Archive: JIMBO
I really can’t tell if this is actually tough, or if it’s just that everyone thinks it’s tough. I just got off of the phone with Mr. Kevin Stone, and though he said “it’s a real pain in the ass for your friends,” he did commit to coming to my house at (more or less) the time I asked him to, and now I have a plan for tomorrow, and I don’t need to worry.
My girlfriend, Liz P., said it was real dumb that I am doing this. I told you that and I tell you this to point out that folks are reacting strongly my plan. I’m not convinced that we can’t break free from this crazy thing, this mobile phone business.
I’ve been having trouble determining my limits for this experiment, but I’ve come up with this. The phone can’t leave my desk, except for charging (outlets in my room are woefully placed). I will not respond to text messages except by actual voice call. Though I haven’t decided for certain, I imagine I will refrain from checking my voice mail messages from away, but might also end up in a sticky situation where I need to. I am DJing weddings on the next two Saturdays, and there is always something to fetch, or fix, or some other fiasco pops off during the event, but with enough foresight, this might be overcome.
The experiment seems to be a little flawed because my experience isn’t what it would be like if things totally changed and lots of people went back to land-lines and answering machines – my experiment is one person using a land line in a sea of mobile phones, i.e. I’m still counting on a network of cell phones to be able to contact people. I must return to my hypothesis: I predict that by using a land-line the pace of my life will slow down and I will less stressed, more productive, and more present in my every-day activities. I needn’t be confused with revolution; I’m not going to change anything. This is a scientific study, after all, not a polemic. I shall try my best to follow my rules and record the results without intent.
I have a plan and a hypothesis.
For the entire month of September I will leave my cell phone in my bedroom, tethered to the wall.
I’ve become convinced that life before technology was somehow better, and that our brains can’t deal with – or haven’t had time to adapt to – so much stimulation. I thought a lot about this on Saturday when I was working in the garden at my house. My housemates and I installed another raised garden bed and I must have thought about checking my phone for calls or text messages three or four times during the time we were out there, pushing our hands into the soil.
I’m not certain that my theory is true, that life was better before technology, but I’m going to give it a shot. I want to slow my life down and enjoy my time, rather than speed through my days, wondering where else I could be, or what I’m missing out on. I’m going to have to make plans with people and stick to them. Brrrr!
It’s not going to be easy. Already the lack of the convenience is showing. I can’t call long-distance from many phones because people don’t bother localizing their numbers when they move. I don’t have a timepiece anymore. I wrote down a few, but I just don’t know people’s phone numbers.
I’ll let you know how it goes. If I don’t call you back right away, you might have to just drop by the house to say hi.
Tineola bisselliella is the name of the common clothing moth, and I’ve got a whole bunch of them. My new room in my new house, and these jerks aren’t leaving. It makes me mad, the way they sit on the ceiling, out of reach. It reminds me of Puerto Rico in a way, the tall walls with small bugs hanging out on them, but there I expected it, adapted to it. Here, I’m upset, pissed off. I swear at them, and they swear back at me, leaving smear marks where I’ve hit them with an old Harper’s. The handsome, tanned man on the back cover’s airline advert has been thoroughly mangled with the (what I’m sure to be) acidic guts of these moths, these bastards. I don’t know what to do. I’ve pulled everything out of the closet, even the carpeting, and they’re still appearing in there, hanging out like it’s a place to be. What makes me more angry, their presence or my intolerance of their very being? What are they really doing, I wonder, when they reappear after dark. What harm can they do? None is the logical answer, but hearing them flit about in the dark makes me squirm under my sheets. They land on my clothes, my skin – just who the fuck do you think you are? Cedar is the natural choice to turn them away, but the more they persevere, the more I consider risking cancer and odor with chemicals. I truly hate them.
The freeway moved, then stopped, clogged by a mishap. It became something else, and then changed again. The hills were there, and then they weren’t hills at all but just the other side, the river plunging lower and lower.
A blade, a single blade, spanned two train cars’ length. Count how many – six, seven, eight, nine. How many are on the hills? How many are alive on the hills? Some churn slowly, quickly. Neighbors defy each other’s will, holding when it makes sense to let go. Is it their will, or are there brakes? Have you heard them? “Like a passing train that never does,” they say. How can something so big, so graceful, be anything but gentle?
