Rory Cheatam Walks a Scrawny Dog

Rory Cheatam took the dog for a walk, on behalf of his mother. She
called up to him from the kitchen where she was reading a newspaper, her voice as high-pitched and straining as it was in his memories of adolescence. Groaning, he shoved himself into a pair of leather boots and lumbered down the stairway. He took mind of the pictures hanging on the walls as he stretched a sweater over his back and lanky arms. He had knocked down so many. Heading into the kitchen, he eyed the target of his disdain. The dog sat under the table, with its tail curled and its head lowered. To one side rose a wall of draping pink fabric, a nightgown, a soaring tower of cotton and polyester which, to the dog, must have seemed like the walls of a cathedral or perhaps the cliffs of Dover. Rory eyed his mother as well. She sat there, with her glasses slipping down her nose, a handsome nose, and her small mouth pursed and moving somewhat, mouthing the words she was reading. A handsome face and a beautiful woman, even in her old age. She didn't look up at him.

He grabbed a leash and a small plastic bag and headed for the door. Opening it, he felt a rush of cold December air. The dog followed, obediently.

Obedience wasn't the problem with the dog, Rory could admit that. The dog was frightfully obedient. Too obedient. Morbidly obedient? It made him uneasy. Living things should have more control over their lives. Or at least more of a free spirit. Rory shook his head. What do I know? He thought to himself, and crossed the street, the dog trotting faithfully beside him.

It took a long time for the dog to relieve itself. So long that it caused a bit of an existential crisis. Why am I walking this dog in the first place? Rory looked down and hated it when the dog looked back at him. How did it know that I was looking at him? He was probably listening to the vertebrae in my neck move. What a little son of a bitch. He probably thinks he's walking me.

"Jokes on you," Rory called out, surprisingly loud. "I'm walking YOU." Ahead of Rory, an old lady paused in her garbage can processional. She stared at him. "Good evening!" Rory exclaimed in a very clear and slow voice, with lots of emphasis on each syllable. He had no clue if she was hard of hearing, but she had the clear and sharp eyes of someone who had developed hawk-eyed vision in compensation for some other sensory deficit. She was probably hard-of-hearing, Rory concluded and it wasn't until he was two blocks away and the dog had carefully selected the rusting yellow carapace of a fire hydrant as the final resting place of its sacred reservoir of urine that a single faint thought echoed through Rory's mind. I should really help that lady with her trash cans. He headed back, but when he got to her house she was gone and the lights were out, and the night sky above the streetlights started to fill with large flakes of snow.



Here's a picture of my car in the snow. I've named this car "Susan B. Anthony, Champion of Women's Suffrage".

Unmanmade

I had a nightmare two nights ago, and I would like to describe it here, on this blog. It seems an appropriate place, and I haven't posted in awhile so here goes:

I woke up at 7:30 in the morning clutching my pillow and my mattress tightly and my eyes were tearing and my heart was pounding. I remembered the dream vividly and I still remember it. It was an anxiety dream in the truest sense, and my subconscious most likely conceived it as an unintentional by product of issues yet to be dealt with. In the dream, I was still in college. All of my friends had graduated and I had the distinct sense that I was alone. Not in a physical way; I was surrounded by happy and energetic young students, but in an emotional way, and I felt like I was part of the scenery, an immobile and inanimate object framing the collegiate experience of others. I suppose that I felt like a ghost, now that I think about it. Yes, a ghost. Anyway, I had to get to class and I couldn't remember what building it was in and I was running across campus, flying really in the way that ghosts tend to, and I remember thinking that this is it, this is the end, the death of everything I've known and all of the people I have met and all the experiences I have had, all melted and drained into an inaccessible abyss or, worse yet, packed onto a super sonic rocket and propelled far beyond my reach, maybe into orbit around a better planet somewhere. I gasped with fear at the notion of everything I loved going missing and I awoke with my eyes tearing and my heart pounding as I said before.

Here's a photograph of me in New York City:

Baby Come Back

I don't play video games anymore and I can't remember the last time that I made a YouTube video. Yet I keep finding killer montage songs! In other news, my new car is working marvelously, and I'm having a lot of fun playing paintball with my friends. My students are doing well and I don't dread going to work in the mornings. I'm listening to great music and I just finished season 3 of Downton Abbey. What else could I possibly hope for at the juncture of my life?

