A New-ish Direction

First off, I finally got around to updating to Wordpress 2.5.1, and it’s very pretty and elegant on the inside.  I love it.

Secondly, I’ve been long puzzling out what to do with this blog, and I believe I’ve hit on an idea.  I just picked up Natalie Goldberg’s latest book, Old Friend From Far Away:  The Practice of Writing Memoir, and I think what I’m going to do is to kill two birds with one stone and publish what I write as practice while reading the book here on the ole blog.

How does that sound to you?

Then, what’s going to happen is, an editor is going to happen upon this one day, become enthralled, and publish the whole shebang after giving me a million dollars.  Does that sound like a plan or what?  I love it!

So, I’ll be back.  After I’ve written something.

If anyone would like to pick up the book themselves, and do the practices as assigned, feel free to leave a link to your posts in the comments!

Um, yeah. Hi.

Next month, I will have had this blog for four years.  That might sound somewhat impressive, but no.  I haven’t posted much in a while.  I’ve been somewhat neglectful for a while now.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to…it’s not that I haven’t had anything to say…

I’ve just not been saying it.

I’m not making any promises here.  I’m not going to claim that this post is the beginning of a new slew of posts.  I’ve absolutely no idea if I’ll even remember tomorrow that I posted tonight.  All I know is that Cat Stevens is coming out of my speakers and that’s sending me back in time a bit.

Not that I’m going to tell you about it.

What’s happening right now, at this very moment, is me, drinking some inexpensive yet very tasty wine, and being a bit sad still about my friend Frank Crist being dead for some eight months now.  Maybe it’s the wine.  Maybe it’s the dead thing.  Maybe it’s my birthday coming up.  I had no problem with thirty.  But I was a wreck at 29.  I’m hoping 40 won’t be a problem, but, well, DAMNIT.  I’m about to turn 39!

No.  Really.  39.

I don’t feel 39.  Though, what is 39 supposed to feel like?  I mean, my parents have a good quarter-century on me, and they’re having the time of their fucking lives, at least it certainly seems like they are.  So that’s something to look forward to, right?

This all sounds strange.  Because the thing is, I’m really loving my life right now.  I like everything I am doing.  I like all of my five-odd jobs, and I don’t even mind that together, they don’t create a living wage.  I feel free and clear and happy.  Yes, HAPPY.  Say the word ‘happy’ six or seven times really quick. It kinda loses meaning, doesn’t it?  Weird, huh?  I’m HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!

It looks like I spelled it wrong, doesn’t it?

Here’s this thing:  I really miss Frank.  A fair bunch of people have died in my lifetime, people who meant something to me in one way or another, but none like Frank Crist.  There’s even a handful of people still in my life whose death, if it happened tomorrow, might likely devastate me more, I don’t know.  But right now, at this moment, it’s Frank’s death that’s got me all wrapped up in madness.

And it happened many, many months ago.  Damnit, I miss him.  I miss him because he would have been so happy for me right now.  He’d be cheering me on and encouraging me in my dark moments and dragging me, kicking and whining and moaning, out of my self-pitying moments, and he’d do it all without saying a goddamn word.

It is wrong for Frank to not be alive in this world.

It’s just wrong.  Excuse me while I go sit on the couch and drink cheap-but-tasty wine and smoke cigarettes and be mad and feel sorry for myself.

Barack Obama. I can’t help it. I really like this guy, and I really want him to be the next president.

Hey look! I have a blog!

Alright, so I completely forgot that I have a blog.  I haven’t posted since LAST YEAR.  Yeah, it was December, tail end of the year, but still.  Last year.  It’s mid-April now.  I haven’t touched this site in more than five months.

That’s just sad.

Life just kinda does this shit to you, you know?  Where you get busy and there’s priorities and you have to let some things go in order to remain sane?  Do you know what I’m saying?  The good side is that I’m sane.  The bad side is that I had to let this space go for a while.

Anyway, I have a story to share with you all.  Whoever is still out there who hasn’t cleaned house on their RSS feeds, anyway.

