Sup-Plant

I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been one of the cats... or my landlord. I'm not sure either of them would have lasted for a week and a half without water or would have taken to being loaded into the trunk of a car at midnight.

I didn't want to write about this because it's not particularly enlightened or kind. In fact, it's a bit off-balance. But I can't deny that because of it my life changed, and changed in some pretty significant ways in comparison to the unkindness of the act itself. It's hard to get past something like that without telling somebody else. I mean, I don't have the plant to talk to anymore. I don't even know where it is. I disappeared it.

The plant had become the focal point of a great deal of emotion, which wasn't the plant's fault at all. Yet, whenever I looked at it, the nondescript fernyness of it in that overly large blue and white porcelain lemonade tank, I felt a certain sense of loathing. Sure, the plant wasn't technically mine and the container was the product of a memorable outing to a garage sale, the kind of thing that happy couples did and do on Sunday afternoons. The plant was even named after her ex-boyfriend, or an ex-boyfriend of sorts. Still, none of that bothered me.

Maybe what bothered me was that it was living, thriving even, growing taller and wider and greener just as it was growing more and more alien to my life - sort of like a guest who stays too long after the party is over. We never had anything to say to each other at the peak, and now that it was just the two of us, we had even less to talk about. And it wasn't about to leave. It couldn't leave. It was oblivious to the fact that it probably should. And I hated it for that. I couldn't sit down and talk it out, come clean, put an adoption ad in the paper, or even just stop calling it. It was at the same time life form and furniture, a possession left behind with no value but something that demanded care and maintenance. It wasn't even a prized artifact of either of our lives, just something that was picked up along the way and would not, could not change it's place of it's own volition.

I'd sit across the room from the plant, cross-legged, and stare at it as it's leaves tossed in the screen-window currents. Sometimes the motion would catch my eye as I was watching television or working on the laptop. And then it was all about the plant. All of my attention was focused on the plant. No other thoughts would come but thoughts about the plant. What started out as discomfort led to agitation which led in time to something I have to admit was hatred. I admitted this out loud many times, in fact, silently mouthing the words "I hate you" as it cheerfully waved its fronds at me.

After a few months of this, I would take to watching the plant from the hallway so that it couldn't read my lips. I'd decided by then that the plant would get the front room and that I'd be happy with the rest of the house. After all, I couldn't move the plant into the area I used to cook or into my bathroom, bedroom or office. I'm not sure how long I'd survive not being able to eat, piss, sleep or make a living. And so it sat in it's little carpet indentation and I sat against a wall with a pillow.

In time I realized, in a dawning of fuzzy clarity, that I was going to have to disappear it. I use this term because I'm a paganish sort of guy with more than my share of buddhistic leanings. I wasn't about to physically kill it, but I knew that it had to go, either bodily or otherwise. I couldn't see it anymore and I certainly couldn't live with it.

This began a phase of my relationship with the plant that I'm not proud of, a particularly passive-aggressive phase with a hint of instability. I'd leave the plant in the alley only to rush out a few hours later and save it. I'd lock it in the basement only to scrabble with my keys and free it when darkness fell. I considered throwing it in the garbage. I tried putting it out in front of the house with a "Take Me" sign on it. I attempted to pawn it off on my friends. And in time, I simply conveniently forgot to water it.

But the thing is, the more I tried to do it in, the more the plant refused wholly to take notice. Without water, it thrived. Without sunlight, it thrived. With threats against it, it grew taller and wider. It lived and lived and lived and raised it's fist and spouted rebel propaganda and gritted its teeth and spat at me in my sleep.

I could do nothing to stop it.

In stories like this, the ending often arrives with a compromise, a coming-to-terms, a reversal. The plant shows me that life will continue despite all negativity, something like that, a nice, clean parable. The plant and I make a bond that is lasting and beautiful. All hail the new golden age of mammal and vegetation. A part of me wishes that was the case.

Instead, what happened was I loaded the plant up into a friend’s trunk one evening after midnight and told her to take it away. I didn't care what happened to it. I didn't want to know what happened to it. All I knew was that I was tired of it. I was tired. It just needed not to be here anymore.

And so it's gone. The space where it sat is empty and there is nothing in the apartment that draws my emotion like it did. And there hasn't been a moment where I wished it back with me or missed it in any way. In fact, the day after it vanished, I started to get rid of other possessions, started to drop many hard-attached attachments. It was as if this plant was the block in front of a barrage of other things that wanted to leave the party but couldn't. It was as if the absence of the plant made so many other things unnecessary.