Here's a picture I took of an autumn road in Connecticut. Walgreens tried to ruin it. They only made it better.

Before the Rise of the Oceans

I bought a new car. I bought a used car. I replaced my old car with a newer, older model. A car with more room in the back. A car with less cup holders. A car with better air conditioning. A car with worse radio reception. A car with a cassette player. A car without a CD player. A car with all four tires attached to their respective rims, and two working catalytic converters still attached to the under body and not scattered in broken pieces on the ground and a rear passenger quarter panel that is not crumpled and broken and slightly imprinted with the logo of a Suzuki XL-7. I'm also trying  to sell my motorcycle. I got a great deal on the car. I think I will lose money on the motorcycle. Hopefully everything will end up in the middle. That seems to be the tendency.

Here's an interesting photograph that I took of a lamp:

Cliffs and Cliffhangers

The last three weeks have been a whirlwind. Getting into that car crash has turned out to be a bigger inconvenience than I ever imagined, although I am continuously reminding myself that I was lucky I didn't get hurt. Losing my car has been a hassle, but a sort of frustratingly bland hassle, the kind of hassle with a strong undercurrent of consumerism, the kind of hassle which is probably experienced in its purest form in the United States. Of course I must buy a new car to replace the functionality of my old car. When I bought my first car, I was accompanied by my mother. Now, on my most recent outings to inspect potential candidates, I am accompanied by my father. It is a giddy and exciting rush at the beginning. The whole situation is charged with a sort of masculine bravado; my father and I fighting against the forces of lemons and flakes.

Sometime during our journey, usually between the first and second cars, the attitude changes. I am along for the ride and my father is driving. He is in his element in the absolute fullest sense of the word. He brings dirty dip sticks close to his nose and smells engine oil, he rubs transmission fluid between his fingers, he crouches low and inspects undercarriages. I occupy myself with the struts; I lean on the back of the car, pressing my weight down and feeling the slow compression of the suspension, my whole body is tuned for the areas of friction, of slow movement, of unsuspected sounds and sensations. I run my hand over the rubber gaskets which seal the windows, I test headlights and air conditioning units. Together we are inspecting a car, but only in the sense that we are both inspecting the same car. We stay on opposite sides. If I get to close to him as he circulates, I'll back away and talk to the seller.

Old drunks, migrant workers, a woman who is probably high. A ripped receipt for a Dunkin Donuts. An empty plastic wrapper that used to house packets of dry soup mix. A pair of shoes. Our vehicles are very real manifestations of our minds. The insidious, the hideous, the haunting, the beautiful and fragmentary pieces left to flutter in the void of our subconscious. We leave things behind in our cars when we sell them. Do we leave things behind in our minds when we die?


Here is a photograph I took of a rock face on a recent hike with two of my friends. I've included one of them in the shot near the base of the cliff to add a sense of scale, depth, and the often-missing human element

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Weekend in the woods

This weekend I traveled to Vermont in a too-small car with three of my friends. We stayed at a small and old cabin in the woods which served to protect us from the rain and little else. The accommodations were wonderfully primitive and after a long day of hiking and playing paintball I felt exhausted but in a righteous and wholesome way. I have started a new job and there are many uncertainties in my life, but I am certain that I would like to experience a cold Vermont morning in a creaking and faded cabin more often than I have in the past.

Here are some photos from the trip:

The end of an era

Today a woman fell asleep at the wheel of her car and drove through a red light, slamming into my car as I was driving across the intersection. I saw her silver SUV out of my window a half second before she hit, and I knew with absolute clarity what was about to happen. She hit me on the passenger side of my car near the back, which is probably the best place to get hit by a car, not that getting hit by a car is ever something you desire to have happen. The force of the impact crumpled the rear quarter of my car and spun me around so that I was pointing exactly towards where I had come from.

I walked away with no injuries. I'm so incredibly sad to lose the car. I visited the wrecking yard today to clear out the rest of my belongings. There wasn't much there, a few photographs in the glove box, an ice scraper, and a beach umbrella in the back.

