The Infinite Abyss

I says, "waiter there's a fly in my soup," he says, "what's the matter did you order a mosquito?" I says "waiter whats this fly doin in my soup?"

2006-04-09T15:42:00.000-04:00

I have no idea what's going on.

Seriously.

What's happened? I suddenly don't recognize my hometown. It's gotten so freaking cool over the past 72 hours that I can hardly contain myself. And the fear of it returning to normal idleness is looming and dreadful, and I know, inevitable.

First off, on Thursday night the Revolution, WKU's student radio station, put on their annual free concert. This year, they moved it to Fountain Square Park--a nice choice. I got out of class on Thursday night, late, of course, and went straight to the park with a friend. We didn't stay long, but the crowd was good and may I say that a streetscape is the perfect place to feature this concert. Present were headliner Andrew Thompson, Vilejive, The Wayward, Sound and Shape, Laromlab, Commander, Ocelots, Decade of Expert Assassins, Blue Collar Boys, My Finest Hour, and The Secret.

THEN, last night Nickel Creek played the Capitol Arts Center, approximately 100 yards from where this huge concert had occurred two days earlier. Aside from Ray LaMontagne's Bonnaroo 2005 show, this concert was the height of any live performance I've ever seen. They played for almost two and a half hours! The crowd was good, and it just seemed that Sarah, Sean, and Chris were feeling it. The encore was incredible. First, Sarah came out alone. She crooned and the place was silent for her. I was on the edge of my seat. Then, she sat down on the stage and Chris came out and played a solo piece and then Sean finished that up. They then played three more songs. It was incredible. At one point, I was thinking, this'll be the end of the show and then Sarah said, "You guys can leave if you want. You realize the shows over and this is all just extra right?" Througout the night, their songs melted into their own version of Brittney Spears' "Toxic" which was AWESOME, and "The Weight" by The Band (which is the song that starts with, "I pulled into Nazareth, I was feeling about half past dead..."), and even Bach.

About the time the encore was wrapping up, I got a text message from a friend: "(guy's house), 2nite.. word is andrew thompson will b there. call 4 more info! Party!" OK, so now the headliner from Thursday night's show was going to play at some guy's house up the street? No way. Well, way.

Well after the show, on my way to see Andrew Thompson, I swung back by the Capitol to see if the Nickel Creek had left yet. There they all stood. I met Chris Thile, stood toe-to-toe with the Grammy winner, the guy who's all over my ipod like butter on bread, and though some honey on his arm had most of his attention, he did manage to talk to me for a couple of minutes. I invited him to see Andrew Thompson, which he declined because "I have to walk my friend here back to her car, but I sure do appreciate it."

Oh, and Matt Pond opened and they were awesome.

On a somewhat related note, rumor has turned into credible speculation, and now confirmation that the Maya Angelou will be speaking at WKU this Fall. And now, still in the rumor phase, word is that Barack Obama may also be visiting next year. I really don't know what has happened, but something about my hometown just got really, really cool.

GO HERE, now, doing yourself a favor, and watch the Andrew Thompson video for "There Must Be Some Kind of Misunderstanding."

I says, "waiter there's a fly in my soup,"
He says, "what's the matter did you order a mosquito?"
I says "waiter whats this fly doin in my soup?"
"well it looks like he's doin' the backstroke"
"ooh la la, well excuse moi, there must be some kind of misunderstanding."

I says "ah, waiter there's a guy in my soup."
He says, "you know who that is that's the Dow Jones' average."
"Waiter, what's Dow Jones doing in my soup? "
"Well it looks like he's filing his taxes."
"ooh la la, well excuse moi, there must be some kind of misunderstanding."

"Waiter, there's a condundrum in my soup."
"That's no conundrum, that's Montgomery Clift."
"Waiter, what's Mr. Clift doing in my soup?"
"Well it looks like he's taking a mulligan."
"ooh la la, well excuse moi, there must be some kind of misunderstanding."

Spread Thin

2006-03-20T21:43:00.000-05:00

Today, I was talking to a good friend. It came up that I now weigh 195 pounds. First, with guys, there is no secretness with weight. It's something that comes up about once a year in conversation much the same way one might discuss how many miles to the gallon their car is getting. Now, it's not that I'm fat; I am 6'1" after all, which means that 195 pounds makes me tall, thin, with some hang over flab around the belly is all. But, his reaction was one of shock: "you're kidding!" he said. "No, I'm not." No one believes this about me. In fact, I didn't believe it about me when at a Halloween party in October, I stepped on my host's scales in the bathroom and looked in horror as the scale was sitting on the 200 mark. I went immediately to my parent's house after that night and tried their scales too. How did I get that heavy? And, when? And, where is it all hiding? I mean, I still look the same... only I've gained 20 pounds in a half a year.

Just this past week, I stepped into a crowded elevator in a line of others and at some point, the elevator shifted under someone's weight. I secretly knew it was me. I was with a group of colleagues, so I jovially made a comment, like, "I knew I shouldn't have had that second plate at lunch." A sweet lady near the back said, "like you'll make any difference. Look how thin you are." But, I didn't dare let out in an elevator that I'm busting the deuce.

With all this being said, while my stomach is stealthily becoming robust, my time is seeping away. I am spread too thin. Today's the day where I realized things are almost out of my hands with too much to do and not enough time to do it. There are work duties: I'm about to embark upon the meat of a task I've never done before--which means fear, real fear, of what I'm about to get myself into.

Then, there is school. Oh, school. Why did I think I could take 9 hours this semester? Why? Today I sat in a parking lot in Paris, KY, figuring out how much time I've completed in my 150 hour Practicum and figuring out how much this leaves me. Though the semester is more than half over, my practicum hours are less than 1/3 done. Ouch. So, I set to work trying to solve this problem. By May 11, how could I accumulate 150 hours? I looked first for time off, then there is that trip I'm taking with my on-site supervisor--does time in the car count? sure it does!--there are the meetings that we're scheduled to have each week between now and then, the sessions I'm covering in front of new students... It started coming together! That is, until I realized I had counted my trip to NKU twice. With great doom, it became clear that likely I'm going to have to give up something very important to me until May 11: lunch. From now until then, one hour in the middle part of my day is going to have to be spent out of the office and not with food, but instead in another office. This really bothered me until I realized maybe it's the solution to two of my problems.

Perfect Timing

2006-03-14T22:53:00.000-05:00

What controls us? Happenstance? Karma? Or us?

I drew a bathtub full of hot water. The lights went off. I grabbed a towel to use as a pillow. As the water neared the tub's edge, I poured some shampoo in to just make enough bubbles to cover the surface of the water. I grabbed my laptop and turned Media Player off shuffle mode.

Something happened today that needs recognizing. I had my ipod playing in the car and on came a David Gray song. I was driving on this empty highway in the mountains. The sky today was a blazing blue marked by shreds of cumulus, the blissful wake of all of yesterday's storms. The road snaked between Cumberland and Harlan, following the path of the Cumberland River, winding in between the southern flank of Pine Mountain and the northern slopes of Black Mountain.

My entire life I've been fascinated with maps. When I was a kid, I would literally spend an hour or more sitting with the Rand McNally Atlas studying my own state--frequently. And, occassionally, I still do. I used to look at place names in the eastern part of the state, the parks, the forests, the mountains, and the towns, imagining what they must be like. The mountains, majestic, cloaked at the top by fog. The towns, haggard, tired, dirty, and children barefoot in the yard just like on Feed the Children. The forests, long, endless, enchanted and virgin. And the parks, with names like Kingdom Come, were like fantasies in my mind.

These places are not what I had imagined. A young mind has a way of creating fantastic things and awful things alike. Take for example the people in these not-so-haggard, but sometimes, village-esque towns: they're not lacking anything except an interstate highway in their town. But sometimes, reality, as plain as it is, just dazzles you. That is what happened today. Real life won out over fantasy.

Driving, today, I watched the clouds paint their shadows across the mountain sides. I raced cloud shadow lines down the highway, finally winning out and driving into a sudden muted light and as quickly back into the intense sunlight.

Water from yesterday's storms was pouring off the cuts in the mountainsides. The roadsides were filled with glinting waterfalls.

Someone asked me today about Bowling Green: "do you have tornadoes there?"
"Yes, sometimes. Why, do you not here?"
"No. We have floods. The mountains protect us from tornadoes."
Another person spoke up. "I remember one time a tornado touched down in Harlan. It knocked over a tree."

How fascinating. No tornadoes. And when they do hit, they make news for knocking over a tree. But floods, and yes, floods indeed. Even the little bit of rain from yesterday had sent the Cumberland River into a kayaker's dream. The water muddy, churning where it wasn't white.

And as I drove on more, it happened. David Gray came on via random shuffle from my ipod, and I realized I had never heard this obscure song. Everything came together. The day, the sense of bringing a picture to a map, and something I've always wanted to see happened to stand on the side of the road as I drove by--a moose!

I questioned where the music of David Gray had been in my life, and felt that clearly it had waited to define this moment for me. Tonight, as I finished drawing my bath, I brought the computer into the bathroom and played "Life in Slow Motion" as I fell asleep, legs outstretched in hot water, head resting on the pillow towel.

Photos from the past week

2006-03-05T01:21:00.000-05:00

Regatta, Sand Key/Clearwater

After one of my aforementioned therapy sessions

Morning at the Belleview Biltmore with the old oaks and cedars

Sunset at Pier 60

A perfect beach in Tarpon Springs

The Belleview Biltmore Resort... my highest recommendations (just don't take the ghost tour, but do visit the far west wing of the fourth floor)

The Gulf of Mexico is my therapist

2006-02-27T19:01:00.000-05:00

If the saying is true that if a bird shits on you, you're going to have a lucky day, then the saying must also be true that if a seagull shits on you, you're going to have a lucky day at the beach.