I continue to look for some lesson in this. I haven't found much yet. Thing is, I keep identifying with the plant in some way. Maybe I always did. And maybe that's what made it so hard for me to just toss it away or pass it along because that’s how I felt, tossed away or passed along. And maybe that’s what it became a symbol of for me, and what I ultimately hated and wanted to vanquish, the reminder or just the stalwart and flawed perception – the part of me that believes that I too was unwanted in the end.

And then, there are other days

I'm trying to get in the good habit of blogging several times a week, and the more I do so the more I find that events in my day or days filter out into manageable truths or ridicules that I end up blogging. It's interesting, because it causes me to be more holistically observant of how moments come and pass, it causes me to have to think again in linear forms to get an abstraction into a manifestation, and it greases up the wheels of the intuitive self-editor and his hopeful attainment of a balance of distance and intimacy. Events gel into "I'm going to use that" or "I'm going to absorb that" or "I'm going to let that pass". And somewhere, a filter kicks in high-processing mode that sifts sensory and non-sensory stimulants into one of so many little terra cotta pots.

The exercise is working for me... But it's very different than it used to be.

I've been writing an online journal since 1997, back in the days when they were unique and strange beasts. Back then, nobody knew what it was I was doing, I had many readers, and the biggest question was always, "How can you be this personal and open to an audience of potentially anyone?" Now they say, "Oh, a blog. Yes, I have one. Actually, I have three". If you are a writer of any kind and you are connected to the internet in any way, you probably have a blog. And if you don't now, within the next few years, you will.

The issue of being candid is a thing of the past. Everyone's blog is out there, indexed by search engines, read by friends and strangers, and being personal is not just a by-product, it's a required element of the established form. With all this increased traffic and focus on the format, with all the people I read and who read me, it's had the opposite effect on what I am willing to share. There are things that happen to me, things I learn about people, things that I may be affected by for months, that I know I can't write about. I'm read by my friends, by my co-workers, by my family, by ex lovers and future lovers, and even though I say the things to all those people that I should say and want to say, there are still some things, some secrets, some pains, that you just can't speak. Back in 1997, I would have written them in a journal, in a cathartic manner. Today, any of those secret things I write about would eventually be read by somebody I don't want to read it, or they are things that just go into more detail than somebody I know might want public, or they are extended expressions of something, a rehashing perhaps even, that I know would make life harder and more painful for somebody.

So weeks do pass and days do pass and I talk to friends about the secrets and I choose to blog or journal only those things that are either overarching, central to my own being, or can be hinted at or inferred. And while, as a writer, that turns out to be greatly beneficial through its way of forcing thought upon the medium, or at least balanced restraint of a kind, it's also something I do miss. Still, I wouldn't have it any other way because it does cause me to segment, and segmentation is an excellent way of learning focus. Focus is what I need.

Today then, was a day filled again with things that you won't be told in writing. Still, I'll give you a piece, and it's another closing paragraph about coffee.

I made myself coffee today in a french press I purchased recently. And I got to thinking about divorce. What they don't tell you when you go into it is that it isn't the splitting up of dishes and possessions, or cars and houses, or animals and plants that should be signed into legal agreement. I think it the other things that matter and the other things you should be aware of and agree to. Mister Harbinger, you will no longer, by way of this legal proclamation, be able to make coffee in your kitchen and you, Miss Palimpsest, you will no longer be able to eat buttered popcorn. Or you, Mr. Carbuncle, you will no longer be able to walk down that street and you Miss Fannypack will have to sell that CD. Because emotions and anger are tied to moments that come and pass, which when you shake out the tree, settle in very unusual and mundane places. The same can be said for death.

Today, I made myself coffee and I'll make it again. My dad used to drink coffee every morning, sipping it like he was eating soup and his eyes would be several inches over the rim. I have coffee stains on my mattress and these mugs really have to go.

But this cup, the cup I made, this is mine. Turns out, that's why I made it.

10ccs of Kona, tall and wet, with legs. Stat!

Where has the last week gone, other than into the belly of a machine? Every six months or so, it seems as if I nudge the wrong lever or push the wrong button and the rubber band twangs and the duct tape comes lose from the corner and the blind rolls up with a cadenced flapping and the white stuffing beans come pouring out. And then it depends. Sometimes it's an evening if I'm lucky and can manage to wind the thread back on the spool and recapture the ferret. Other times I'm out for three or four days, doing nothing but installing software, reconfiguring, and cursing.