This was my first car. And the beach umbrella was once shared with someone important. And I also remember using the ice scraper on a frigid February afternoon to extract my car from the frozen slush of a college parking lot. And the photograph is creased in the middle, but I look happy in it and I can still feel her in my arms when I wake up in the middle of the night. And she was the first person I wanted to call when I opened my door and stepped onto the smoking, rubber-stenched pavement and I couldn't hear anything.

Here are two photographs I took for the insurance denizens:

Tall trees

Still heartbroken, I bought a paintball gun. This seemed like an appropriately masculine response to the situation. I am fortunate enough to have friends who have the same ideas that I have. This is a rare thing. I brought my paintball gun to them and they brought their paintball guns as well. And together we hiked into the woods and explored. We traced the path of a trail, an abandoned relic of the infinite days of early puberty. When I returned, I had a conversation with another friend. She told me about words in other languages which do not directly translate to English. One of those words seemed especially relevant. Waldeinsamkeit is a German word describing the cathartic sensation of being in the woods and being thoughtful. There seems to be a delight and a purity to exploration and I want to seek it out and be comfortable finding it in myself.

Here's a photograph I took of the hills of Connecticut.

Two aces

My heart was broken and I started cleaning my room. My cleaning strategy relies heavily on sorted piles. I wish it didn't, but its all I know. In one pile was camping equipment. On the top of this pile sat a confident backpack. I retrieved camping items from around my room and shoved them into this backpack. The backpack didn't seem to mind. In the top pocket there was a rigid presence. I unzippered the zipper and peeked inside. A deck of cards. When I opened the deck, two aces toppled from the top. I paused to remember. Two aces for a magic trick long forgotten. Two aces sitting on the top of a deck inside of a forgotten backpack, now repurposed. I stared at the cards and reflected on my life and choices and paths cut short. I could have been a magician. With enough time and training, anyone could be a magician, I suppose. This realization is slow and non-intuitive. I placed the deck of cards back into the top pocket of the backpack and rezippered the zipper.

Here is a picture of chickens that I took recently:

Mass centralization

For the first time in several years, arguably since before I left for college, all of my stuff, my material possessions, are located in one place. Moving from New York was stressful but ultimately positive and cathartic, and I am going to enjoy the process of consolidating and minimizing my life. My next step: get my motorcycle insured and registered at the DMV! I've got some trips to take...

Here is a photo that I took of a restaurant on Cape Cod:

The silent song

I went to the doctor today. The doctor was new to me, but he had obviously been doing his job for a long time because his office was very humble. He had a good bedside manner and I was relieved when he told me that I was in good health. I told him: "Thanks for the external validation," and he laughed.

Here's a picture of a cool tree from two streets over. I suspect it has been in this town longer than the doctor.

Move along

Today was a productive day. I woke up and cleaned my room and some other parts of the house, and then headed outside where I braved scorching heat and humidity to paint the gas tank on my motorcycle. This is my second attempt at painting this, and I hope it goes better than the first. The key to a good paint job is good surface preparation, latex or neoprene gloves (to prevent oil on your hands from touching the surface), several light coats, and a light sanding between coats. I decided to paint the gas tank a dark metallic blue, which is fitting because blue is usually the color of Suzuki racing bikes. Everyone can dream!

I also got a chance to hang out with my friend Sean who I haven't seen in several months. We went to the beach and flew kites and skipped stones, although I only have photographic proof of the first activity. I'm stilling lugging my new camera around everywhere I go, and I have made an impression on most of the people who have seen it. Life certainly looks different through the viewfinder! I'm ordering chemicals this week so that I can begin to develop photos on my own. This will save money (definitely) and put me in control of the whole process (potentially).

I'm also going to include some photos of my weekend on the lake with a few friends. The boat is a "testament to American excess", but it was really fun to ride in and I wasn't paying for the fuel which was an extra bonus.

I can't take my eyes off of you

One of the things that I miss, well perhaps miss is the wrong word (yes, it definitely is), more like intrigued at the appearance or in this case disappearance of, is music. I use to listen to so much music. Maybe its a generational thing. Or perhaps its just growing up. I've moved through too many computers, and my Windows Music Player library became a smaller iTunes library became a smaller playlist on my mp3 player became a smaller playlist on my smartphone became listening to Pandora became listening to the occasional music video on YouTube.

