Elvis in Winter
Elvis in Winter
The Elvis impersonator that waves the sign for “Joe the Jeweler Buys Gold” is gaining weight. There is snow piled up all around and his ski cap is pulled down past his sideburns.
While still on The Daily Show, Steven Colbert interviewed this Elvis, pointing out in his dry way, that he was singing into a magic marker and making other points about this singular individual. I love humor, and have misused it more than I want to consider, but news programs, especially fake ones especially fake ones I like, should make fun of politicians and celebrities and not strip bare those of us who need our layers.
A makeshift Elvis outfit, the sunglasses, sideburns and most of the hair rounds out the look. His minimized gyrations on Rt 38 didn’t stop traffic, but neither does his pitch for “Joe the Jeweler Buys Gold”. Joe probably gives him a paycheck of sorts.
In the summer, he is usually in front of Weber’s on Rt 38, posing and singing to the traffic, his mother used to sit in a lawn chair suggesting what poses to strike. Someone gave him an old microphone, I don’t think it mattered to his mom. Traffic would go by, some would honk and wave.
I don’t see his mom with him anymore. I wonder if she’s too old now or the weather’s too bad or worse.
This Elvis makes me wonder. How do we latch on to who we are? How do we define ourselves? What leeway do we have? How can we change and move on? Why can’t some of us negotiate our outcome or change our narrative? And how blessed are those that can?
It’s hard to strike a pose wearing a sandwich board. It’s like selling out: I’ll practice my art and do what you want also and get paid But art doesn’t work that way. Whether it’s one of the Wyeths, the Beatles or this Elvis. Singing into a magic marker on Rt 38 is one thing: wearing a sandwich board and singing is another.
Same Old New Year
North Third on North Third Street
New Year’s Day brings with it a generally bloated, hung over, glassy eyed, shouldn’t I be doing something sort of feel. Not for me, my son slept over last night, but in general.
It also brings a sense of a fresh starts and higher hopes, gym memberships, promises to loved ones, commitments to do better and grow and live and have fun. It brings change and decisions and new beginnings.
I think that’s why it can also be a bit of a downer of a day. First, for many of us the real fun is the night before and for many of us, the day after is, well, the day after – the beginning of the hard slog, the dip (already?), the real work, our last day off before getting back to it. There’s also the ages old argument that with every beginning comes an ending. When we say hello to something we want to make part of our life, we often have to make room for it – something has to be put on the shelf. I want to read more, write more, exercise more, spend time with my sons more. That time is coming from somewhere. That’s my plan for tomorrow, a time budget: what do I have, what do I want to do, how long does it take, where can I fit it in?
Keeping in mind that I have the attention span of a… ooh, a pigeon!!!
… right. So downtime, or what some people would call ‘coming back to earth’, is a necessary part of this. And I’ve learned to budget heavily for it.
I’m always amazed at the self-help blogs out there with people who are self actualized to the point of seeing Nirvana as that place we were last month… wasn’t it lovely? Up, meditate, exercise, read, practice music, write, get the kids ready for school, spend time talking with them, spend time with the spouse, go to work, come home, prepare dinner, end world hunger, unite the political parties, a chicken in every pot, eternal gratitude, three hours of sleep is plenty, thank you very much. At the risk of sounding bitter, I could efficiently and productively beat the shit out of some of them.
They can be the productivity version of beauty magazines: they only make you feel ugly. But thanks for sharing.
So, with these thoughts bouncing around in my semi aware head, I drove into town to meet a friend for a New Year’s drink. Philadelphia, home of the Mummers, was covered in a light drizzle nearing five o’clock. Grey sky, wipers squeaking, a little chilly, almost dark. I realized the day matched my feelings pretty well – melancholy with a splash of anxiety thrown in.
North Third is a good bar, great art, good food and staff, a nice choice for a drink. Until, while waiting for my friend, I noticed the other people were all young. Perfect. Let’s add a growing sense of mortality to the list. But it was good to be that age once. It’s good to be this age, honestly. But, if we’re being honest, it would have been nice to have been that age a little longer.