There’s a town in a hole. A town downwind from a depot. There: a town on the river. It’s volleyball, it’s wrestling, it’s softball; not football. They try to compete, but they know not to push too hard.
Every home has a remote alert, a small, gray box with a stubby antenna. If the VX or the Sarin gets out from the depot (they’ve destroyed the Mustard), everyone will know. On New Year’s Eve there was nothing happening in town at all.
Few choices for commerce are unique to the town; most places are the same places that everywhere has. One is a diner with a bassinet in the entryway and strange photos of all of the staff above the cashier. One of the cooks wore an eye patch. One of the patrons talked loudly about Jesus being present, very present. One of the sports cards that came out of the trading-card machine was of an old man, kneeling.
A junk shop has old paintings, old cast-iron skillets and an old man who likes Juice Newton. The woman across the street at the Tienda de Ropas doesn’t know that man.
At first it was Seattle, and then it was Vancouver, but the rain was the same. Not drops and clouds, but thick, gray batting torn from the sky to the horizon. The car moved swiftly and quietly, understanding itself and the road. There were few changes, save for kilometers and the names of kings and queens rather than a man that denounced them.
A city of glass and steel, built vertically to challenge the mountains. At war with nature, who had her way with the city by sending in her coldest air to sit among the buildings and wait. It did not leave as it saw no need to.
The sun returned, and the wind moved the gray and the mountains showed themselves to the city, which yawned and rented bicycles.
At night, the old part of the city rolled over on a wet mattress and drifted into a deep, narcotic sleep as young men dressed up and played their instruments like Marc Bolan.
And in the morning, the gray returned, but the mountains were clearer than ever, peering down the long avenues.
Awoken by the sounds of scratching, I found myself in the room, alit by the soft yellow light of a lone street lamp through the trees. Scratching above my head, as the wall my body points at is shared by a garage. Scratching on the wall. Scratching in the wall. The wall is alive. It is filled with straw, a maze for the small things. The plaster is old and crumbles easily. It is moving. It is above me. The room is awash with the sound. Light dances across the floor, the bare walls. Movement, silence, presence. Its small body pauses on the quilt, the pattern alive with possibility. It moves slowly, much slower than it scratched, smelling, searching. When I move, it doesn’t. Acknowledges my presence, yes, but doesn’t away. It turns its head as the light crosses its path and I take it with no difficulty. There is nothing sharp about it, but it moves, writhes. The tail whips against my arm, sturdy like a power cord. I am alight. I am across. And I kneel, the maw of the bowl agape, and it is plunged. The electricity discharges and the beast thrashes. The howl that does not escape is in my throat, my head. The smallest bones vibrate, dissonance.
Dear Mom and Dad,
Thanks a ton for the care package – the cookies went fast!
Classes are going pretty well. I just got through midterms, and I think I even aced my Shakespeare test. It’s been tough to get up early for that grammar class, though.
Living in the dorms is crazy. I keep meeting all kinds of people in the lounge. I’ve been doing most of my studying there because my roommate makes the room smell pretty bad. He leaves food out and has some pretty gross habits. His name is John, and he’s an exchange student from the 1600s – pretty crazy, huh? I think he’s the only guy on campus from the past. I end up having to catch him up on basic things all the time, and it’s kind of a pain. I mean, I’m sure it’s tough to live in a different time and all, but I have my own stuff to do to – I can’t hold his hand all the time. I might have to see about getting moved if things don’t change.
Last week, John came back to the room drunk and puked in the trash and didn’t clean it out until I asked him to. I had to complain to the RA about that – and the bedpan thing. He uses a bedpan, which is totally gross. Our rooms are pretty small – I’ll leave it at that.
On the plus side, he did help me with some of my Shakespeare reading, and he’s teaching me how to play guitar (he’s really good). I tried showing him how to use the ipod speakers you gave me, but he’s not really into my music – he mostly just plays his guitar, which is cool.
So, overall, things are pretty good. I’ve been staying busy, I even joined an indoor soccer team.
Wish me luck!