This time it was a wobbling domino that caused my drive letter to change, bringing the whole flimsy Microsoft stack of cards down onto the flooring. These moments are logged in my brain as, "You know, the time that I deleted my boot magic configuration file" or "You know, the time that the service pack destroyed my registry" or "You know, the first time I installed the .NET Framework Beta" or this time, "You know, the time that I tried to get more space and ended up changing my drive letter". And that's geekier than I ever want or wanted to be about it, but through it all I've had to be able to talk like this just to understand what in the hell happened, let alone try to fix it. There is no help to be found in the market, no phone call possible. You survive by whatever you pick up in the street and along the way. You become the expert because if you don't, you might as well go back to the abacus. Nobody else is going to be able to save you, chief. You are on your own.

It's always stressful on me and it brings about large quantities of thinking. I mean, what else is there to do as you watch installation progress gauges climb to 100 percent while your life is breathed away?. This time, I realized that I'm developing a deeper relationship with the Cinemark film creature than I am likely to with any human female in the near future. You know the film creature, that little entity made from film strips that gallivants across the screen before the previews and the main feature at Cinemark theatres? No? Well, you are missing one of the finest natural comedians of our time, friend, and quite the hottie.

But none of that is the issue here. This is really about living in Seattle. Because that's what I've been thinking about, namely how much I love it. I've only realized just recently how different west coast living is compared to living anywhere else in the country, and how different northwest living is from living anywhere on the west coast. Those levels of difference were things that I think I'd tried to ignore or were just ignorant of in my first two years here, but now that year three is coming to a close and another deep Seattle winter is approaching, I'm really seeing it all clearly.

And it's not something easily articulated, but something that has to be lived in for a while, like an old shirt. Because Seattle settles into you and the people settle into it. They sink into their clothes and their knees get flexible and their shins get lower. The bruise colors emerge from the closet like a stain of ink on linen, beating back the weaker hues. The summers are clear and hot and dry, the winters are dark and wet and enclosed, and in-between is this overcast mist, a mist that no umbrella dents and no sense of planning can affect. The mountains rise in all directions and the smell of salt sea is ever-present, the calls of seagulls, the path of pelicans, and the low tones of barge ships and bridge captains.

It requires something different than Midwestern gee-goshabilly or even Californian granola. This is a city whose pier area was once booming with startup internet businesses. Little wide-eyed programmers played old-style arcade games and foosball in garage studios with wide, tall windows while their stock rose and the money flowed. Gone now in a flash, a ghost town of still-broken windows, shifting into something new. This is a city that endures weeks of non-stop winter rain and darkness before 4pm. This is a city that was built on mud, fell into the swamp, was built again, burned down, and was built again. I don't even know where to start to describe what it requires, but maybe it's a holistic sense of "Feh, nothing to be done for it. Might as well make the best of it. Where is my chicken suit?"

And to me, it explains coffee, which is what I'm really getting at. Forget all that other stuff. Rainy winters = Coffee. Comfortable clothes = Coffee. Trying to work out what you just saw on the street = Coffee. I don't think it's really a cultural thing at all. I think it's so ingrained into the experience, matches the environment and the mood of life here, that it's almost impossible not to drink it. It has become a comfort, a constant stability, a lingering smell around corners that reminds you where your feet are.

As proof of that, a quick story. I was out with a friend of mine when she received a voice message about an emergency at home. Turns out that her daughter had cut her finger, that it looked serious at first, but ended up not requiring emergency care. He response? "Oh my god. Are you okay? Do you want me to get coffee on my way home?"

Turtle K Ranch

A fast word that a new Walkabout was posted last night and that it is read and approved by Kristina. Yes, Kristina. Kristina, Kristina, Kristina. Thanks to Kristina for reminding me to tell you.

(Kristina reads these blogs to see if she is ever mentioned)

The White Rabbit

Despite myself, this past weekend I rented two things from my local Hollywood Video, the Playstation game "Enter the Matrix" and the animated "Animatrix". Looking back, I can't say I planned to do this, only that the game looked interesting and I had heard good things about the video, and they were side by side in front of me. This was Saturday morning.

By Monday night, I had completed the game, having done little else all weekend but play through it. I was possessed. Although the game offered me special information as to the plots of all three Matrix movies, what sucked me in was the chance to be actively in the virtual world that I had seen on the screen - a world that was portrayed as a virtual world while in the real world people were "jacked in" to it. As a real world person now also "jacked in", I started to think in great detail about the films and what it was I was doing - how strangely addictive it was to play a game set in a virtual world that was the world I was living in.

