Lizkdc Dislocation

All Souls: Halloween Is Weirder Then We Let On

Here we are again this weekend, on our National Holiday of Candy, Children, and Death.  Which is a confusing mixture, almost as much as as the National Festival of Rebirth, Snow, and Materialism.  Also, skeletons and spiders are scary, but not as frightening as a man coming down your chimney who's also following you in his magic snow-scope all year, detecting when you're Bad.

No, there actually is a point to it all, beyond our weird habit of ingesting the folklore of ancient peoples and making them available at Walmart.  As the days shorten and the leaves flame and then fall in northern lands, October has always seemed psychologically the right time for a day to deal with the dead. 

The church, in its liturgical way, meant for All Souls day to be all serious business and fasting and prayer for sinning souls, but the popular folk of Europe in their more literal mode said "hey, all this calling upon the names of all the dead and stuff . . . isn't that a little effed up and scary?"

Beauty and Creepiness (Forest Hills Cemetery, Halloween Week)

You know about the Puritans and their whole death thing, if you grew up around here.  Because when you were just a weeny New England kid enjoying your schoolday of crayons, off-key singing and those tiny cartons of tepid milk, suddenly you would get dragged off to one of the local historic boneyards and given a tour of the places where all the famous history people were buried.  Paul Revere holding a silver teapot and all the Pilgrims and all the Colonial time people were down there somewhere. The Pilgrim people in their black and white uncomfortable outfits, the Revolution dudes with their triangle hats and wigs and kneesocks, the ladies in little squishy bonnets who were so useful about spinning cloth and making soap and boycotting tea.

Well, so the Puritans and other early colonists were pretty up front about death.  You look at their graves and what do you have? Skulls.  Cross-bones. Timeglasses with time-running out. Sometimes a full-on skeleton in a hoodie with his death-dealing scythe. You know, they didn't pretty things up much.

Sometime around the Civil War and all its sorrows and the Victorian period and all its proprieties, things changed, though.  The folks in Boston went out to what was then the edge of town and made this huge spectacular death park, with an ornamental lake, and a thousand graceful trees, and fancy gates, and filled it with stone lilies and wreaths and ornate urns instead of bones,  and monumental ladies covered in drapery and gentle regret. And angels--lots and lots of angels.

Maine, Danger, and Andrew Wyeth

There I was on the coast of Maine, and all the clams were singing.

On remote Route 73, the needs of man are reduced to the essentials: fried food, haircuts, truck repair, and Jesus. You can go for miles without seeing more then a tiny four-way stop sign village, but these core things will be for sale at each of them.

Coffee Shop: A Perilous Journey

I just drove to the coffee shop on autopilot.

I was suddenly driving down Centre Street and the lights came up in my head and I said "where the hell am I going, anyway?" And self said, "you're on your way to that coffee shop on Amory Street. Shut the f*ck up, I got this."

Which is good, because subconscious self actually knew what it was doing. Usually subconscious self isn't so reliable and tells me stuff like "sure, have another beer," and "say it! that client will love your sense of humor," and "What the hell, let's marry that guy!"

October Gets It In Gear

I'm looking at the row of tiny dark clouds lining up in the weather box on my home page. And I'm reminded that October throws a lens of its own on the weather.  Suddenly, blue sky and bright sunshine, while still on offer, become more precious.  No more of the overgenerous, profligate sun, sun, sun, sun, thunderstorm for an hour, sun of July and August. No more of the freshmen-misleading gentility and slight, polite cooling of September.

In October, you have the gorgeous sunny day and gilded leaves beloved of postcards, then windy, chilly grey for two days, then suddenly, another helping of sun.  The rain rains all day long, when is happens, filling the gutter and weighing down browning garden wreckage. 

At night, the temperature drops become precipitous, no longer just playing around, and when I come out on the front step in the morning to get the paper, the chrysanthemums look at me like "DUDE what just happened?" 

In October, your paper will be due.  Baseball will end. The geese are exercising their exit strategy.  Get the bulbs in the ground before it's too late.  The light will lessen.
You have to grab one of those perfect October days outside when it happens. Because after comes November, and you know what he's like.  Bastard.

The Next Thing

Foxtail Ferns, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

You know what?

I'm going to write a book called MEMOIR: A MEMOIR.

In which I robustly combine the elements of every first-person fauxtobiography on the New York Times best seller list until I achieve ultimate world domination. It will consist of my vivid (though sadly, untrue) life story of alcoholism, flogging, and tuberculosis, my colorful but tortured artist parent, my impoverished and deadly childhood in which I flee rural Ireland for rural Somalia and end up driving a Humvee for Blackwater in the war against jihaad . . . until, after a chance encounter with basalmic-dressed salmon, cooking enters my life . . . and saves my soul.