I have to catch two different buses to work. My transfer is downtown at a stop surrounded by very tall buildings. If I’m on time, it’s still dark out. Sometimes I’m late, and the sun starts to rise and light the tops of them.
One morning I was admiring this effect and noticed a strange light on the top of a mid-sized building. Green lights, perhaps six wide and eight tall, arranged in a diagonal array atop a pole, facing southeast. It can’t be for helicopters because the building is adjacent to taller buildings, so what is it? I can’t help but look at it now; every morning I check to see if it’s lit.
Yesterday the lights were red. I can’t really explain the way this made me feel, but superstition worked its way into my thoughts.
I work at a therapeutic nursery for children – aged birth to four. Normally I just drive the bus, but yesterday I filled in for the teacher’s assistant in the two-year-old classroom. The kids are wild and hilarious. A little boy poured all of his cup of milk into his bowl of cereal, ate most of the cereal and then asked for more milk. After pouring the milk back into the cup for him, he fished the last of the Kix out of the cup, poured the milk into the bowl and asked for more milk. A little girl – who had, upon arriving in the classroom, immediately went around the room and threw everything on the floor – went ahead and threw his bowl of milk on the floor, too, ending his experiment in gravity and the nature of liquids.
Spills can be cleaned and attention can be re-directed. Some things are more difficult.
This girl’s need to make chaos of the room was unappreciated by another girl, “D,” who needed stability. The first girl, “C,” got out the little xylophone and brought it over to me, sat down, and proceeded to make a racket. D immediately came after her, eyes alight with fire, growling fiercely from the back of her throat. She put her hands around C’s throat, and when separated, continued to thrash and kick at her, never averting that vicious stare, limbs shaking with rage. Two or three more times this happened – grabbing at other kids’ throats or collars, eyes wide, that unreal growl, and the shaking, as if there were more rage in her little body than it could handle.
It’s easy to over-simplify the reason behind such behavior with platitudes gleaned from made-for-TV specials, but there are so many factors at play. It may have been her family that gave her these ideas, but it may not have. I dropped her off at home and dad seemed a friendly guy, with the house relatively clean and warm smells of something being fried wafting out from inside – and a huge television on. Stress plays a large part in a lot of these families’ problems. Everything from physical health to the ability to deal with children’s needs is impaired by stress, and living in any form of poverty is stressful.
That said, the son of one of my family’s close friends – who is now in law school in New York – was a biter when he was three. A fierce biter.
Today, the light was green again, but before the bus came, it started to blink. Every. Three. Seconds.
I don’t know what it means.
For a week or so I was driving around my pop’s car with only the cassette single of “Regulate” by Warren G in the deck. Each side had the album cut exactly once – a perfect, repeating cycle. As I listened to it over and over again, the song grew out of the rote tale of west-coast gangster life I’d assumed it to be and into something more. Check it out:
The story begins with our protagonists, Warren G and Nate Dogg, cruising the eastside separately. Warren, though the principal of the song (it is on his album), runs into trouble, while Nate Dogg causes a car full of girls to crash on account of how fly he is. Nate Dogg, the king of the gangster-croon, the Sinatra to Snoop Dogg’s Dean Martin, is the tougher, more resourceful man in the narrative. He swoops in, saves the day (fends off the perpetrating dice-rollers) and then delivers Warren to the immobilized girls, relegating Warren to the role of Sammy Davis, Jr. in this contemporary gat-pack.
But this is where the song gets interesting: the third act of this narrative isn’t narrative at all, it’s the duo bragging about the abstract splendor of their well-being and how nice their music is.
It’s only natural the story should end with such ephemera. Trace the steps: The shepherd, Nate Dogg, leads Warren G, our pilgrim, out of hell (getting jacked at a crap game) and into purgatory (he still needs to find some girls). The third verse’s cyclical non-sequiturs “the rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble” are the heaven the pair are after – a high, blissful experience that we can only assume is what one finds at that fabled eastside motel.
I can still feel that intense draw from the first time I heard Warren G’s opening line: “It was a clear, black night, a clear white moon.” He sets the scene in the style of epic poetry, as if nothing less were to follow. I think these fellas knew what they were up to.
