And, for some reason, Freshman Football pops into my head.  Weird.  And, specifically, I remember the sole time that I felt like an actual team member.  It was a single moment in the span of an entire season where I felt as though I had support, that I was a part of a whole.

We were running, so long ago, what I believe are still called gassers.  Essentially the team was divided into groups and forced to run sets of four 20 yard wind sprints in a row.  Two halves of the team each faced each other, the appropriate distance apart, and one side would send an even smaller group forth and then back and then forth and then back again.  One gasser.  And then the next group would go.

It was very easy for me to allow myself to stay hidden from the coaches in the crowd of runners.  I’d find my spot in the pack and settle into a decent jog for most of the way.  Easy anonymity.  For most drills that involved a group of roughly ten runners that’s what I’d do.  Settle.  Into the pack.  anonymously.

I was in what I thought to be the toughest group to run in which meant that I couldn’t totally slack off.  We were the backs.  Quarter and running and defensive backs.  Recalling now, I believe we also had some receivers but I can’t say for sure and at that age and competition level most everyone had an offensive and defensive position.  I was the only fourth string quarterback and I was grouped with many people who would go on to play all four years, starting at each level and then leave high school to play collegiate ball some place.  We had some of the biggest and fastest and most athletic kids in our group.

I can’t say for sure what happened.  I had quietly passed the time between gassers like usual and when it was our turn to run I stepped unassumingly to the line and when the whistle blew, I flew.  I could feel my legs churning and the rewarding burn in my muscles.  It was just me out there.  At least that’s how it felt.  I couldn’t hear anyone or see anyone until I made my turns and had to cut back through the pack of trailing players.  Even then they were mere obstacles.  I never made eye contact with them on my way through.  They may as well have been rocks in a field.  I imagine now the players that typically finished first smiling at the unexpected effort behind me but who can say.  That’s how I’d like to remember it.

I crossed the final line and immediately started heaving and trying to swallow as much air as I could stand.  My hands were on my knees and I was bent at the waist, having trouble lifting my head.  The shoulder pads and helmet weren’t helping.  And then, I was surrounded by smiling faces.  It was my group, people that I’d talk to in the hall but never really spent any time with, crowding around and patting me on the pads and helmet.  I tried looking at them in the eyes but I was a little embarrassed.  Jesus, I heard, what made you run?  He was laughing, they were all laughing, and I could only manage a humble, I don’t know.

I did my best to regroup but was the walking dead for the next round.  I tried to recapture the burst but it failed me around the end of the first leg.  One of the coaches got on me afterwards about it and that was the end.  30 seconds of feeling legit.  Like a team member.

Stifling in the standing line for the ferry I think of that moment and smile but then I start to think, Why only once?  Why wasn’t I able to repeat that run?  Why couldn’t that be the norm?  And, I can’t think of an answer.  Is there any way to capture that, excuse me, tap into that energy and enthusiasm on a regular basis?  I hope so.  I believe in the power of the mind.  And I’d like to believe that when you want something enough it can be achieved or obtained.  But volition doesn’t come cheap and I think that’s the trick.  There isn’t a quick fix.  You have to keep your goal in sight.  And work hard.

The play was wonderful.  It took a little bit to get used to as the actors provided brief narratives about the characters they were playing to provide some context, but once it was in full swing it was really terrific.

The first time I saw it was last Wednesday for a midmorning showing and I walked out pleased but more excited to see it for a second time.  My only problem then was with one particular character, Jones.  Most issues I had with Jones were due to casting.  Jones was always an entertaining character, he was a sun glasses wearing, chain smoking narcissist but I always had him pictured as a thin man, struggling to get food to eat and a job to work.  He always seemed soft spoken until, as if from nowhere, he would exclaim: WHOOA or OOOOH-WE!  The actor cast as Jones in the play was a bit heavier and less enthusiastic than I had gleaned from the text, which I have read several times and is my default gift for anyone’s birthday.  After the second showing, a Saturday night affair, I was left to believe it was just one off performance.  Jones brought the energy and flash that I felt was missing from the first time I attended.

Surprisingly I walked away thinking that Mr. Levy, owner and proprietor of Levy Pants, was the best character.  He was never a large character in the book but in the play no one impressed me more.  The actor fit the role perfectly, an unhappy business owner from the upper east coast, weighed down by depression every time he set foot inside his enterprise.  He was in a dysfunctional marriage and wore Levy Pants around his neck like it was an 200 pound albatross.  With all the colorful characters from New Orleans I think it’s odd that he would have stood out so much but it was terrific.  And I like a little surprise.