Agents, call me. . . Think "Angela's Ashes" meets "Generation Kill" meets "Under the Tuscan Sun" meets "Running with Scissors." You want in on the ground-floor on this one.

Chad Kroeger: Life Coach

Nickelback - If Today Was Your Last Day from Nickelback on Vimeo.

So the other day I heard Chad Kroeger of Nickelback on the radio, and he had an inspiring message to share with us all.  This was surprising,  because he IS the dude who has given the world such delicate romantic insights as: "I find it hard to leave/while you're going down on me."   But you know, I listened to this new song and decided that really, it contained some damn good advice.  I decided I should immediately begin to spread this set of insights in my own world.

So, I called up my buddy Kathleen and said:

My best friend gave me the best advice
He said each day’s a gift and not a given right
Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind
And try to take the path less traveled by

"Oh Good Lord," she said.  "You know what else is a gift and not a given right?  The English language! Are you sure this is an actual person and not some sort of hideous cliche-generating supercomputer buried in the Mohave?"

"Chad is from Vancouver," I said.

"Whatever. One more reason to Blame Canada. Anyway, if today is our last day, I'd be going for cocktails.  And something with a lot of butter. Also I may settle a few scores on the way out of the office.  Wonder if a fifth floor window is high enough?"

Night and Day (Cambridge Revels RiverSing Equinox Thingie)

DSCN0577.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Night and Day (Cambridge Revels RiverSing Equinox Thingie)

You guys, I just went to RiverSing.

Now, usually I am in total rebellion against the part of my Massachusetts heritage that involves: Children's Television Workshop, Judy Collins, women in Ecuadoran smocks over fuzzy sweaters leading their soy-free children in song, grey-haired men with pony-tails or braids or both, "kayaking for peace" bumper stickers, giant puppets, and all any and all singing of "This Land Is Your Land." Any sort of music that personifies planet earth--especially talking as if "she" is a mentally disabled next door neighbor whom we're taking up a collection for-- is straight out.

But Dorothy wanted to go, so we found ourselves on the banks of the Charles River doing this deal, where the same silver-haired, senselessly jolly people who put on the Christmas Revels (with all the "yon angels" and "patti patti pans" and "pum pum pums") now do a fall equinox deal. Celebrate the wheeling of the sky, the moment of equal day and night, and the passage of another summer into a new autumn.

The sun was setting over the river in orange and grey-blue, the white spires and brick courtyards of Harvard framed the scene, along with massive trees still dense, forest green from late summer.

There were salt and pepper-haired smart looking men in wind-breakers and chinos from Kendall Square, the technology VPs and management consultants who are our new rich; dapper older guys in blazers with super thin, immaculate wives in scarves, the old rich; college students; bewildered but game Asian tourists; Latino kids on bikes. A racing eight sped by and a solitary single scull. Bright red kayaks and L L Bean green canoes. And to cap the concert, a saxophonist floated by on a small boat with a huge illuminated sun and moon, wailing a farewell to the summer.

Some dude read a poem about how it was fall and birds were flying south. Just as these words came out of his mouth, a squad of geese formed a v and flew away into the gilded sunset.

It was sort of cool. Don't tell anyone I said so.

Betrayed by the BBC (Inspector Lewis)

Back in the day, Mom and I used to watch a lot of BBC, helpfully imported by the annoying Anglophiles at WGBH.

It was both alien and comfortable, in those days.   Tragedies happened, but to noble, distant sepia characters in bonnets or belted World War One uniforms. 

Well, let me tell you, it isn't like that anymore. We sat down to watch "Mystery!" after many years away, a series named, with a delectable lack of attempted appeal, "Inspector Lewis."

Opening scene, setting is Oxford! Yay! Hurrah for common room teasand punting and tutors! Stately towers!  Handsome, sexually repressed aesthetes!

Here we go! Handsome, conflicted graduate student angsting in a shadowy church at night.  Chubby, timid vicar looking conflicted, right.

Oh, the conflicted graduate student is smashing up marble Jesuses, here comes the chubby vicar to comfort him and . . . oh! Oops!

An hour later.

Dorothy: "Well, that wasn't what I expected."

Me: "Not your grandmother's Miss Marple, no."

Dorothy: "So many fiery explosions."

"Not so much poison in the dons' port as I remember."

"And you know, even with all the clues, I was pretty surprised about the BRAZILIAN SEX CHANGE."

"Let alone the RED HOT POKER THROUGH THE EYE."

"I didn't see that coming."

"No."

"Not a bit of it."

Is there nothing sacred in this ever-changing world? Weeps upon a copy of "The Murder at the Vicarage."