Yesterday I was shit on by a seagull at Clearwater Beach, FL. It didn't matter, though. Life has been way too perfect the past few days. I've been on a business trip to the Bay area of Florida and may I just say, I have never, ever been so happy to be working.

I'd never been to the Tampa Bay area before, so it's been a new experience. Upon landing, I picked up my car at the airport and a Latin music station was on. I HAVE TOTALLY ADOPTED LATIN MUSIC as my genre of choice now. I haven't understood a single word, but I love the beat as I'm driving around south Florida. It defines the beat of this area. Urban, yet beachy. Busy, yet relaxed. From Tampa Bay, but for a non-English speaking audience. It has seriously gotten to the point where now a song comes on and I'm like, "I LOVE THIS SONG!" even though I have no idea what it's called, who it's by, or even one single lyric. Noventa-dos punta cinco FM (92.5)!

Here's what my days have been comprised of for the past four days:
1. work
2. beach

For the past four days, I've spent each evening on the beach at Clearwater. For the past four days, I have set on the sand where the ocean meets the land and watched the sun go into a big orange ornament over the Gulf of Mexico, then disappear. There have been four perfect sunsets in a row (tonight's arguably the most perfect) and I have been witness to each. There is something so clearing of the mind about watching the sunset, especially alone, to just have that time to reflect and to think about tomorrow and to stare up at the cirrus clouds in the sky over your head after the sun has sank below the water and watch the clouds then go bright orange, then red, then purple, and then disappear into a nighttime sky. It's theraputic. It's forgiving, cleansing, and brings back an innocence and reminds one of the satisfying complexity of the world. It's the time to let the mind wonder. And, when all this wondering is done, it's time to get up, walk across the boardwalk with the street performers throwing flames and juggling swords, past their crowds, with the children up front laughing and parents in back, dad with his arms around mom, and past all the vendors selling hemp jewelry and shell necklaces, and young boyfriends and girlfriends, and the adult couple who's in a new relationship, him playing the guitar for her and them together wrapped up in a blanket of privacy. All of this has made me very happy the past few days. All of this has made me feel very clear-headed. All of this makes me want to stay on for another four days. All of this makes me wonder why I never watch the sunset over the hills at home in Kentucky.

One year review

2006-02-22T21:47:00.000-05:00

I realized yesterday I missed the one-year anniversary of my kickoff of this blog. The "birthday" passed about two weeks ago. I feel it important to recognize this.

About a week ago, I sat with a new friend telling her about my blog. "What kinds of things do you put on there?" she asked. "Is it like a day-to-day account of what happened?"

This question was very good and cut exactly to the point that I've always tried to avoid with this site. I never wanted it to be a reflection of what I did, but rather a reflection of things I thought and to help me develop thoughts better. As a result, I feel as though I've had a couple of shining moments as a writer where I told a great story and hopefully made someone who happened upon it think. My favorite entry was probably about the bug-in-the-kid's ear.

Here are some things I've noticed about this site:
1. Commenting is dead. I used to get loads of comments. No one comments anymore. I take responsibility for this. Clearly, my writing sucks now and I'm not engaging anyone. Maybe its the fact that I've stopped posting free music downloads each day. Maybe its the fact that I rarely post pictures of myself on the Price is Right anymore. Maybe I've pissed you off through something I've written or an actual attrocity I've committed against you in real life. But, if so, please let me know. Say something mean in my comment section. I won't care. Really.

2. I get a hell of a lot of hits from the photo I once posted of Amelie (Audrey Tautou) from google images. This proves my point that she is the world's most perfect woman.

3. My favorite hits are ones that involve people finding my site for some really weird, twisted searches. What is going through people's minds? But for whatever reason, they end up browsing around for a while.

4. Though I've sank to occassionally making this a diaryish "then I did this, and then..." account, I've tried to actually supply some form of intelligence occassionally. But honestly, at the onset of publishing posts, I would think about it a lot... what will I write tonight? Now, though, I sat down at my computer a minute ago needing to write a proposal for a research project that's due tomorrow night and I realized, I don't really want to do that. I think I'll visit dericoky.blogspot and write something.

5. Though I've thought about letting this blog go, I keep it. Even though most of the people on my "I give these people half their hits" list are now no longer active bloggers (where are you guys?) and I miss the community of reading what everybody had to say each day, I've always thought of writing here as something I do for myself, not for others. But there's no doubt that my writing has grown scarcer as time has gone along. I suppose there is something that makes writing for an audience a little more commital.

Atlanta: February 2006

2006-02-19T23:42:00.000-05:00

photo credit: National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/king_center_freedom_hall.htm)

When I lived in northern Kentucky one thing I was constantly amazed with was the history that took place in the area. I remember thinking after I moved into my apartment on a bluff over the Ohio River--I wonder if any slaves ever crossed the river here. As a resident of the area, especially late in my residency of Kenton County, I became increasingly more and more curious and began to seek answers to the area's history. I learned loads of things I'd always been curious about, but perhaps the most shocking thing of all that I learned from this experience is that I had a real interest in Black American history, namely the Underground Railroad, and within the past few days, I've had another breakthrough: I love studying Martin Luther King, Jr. as well.

Now, what's it matter? I'm white. I'm male. I'm Christian. I'm straight. I'm exactly what American society points out should be easiest. Heck, to add to my demographics, I'm even college-educated and employed. But the truth is, I'm not content to just enjoy this. I feel some great homage to things that came before me and struggles that people unlike me faced. I just do. And, I'll add, I'm very glad that I do. I don't understand why I feel this relationship to this rather important volume of history, because I've rarely had to struggle for anything in my life.

Last weekend I had to go to Atlanta for work. I went down very early Saturday and my plans for the day fell through. It turned out to be the most serendipitous event I've experienced in a long time. I first dropped off a friend on the north side of town and then proceeded downtown to be a tourist for the day. I parked my car and set out downtown on foot, quite amazed by Atlanta. The last time I was there (besides passing through the airport as seemingly most flights do) was when I was about 14. The skyline seemed to scream wealth, power, and an in-yo'-face-American-dominance that I didn't realize existed in the city. My footsteps led me to a predominantly black district of the city where Underground Atlanta is. As I walked, I put on my gloves and buttoned up the top button of my coat. I watched fog come out of everyone's mouth. The street was filled with screaming pedestrians, families out and about, and in every window it seemed someone was getting their hair done. The urban beat of the city was penetrating me with a chill of exicitement. I took the steps down under the streets into the food court and ate Chinese in a line where a framed Coretta Scott King picture sat in rememberance on the glass case above the Lo Mein with cut, dying flowers around it. There was an employee who stood yelling for passer-bys to stop and try the special. His selling line was "we serve real chicken here, folks. No chunks, no kibbles-n-bits, nothing but the best chicken." As a reverse effect, this kind of disgusted me, but I was really hungry for Chinese so I stayed in the line. Aside from that, this guy spouted off political opinion as if he were a recording device playing back the real blowing lines he'd heard from the news. It was great to see such a public display of biting political criticism. It made me question, even if we are afraid that people around us will disagree with what we say, why are we still so afraid to say it? The food was great. I sat and felt the urban beat absorb me and ate my food alone at a table in a place where I was the minority for a change. Perhaps more than anything, that's what felt good sinking into my skin.

I visited the Coca-Cola Museum, which is an anecdote that doesn't belong in this post and then truly felt a power of the city when I walked into the CNN Plaza later that afternoon. But it was hours later, after I'd gotten back in my car that serendipity struck.

During the afternoon, the wind had picked up even more and a few snow flakes were flying around in the air. I got in my car, studied a map, and felt confident I knew how to get to my hostel (even though I was on business, I wanted the experience of staying in an American hostel--I ended up sharing a room that night with a Norweigan, an Argentinan, and a guy from New Zealand). I started down Auburn Avenue from downtown and thought I was heading the right way, but the further I went the more I doubted my navigation. I went below an underpass where there were rows of homeless people lying in the cold with their pile of stuff beside them. There must have been 100 homeless individuals here. As I emerged from the dark, I passed by a convenient mart with barred windows where police cars and an ambulance were parked in the street outside with their lights going--something had happened. I kept my eyes ahead of me and concentrated on street names, trying to re-picture the map of downtown in my head. I was behind a Caprice that was painted purple and had black tinted window and had hydraulics and spinners on its tires. As I drove up a small hill, I noticed a crowd of people on the sidewalk in an area that I only caught out of my peripheral, but imagined it to be a school. I drove on and the neighborhood suddenly improved by leaps and bounds and suddenly I was at an intersection with a National Park sign. Confused, I sat in the intersection and read the sign. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. BIRTHPLACE NEIGHBORHOOD

I parked the car, got out, feeling something very good about what had just happened. I had gotten lost and had ended up at a site I didn't know existed, but was exactly where I wanted to be. I walked down the street and looked at the homes, the places where MLK's boyhood friends lived, where the corner store was where he bought candy, and finally the house where he was born. I looked at a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. standing with his own children on a spot in front of his boyhood home where I had just stood myself staring up at the porch swing and the windows moments earlier. The wind stirred in my ears and I held my cheeks in my hands as I walked around.