In the Saturday night showing, just as the narrative was gearing up for the finale a fire alarm went off.  The announcer over the PA repeated twice that it was a genuine fire alarm and that we all needed to make our way to the exits, which we did at a beleaguered pace.  In the alleyway the audience crossed paths with the actors who took up where they left off and finished the production in the  street to an uproarious applause.  Granted, there were probably only two minutes left of the play and the last scene contained only two actors but it was a great experience.  As Ignatious J. Reilly and Myrna Minkoff plotted their escape the rest of the cast became part of the audience and for two glorious minutes I felt like I was really a part of the production.

It was a wholly satisfying and quirky experience that only such a tale could make worthwhile.  But read the book.  Learn the background of the author.  The importance of the story is lost were you not to do so.

Change can be painful.  Fact.  And not all change is good.  Also fact.  And change can be used as a tool to refocus a person on their life.  Also fact, even if it is a difficult one.  But the one constant in this world is that there is no constant which is why change needs to be used as productively as possible towards happiness.

Change can be exciting when it’s embraced.  There have been a lot of changes of late and now that I’ve gotten a chance to sit and reflect on them this is my exact plan: to embrace the change and move forward.  Things happen, as they tend to do, and sometimes it’s just best to let them occur and treat them like a big reset button on your life goals, even if pressing it is the most difficult thing you can do.

The changes, these changes, will affect others greater than myself so maybe it’s easier for me to embrace them and take a positive from amidst the pile but maybe when something weighs heavily on me in the future, as I’m sure it will, I can take this self-taught lesson and get strength from it.  Everything is a process.  Things take time.  So I’m sure I won’t get it right the first time, no one will.  Or the second.  Or the third.  You see where that is headed but if you are able to use change as a tool then life will always be exciting.

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel is a seemingly autobiographical account of him and his group of friends living as ex-patriots in Paris and venturing into Spain for the bullfights.  Throughout his career, however, he would get into a fair deal of trouble for so frequently dipping his quill in that ink.  Reading a biography enforced what I already knew, that his friends weren’t particularly keen, for the most part, about their literary portrayals.  Perhaps he was painting too accurate a picture of them or not flattering them enough or just so completely off about their intricacies that they became incensed but it was enough of a ruckus to cause delays in publications and potential litigious showdowns.

A Farewell to Arms as well was essentially his experience driving an ambulance in Italy during World War I and getting injured and falling in love with a nurse in an Italian hospital.  In real life the nurse left him.  In the book (sorry to ruin it but still read it) she dies during childbirth, a small and petulant ‘fuck you’ to her.

Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, wrote one of my favorite books of all time, which just happens to be very closely related to his time as a dishwasher in Paris in the earlier parts of the 20th century, Down and Out in Paris and London.  For Down and Out he would tour around the poverty stricken parts of London and record his thoughts and in Paris he actually embraced the role of his character by taking menial jobs, like his dishwashing gig, to gain experience to write about.

Some authors aren’t so blatant as Hemingway or, say, David Sedaris but it’s a tool often used and it seems odd to me that I hold some undeniable prejudice against flexing that muscle myself.  The whole point of this article is this: Fuck that.  I’ve decided that the stories I truly care about are about the people I truly care about and to completely disallow them to have any influence of my writing may have been a touch on the extreme side.

So… I am going to give it a shot and see what comes out.  Who knows?  Countless authors have just needed to get that first book out there before really starting to experiment.  (*cough*, Norman Mailer)  Who’s to say that I am any different?

I don’t like the mall.  I’m starting this paragraph without knowing where it will take me, so consider the following a mere matter of the general flow of my consciousness: I don’t like malls because they are unnatural.  They are corporate.  They are the worst example of consumerism.  A mall is a place where good ideas go to die.  Where teenagers go to loiter and steal, at least I did when I was a teenager (the latter, I didn’t loiter (at least at a mall)).  Where zombies convene to terrorize average American citizens.  Actually, Dawn of the Dead is probably the best criticism/caricature of mall culture that exists.  Better than Mall Rats.  Immensely more important than Debbie Gibson.

I think my biggest problem with malls are that they are static.  The products don’t change from one to the next.  Perhaps that’s a comfort to others but it scares the bejesus out of me.  Complacency is a silent killer and malls are so blatantly complacent that I don’t understand how people get roped in.  But they do.  It’s been five years or so since I worked at this particular mall, in this particular store and it still has the same manager and one of the same sales associate there today.  The associate had been there for years already when I showed up.  How does this happen?