This was only the beginning.

The Animatrix followed, feeding me with more special information and shifting further my perspective in regards to the trilogy. Following that was a rental of the original movie, which I watched on my laptop... on my chest... with headphones jacked in to the media. And this weekend, I'll see Reloaded on IMAX. My perspective continues to shift.

I began having the dreams. Each night when I went to bed, all of my dreams would begin with the same minor key notes that begin the movies and sometimes with the same scrolling green lines of characters, some frozen in place, some in motion. And I would flash and be in the dream, whatever that dream was. My dreams would play out and at some point, the phone would ring in my dream. I'd answer it and sit bolt upright in my bed, awake, with a great inhaling of air. I was dreaming the Matrix now. I was dreaming that I was in a virtual world, jacked in from this real world, and when I awoke, it was back here to this real world I went, the same virtual world that I had just been dreaming about. Each night, it was the same thing. And strangely, I was happier in those dreams and more at peace in them than I have been for years in dreams. What does that mean, I think, I thought... and I am thinking now.

I started to think about this world as the Matrix, more for fun at first, later very seriously. And then this really funny thing happened. I was at a local fast food joint ordering dinner and two frat boys walked in, the kind of frat boys that you know play baseball or softball. There isn't anything about them to suggest it, but somehow it's extremely obvious. They were both wearing grey shirts of the same brand. Each of them had on Ocean Pacific shorts, one of them in khaki and one in black. They had identical sandals on and identical watches. And each of them was wearing a grey-green baseball cap. I couldn't stop staring at them. I could tell that the caps had some sort of emblems on them, and I strained to see.

Suddenly, in unison, they stood upright and turned to look at me. And I saw the caps. One of them had A on it. The other had B.

A and B.

I almost laughed out loud. Two models of softball-playing frat boy to choose from, special ordered to your reality? Customizable? Please pick A or B, sir, and indicate how many you'd like...

Driving Sideways

There's always music, music to seep softly through the edges, music to fill up the spaces. In 1992, it was Tori Amos' "Under the Pink", which I played non-stop for an entire summer. I never grew tired of it, even on the long and pointless drives around the Columbus city ring, or the days that I would pick a direction and drive until I didn't want to run away anymore. At night sometimes, I would let it play and drifted into it, wanting to be as helpless as I felt.

This time it has been Aimee Mann, mostly "Lost in Space" and now "Bachelor #2". And in the rare moments when that won't do the trick, it's been the Indigo Girls' "Become You" or Tanya Donelley's "Beautysleep". But truly, this time it has been Aimee as the Witness. Aimee has been the one who understood and sang of understanding. Aimee has been the one to hold the line. And like before, sometimes I listen to her for hours on repeat. CD Players now are in computers, on gaming systems, or they spit out MP3s for any number of applications. Aimee plays on.

So, last night I did something that I've always refused to do. I went to a concert alone. But it was Aimee Mann, on the lawn, at the zoo, and I was guaranteed to be able to get as close to the stage as I wanted. So I was there, a few rows back, alone on the grass as other couples, families, groups of friends gathered on blankets with coolers, as other lives intersected with mine. As it turned out, by the time she took the stage I was sandwiched between a man bearing a striking resemblance to Richard Simmons who would clap his hands together rapidly when each song started, and two couples arranged as best as they could on a small beach towel around a bowl of fresh pasta salad. My space was the width of my body and the length of my legs. Neither group said a single word to me. But as strange as I found that, I didn't care. My view of Aimee was perfect. Her emotion was clear and her performance captured exactly what her CDs gave me.

She, tall and thin, white-blonde, fluid, donated the proceeds from the concert to the giraffes. I found it extremely appropriate, and equally as symbolic of a certain kind of awkward non-belonging. I imagine giraffes in the wild as the gawky, teenage girl at the prom, the lions and hyenas around the water bowl, the apes on the dance floor. The giraffe, head between her legs and she drinks, doesn’t make a sound. And it wasn’t that Aimee was a giraffe, out of place, gangly. It was that I remembered exactly what it had been like for me in school, and probably why her music is reaching me on that level twenty years later in the middle of a divorce. And maybe, looking at her, listening to her, I felt a kinship and an understanding that somehow made me belong, made me belong in this crowd between the mascaraed man and the yuppie foursome, at least for the two hours she graced our lives. But she’ll now always be my giraffe. And maybe she too sings of understanding that, somehow.

When she was finished, after two encores, I picked up my sandals and my water bottle and melted into the crowd. When I got home, I turned off the CD…