I got in my car and drove down the street and this is where it really happened--the biggest surprise, where my getting lost really paid off. I realized that what I had caught a glimpse of earlier wasn't a school, but instead was The King Center. I parked my car down by Ebenezer Baptist Church, where MLK's father preached, and later MLK himself would get his start as both a reverend and an activist. I walked the street and realized that the crowd I'd seen earlier at The King Center was gathered there for a reason--Coretta Scott King had been entombed there days earlier only yards away from MLK himself. I walked up the steps in amazement at my lucky stumble. The wind suddenly howled and snow came flying in. The sky to the west cracked and downtown Atlanta, a mile or so away, suddenly lit up like a glittering sea at sunset. The moment held a spirit I will never forget. I stood at Mrs. King's gravesite first, staring off across it, across Auburn Ave at the flying snow. Then, I stepped over to the water that seperated me from MLK's island tomb. There were lots of others there, but I felt so alone. In all the wind, no voices carried to me; it seemed silent. I sat down on the water's edge and put the tips of my finger in the water and spent a long time. I stared across the blue water, across the tomb, across the trees and the flying snow, to the glittering city a mile off in the waning sunlight and felt I had discovered why the city had seemed so powerful to me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today, I laid on the sofa a week and a day later and watched a documentary on King's life. I watched black-and-white footage of marching from Selma to Montgomery, through Cicero, saw the stills of the moment after he was hit with a thrown brick. I watched video from his last birthday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, saw his influence in Washington, LA, Chicago, Memphis, Mississippi, and in Alabama. And knowing what was coming didn't make the moment any less poignant than when the documentary featured that last speech he made in Memphis, when he closed with the following:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Chills ran up my body and tears came to my eyes this morning as I watched this. Though I felt I knew the words, have heard them altered and in sound bytes my entire life, this was the first time I had seen with what spirit he delivered them with. As he closed with that very last sentence, he basically just fell back into a chair. People fell around him to shake his hand. The audience seemed positively electric.

In one month, work will take me south again--this time to Memphis. Having visited Memphis before, having seen Graceland, there are two sites I'm aching to see. I'll spend the day at the National Civil Rights Museum and I'll visit the Lorraine Motel. And maybe someday, the need for all of this history that doesn't belong to me will cease. But for whatever reason, right now, it's strong and real and feels like I need to own up to it--even if I am a white stereotype.

Salisbury Branch Road

2006-02-07T23:56:00.000-05:00

On Getting to Hi Hat

I had to go to Hi Hat, Kentucky yesterday. To some locals, this is pronounced as one word with one sylable.... try "hiut" as a one-sylable word and you'll get it.

Now, mind you, I'd never been to Hi Hat before, so mapquest directions were in order. Many people bitch about mapquest directions, but I've yet to find anything better. Google maps are great, but don't provide me with the same order that mapquest does. With mapquest, I can simply type in an address where I'm starting in the address field, tell it which city I'm starting in, what state, and what zip code. I work this way. It makes sense. With google maps, it doesn't give you these individual fields... just one big line where you can type whatever you please. This confuses me. I'd want to say, Comfort Suites Prestonsburg, KY to Hi Hat, KY, but google maps doesn't recognize this nor do they give me a place that clearly indicates where I should type a city name, such as Hi Hat. One other thing... when the google maps directions get down to the real tight turns, they give you distances in not fractions of miles which my car's odometer can understand, but in feet. For example, a google map's directions might tell me to "take a left on Gas Pipe Road and travel 239 feet."

Long rant short, I still use mapquest because of these reasons. And usually, mapquest is pretty good to me.

I was following my directions and knew that my next turn was to be a left on Salisbury Branch Road. I was watching the odometer so I'd know when I'd been on KY 7 for 8.6 miles and right on cue, I saw a little homemade sign that said "Salisbury Branch." I thought, "this can't be the road I need" and went on past it. I drove about a mile on and realized that this was becoming less promising. I swallowed my pride and thought, "too many times have I doubted mapquest. Surely, I must need some trust." I wheeled back around and went back to the homemade Salisbury Branch sign and took a nosedive off the highway on to the steepest decline ever managed by a boy from Warren County.

Salisbury Branch Road first crossed over a small bridge (I suppose the water body was Salisbury Branch, but I could be wrong) then immediately over some railroad tracks. The road was wide enough for my car and my car alone. I was driving, rather quickly it seemed for this road, but was smiling, thinking, "well isn't this quaint and charming?" In fact, the scenery was gorgeous. The weekend's light snowfall was melting off and water was dripping and glistening in the sun. I rounded a curve on the little one lane road and felt like I was in the back of the Cotswalds.

At one point, I met a truck, which was problematic because the road was only made for one vehicle at a time. To solve the situation, I thought quickly and pulled into someone's carport and let the truck go on past. Then, I backed out and started further on down Salisbury Branch Road. It was about this time that my actions caught the attention of the neighborhood's dogs and they started barking insanely at me and chasing me. I drove on, unphased. And then something I didn't expect to happen happened.

The pavement ended and Salisbury Branch Road became gravel.

Now, any other time, I would have found this a good indication. But, my next step on mapquest was just another 0.4 miles on and I knew that this was going to be a left onto another road--a road that was surely paved and probably busy with traffic. I'm a very trusting person. So, I gave mapquest the benefit of a doubt and went on.

The melting snow was running down the ruts in the gravel and it felt as if I were driving in Salisbury Branch, but my rental Enterprise was doing good through it. But then, something I REALLY didn't expect to happen happened. The gravel stopped. Salisbury Branch Road became a muddy track. For whatever reason, I kept driving. I drove all 0.4 miles to where the next highway should be and on, hoping, trusting. The muddy path was puddled with melting snow and my car was making RRRRR RRRRRR sounds as it slid in the mud. I drove a half a mile into a meadow before I stopped my car and started laughing.

The dogs were all around me barking, "who is this nut?" and there I sat in a rental car in the middle of a muddy field a mile off of the end of pavement. It was then that I gave up being on time for my next appointment and just felt thankful to have a job that provides me with excuses to experience things like this.

I turned the car around and proceeded epically through mud, gravel, pavement, losing the dogs eventually, crossing over the railroad tracks, going over the one lane bridge and then up the steep incline back to the real highway.

I stopped and asked directions to a man who was walking with his family down the road. This is where I learned that some locals call Hi Hat Hiut. He gave me directions that sounded somewhat more sound: "go up here to the Beaver Creek Restrent, turn left ov'r the concrit bridge and go un over the hill, and when you come off the hill you're in Hiut." I followed his directions to every last hillbilly word. And everything was dead on accurate, except the hill turned out to be a mountain that I believe alters weather patterns for the east coast--it was freaking huge, but sure enough, when I came off the hill, I was in Hi Hat.

Crash

2006-02-05T23:03:00.000-05:00

Tonight I was driving through Pulaski County on my way to eastern Kentucky. I was on a four-lane, divided highway, much like an interstate, but not. I was heading east. The traffic heading west was seperated by a grass median.

It was a long, straight stretch. Up ahead there were flashing headlights... bright to dim, bright to dim, bright to dim. And then, I saw them, a pair of headlights in the eastbound lanes heading west. Brakes were hit. I followed the car ahead of me into the grass and came to a stop. The truck beside me came to a stop and then SMACK. The car drove straight into the truck head on. I sat and watched it all happen: the sparks, the crunch of the front half of a car.

Pisa

2006-01-27T23:22:00.000-05:00

Photo of the Day

AND THE SURVEY SAYS... Richard Karn is so not cool

2006-01-24T18:55:00.000-05:00

Tagged by Jeff, I thought I'd fulfill the prophecy and actually do a survey for the first time in my life (that actually may not be hyperbole).

FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:

* I ran my own lawn business for three months (March, April, and May). Then, I told my clients I couldn't mow their yard anymore--just gave them up mid-season so I could travel. I'm a selfish prick.
* I worked at Lerner, Sampson and Rothfuss as a Billings Specialist. This job taught me a lot. I worked on the sixth floor of a high rise building one block away from the Carew Tower and from Fountain Square and I always imagined I'd look out my window someday and see ugly, naked guy across the street in another high rise, but it never happened. I think it was the way the sun glared in my eyes. I couldn't see squat. I hated that job, but my God am I proud of who I was during that time. May I just say, I hope a certain controller is less bitter with the rest of the world than she was with me the day she told me I was "poison in the office."
* The Trace at Bay's Fork Golf Club--I picked up rocks, tore up irrigation systems, did tricks in golf carts, and made some of the best friends of my life. It was the perfect job to have as a teen. Ah, fondness.
* Admissions Counselor for WKU--I recruit students, sometimes feeling like I'm kissing a mom or dad's arse to appease them, but every once in a while feeling totally rewarded when something awesome happens like the night a girl came up to me on the sidewalk on the square in front of Spencer's Coffeehouse and thanked me for convincing her to come to WKU. She said, "I love it here. Thank you."

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:

* Amelie
* Life is Beautiful
* Forrest Gump
* Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation (yes, I'm serious)

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:

* Scrubs
* Love Monkey (is it pre-mature to say this since I've only seen the pilot?)
* LOST
* Letterman

FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN:

* Bowling Green, KY
* Villa Hills, KY
* Cave City, KY
* London, England (for like six weeks during the summer of '02)

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:

* Italia--Roma, Positano, Firenze, Tuscana
* NYC
* Port Isaac, Cornwall, England (quaint, lovely)
* I drove through Kennebunkport, ME once. I just needed an excuse to prove to myself that I could spell Kennebunkport.