My friend came and we talked and drank and ate. The New Year common theme came up: life, so short, so often taken for granted until it’s almost gone, until the vibrant years have passed and we wake up and wonder how we got here and now we’re going to make a difference, now we’re going to make some changes. We never seem to find the time, yet, it should be every day, really. Some little thing can be done to ‘make a difference’ in our lives on a regular basis: pause, breath in, thank someone, feel real gratitude, help someone just a little, call someone, do something you’ve been putting off, reach. We don’t have to save the world this weekend. Take the time you’d spend forwarding a funny cat video to call someone. Steal time from wasteful things to use for little, good things. And the little things add up. It all adds up. Just force yourself to do something everyday, and like exercise, it gets easier and easier and you can do more and more.
Most of us will never be like the productive, self help gurus. Maybe we don’t need to be. Maybe we need to look at their advice like it’s a buffet – take what we like and leave the rest. We can find our own little things to do to move forward, to push ourselves and make a difference. Little things add up.
We said goodbye, with plans to meet soon and further our task to save the world and I walked through the drizzle to my car, this time it just seemed like rain.
When I got home, I thought about writing again. Something I put off like a colonoscopy. So I set a goal to post a NEW YEAR’S DAY POST! I hacked at it, looked at pictures, funny cat videos (they ARE funny!) and finally got this out. I feel good about it! It’s little, it made me feel better to do something and actually get it done. Of course if I hadn’t watched that video, I would have finished this before twelve midnight and now it’s posted on January 2, 2012, which is just a regular, stupid day. The important part is, it’s done and the dumb-ass feeling will fade by morning. It always does.
Critiquing Photography, Or Not
Oaklyn, NJ
In this day of infinite sources screaming for attention, it’s difficult for many of us to slow down and appreciate those simple things in life; things that should be ritualized to make them special again. Just pausing for a moment to smell your tea, look out the window, accept what your senses tell you, can make a huge difference in your life. Just that pause in the midst of what people, even fifty years ago, would call insanity, can help. But here we are.
I was heading home and came across the scene above. Everything from the ‘Joe the Jeweler’, to the bending sidewalk, to the buffalo, seemed to say ‘Take my picture, you can figure it out later.’ So, I took the picture, and the more I look at it, the more I like it, though I haven’t figured it out. At first, it was a hodge podge of junk; a visual garage sale. As I looked longer, it seemed like bits and pieces of Americana, today’s culture, blue collar towns and a point and shoot I keep in the car, all came together.
It defies the accepted norms of composition and other taught basics and, I admit, I was ready to toss it from my Lightroom database. Luckily, I had paused to stare out my kitchen window at a dog across the street and looked around at the houses and trees in the late afternoon light, and I slowed down enough to reflect on this simple little snapshot.
That was my output for today. Not much in the big picture, but one that feels good, and now and then that’s just what we need.
Pocono Hiking Grammar
Boulder Field, Hickory Run State Park, PA
Okay, it’s bad enough to deface an area of natural beauty and wonder. But for the love of dog, get a dictionary. We all make typos, but not in spray paint.
Of course, I could have it all wrong… I did feel a bit more confidence while there, a sense of my innate abilities to lead a fulfilling and rewarding life, a sense of striving for the next challenge to come my way. I felt the urge, nay, the veritable need, to confront others who dabble in evil ways, to right wrongs and pursue injustice where ever it lives!
But that could have been the coffee. I think it was just a typo.
Relationships End
Well, it’s been a looong time since I’ve posted anything. My wife and I are separated and probably divorcing by the end of the year. A difficult time for all. I needed to take a pause in many ways.
It’s time to start fresh. Look at my life from a different lens. Writing will move that along… and here we are.
So, not much to write about now – actually there’s a shitload, I just am starting slow and guess the weight of giving voice to our breakup shouldn’t be diluted with humor.
More to come.