Earlier, I stopped at the grocery store.  I’ve got almost no edible food in my kitchen, and I’m thinking–it would probably be a good idea to pick up some stuff.  I don’t even have anything to drink aside from some skunky beer, vodka, and french-vanilla creamer.  Coffee and tea, yeah.  But that requires effort and a wait.  That’s the way things have been around here lately.

Anyhoo, I’m in the tiny liquor section of our grocery store, coming out of the big-ole walk-in refrigerator with an 18-pack of Bud Light, and a woman and her young son were making their way around my cart, which I’d left outside the entrance to the fridge.  She muttered “Sorry,” as if she really needed to apologize for moving my cart, which I’d left, selfishly, in a spot completely inconvenient to anyone else wanting to make their way around the little liquor section.

I flopped the beer into my cart and took a quick look at her and her child.

Quickly, the thought flashed through my mind, though not in these words, just more of an impression:  “They don’t belong here.”

I pushed my cart down the little aisle and I considered turning right to the next, where the vodka is located, to see if Ketel One was on sale.  But something stopped me.  The thought was very clear in my mind–

“The woman who moved my cart to get by, and her child, are in the vodka aisle, and she doesn’t want me to see what she’s doing.”

As I turned left, I thought, “She’s going to try to steal a bunch of booze,” only again, it wasn’t in words, it was a feeling.

By the time I’d made it to the check-out, she’d apparently been accosted by the manager and had run out the door and to her car, with her young son.  The manager was near the customer service desk, asking her to call 911, and his hand rested on the handle of a cart filled with bottles of Absolut.

And one, lone, little-boy’s hiking boot.

I overheard phrases–”She was shoving the bottles in his jacket.”  “What kind of example is that for a child?”  “She should be ashamed.”

You think she’s not?  You think that woman doesn’t walk in shame every moment of her life?  She’s so desperate for whatever it is she’s desperate for that she has to try to steal booze from a grocery store and use her five-year-old son as an accomplice?

This level of desperation is easy to hide from in my little town.  But it’s coming, isn’t it?

I’ve felt, for several years now, a sense of foreboding; shaky footing; desperation in this country.  And it just keeps growing.

A large part of me, the vocal part of me, is terrified.

But there’s a part of me that’s somewhat excited.  I know, that sounds weird.  But I’m a little excited to see the parts of this country which have been, historically, untouched by everyday desperation, feel the effects.  See desperation.  Feel desperation.

I’m excited to see the eventual outcome.  Maybe I won’t survive it…maybe it’ll take so long to see what’s happening right now with any sense of distance or relativity that it’ll be my grandchildren talking about it in history class.  Or my great-grandchildren.

I just don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.  And for the first time in my life, I’m absolutely giddy about it.

I am now a columnist!

Click the post title to get to the link.  Something’s wonky with this template.

Rule number one: Don’t talk about Western Springs

The fun never ends with me, does it?  That is a link to the first in hopefully a long, long line of columns I’m writing for my local paper.  In the paper version, there’s a picture of me!  A random kid recognized me when I was walking down the street!  It was crazy!  And no, I don’t use this many exclamation points when I’m writing the column.  That’d be silly!  And really annoying!

The funny thing is that a day or so after I turned the column in to my editor, Business Week named my town the second-best place in the country to raise children.  Obviously, they didn’t get the memo.

Happy Thanksgiving!

That’s it.  Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope you have lots to be thankful for.  I sure as hell do.

technorati tags:thanksgiving

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A New Project

In lieu of working what some people would qualify as a “job,” I’ve decided instead to devote a great deal of my free time (it’s all free time, I suppose) to digging up information on my antecedents.

I’m your typical American mutt–I’ve got blood from Italy, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, and Germany coursing through these veins.  You throw Japan in there and I’m practically World War II.  I have a great grandfather who was a Chicago cop, jeez, a hundred years ago?  There’s a fantastical story about one of my grandfathers (who also, reportedly, was breast-fed until he was 5) being sent back to Denmark by his employer to visit family and to smuggle back a black orchid bulb.  I did some research on that a few years ago and didn’t get very far.  No one seemed to know what the hell a black orchid might be, which leads me to believe a couple of things:  1. There’s a long tradition in my family of people making shit up and 2. Now I know where I got that from.