FOUR PLACES I’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:

* on the spiaggi in Positano
* on a Peace Corp trip
* Hogwarts
* Cuba

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:

* my mom's brownies
* shrimp kabobs that I cook with green peppers and mushrooms
* steak that I cook
* Fettucine Chicken Alfredo w/ brocolli and mushrooms

FOUR OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVORITE RESTAURANTS:

* Taylor Grocery Store (upon reopening this place in 1997, owner Lynn Hewlett said, "Everybody's invited to come on down, but if you're in a hurry, don't bother to make the trip. We want people to sit out on the porch, sip a little wine or whiskey, and visit with their neighbors while they're waiting for a table."
* Harper's
* Lambert's Cafe
* the Apple Barn

FOUR SCHOOLS YOU’VE ATTENDED:

* WKU
* Allen Co. Scottsville HS (very little patriot pride, sorry)
* Alvaton Elementary (would still feel like home--memories)
* I went to a Community Ed. class at University of Cincinnati when I lived up there. It was called Communiversity and I learned about Travel Writing from Bonnie Manning, who was a cool chick

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:

* www.wku.edu
* http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/
* http://www.stevesmart.com/lightbox/
* Intellicast BG Radar

Leron's call

2006-01-23T22:53:00.000-05:00

Oh shit, it'd been so long since I wrote anything I was this close ---><--- to forgetting my password to blogger. Alas, my trusty memory came through once more. So.. awesome thing happened tonight. Phone at my parents' house rings. I answer. My Dad answers at the same time in another room. A man on the other end starts into an anecdote immediately and it takes me some twenty seconds or so to figure out it was my uncle Leron. The guy is hilarious. Imagine watching old-school comedy where everything is a witty one-liner that you have to catch. One of his lines was, "you know guys, I'm getting sick of winter. These grey days and everything--nothing to do, being stuck inside all the time. I'm sick of it. The other day I took a water pill just so I'd have a place to go."

My Dad's humor used to be so similar. Now, (wow, don't think I've ever disclosed this on my blog before, but) my dad is suffering from alzheimers and he's just not the same as he once was. But talking to Leron totally brought back some of my old Dad. Perhaps I heard my Dad's humor in the things that Leron was saying. Perhaps it was the clarity that my Dad would show for a few seconds as he'd recall an anecdote from their childhood as well. Perhaps it was just hearing my father laugh so much. But it was awesome and made me feel like for a moment it wasn't like it is.

Last Wednesday, I talked to a girl I've not talked to in seven years. She was the cute girl I met from Russell County that I took to my senior prom. Now she's getting her Master's and a husband on Block Island later this summer. But it had been seven years, seven years... that's a long time. So clearly both of us had grown up a little bit. We weren't talking about things we did at the lake like we did when we were 17 (15 respectively) but we were talking about colleges, loves, enlightenments, travels abroad, and perhaps most seriously of all.... alzheimer's disease. Her Dad died from alzheimer's a few years ago and hearing her talk about the whole experience, all of which happened during that gap of time where I didn't talk to her, was huge for me. Never before have I been able to talk to someone my own age who understood the ramification it has on someone (the one with the disease or the family member). It hurt. It felt freeing. She's got a real humor about it all that I don't have, that I can appreciate, but that doesn't suit me quite yet. I'm on the front side of an experience and she's on the back side of it. It's different. But to be able to explain.... to candidly speak to someone who could understand the senselessness of it all.... how nothing ever happens for a reason. It just happens. I'm happy to report that I came away from that conversation with an altered attitude about whatever experience I'll have later on in life. It's been weird lately--but in a good way. I don't want to say anymore about this topic.

But I will address the way I use the word "weird" too much in speech and text of late. It's been this way for about the past year. Some people overuse the word "like," Anthony Winchester for example. But for me, it's "weird." Please, if you have any ideas, give me words that I can substitute for "weird." I need something that I can use as an expression... like if you say to me, "did you see the way she looked at him?" I'd say, "yeah, weird." I need something I can just use an expression. I need suggestions.

So I'm going on a secret advertising campaign that in my head will revolutionize my campus. I'm going to say nothing more because when this idea totally flops, I don't anyone to call me on it. But, when the idea succeeds like a mother, I want to be able to point back to this obscurity and say to all the doubters... "boo yah."

Oh, and Chuck Norris humor is suddenly in. What's with it?

Sidenote: in late-November, I tried to tell my Sigma Chi Tiger Wood's story and it bombed. I didn't even make it to the punch line. For anyone who has heard this story, you know it's about damned near my best. Which brings me back to my uncle Leron.... how do you get funny like that?

Words for the musical explorer... Neutral Milk Hotel. Communist Daughter.

Friday night I went to the Prism Concert by WKU's Music Department. Awesome. Somewhere between my daydreaming during the piece by the cellists... thinking of Florence... ah, the night in Florence and then the gospel singing from the center of Van Meter Hall to the Steel Drums in front of the stage and the sway in every person's shoulder in the audience to the curtain drawing back and revealing the symphony orchestra in all their elegance, I realized, this is good stuff.

For a future blog idea, when I remember my password the next time, perhaps I'll tell you about Thursday night and the secret to a happy marriage that I discovered. But in the meantime, I'll be listening to Neutral Milk Hotel and thinking about one-liners that will someday make me appear funny to my nephew.

Life's good, Scrubs is back

2006-01-10T20:31:00.000-05:00

I've been quiet around here of late. Tonight I'll make up for that.

I'm watching TBS in my hotel room. Their "tell us what you think is funny humor study" commercials are hilarious and I quite enjoy them. In addition to this, I will take this opportunity to say that I'm unashamed to admit I enjoy Orbit gum commercials in all of their cheesiness. I think I would like to act in one. So, I'm traveling this week for work. I'm in Lexington staying at my favorite hotel. I'm not sure this really constitutes as a complaint against my perfect hotel, but I found some stuff in my room that is questionable. Last night, I knocked my cell phone off the bedside table in my sleep. This morning, I kneeled down in the floor to look for it. In my search, I found a peanut, a penny, and a shred of paper that had the words "sensuous," "impulses," and "muscles" on it. I had to wash my hands. My perfect perception of this hotel now has a stain.

Lexington is my favorite town to visit, but for whatever reason, I'm not really feeling it here this week. I just really dislike winter, and I forgot my coat. Usually, I'm able to get out and breathe some air, but I've been fighting some kind of head cold or something and without a coat, I've confined myself to inside only. After two days of this, I'm kind of lonely in Lexington and ready to go home. Today, I got chinese food after all my work was done. I was sitting at my little table for two in my room and got to my fortune cookie. My fortune said, "Happiness is right beside you." So I knocked on the hotel wall over to 208. No one knocked back.

Several things have happened since I last blogged. Likely the most altering of these is my first and second experiences with yoga. I went last Tuesday on lunch to the Preston Center. I sweated like a fat man and was shocked at how strenuous yoga was. Oh my gosh, I thought it wasn't going to end. It was only supposed to be 35 minutes, but I felt like I'd been holding myself up with one arm forever. Even the down-dog pose, which is supposed to be a resting position was killing me. Finally, though, we wound down, the instructor told us to lie on our backs. In her words, "this is your time" and the music played and she came around and put eucalyptus and peppermint oil on our foreheads and the next ten minutes was absolute bliss. My body, all stretched, tired, absolutely melted into the mat. My mind basically flushed itself and all I could think of was the smell of the eucalyptus and peppermint oil and I was laying bankside of the creek that runs through the moors at Bronte Falls on a warm summer day on pillowy, green grass. So I went back the next day after work for more yoga.

Scrubs is back from hiatus. WAHOO!!!

Picnicking on the Seine

2006-01-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

After a morning
of love-making,
an afternoon of impressionism,
and an evening
in the Luxembourg Gardens,
we'll go to the Seine
at sundown
and experience the long
cooling of darkness coming
with the young Parisians.
We'll listen
to the water bubble
under passing boats,
a couple in an arguement
that we can't understand,
murmur into each other's ears
about the morning
as we drink a Bordeaux
and the moon rises
on the other bank.
Somewhere a mile away
on the metro
an accordion
will hum to an old lady
who will die tonight,
to a couple
who will conceive
in thirty minutes;
the Metro's red line stops
on average
every three minutes,
thirty-seven seconds.
A man will approach
selling fresh flowers.
We'll smile him away,
"no, merci,"
finally open
the picnic basket:
a wrapped cheese,
a baguette,
and at your request,
mandarin oranges
from the street vendor
with a scarf tied
around her head
and a missing front tooth.
She knew English,
even a little,
we knew,
but your elation
showed when you
completed the purchase
in stuttered French.
This evening
I promise you.

Lately

2005-12-31T02:33:00.000-05:00

Hmm. I feel like posting tonight but have no idea what to say.

Let's start with a kicking photograph: Costa Rica's Arenal Volcano

For this occassion, I'll make a list. This will be a list without a title, but just about random bits of my current state of affairs lately:

this morning I got an email from friend in Argentina. She is pregnant with baby boy and is engaged suddenly. Eight months ago, when I met her on a street in Florence, she had a backpack strapped to her and didn't know where she was going in two days, much less in her life. Damn, life straightens itself out and solidifies pretty quickly sometimes.
I've been working out lately. I joined the Preston Center and my lawd, I'm loving it. I have started playing raquetball, I've started doing the weight machines (odd contraptions that look like sex machines or dental equipment or something but really all they give you are sore muscles--hmm, not so different at all, really), I've played walleyball (um, awesome) with a math professor, basketball with a french professor, a guy from Turkey, and a friend from Pakistan (as I played I kind of felt like I was in the Olympics), and I've played badmitton. Life getting fit is fun!
My high school prom date is now my facebook friend. She's engaged and we're having lunch together soon.
I'm not in NYC. Instead, I'll be in Louisville tomorrow night.
Coyotes have been howling outside my house recently at night.
The song "Halloween" by Ryan Adams has been in my head since I heard it this afternoon.
In the past 48 hours, I've watched "Crash" twice and freaking love the film.
I just finished watching "Cold Mountain" again and wonder why Jude Law and Natalie Portman don't just get married in real life. Even though Natalie Portman is only in that movie for about five minutes, that scene between them is the most beautiful.
Last night I went for drinks with a friend at Baker Boys. This was my first time ever there and I would like to award them the local award for "Worst mixed drink." Learn some bartending skills or just serve beer.
I have a headlight out on my car.
I wish I could play old-time string music.