Drugs is a quick and easy answer.  I had already left but seen one of the two in what I wouldn’t hesitate to call his ‘meth phase’.  I’ve never partaken in meth, nor do I have any interest in it, but I saw all the acute signs.  It’s a real shame because his mental capacity went down the toilet, and quickly.  But the other has never had a drug problem to the best of my knowledge.  He’s never bragged or offered or shown symptoms, he’s just been lulled into latency.  I feel for him most.

It’s not just malls.  The setting isn’t the only contributing factor and I realize that.  I understand that comfort and fear of change and sticking with what you know are all attributable agents.  But I think all these reasons fall under the umbrella of security.  Our culture seems obsessed with security.  It drives people into cubicles and malls and behind counters and, even worse, keeps them there.  Has risk been totally driven to the wayside?

Perhaps.  Perhaps that’s why modern music sucks.  Perhaps it’s why characters in comics and novels are being recycled and TV shows are nothing if not formulaic nowadays.  How many CSI’s are there?  How many different ways can you fill in: So You Think You Can..?

I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.  I truly believe that there is a direct correlation between the amount of crap out there and the quality of worthwhile expressions of art.  For every five crappy and predictable shows like Raising the Bar or CSI you get a gem like Dexter or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  For every dozen or two crappy, serialized characters you get original titles like Locke & Key (comic) or characters like Meyer Landsman and Berko Shemets.  You just have to sift through it all and maybe that makes the prize all the more worthwhile.

‘If I read this to you and didn’t tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazi’s, Soviet’s and their Gulags or some mad regime Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings.  Sadly that is not the case.  This was the action of Americans in treatment of their own prisoners.’

A little context is necessary and this is about as little as you get: Dick Durbin, who since has apologized for comparing U.S. troops and agents to Nazis and Soviets and mad men was talking about a report on the Senate floor about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Rush Limbaugh.  After going on the offensive by first comparing the pre-election Presidential seal of Obama to a Nazi Swastika and then, more recently, making the same comparison of the Obama Health Care logo Rush has seemingly backed himself into a corner but, as with all great pompous people, instead of admitting an overstep or small err in judgement he has turned the table, declaring that it is the Democrats hurling Nazi allegations at the at the GOP and the American people.

Nancy Pelosi says she saw some Swastika signs from protesters at a town hall meeting aimed at discussing the new Health Care Program which clearly, according to Rush, means that she is calling all in opposition to the Health Care Program Nazis.  This, says Rush, is an attempt to divert attention away from the ‘lies’ the President and Pelosi are telling the American people about the Health Plan.  On his show today he actually said, many times, that the President and Pelosi are blatantly lying to the American people.  That they are manipulating facts and omitting truths.  Pretty brash for such a supporter of the last President and for someone who used to support the notion that criticizing the President was unpatriotic.

Worse still is Rush’s interpretation of Dick Durbin’s statements.  In his mind Sen. Durbin’s remarks where aimed squarely at the GOP despite no mention of any partisanship.  While the comparison by Durbin may have been ill conceived and, consequently, ill received it was aimed at showing how ashamed we should be for letting something so wholly wrong happen under our watch.  That we could allow our morality and basic freedoms to fall so far away from the founding principles of America is shameful and deserving of comparisons to some of the more egregious actions throughout the scope of human history.

Now if Rush wants to say that it is the Democrats calling the Republicans Nazis then so be it.  If Guantanamo is the context that the criticism is being leveled and Rush is so personally incensed by it, he is inherently taking responsibility for the actions conducted at Guantanamo.  He is recklessly accepting responsibility by saying, ‘You are calling us (the GOP) Nazis because of what we did at Guantanamo.’

It’s natural that he be offended by being compared to Nazis but by using Sen. Durbin’s remarks in this fashion Rush is also pulling the Guantanamo debacle close to his chest.  He’s going beyond acceptance to condonance and even admitting ownership.

People get things wrong.  Not just forgetting things at the store or showing up late to a meeting, people get big things wrong too.  And Guantanamo was wrong.  It was a violation against humanity and I fail to believe that Rush can honestly say anything to the contrary.  But that would be ignoring the fact that he does say things to the contrary.  It would be forgetting how blatantly he is unable to admit a mistake.  It would be overlooking just who toes the uncompromising partisan line.

I’d find this all more amusing if not but for one fact, Rush has a large following, which makes these ideas dangerous.  After all, it’s only funny if there is no threat.

I don’t actually have any ill will towards anyone from my class, which I realize may be a tough sell after the first paragraph but it’s true.  I don’t hate or even dislike a single person from O’Dea’s graduating class of 1999.  Sure there is some minor distaste towards some but that was ten years ago and even still, it doesn’t amount to anywhere near the level that would have me being anything less than cordial towards any of the ‘fellas’.

