and then suddenly the shelf starts to drop off and you can't see the bottom as easily as you used to be able to and those confident steps turn into hesitant, searching probes that move farther along into deeper water. At 29, a set of floaties would be nice. Ridiculous, but nice.

I'm starting to feel stuck again. The more experienced I become (I enjoy the adjective "experienced" much more than "old") the more I realize this is a pattern with me. I'm sort of like a rock that tumbles down a hill for a while and then finds a place to rest. It's refreshing for a time, but then the lichen starts to grow and I feel uneasy. Potential energy builds up and I just want to tumble again. Sometimes the tumbling is just a slide a few feet in another direction, like moving across town. Sometimes it's crashing, bounding, underbrush shattering ricochets that last for months. Maybe it's a job change or a relationship change or a complete shift of outlook. Regardless, it's a change. The irony of it is that if you asked me where I would be most comfortable, I would tell you some place where I feel settled and content. But in saying that, I have to accept the fact that constant movement isn't the answer, especially if I indulge the rock metaphor once more and speak of movement of the tumbling variety. Who the hell can control that? Plus, there are a lot of people in my life who would suddenly need a "watch for falling rocks" warning.

Not to get too Zen (and with the naturalist wading and tumbling metaphors I'm probably already there), but I know I'm not going to get that warm, fuzzy feeling until I'm happy with where I am -and I mean that in the non geographical sense. It's just that sometimes I confuse being at peace with settling. There's a great scene in the movie High Fidelity where John Cusack's character is trying to explain an epiphany he's had about his relationship. He starts to tell his girlfriend that he fantasizes about other women and the underwear they're wearing and how he now realizes that the reason he can fantasize about them is that he never gets to see their granny panties. He doesn't really know them and in not really knowing them he's keeping himself from being happy with either another woman or his girlfriend. I suppose I'm guilty of that as well. Not necessarily with women's underwear, but with my career and my finances and my city.

So there's the challenge. That's where I am. Do I not really know where I am and just want to tumble off somewhere else because of the fantasy of it all? Or am I consciously realizing that I am not where I want to be and just need to overcome all of those complexities and intricacies and commitments and fears that age - er, experience - has encumbered me with.

Lawnmower Man

Yesterday, I saw a guy driving a golf cart around is house. He was wearing camouflage shorts, high tops, a ratty American flag bandana, and sported the tan of someone destined to die of skin cancer but completely nonplussed by that eventuality. Attached to the golf cart via the straps intended for use in securing a golf bag to the back of the cart was a push lawnmower. I suppose at this point it would not shock you to read that the lawnmower was on and that the driver of the cart was proudly operating this rig as a riding mower. This struck me as hugely awesome and reminded me of the time, when living in the Middle East, I saw a tiny Dodge Ram 50 pickup truck towing a Brahma bull down the highway via a rope tied to the bull's head and attached to the trailer hitch of the truck. The whole scene was ridiculous. The bull was clearly struggling to match the Dodge 50's speed (maybe the first time in history anything has struggled to match a Dodge 50's speed) and the driver was completely oblivious to the Bull's increasing discomfort.

Lawnmower man showed similar disregard for his attachment and bounced and skidded his way around his lawn leaving little grass mohawks and long patches in his wake. This too struck me as hugely awesome. Clearly, the advent of the golf cart-cum- riding mower had nothing to do with efficiency and quality but was instead imagined solely to facilitate laziness. This reminded me of being junior high aged and allergic to work. I remember one Sunday - chore day - hearing my dad laugh to himself in a resigned way as he was cleaning the bathroom my sister and I used. This was not a good laugh. It was more of an "I give up" kind of laugh. I poked my head in the bathroom door to see what the offending object of his ridicule was and saw him holding a toothpaste tube and shaking his head. The end of the tube nearest the opening was crimped and crushed into a twisted knot while the rest of the tube, bulging with a fresh reservoir of toothpaste, was untouched.

As I thought of this, I began to realize I had maybe once been a little too much like lawnmower man and I stopped laughing as hard as I had been previously. Then I thought of the dishes in the sink, the expired chicken wings in the refrigerator, and pile of laundry in my bedroom and I stopped laughing altogether. Then I thought maybe I could kill two birds with one stone and wash my laundry in the dishwasher with the dishes. Genius.