Goodnight world.

Time

2005-12-28T23:48:00.000-05:00

Right before Christmas, I watched this Discovery special about the tsunami and my lord it wrenched my heart. In case you are not a current events, news-watching dude, you may need to know that the one-year anniversary of the Asian tsunami was two days ago.

I remember waking up on December 26 last year and hearing about the tsunami. Tsunamis, first off, are one of those things you always hear about and know exist and can happen, but they never do... kind of like earthquakes in Kentucky (December 1990, anyone??). But my God, that day it had actually happened--a tsunami! I remember that whomp feeling that I felt that morning when the broadcaster said 10,000 were feared dead.

In America, we inflate numbers ahead of time so that we're relieved when things come out so much better. September 11, 2001, broadcasters used numbers in the 10,000 and plus range. Remember after Hurricane Katrina, they feared 10,000 may be dead along the Gulf Coast. Rather, it was something more on the order of 1400. We, America, initially exaggerated by about 86% in the Katrina-wake so that when it was all over, things weren't as bad as they seemed those two days that we watched people being picked up off of rooftops by helicopters like seashells from a waveline.

But the tsunami killed around 250,000 people. They initially put out a number that seemed huge, yet only accounted for 4% of the actual human loss. Now, the whomp. The real whomp that you can't justify even after a year of seperation.

On this Discovery special, there were stories of children. One child, who was maybe ten years old and had lost his entire family, appeared intermittently throughout the show. He seemed to just wander even as he was interviewed--over debris, along the water's edge, through town--as if he were looking for something. And, I'm sure he is. Where does a small child go after losing not only his home, but his family? Here, a family would adopt the child. But there, not necessarily.

In another story, a father was interviewed. He had lost his wife, son, and daughter. They were all together that day, riding the train to the beach. At the last stop before the coast town, the train stopped and some people got on and some people got off and the man's family sat there and waited for that moment. As the train pulled out of the station, the man's son said to him, "I won't come back here." A few minutes later, as the train headed into lower ground near the coast, it met the wave. The train of course was washed off its tracks. The man's family was caught in one of the waves. His son was right.

And it brings up questions of intuition. How is it some animals sense the danger, but we, the dominant species, stand on the beach as a tourist with our camera and watch the ocean recede and when our wife asks, "Do you think it has something to do with the earthquake?" say "nahhh!" and then you see the sea far away getting rough and wonder--as one footage of film from the Discovery special shows us. The rough sea rises. Boats out off the shore capsize. And then seconds later, we're fleeing, us humans, not knowing until it was staring us in the face--death. But the child knew. Somehow. He felt something. And so did others--the animals that fled inland and upland. They knew.

On an island where an ancient tribe lives in a lowland that was most certainly destroyed by the tsunami, a film crew went to see if any of them survived. In fact, the entire tribe did. They knew. They knew that when the sea goes down, humans must go uphill. They had this great analogy that is their dogma. They believe the Earth sits in a big tree and when the Gods are mad, they shake the tree (earthquakes). When the big tree shakes the Earth moves in it. All the water spills to one side (the sea going down) and then the Gods stop shaking the tree and all the water comes sloshing back (the tsunami). It sounds naive, but these were the people that knew how to save themselves. What's naive is the poor man who said, "nahhh." But that, is really me if I'm there. I'm a tourist. I've never known of a tsunami actually happening. I've just heard of them. And I don't know the warning signs. So I watch it, this wonder of the tropical Earth. The locals are out there. It is safe. But, no.

All of this talk of the tsunami prefaces simply what I felt I wanted to say. A year has passed and it's time to reflect on things. It is what calendars allow us to do. We measure time and compare and contrast our situations and it depresses us more times than not, but I have nothing to be depressed about except for 4% becoming 100% and so in my small world, 600 feet safely above sea level, I feel lucky and happy and sorrowful for that little boy who is now without a home and a family and for the man who lost his son and his wife and daughter. And I feel a secret admiration for the naiveness of the old tribe and the simplicity of their beliefs that sustain them. And, I realize a year ago, I was taking the GRE and now I've got graduate school a third over and the rest mapped out in front of me and Yann Tiersen is singing, "This train is rolling on, this train is rolling on" in a rare switch-over to English and I simply say to all out there this:
It's the end of a year. Reflect. Reflect cautiously. Give thanks. Remember the world maybe does sit in a tree. Challenge your thinking. Expand your thinking. And though this year wasn't bad, make next year better. Happy New Year.

You're Invited

2005-12-28T23:36:00.000-05:00

The parents of DericoKY,
the author of the Infinite Abyss,
and the Apple Corporation,
the parents of the iPod (30 GB),
request your presence
as two celebrate their union.

The post-nuptual ceremony
will take place at this weblink
for the next hour or so.
The two are currently
exchanging their vows
in an intimate ceremony
as Derick has moved all 1700
of his songs onto his love
and has seemingly infinite
space left.

Gifts are requested in the form of .mp3.

Christmas post

2005-12-25T22:33:00.000-05:00

Why, why, why am I so awful with the opposite sex?

I totally made it sound like I wasn't interested in her or even a relationship period. Not that she's available or anything, but I made myself sound so inaccessible. I need to take back words. I need to reshape sentences. I need to say, bluntly, "I can't stop thinking about you." I've thought of texting her. I've thought of calling her. I've thought of showing up at her work tomorrow.

But, I won't. I'm dreaming. It's wrong. She's boyfriended already and I'm an idiot.

On to Christmas...

Christmas just wows me. We, my family, say we'll cut back. I, as one member of my family, did. No one else did. My mother is a spend-a-holic at Christmas and it makes me feel ill. The other day, I was in line at the mall. A lady in line asked me to go ahead in front of her. Over her shoulder was her purse. In her right hand was her cell phone. In her left hand was her credit card. She was trying to get a new credit card activated so she could make another purchase. One moment later, there I stand being checked out by a saleslady. The saleslady next to her is saying, "I can help you down here, ma'am." The lady who had let me in front of her was on the phone now. She said, "You can try this credit card, but I think it's maxed out. I'm trying to get this other one activated."

There it was. A dagger to my heart. I wanted to grab the lady's phone and say, "Ma'am, it's not worth it! Your family wouldn't want this. Whoever you're buying that gift for wouldn't want you to do this." It hurts me to watch people go further in debt and this morning it hurt me to look at my family with our stacks of presents. I was saying, "But Mom, I only asked for one thing! Why did you do this?" And I am appreciative and I love her for it, but oh, it hurts me to know that she put herself further in debt for me and stuff I don't necessarily need. I can get by without things, people. "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Henry, tell them!

I had an untraditional Christmas (didn't open presents on Christmas morning, but rather, all of Christmas afternoon. At dusk, we grilled out (ribeyes--quite good, even if the grillmaster does say so himself). It rained. It was windy and the fire in the grill kept blowing out. We sat down with intentions of drinking lots of wine and then doing stockings, but things always get crazy in our family and before you know it my sister was gone out the door and I was in the office making my Mom a last minute Christmas present (CD of a late country music singer who was a friend of my Mom's) and Cameron was playing and Bryanna was awake. The bottle of wine never got opened, but things were great anyways. Everyone was tired, but jovial. And at some point, it felt good.

I haven't left a song of the day in ages, so that slump is over. I hope someone, many someones who may not know this song will take a listen to it over the next few days. Loaded with powerful lyrics, it's a beautiful, poetic, and cathartic song. yousendit.com is no longer friendly with files as large as mp3s, it seems, so find this song. In the meantime, I'll hook you up with an amazon.com link so you can listen to a soundbite. But, however you get music, I think you should get this song.

"I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie

On Being Young

2005-12-21T00:26:00.000-05:00

There is something magnificent about living in a town of 50,000 people and it being somewhat of a university town. Despite the "I Hate Living in Bowling Green" club on facebook, I believe that there is a charm that oozes from this town, even given it's gnarly traffic, over-abundance of greasy restaurants, and let's face it, rednecks.

I meant to blog about this a few weeks ago, but never did. One night, I was on the way home after bitch day (Thursday) and was near pooed. Then, I pulled onto my road and there was a young girl sitting there in her car waiting for the stoplight, dancing like a wild woman. It made me happy. It renewed my own youth and reminded me that I too should be dancing in my car.

Tonight, I sat at the same stop light and remembered the girl, and was thankful that I'm 24 and feel good about life.

Peace Corp

2005-12-19T23:16:00.000-05:00

I'm changing. My musical tastes lately have shifted straight into foreign progressive classical something or another. I've started considering joining the Peace Corp after graduating. The idea of putting me in third world somewhere, access to a computer void, the nearest English-speaking person maybe hundreds of miles away, sounded insane when first mentioned to me. Why would I even want to? But I've been reading this book of essays written by former Peace Corp volunteers called The Great Adventure: Volunteer Stories of Life Overseas. Last night I read an essay about a man who was in a village in Papua New Guinea for two years. The volunteer was from Chicago and the man showed them pictures of life in America. He showed them pictures of skyscrapers and other signs of affluent America and then he showed them a picture of two homeless men holding a sign, begging for something. The people of this village wanted to know all about these men. They wanted to know why they didn't have a home. They wanted to know why in this photo, there was a man walking by them and not helping them. They wanted to know what became of them. You see, these villagers were from a culture where you lived communally and everyone was helped and treated equally. The Peace Corp volunteer couldn't appease their questions of American homelessness with an answer they'd accept.