I guess it’s time to get to the point.  I didn’t like High School and it had nothing to do with any individual person but rather a group dynamic that I feel, in retrospect, retarded my self exploration.  To be fair I also realize that this feeling can easily be chalked up to a lack of courage in my teenage years and I’m sure that some of that attributes to my general malaise today.

With a few glaring exceptions High School sucked.  The people, except for one, weren’t friends because they simply aren’t friends.  My interests weren’t encouraged or inspired and looking at it now I feel like I graduated as just another clueless asshole who defined himself through sports, without really playing sports.

This all raises a good question, What should High School be like?  I’m enough of a realist to know that it can’t be a basket of candy and sunshine and that challenges of one’s character and abilities are a necessity.  High School shouldn’t be a walk in the park but does it have to suck?  Those should be character building years or at least nudges towards discovering some type of personal truth.

Maybe I’m just a slow learner.  Ok, I know I’m a slow learner when it comes to my interests or my person but I choose to view that part of me in a positive light.  I choose to look at it from the perspective that I need to experience something first, sometimes multiple times, to decide if I dig it or don’t.  I can’t just take someone at their word… on most things.  It has taken a long time for me to realize this about myself, over 20 years in fact, and though I didn’t enjoy High School I wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China because it was those experiences, as well as others good and bad, that molded me into the person I am today.

And I like me.

Hip Hop.  Hip Hop is not Rap.  Hip Hop is a culture that seems destined to be misinterpreted by every white man alive… almost.  Hip Hop is not ignorance.  Hip Hop is not Pop.  Why is that concept so hard to grasp?  Why is Hip Hop seemingly synonymous with stupidity?

Warping words is fine, in fact it should be encouraged in most artistic circumstances.  Poets have been playing with structure and like sounding words and pronunciation for as long as their were words to play with but I have never seen a tool so abused and diluted as I do today.

You like Hip Hop?  Great.  You want to make Hip Hop music?  Grand!  Don’t fit yourself into a mold.  This goes for any art form.  Don’t change yourself to the art change the art to you.  Don’t talk like everyone else.  Don’t be just another, be better then that by being yourself.  By modeling yourself after others that have come before you you cheapen your own message.  Those that came first are admired for portraying to people their perception on the world and that should be the goal of any artist no matter the medium.

‘I want to be the next…’ are the most dangerous words to the honesty and integrity of the artistic community today.  It’s a shame so many people use them.

Somehow with surprising ease, considering the bottles of booze the night before, I was up early.  There was supposedly a football match to be televised later in the evening and the male Brit former tour leader bade us to breeze through breakfast the night before.  And again in the morning.  He wasn’t rude about it but still, c’mon.  No real reason to rush.

We ate and then were off, stopping in Masindi to grab water, and then quickly we found ourselves back on the road again.  The male Brit former tour leader had grabbed a few papers and I was officially introduced to the glory of the tawdry tabloid: the Red Pepper.  In brief, the Red Pepper has been banned before but now somehow maintains the status of legitimate periodical in Uganda, sort of.  Most view the paper as standing at the precipice of pornography.  The Red Pepper is a place where babes are juicy, wieners are whoppers, vaginas are Khandahars and dancers turned singers are asked questions like: Do you masturbate or do you like oral sex or porno or favorite sexual positions.  It’s a hell of a thing.

It was another couple of hours before we got to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary.  Apparently the male Brit former tour leader had already seen the Rhinos and didn’t shell out the extra Schillings to go trekking so he stayed behind, casually mentioning the importance of the football game again.

There are six white rhinos in at Ziwa.  That number was soon to increase.  The imminent rhinos also included four black rhinos which would spell the end for the foot trekking, since they attack people unprovoked and all.  The white rhinos are much more docile and also almost twice the size of the black rhinos.  Fact.

I felt good, like the alpha of the pack.  Every since he had scared the baboons away from the lady Swede I had been a bit overshadowed by the male Brit former tour leader.  (Not a fact).  We hopped from the van and set out into the tall grass on foot.  For security reasons there are guides assigned to follow the rhinos around the sanctuary 24 hours a day, keeping a close eye on their location and protecting against potential poachers.  Truth.  Our guide had an automatic rifle.  So did the guide with his eye on the rhinos.  They appeared to be old AKs.

We first marched into the midst of two males.  It was explained to us that one of the females was pregnant and had ejected all the males from the fold.  Somewhere was a third male wandering alone, he had been bounced from the group by the other males previous to the pregnancy.  We stood not fifteen feet from the males.