We were having dinner nearby and I noticed the waitress glancing at my older son Liam, who is cursed with being even shyer than I was at that age.
I brought up the fact that he doesn’t even notice girls checking him out, something that might be helpful when you’re in the dating stage. Some eye contact wouldn’t hurt.
Caleb offered his technique for getting someone to check you out. “You tell them to look at your shoes, and when they look down then up, they’ll check you out!” !!?!
A little more talk about dating and shyness and Caleb puts things in 8 bit perspective.
“Pretend you’re Mario. You have to go through a lot of Goombas before you get to Princess Peach. And you might have to fight Bowser. But there isn’t a game-over because you go to the next Princess.”
There is no game-over, there are a lot of Goombas, you will have to fight Bowser and there is always a next Princess.
So keep moving, life is simpler than we make it. Be comfortable with yourself, try things, try different things. The world turns and life goes on.
One Eyebrowed Rabbit Zombie
I find that fascinating! ...or do I?
Squeaking pose, hedgehog as victim
This past weekend was busy:
1. Took C to a Riversharks game – stood in line for popcorn and soda for one inning. Ate popcorn and drank soda for one inning, ‘can we GO yet???’, two innings-personal best. (Beautiful night, sun setting while BF Bridge lights came on.)
2. Took C to ‘Funzone’ (arcade, waterpark, golf, private bank), ‘don’t LIKE funzone’. But after walking through, realized our mutual attraction to shooting zombies, but not Jesus.
3. Sunday, C shaves off one of his eyebrows. His brother L told him ‘if you want me to get in trouble, shave one of your eyebrows and tell Mom and Dad I did it while you were asleep!’ The weak point was C never sleeps in the afternoon.
Now he looks as if he’s always interested in what I’m saying. Even when I’m quiet.
4. Carley caught an adult rabbit. She was quiet in the yard for some time and I went to check on her. Laying down in the middle of the yard, mouthing something, she looked up at me coming out the back door, then back at her paws, then at me. Dogs don’t hide guilt well. She was trying to make it squeak, but that ship had sailed.
At first I felt bad for the rabbit, but then I thought, ‘YEAH, my girl MOVES!!!!’
I told C what had happened and he seemed very interested.
Lego Loss
Lego centaur
First things first: I LOVE Legos. They are the 8 bit equivalent of sculptural materials. Containing so many possibilities in their little squares and nubs. Colors, shapes, gizmos, mini figs, you name it. Playing with Legos pulls your subconscious to the forefront: you have to interpret part of the play, it’s too rough to see exactly what’s going on. That’s the beauty of it for me, that personal interpretation, the coarseness of the visual communication that leaves things open for poetry in play. But there’s a sadness too, the impermanence of your creation, the same thing that makes them so great can be seen as their intrinsic weakness. I guess it’s an optimist/pessimist thing.
My older son, L, loved Legos too and we got him a bunch of different kits as he grew up. L was very organized and had a sense of coming toy collapses. After he’d tire of his different vehicles and buildings, he’d put them in zip lock bags between playing with them and keep them in a storage bin, the kind that eventually migrates to the attic or basement, to blend in with all the other storage bins. Yeah he’s organized.
When the younger boy, C, came along, he too eventually loved Legos. His sights were higher than L’s: the Batmobile, Star Wars scenes, large, theatrical and lots of mini figs. While C was still young, L decided, being a senior in high school, the chances of using his Legos again were slim and wouldn’t it be nice to give them to his little brother? How cool is that?
So, on this Christmas in July, C was the proud and overwhelmed owner of a shitload of Legos. There were any number of planes, boats, undersea vehicles, space ships, knights, buildings and trucks amassed on the floor. It was overload, but C took it in stride and got his game on. Each set got rotating play time, with C wielding his imagination like a theater director.