There’s the Italian grandfather, one of (I think) four siblings, and the only one of the bunch who didn’t marry an Italian.  And worse (I guess), he married an Irish German.  And that Irish German took exception to something her Sicilian sister-in-law said one day and enforced years of non-communication between her husband (my grandfather Victor) and his brother (Uncle Frank).  Victor and Frank, apparently, ran into each other in Vegas and started speaking again.  Victor and Frank also died within days of each other.  Yeah, I got an Uncle Frankie.  What’s it toya?

My maiden name is Julian, and, supposedly, was at one time Giuliani.  Which prompts one to wonder–am I related to a candidate for the Republican nomination?  (Actually, my father wonders that.  I just shudder at the thought).

There’s the Giulianis/Julians, the Johnsons, the Rokiskis, the Nielsens.  There’s Vic and Frank and Marge and Emily and Rosie and Gracemarie and Sven and Louise and Hans and Adolf and Christof and Martha and Gus and many more.  There’s Danish sharecroppers who sent their sons to be apprenticed as carpenters and horticulturists. 

And that’s virtually all I know.  I have my own memories of the people my grandparents were (they’re all dead now), and those stories mix in my head with the stories I’ve heard about their lives before I was born, before my parents were born. 

So, my project:  as usual, I think bigger than is probably necessary.  First, I have to gather all the information that is already known about the people who came before me and put it in one place.  And then I have to find more information, dig deeper, listen, retrace their steps.  It could be just your average, everyday family tree project, or it could be a history of immigration in the United States in the 20th century.  Or it could just be a history of me.  Who knows where it’ll take me?

I want to put up a website to hold all the information I find, and to share it with all of my relatives, but I can’t for the life of me think up a proper name for it.  Something that somehow pays tribute to the countries and/or people of my origin.  Any suggestions? 

What the Hell?

I know that’s what you’re asking yourself.  What the hell happened to this blog?  Well, I’ve decided to make a few changes.  A fresh start, I suppose.  Whether that guarantees I’ll actually post once in a while remains to be seen.  I sure hope so.  I miss my blog!

I briefly thought about abandoning all of my old posts, but I don’t think I’ll do that.  They’ll be up soon.

 And if you used to appear in my links, you’ll end up back there.  If I forget you, go ahead and nudge me to put you back up.

Me on TV

Yep!

I will be appearing live on msnbc tomorrow, sometime between 11 a.m. and noon CST, talking about the response on Newsvine.com to the Democratic Debate happening this evening.

Live. On television.

Hopefully, there will be a link available to video of my appearance, and if so, I will post it here. But I fully expect you all (all three of you) to be watching.

Frank Crist, February 23, 1973 - October 17, 2007

Frank was my friend. And now he’s gone. He’s presumably floating around wherever atheist anarchists go for the rest of eternity.

The first time I met Frank was on the first day of a class we took together. I walked in and saw him–all lanky, sexy and messy–and thought, “Who is this guy with the tattoos up his arms and the boots so broken in it’s like they’ve been on his feet since the day he was born, and the red beard and the long blond hair?” And the first time something of mine was read in class and I saw him listening, and nodding, and then he turned those twinkling, open eyes on me, and the look told me everything–that he knew nothing about me yet accepted me completely for who I was, sitting there across the semi-circle from him. I’ve adored him ever since.

There are a few things Frank taught me in the way-too-few years I have known him. Among those things are that it’s okay to believe that writing and breathing are nearly the same thing, and that it is as important to write as it is to breathe, and being true to one’s self is really fucking hard, and can be painful at times, but in the end, is far better than the alternative. And also, that spending an entire day attempting to brew beer in coffee pots is a perfectly acceptable way to pass time.

To know Frank was to know an uncomplicated, uncluttered, unselfish kind of love. My heart is broken, but the memories remain. I will never forget you, Frank.