He retired to his hut. Later that night, the village elders came to his door. They knocked and when the volunteer answered, they explained that they'd been in a long and very important meeting discussing these two homeless gentlemen that they'd seen photographed. They demanded that the Peace Corp volunteer call the American government and have these men sent to their village. They already had planned to build them huts, to sew gardens for them, and to prepare the village for two new residents.

The American volunteer tried to explain that this plan would never work. The American government would not hear of it. And, it's not as though he could just call the American government. He tried explaining bureaucracy to the villagers, tried explaining that these two men were an example of homelessness in America, not the center of it. They didn't understand. They couldn't. And days went by and they started building the huts for the two homeless men from Chicago and each day the American Peace Corp volunteer would try to contact powers that be in America and simultaneously, he'd try to tell them that their plan would never work.

This just shatters a glass barrier of thinking for me. It takes me to a new level of thinking. I could be that individual. I could be that person showing photographs to people in a land that they couldn't comprehend. I could be that person trying to solve a solutionless problem. The idea is starting to sound hugely attractive to me.

I'm thinking more and more ahead now. Everything is post graduation thinking... what will I do? Where will I move? Will I go abroad? Will I live go straight into a doctoral program? Where? What about money?

These things I do know:

I got two As this semester! This kind of pumps air back into the lungs of my GPA which was not so hot after two summer Bs.
It looks more and more likely that I'm studying abroad in Costa Rica this summer between June 5 and June 28, studying Comparative Education with the KIIS program. The only thing that is in my way is missing Bonnaroo. I have not yet come to terms with this. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I'm considering a study abroad trip elsewhere that would cost more money just so I could make Bonnaroo. This seems great for my desire to be in Manchester, TN for June, but not the best choice for my finances or career objectives.
I'm going to NYC in a week and a half and I'm flat out stoked.

Puddle

2005-12-16T00:40:00.000-05:00

I'm now 15 hours done on my way to a Master's degree. Yi-yah. I'm exhausted. My toes are even tired. I finished my finals at 6:05 today, just in time to make it to the party at one of the prof's house at 6:30. I made some lame kind of grand entrance and felt very cool for all of a single minute and the night cruised downhill from there. At 6:07, I was walking down College St. towards my car and I was thinking, "I'm done. When will that feeling of relief hit me?" Well, weird thing is, it hasn't. I remember during undergrad, how on the last day of finals, there was this sense of lightness, overwhelming happiness, personal achievement. But, none of that ever came tonight. I figured once I made it to the party, it'd all sink in. No.

I drank wine with my classmates and life was relatively good. I felt a smidge too boisterous at one point. Then, the invitation came to take the party elsewhere, and I went.

In Le Fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain, there is a scene where Amelie vaporizes into a puddle of water on the floor. Within just a second of seeing him and some other being stepping in, she melts. And tonight, slowly, one time after another, I melted. On the outside I laughed and I cracked jokes that went nowhere, and time after time, my insides became a sloshy mess as I watched. But, my face nevr showed it. And when it was all said and done, I was dropped off back home. I walked in the door, let it close behind me, and then, I fell into nothing but water.

to be, or not to be (emo)

2005-12-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling emo tonight. Three months ago, I didn't know what emo meant. I went to a Sonic one night in Lexington after watching The Aristocrats at the Kentucky Theatre and hearing the Indigo Girls playing in the hall next door and I ordered chicken fingers and fries. The car hop came out and said, "I like your glasses. They're very emo." I went back to my hotel room and searched "emo" on urbandictionary.com and then about a month after that I was invited to an emo themed party, which again, I wore my glasses to and I also wore a black t-shirt and I played my Jimmy Eat World on the way to get me pumped up for the party. The party was fun, but I felt awky, since I was in my pre-pubescent understanding of what it means to be emo and also since I knew only one person at the party, who happened to be the hostess. That night one kid showed up in a red t-shirt and red shorts and red stockings on his legs and claimed that he had misunderstood and thought it was an elmo party. Everyone else came in black and makeup and glasses, which are iconic of the emo culture, and there was lots of faux talk about worthlessness. That night, I confirmed that I'm not emo, no matter how much my glasses make me look so.

This all being said, tonight I'm feeling emo. And, since I'm given to moods, let me also say that I'm feeling regretful, low, and old. Yes, old. At 24, I feel old. I'm way too old for emo.

family get-a-way and my fresh breath of air

2005-12-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

The next time I'm about to embark upon a family vacation, grab my arm and ask me the following questions:
1.) How old are your neice and nephew at the current moment? Is this a good idea to take them on a trip?
2.) Are you driving on this vacation? Is this a good idea to take the neice and nephew with you given their age?
3.) How many hotel rooms do you have blocked? Just one? Is this a good idea considering the scattered sleeping habits of your neice and nephew?

That should set me upon reflecting and hopefully steer me in the right direction. All in all, I won't lie. It wasn't a great trip. We paid $84 for the family to go see Ripley's Believe it or Not Aquarium, which is the most painful $84 I've ever seen my family let go of. I mean, the aquarium isn't unimpressive, but I've been in aquariums. I've seen the aquarium in Newport and I've seen the aquarium in Chattanooga, and when you have seen one, you've seen them all. They are fish. They are seahorses. They are frogs. Yippee. Great if you're in a zoo and it comes with the price, but $17.95 per person can basically get me into Holiday World on a warm sunny day, which is truly pleasurable and can last all day and one can even get a sunburn out of the deal if they don't take advantage of the free sunscreen and they can even sip free beverages while doing this, and when it's all said and done, they can walk back to their car where they parked for free. I think I just plugged Holiday World and I didn't set out to do that. But, Ripley's Aquarium, in Gatlinburg gets the antithesis of a plug. It gets a socket.

Tonight there was a time I thought I truly was going to reach up to my hair and pull a handful out. This brings up another important, yet unrelated point. I haven't had a haircut now since September 30! That was a long time ago. I think my hair is longer right now than it's ever been. I'm ignoring it for whatever reason, although yesterday, my hair got tangled for the first time ever. I had never had a tangle. Painful, but only for a short second in the shower before it came out. I feel like the long hair makes me better looking. This is probably completely a wishful fabrication of my mind, and I can attest it's having no effect on my social life, which remains dateless. Though this brings up yet another point, I did have a date which I didn't blog about that was a total flop, but did get me out of my 11 month drought. Woo.

OK, back to this trip. There was one highlight that I MUST write about. Yesterday we did the one thing I enjoy about going to Gatlinburg: driving up in the national park. I love going in the winter, because, as usual, Gatlinburg had no snow and yet, as you near the top of the ridge line at Newfound Gap, it suddenly gets icy and the roads become dicey and you think, "should I really be driving up here?" but then there you are at the gap and you see the view in both directions and you realize you're still 1300 feet below Clingman's Dome somewhere and you think, "damn, this is gorgeous," and there's snow and ice and wind and you take a deep breath and look up at the blue in the sky and realize that the sky is bluer here and you realize that it's almost as if you're in an airplane looking up at the sky, above all that haze and pollution that clings to the Earth's surface.... I'm still not to the highlight, but here it is...
So, we were up there. We stayed like ten minutes because Cameron woke up and wanted water. There was no water in site. No machines to buy anything. Water fountains frozen completely. While I was walking, looking around the shelter with toilets for a drink machine, I saw a hiker come out of the woods. He was carrying a huge pack and immediately I recognized him as an AT hiker. He walked to the road, put his pack down and got out a bandana that said, "HIKER TO TOWN?" and stood there. As we packed the family back in the van, I asked if it was OK if we picked him up. I warned them that he'd stink, but told them he would be completely safe. So, they consented and I pulled up next to the guy and said, "Gatlinburg" and he nodded yes and one minute later he'd thrown his pack into the back of the van and he was sitting beside me and we were heading down the icy road to Gatlinburg at 10 mph. He stunk like a homeless dog who had been in a landfill during a downpour in the summer. Almost the first thing he said was, "I'm sorry for the smell. I can't smell it, but I know it must be bad." I looked in the rearview mirror at my family. They were making scrunched up faces, not sure if it was polite to open their windows a crack or not. They never did during the twenty minute ride. The hiker was from Hampton Beach, NH and was thru-hiking north to south. He hopes to make it to Springer Mountain by Christmas. This is his second thru-hike. He was completely out of food and said he had rationed the whole day before so he could make it to the gap and get a ride. He asked to be dropped off at the Shoney's Buffet, because he said he couldn't go to the grocery as hungry as he was or he'd buy everything. The conversation was strictly about the trail and life on the trail and the people he'd met on the trail. He didn't ask one question about me. As we got into town, he said, "I can't believe all the people." He's been in the woods for four months so far. We talked about the readjustment from trail life back to life. He said after his first thru hike, he found it very weird to sleep in a bed for the first week or so after getting back home. I dropped him off right there on the main drag in front of Shoney's and all the shoppers and redneck tourists that Gatlinburg attracts turned their heads to see this bearded, sweaty man get out of a Dodge Caravan carrying a huge pack with stuff dangling off it. He said "thank you" and I said "good luck" and that was it. In more ways than one, I felt cleansed. We rolled down the windows on the van to air it out, free, finally, to breathe... and, it made me want to strap on a pack and join him.