DC Revisited

Palmy Shadows, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Victorian Gardem at Smithsonian Castle

Beautiful, messed-up Washington. With its stately columns and shaded, shadowed gardens, and prosperity. Its liquor store corners and rows of front porches and hard times. Long serried ranks of wood and brick row houses, ornate and fanciful manses, high, comfortable banks of condos and apartments across wide old avenues, niches full of cats and master's degrees.

I miss my DC friends, the non=profit idealists and the efficient experts, the fundraisers and chefs, the lawyers and teachers, the carpenters and editors and web developers. I miss the slow grey mass of the Potomac with its densely-grown green edges, the peaceful canal and the stately parks and sun-rippled Rock Creek. I miss the dank, tiny, inefficient bars. I miss the constant eating and drinking, debating and talking, reading and opining, the smart but weary daily DC.

I was searching my skull for something cynical and funny to say about this visit to my old hometown, but I just found affection.

On Sale Now: Zombie Kurt Cobain

Oh, no.

This is F*CKING CREEPY.

Hello again, you beautiful and damaged young man.  BTW, you're going to die young, fueled by unbearable misery.   Then we're going to dig up your corpse, animate it, and sell you all over again.

Are there gameplay levels for heroin addiction and orphaning your child?

Roast in Hell, Guitar Hero.

I think of Kurt a fair amount, oddly enough. I think of him because of that old '90s crowd of mine, the one with the handsome men and charming bohemian women, and leather jackets and the long vanished DC bars and the amazing music, the good years and the horrible, heartbreaking years, the addictions and the split ups and the people who just disappeared and the one who died.

Which all makes me a big fan of Dave Grohl. Grohl's the guy who decided it was worth it to keep on struggling through the painful ironies of the world, and make music, and get dicked around by music execs, and be a father, and get to have lines in his face and pay a mortgage and have cocky twenty-something musicians tell them they grew up listening to him. There goes my hero. Stick that in your Wii.

The Man at the Door (Ted Kennedy's Death)

Of all the stories about Senator Kennedy in this morning's Globe, this one reached out and grabbed me. It's about Ted Kennedy quietly attending wakes for local servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sharing a gift of insight arising out of sheer, damned misfortune--nobody knows better then he what it's like to get the bitter news that turns your life upside down.

There's a tiny detail in the article recalling the first time it happened, a death forgotten or never known by those who don't follow Kennedy history.  It was August, 1944, in the midst of World War II, when a priest came to the door of the family home to tell them that the oldest Kennedy son, "Joe Jr," had been killed in a bombing raid over Germany.  Ted was just a kid at the time, the youngest of nine. That man on the doorstep in his black clothing, bringing bad news that couldn't be unsaid, must have left a mark.

Art in Dunes

It's wild what you can discover in a landscape you think you know well. I've hiked the Provincelands National Park area outside of Provincetown before, and heard about the lonely dune shacks that are now preserved by the Park Service, but never strayed far enough  from, well, the beaten path.

This year we discovered that the rangers run a late afternoon hike called Art in the Dunes, sounded good--a visit to this amazing landscape to capture the setting sun sounded delicious. Some sort of confab with a local artist was mentioned. Still, I was expecting history on park plaques, a leisurely stroll on the paved park path, perhaps a chat with one of the local watercolorists who market cheerful squares with beach umbrellas and so on.

Sun Going Down, Wellfleet

My friend Kathleen was just posting about sunset in a distant place.

I started typing a reply and then went on so long that I took it home with me.

She wrote:

Is it human nature to view the sun over the sea as a mystical thing?  I stand there and feel like I’m bopping out of my body, the intensity of the sight just stuns me speechless. 

So--kind of philosophical.  Where does our sense of awe or wonder at this stuff come from, anyway? One thinks it would not be very "adaptive" or utilitarian. 

Shore House

Blackfish Creek Wellfleet MA, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

The smell of a house by the shore that's been shut up for a while is suggestive thing. Each is subtly different from the other. One smells of old books and chairs to read them in, of cotton bedspreads and old dry shells, of blackbirds singing in the marsh and of refuge from the hot highway and its candy-colored souvenirs and fried clams, gas pumps and mini golf. Perhaps you don't believe there is such a smell, but there is.

Other shore houses, when opened after a time without people, might smell of old paper and forgetfulness, of long gone dogs and the raincoats they were walked in. Another holds the scent of Pottery Barn, cold high thread count sheets, and Blackberry mobile devices, or Bloody Marys and divorce, or children, buckets of periwinkles, cold wet bathing suits and peanut butter sandwhiches. Of course, after a day it will just smell like you and your fellow travelers, so that first moment of observation is important.