As days passed, when I walked through the back room I started to notice a pattern, too subtle to stand out at first, but the planes, boats, undersea vehicles, all looked like they were fading. They seemed to be losing detail, then shape, until they seemed like fragments that were hardly recognizable as the original toy. And the negative space between the ex-toys became dotted with a peppering of plastic bits. The kits were eroding, time was reversing and they were coming apart. They were blending together into a blanket of potential, no longer the defined assemblages they once were. The space ship de-evolved into a few curved pieces surrounded by tiny parts occasionally linked, the buildings crumbled into blocks, the underwater vehicles melted into medieval knights with pincer arms and propellers.
“We can always build them again Dad.” That was quite a few years ago and of course, you never quite get back to building them again. Even with Lego instructions on the web, there’s just too many parts in too many bins and vacuum cleaners and too much interpretive play to distract you and too much fun in it.
I’ve thought of selling them all in one bunch on ebay. It would come in a 55 gallon drum with a list of the kits included. It might go to a Lego fan who wants to put them together, an ebayer who might separate the kits and resell them, or maybe some little kid who likes to make knights with pincer arms and propellers.
Jesus vs. Zombie
When zombie toys attack
So, last year my wife is explaining the story and meaning of Easter to the younger boy, who is narrowly focused at the moment on 8 or 9 things, and seems out of the conversation. When she gets to the part about rolling back the stone to see Jesus had risen from the dead, he stops everything, looks up and asks, “So Jesus was a zombie?” Before she can explain, I say “Why yes. Yes he was.” He’s back to his things, mind made up, wait till I tell the kids at school!
When culture and religions collide.
Oddly enough, this year, the Philadelphia Zombie Crawl is scheduled for April 4th, Easter Sunday. Starts at Tattooed Mom’s on South Street and stumbles through the area. Get there early for makeup! This is a pub crawl right up there with the Running of the Santas!
Aunt Betty
47 Years Later, The Lafferty Girls Go Swimming: Betty, Honey and Ruth
My Aunt Betty (left) and her sisters Honey and Ruth in Aunt Betty’s backyard. My Uncle Lloyd had recently passed away after 47 years of marriage. Aunt Betty died a few years ago.
When I was a kid, my family would be invited to their many pool parties. After a few parties, I noticed the grass had all been replaced with Astroturf, and I realized at almost 6′ tall, high heels, flaming red beehive and mouth like a drunken sailor, Aunt Betty was easily the largest person I knew. She and Uncle Lloyd had designed and built the ‘walk through heart’ at The Franklin Institute among many other things. He often bragged how he worked seven days a week for 12 years without a day off. There was loss, but bitterness too, when she thought of getting those days off together during retirement. I don’t think Aunt Betty fixed anything around the house after Uncle Lloyd died.
Their house was up for sale for a while. They lived on the corner of Park Blvd. and Jefferson in Cherry Hill. It wasn’t a large house, but it was filled with them: paintings, plexiglass ‘stained windows’, beautiful inventions, statues, illustrations; all bordering on too much, but impressive and unapologetic. They would decorate differently: cast replicas of famous statues for the front yard, full size columns for the back, paint the Creation of Adam on the bottom of the pool. When I’d describe the house to people, they always seemed to say “I know that house!”
Aunt Betty and Uncle Lloyd were from the other side of the family: the side that called it like they saw it, said what was on their mind, had nothing to hide, used any word they knew. They could tell stories, jokes, drink and smoke with the best of them. Uncle Lloyd was quiet and confident, Aunt Betty was loud, flamboyant and even more confident.
I heard of Aunt Betty’s passing a few weeks late and called Honey to hear what happened. Betty had been hospitalized with a problem the doctors felt was connected with the fiberglass she and Lloyd had used for so much of their work. She had been cut on a jagged edge of a broken piece recently. Honey was visiting her in the hospital and, when Betty assured her she would be fine, asked “Are you telling me the truth?” Aunt Betty said, “How could I lie to you when you know my heart?”, closed her eyes and passed away.
Honey still has Betty’s last message on her answering machine and plays it often to hear her voice. “On cold days, it warms my heart.”