Library Musical

2005-12-05T23:37:00.000-05:00

I'd like to write a long, reflective bit tonight, but precious sleep time that I didn't get last night is ticking away again. So, I leave you not empty handed, but with a trusty weblink to take you one step farther than anything I could have written anways.

Please go here and then watch "Library Musical:"
http://www.prangstgrup.com/index_1000.html

In another, much cooler life, I will do something similar.

On birth, death, and the days in the middle

2005-11-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

Photo by Sam Javanrouh, Daily Dose of Imagery

Today. Oh, today.

Lately, I've had a reoccuring thought about the current state of my life--I'm not sure I'm doing anything significant enough in my current days that I'll remember anything about last Thursday even in a year from now. Life's just on this stagnant cruise of graduate school and work. I'm trapped here by commitment, not by resources, and this is OK, though it's not always satisfactory to my spirit.

I think back to days I spent while traveling, always feeling so alive, so electric--a happenstance day at the Congressional Country Club in DC, a day fording a creek in a tiny Fiat in Cornwall, or even just a day as a kid when we drove down to Nashville and I felt like I was going to the big city, hanging out the window as we drove down a downtown street taking pictures of skyscrapers looking straight up. But lately, everything has become regular. I see new small Kentucky towns that are as sad and sleepy as the other counties' seats. I write papers that seem as stale as the ones before them. I paint a drab picture here in this description, and I assure myself and anyone who minds that it's not nearly so drab. I am, in fact, making wonderful friends right now as a student in my program, which I've learned is reason enough alone to go to graduate school.

This all being said, today shattered the routine. I will never forget today. Today plays in my head already in painted images--paint thick and dripping like a VanGogh. My memories, already, are leaving my own point of view as I witnessed things happen this morning, and I remember them at an elevated level.

I must stop here and throw in an interpolation. Please, someone, verify to me that your memories do this too--that is, when you remember something, you don't always see the memory in your head as you saw it from your own eyes; that is, that you see the memory as if you were watching yourself and all those around you in a movie and you, yourself, are just a character. Otherwise, call me crazy... beeeeeepp.

In the past weeks, as I've had this thought about my stale life and the days that I'll soon forget because of unremarkable events, I've thought how this isn't exactly what I'd call living. I'm sleep walking.

Today, I lived in the most ironic sense of life possible: I watched someone die. I waited as she gasped for the next breath, coming, finally, staggered, me wondering... will this be the last one? There was a throng there of my family and I expected someone to break into a hymn. The air felt as spiritual as the moment when someone is saved, crying, begging, on an altar. I counted her slowed breaths and breathed along at the same time. I did this until her breathing became too slow. As if underwater, I found myself struggling to take a breath that she wasn't able to claim. And then finally, a great gasp. It came almost as an exaltation. That great last gasp, the air so electric, the feeling of death falling in the room like a collapsing ceiling and rising out just as fast. I clenched my eyes and hugged my cousin and felt her body shake; images and thoughts in my head flashed in slivers of seconds : Mammaw walking on the sidewalk behind her house picking up pecans, her dress, her shoes, hugging my Mom goodbye on a Sunday, If there is a God, is he here now?, that speck of dirt on the floor, the fly that buzzed in Emily Dickinson's ear, are they the same?, the sound of her screendoor closing, that cold latch in the winter time, the swing on her front porch, the day it fell...

I witnessed a death.

Then, nothingness except for relaxation all across her beautiful exhausted body.

The feeling of timelessness. Witnessing the spiritual pinnacle that every great and pitiful human being faces. I imagined standing around this same bed with a oil lamp and how similar what I just experienced has always been no matter the time. When we break ourselves down, there is simply life and there is death that is certain and unchanging. Everything else, at the moment of birth and death, seems to be sand. But then, I think back to that day I rode the car across the creek in Cornwall, and walking up on the ridge later in the day, and the wind, the color of the Irish Sea, the dogs in the street that day, the pub with the dartboard on top of the hill, the darkness of the cliff that night, and I know, that today is when I live. Today is when I write my life that will matter on the day that will come. And writing things that will be forgotten tomorrow isn't worth the time it takes to breathe.

I offer the hymn now, if you please, http://s51.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3GZT5VBSK7FKY3NVB2KZP7OTGO
from the Reeltime Travelers

On standing bedside with my grandmother

2005-11-27T20:44:00.000-05:00

Mammaw always made chocolate chip cookies that were famous. I never admitted this to anyone, but they weren't my favorite. She thought they were, though. Every Sunday I'd go to her house. As a young kid, we'd go each Sunday for lunch. As an older kid, I'd go each Sunday during the evening. I remember the later years better, of course, so I vividly recall watching something like "Touched By An Angel" on a Sunday night (Mammaw's favorite show) and then my Mammaw saying something to the effect of, "How about I make you some cookies now?"

I'd never turn her down. Out of politeness, or out of wanting her to go to the kitchen so I could change the channel to something other than CBS, I'd accept the offer and fourty minutes later I'd be sitting eating chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk around the kitchen table. The thing about Mammaw's chocolate chip cookies is not that they were bad, it's that they were homemade. My young taste buds were used to cookies with the nabisco label or that the Keebler elves made. Mammaw's chocolate cake or chicken casserole or fried chicken could simply not be beat--it was the absolute best--but it was her cookies, weirdly enough, that she was famous for.

Tonight, years since I had my last batch of Mammaw's cookies, I visited her for probably the last time. Tonight, I stood on a deathbed. I've never been on a deathbed before. I'm sitting here, thinking of some way to describe what tonight was like, yet I can't find a word for it.

Mammaw was lying there, breathing heavily, yet peacefully, and her eyes are closed. Her children were all there, grown, all grandparents now themselves. All of Mammaw's children's spouses were there. Two grandchildren, Michelle and I, and two of her great-grandchildren, Cameron and Brianna, were there. Mammaw is virtually unable to speak, unable to swallow food or water now, and her body very likely unable to survive a surgery where a feeding tube is inserted. She is unable to open her eyes. Her body is simply exhausted and unable to perform any longer.

When I walked in, I stood outside while a nurse talked to my mother inside the room. Everyone else was standing outside in the hallway. I heard the nurse tell my mother, "I'm not a doctor and I'm not a God, but I don't think she'll last much longer this way."

This assumption is already understood and it doesn't seem harsh that the nurse makes this statement. In fact, it's said warmly, with care and with preparatory intentions. In fact, everyone in the nursing home knows that Mammaw will pass. People stopped by and told my family, "no matter if it's 2 in the morning, you can call me if you need anything." I walked around the hall when Cameron got restless and we walked around the interior of the building. The people in the nursing home that we saw were uniformly in wheelchairs. Their TVs, on in their rooms, have the volume turned up loud. Most of them wanted to talk to Cameron (he's two, handsome, and has the most charming voice when he says "Uncle Bubba), but some didn't even look at us. One lady, sitting on her bedside in her room, was crying. Another lady held her hand out to be shook as I walked past her. She wasn't able to talk. There was a young man in a wheelchair that I stopped to talk to for a minute (I happen to know his name is Scott from previous visits to the nursing home) and I notice he has a bit of vomit on his chin and on his shirt.

The nurses know who I am. They looked at me with long looks tonight. They know, better than I, how bad my grandmother is. The residents of the nursing home that are in a good mind also looked at me differently tonight. There were looks of understanding and condolence. One woman even cried when she talked to my sister about Mammaw.

I had one moment alone with Mammaw tonight, and I stood there and looked down at her. I didn't see her really, though. Instead, I imagined her face as it used to be before it had collapsed onto her bone structure and around her skull. I saw her with glasses on and teeth in and standing up and wearing one of her flowered-print dresses. I saw her standing in her kitchen, beside that brown sink that she had, and with a red glass bowl sitting on top of the countertops that were white and speckled with bits of color. I saw her mixing cookies for me.

My mother came in and put her arm around me and put her face into my chest. I turn and hug her completely and I turn away from Mammaw and wipe tears from my eyes. My mother said, "She told me she loved me today. I guess everyone has to face this."

I'm a Millenial

2005-11-25T16:11:00.000-05:00

My name is Derick.

I was born in 1981.

And I'm a millennial.

That's right, it's my generation and I'm not completely proud of it. I expect immediacy. Always. I have no patience. This is the virtue I have the least of. On the patience scale, I'm a -6. I want people to wait on me when I need something. I expect to be able to purchase something when I want. If the store is closed, screw them, I'll shop elsewhere--or, I'll go without. I will not come back later, no, and how presumptuous of you to even ask.

I'm ashamed of this. This concludes my confession session.

Fine Corinthian Turkey available at Stuckeybowl!

2005-11-25T00:39:00.000-05:00

I've thought a lot the past few days about Thanksgiving and questioned whether it's my favorite holiday. It's predictable and easy going... always with the promise of three days off even after the holiday is done. That alone is beautiful. There's no real money invested in it. The reason behind the day is not religiously based and everyone finds it easy to agree on traditions and customs. It's just swell.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving Day is putting up the Christmas tree. This is a tradition that goes back to my childhood when we'd stop at Dude's Market on Russellville Road on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and always buy a huge, live tree that we'd set out after Christmas. We were so environmentally polite then. And honestly, I think we'd still be if we lived in our old house with boocoos of space to plant pine trees. But, such is no longer the case.