I'm not too sure what happened. I've moved music from something I "own" to something I "use". At the same time, I've increased the amount of music that I play and create myself. All of this together doesn't sound like a bad thing at all, but I still feel like there is something missing and when I listen to my old songs I am hit by a wave of nostalgia.

In other news, I have decided to take some time this summer to learn more about photography. I was inspired to pick up a cheap film SLR camera from Amazon and experiment with taking pictures using manual controls. My first three rolls of film turned out pretty well. Which sounds self-serving. Suffice it to say that I was impressed with the results I was able to achieve with relatively modest equipment. And by modest, I mean a $20 camera with some cheap Fuji film. Getting someone to develop it was the hard part, but Walgreens has proved to be a time machine of sorts. I'm also looking into buying the chemicals and equipment to develop film on my own which save a lot of money (90%) as well as provide an intriguing level of control and creativity over the whole process. Plus, its fun to learn something new. Here's some of the photos I took over the last week:

The walk to work

The man walked down the street. As he walked, he stuffed his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. A scraggly looking cat with long gray hair stared out at the man from underneath a pick up truck. The truck had chrome wheels and a dented side panel. The street was grey as well.

The wind was always strong in the morning, and the man lowered his chin to his chest and hunched against the cold air. He hunched and hunched until he no longer resembled a man, but rather a shapeless moving pile of clothing. As he walked, small drops of water began to hit the sidewalk. This was a spring rain, but it was early spring, and it was too cold to be pleasant. The man continued to walk.

He turned onto a quiet street with houses on both sides. In this area of Queens, cars were allowed to park on both sides of the streets, and so the man walked down a tunnel lined with houses and cars on both sides. The cars began to look like houses, and the houses disappeared.

Over his left shoulder, the man carried a medium sized khaki bag. The only notable feature of the bag was a water bottle sticking out from underneath a folded cloth cover.

As he walked, the houses changed gradually. At first, they were well kept and orderly. As he walked, they began to fall into a state of disrepair. The houses seemed to stay in place it was just the quality of the houses that changed. As he walked, the houses grew worse and worse. Finally, when it seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, they started to get better.

Now these houses were covered in blue and white paint. And they seemed much better than before, and the small weed-covered yards were filled with cracked clay planter jars, and there was at least an attempt to grow flowers. And the beauty of this short row of trying-to-be-nice houses stood in stark contrast to the not-trying-so-hard houses on the previous street. The man stood straighter as he passed these homes.

Now, more cats were staring at him. And a few children were staring out from between the blinds on the windows facing the streets. The children looked briefly and then, without removing themselves from the window, would turn their necks and look inwards and some unseen figure, most likely parental. And this unseen guardian or legally responsible individual would say something to the children, although it was impossible to hear. And the children would say something back, also impossible to hear. But it was easy to see their mouths moving.

Actually, the response of the children affirmed the possibility of the unseen parent inside the house. And this possibility solidified into a probability and then froze in place as a reality. The man did not turn to see this. The man had seen it many times before. The children used to look for longer, but now they only glanced outside of the window briefly when the man walked past. And then they turned back into their homes.

The only people left watching the man were the cats. The cats never turned back into their homes because their homes were underneath cars and pickup trucks. It is hard to imagine turning around in something that has no walls. 

Thursdays

I was struck by something recently; the realization of how dramatically different my life is now. Rereading old posts, I came across a self-searching expose on the meaning of life (#42/515). In this expose was a hidden gem: "I think I will read a lot today."

This may seem completely innocuous to you, but WAIT! There's more! The post was dated from January 2009. On a Thursday. A Thursday! The fourth day of the work week! The day before Friday! My Thursdays now are fantastic simply because they are one of the few days (along with the illustrious Friday) when I have no after-work obligations. And my Fridays have been historically spent in migration. So, when you talk about relaxing, Thursdays are really where its at. I cannot imagine waking up on a Thursday and commenting, "I think I will read a lot today." My commentaries usually involve, "What will I teach my students today?" or "I wonder how many empty plastic bottles I will be able to kick on my walk to work?"

I love reading and I fear that I have not done enough of it during the last seven months.

My life, as I have known it, is ending later today.

The empty vacuum waits just beyond the reaches of 9:00PM.

What strangeness sits on those distant shores?

Can I read books there?