It.  Was.  AMAZING!  The animals are immense and very docile, with the exception of the pregnant female.  We left the two males laying down and moved along to the ladies.  The pregnant pachyderm was much like a pregnant person, agitated and moody.  She immediately stood up and shot angry stares in our direction.  We kept a safe interval, about six or seven times as far as from the males, and were stared down the entire time.  For all I know the ‘bull’ female may still be staring us down now.

After the excitement was lunch where we met the South African who spearheaded the sanctuary.  We learned that two poachers had been apprehended trying to enter the reserve and the the price fetched for a single horn was more than most people’s lifetime earnings, hence the reckless nature of the poachers.  We also learned that the grand plan was to reintroduce the rhinos back into their once indigenous land of Uganda but that goal is far off for want of government support.

We were off again and dropped the three soon to be British doctor ladies on the way into Kampala.  The Swedes and the former Brit tour leader jumped out near the hospital, the Brit leaped immediately into a taxi and was off to the football game with his Ugandan girlfriend, a fact that he kept quiet until the three soon to be British doctor ladies had left.  Too bad.  I would have asked a ton of questions and even bought a few beers if I had known.  Soon after I was out of the van.  I tipped the driver and traipsed home tired but fulfilled.  And then I showered.  Sweet.

P.S.  The male Brit former tour leader was an Arsenal fan and they got their asses kicked!

NEXT UP: Random facts and pieces that just didn’t fit!

I had spoken with a couple of other people involved in the project and they had flown down in Economy which tempered my upset.  I guess I didn’t need to feel special.  Anyways, despite the row number it still had World Traveler Plus as the listed class.

In Heathrow, after a 20 hour layover, I finally got to the front of the boarding line with the knowledge that I was traveling on a larger plane from London to Seattle than I had from Entebee to London and had resigned to the notion that row 30 really wasn’t so bad.  In fact it was quite fine.  Better than fine.

I handed my passport and pass over to one gentleman who handed them to another adjacent to him.  They were scanned.  Instead of a docile green light my pass was bathed in an ominous red.

A concerned look crossed his countenance.  He rescanned with the same red result.  Not checked in, he said mostly to himself.  His concern grew contagious.  Where are you come from sir?

Entebee, I said a bit timidly.

A contemplative cough and sigh.  Hmmmm, and you checked in there?

Yes, with the lady at the counter.

Hmmmm…

It was then that the amount of boarding passengers changed from obnoxious to ominous.

Well, said one, I’m sorry to say but, a heart pounding pause, you’ll just have to be upgraded.  Here you are sir, and he printed and handed me a new pass.

I can honestly say that it took a tiny period of time for the news to sink in.  I had already felt lucky to be traveling Plus but the next bump up was… Business!  A smile crept across my face, That’ll have to do, I said.  Thank you!  Those two men had little clue as to how close they came to a rib bruising embrace.

I felt like skipping, hell like dancing down the jetway but discression was the prudent course.  I passed a pack of Indian travelers being told they had too many carry-ons for such a full flight.  That’s right ladies, I thought, we’re all full up.

Perhaps a brief comparison is in order.  Economy is the tightly packed, partially reclinable section of the plane.  World Traveler Plus or ‘Plus’ to the practiced patron offers more elbow and foot room, a further recline in the chair and a fold out foot rest, really quite nice.  Now, business.  Is.  ’the Balls’.  Each traveler is given a personal pod.  Separated by a divider each seat fully reclines to a bed and instead of a foot rest folding out from the chair it is actually folded out from the opposite side of the pod.  There are three recline settings to each the seat and the foot rest.  Alcohol, free.  An actual menu, with options!  I had the duck.  If I weren’t alert to my potential allergy to lobster I would have had the lobster appetizer.  That’s right, appetizer.  There was also a desert but I was too full on fowl to fit the chocolate cherry trifle with strawberry sauce or the ice cream or the assorted cheese and biscuit bonanza.

I was handed a warm towel to wash.  And there was a wash kit with toothpaste, a real tooth brush, a sleeping mask, various lotions and a refreshing facial spritzer.  Damn.  Who knew I would want one?  Who knew I now couldn’t imagine my life without a refreshing facial spritzer?  There was even a personal power plug!

The elderly couple in the pods in nearest proximity were privy or perhaps subjected to my excitement.

The only dangerous thing, I said in preflight while putting my feet up, is that I could get used to this.

A waitress appeared.  Champagne?  Orange juice?  Water?

I made a mirthful face, Champagne.  Please.

I knew it, she said setting down the flute.  She smiled a big smile and moved on.  Champagne?  Orange juice?  Water?

Life.  Sometimes it can be laborious.  Sometimes luxurious.  All I can say is that it pays to have Lady Luck on your side.