Now we have a fake tree. I must admit, I love it. It's nine feet of pre-lit wonder. The thing is an absolute puzzle to put together, but over the past three years, I've perfected it. Tonight, with the assistance of a dining room chair and my mother, we had the tree up and all lights on within 35 minutes. I felt like I was working at a pit stop as we spread the needles out after 11 months of the tree being boxed in the attic.

I don't understand why everyone makes such a riot about Thanksgiving being such a feast holiday. Sure, it is. But is that the core of it? Not for me. For me, it's about all the things that surround the feast... traditions. They are different for everyone. I love hearing what other people do on Thanksgiving. Years ago, I was obsessed with the NBC television show "Ed." Carol and her ass boyfriend Nick used to eat a sugared lemon every Thanksgiving together. Ed and his ex-wife bought a spatula on Thanksgiving morning and the spatula reminded him of her even after they were divorced. And for me, Thanksgiving will always be defined by idiosyncrasies like these.

My favorite episode of Ed ever (well, really, it's a tie with episode 16, "Live Deliberately") is the Thanksgiving episode from Season 1 that was called "Something Old, Something New." What an amazing episode of an absolutely perfect season of a series. I will freely admit that from season 1, the show nose-dived into silly mayhem, but oh, season 1--how you fill me with nostalgia. If Season 1 of Ed had carried over into later seasons, this show would have become rerun greatness. It would have been a cult classic, and maybe it is. Right now there are 8 people logged on to Stuckeyville.com and the show was cancelled years ago! They are still posting on the message boards, following the actors in their new roles (like Josh Randall on LOST--freaking awesome show on its own right!), and chatting with each other. There are still local Stuckeyville clubs active, and who knows, maybe there are people together tonight enjoying (or not enjoying, but partaking in anyways) a sugared lemon because Nick and Carol did.

The thing about traditions (and Thanksgiving for that matter) is that they change. Nothing ever stays the same forever. Today was the first Thanksgiving that I had ever spent without a mass of family around. I spent it with my parents, two cousins, and an aunt and uncle. We all fit at one table. It's the first time I've ever spent Thanksgiving at one table with everyone else. My grandmother was absent for the first time ever (feeble and in the bed--we spent three hours + with her tonight and she didn't even open her eyes, even when she ate a little bit of supper) ; my sister was even missing (Cameron was bitten by a dog the other day and had to be taken back to the emergency room this morning because the bite was becoming infected--but, he's fine--which, wow, am I thankful for).

If you are reading this and you know me... watch Season 1 of Ed. It'll alter you. Note: this is not available on DVD, but you can borrow the entire season from me on VHS (one tape at a time). Then, never... ever, watch a show from Season 2, 3, or 4. It's best to believe that something died so perfect.

Ashland, KY

2005-11-16T14:21:00.000-05:00

On Monday evening, I went to the movies alone. This is only the second time I've ever done this. The first time I ever went to the movies alone, I went at Newport on the Levee shortly after Erin and I broke up and made the mistake of going on a Friday night. See, going to the movies alone is actually really cool. You get to react to the movie all on your own. If you feel like not laughing at a funny part, there is no pressure. You simply don't have to laugh--and no one is there to think, "why isn't he laughing?" Reversely, guys often feel as though they aren't allowed to cry during films. Ou contraire when you go see a movie alone. No one is there to see you, so you can do whatever you damn well please.

Now, the first movie I went alone to see was A Series of Unfortunate Events, which didn't illicit much laughter or crying. It was just an ok movie. But as stated, my mistake was going on a Friday night. Friday night is when all movie theatres are absolutely crawling, buzzing, infested, swarming, with horny teenage couples. It's really disgusting. And I'm a tall guy. I stick out a little in a crowd. And it just felt horribly awkward to have all these pierced tounges rubbing around on each other all around me and be there by myself seeing A Series of Unfortunate Events. I even ran into an aquaintence that night at the Levee who could tell I was there alone and knew of the recent breakup which added an even higher degree of awkwardness.

But Monday night was nothing like this. Going to the movies alone is indeed wonderful, but this must be a prefabricated event. I went and saw Elizabethtown and I chose the matinee feature. I walked into the theatre and I was the only one in there. How awesome, I thought, I don't even have to silence my phone if I don't want to. If I get a crook in my neck from looking at the screen a certain way, I can just get up and change seats. But these fantasies were spoiled when a couple walked in and sat down. I silenced my phone.

To my disappointment there were no previews for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In fact, I don't even remember what the previews were for. They didn't strike my fancy. The movie started. slowly. Elizabethtown gets rolling at a snail's pace, but as soon as Bloom gets on the plane to Kentucky, the movie actually turns quite good.

I realized on Monday that I judge movies based on how long it takes me to recover after watching them. If after a movie goes off, I hop up and am able to start doing homework or am checking messages on my phone, it means the movie sucked. But every once in a while, movies stick with me for the rest of the day. I lay awake trying to dissect the movie and sometime overnight the effect is gone. That is a good movie.

Elizabethtown wasn't either of these, but it did take me a good couple of hours to readjust. When the movie was done, I walked outside and it had started raining over the past two hours. I walked slowly and the rain felt cool as drops landed on my cheeks and I blinked as raindrops hit my eyebrows. I got in the car; I turned it on. The windshield wipers were on, and I was looking all around me trying to spot a restaurant that sounded appeasing. I didn't see one. I felt the need to be where people were, though. I drove across the street to the mall and walked around.

There were two Italian men setting up a kiosk and speaking in Italian and it made me really yearn for Italy. At almost every other kiosk and in every store, there was some young girl, probably around 18 or 19, who had on too much make up and I thought how some of these girls would be much cuter if they had someone show them how to apply make up properly--or if they didn't wear make up at all. (Why do girls wear make up, really? Am I the only guy who thinks this is kind of gross? I don't want oily fake paints and powders all over a girl that I'm going to kiss. Yet, I feel slightly different about lipstick. I'm not sure my opinions on lipstick, but there is something sexy about it).

Anyways, at the next kiosk down from the Italian men was an Italian girl who was wearing fur trimmed boots with her jeans tucked inside them and a heavy jacket. She was gorgeous, and we held eye contact as I walked by and she smiled. I expect she was married to the one of the guys putting up the other kiosk. This is the thing about Italians in general--they are so sexy just on their own... they don't need makeup and even having a husband doesn't make them turn from flirting. Young American women, once married, rarely even look anyone in the eye unless they are having a conversation with them or something--but otherwise, they always seem so preoccupied with something on the floor or on TV or off in nothingness way up ahead. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I felt very welcomed by the Italian girl and I smiled back and walked on thinking about Elizabethtown.

I walked back outside in the rain and decided I'd go to Golden Corrall to eat. I decided I'd eat there because it reminded me of my family. They freaking love Golden Corrall. If they could pick a place to be buried, it'd probably be under the salad bar at Golden Corrall. So, I drove over the hill from the mall in Ashland to Golden Corrall. I walked in and a lady was standing there with stickers.

"Are you a veteran?" she said.
"No."
"OK," she said.
I walked to the line where they get your drink.
"What would you like to drink?" the girl said.
"Sweet tea," I said.
"Are you a veteran?"
"No."
"Don't forget to grab a tray," she said.
I walked to the register.
"Just one?" the cashier said.
"Yes."
"Are you a veteran?"
What I wanted to say: "Do I have sand on my face or something?!?!"
What I actually said: "No."

It's at this point that I looked around and noticed that the place was packed out with men wearing American flag hats, men in wheelchairs, all muscular, all ages. There was like no where to sit. A seater walked up to me.

"Do you mind sitting with other people?" she said.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Well..."
At this point, another lady walked up and said she had a table for me.
This was good because I really didn't want to get stuck next to a Toby Keith wanna be who wanted to put a boot up my ass.

Instead, I got a charming little table in the back corner where I could sit and watch all the veterans talking to each other and socializing. It was pleasurable. Then, this old couple was seated at a table that was like a foot away from mine. They started talking to me as soon as they sat down.

"Are you a veteran?" the wife asked.
"He's too young to be a veteran!" the husband chimed.
"Well I can't tell ages anymore," the wife asked.
"Are you a student around here?" the husband asked.
"No, I'm kind of in town on business," I said, while thinking, Ashland doesn't even have a college.

We proceeded to talk for the rest of dinner. They were rabid UK fans. They have kids. They have grandkids. One of them grew up in Ashland, the other in Hazard. The man fought in WWII in the Pacific repairing airplanes. They own a store that sales uniforms to nurses... not sexy nurse uniforms, but those kinds that are blueish purple and have teddy bears and balloons on them, I gathered. What happened to the attire of the nurse? As uniforms go, I can tell you this is a great slouch in the appearance of today's nurses as compared to those of the past.

They were a very nice couple. When I finished my food, they asked me why I didn't finish my steak and asked me, "well aren't you going to have dessert." I tried for fifteen minutes to get away, but they kept talking. Finally, I shook the veteran's hand and patted the old woman on the shoulder and walked back out.

The rain had stopped. Across the street, a refinery had a blue flame about twenty feet tall shooting out of a smokestack about a hundred feet tall. The night seemed electric with the fire and the wet streets and cars going about.

I drove back to the hotel and turned on my windshield wipers whenever a car changed lanes in front of me. Slowly, thoughts of Elizabethtown returned to me after a lively dinner where I had been distracted, and it was then that I wished for someone to discuss it with.

the mud at Bonnaroo

2005-11-09T23:50:00.000-05:00

I have this weird sensation tonight, a feeling of summer nights of my adolesence, when the world was mine alone. Everyone else was in bed, but I was up. And I was busy. My mind was rolling. The notion of sleep ceased to matter, and outside there was a satellite making a straight, slow line across the sky and at some point, I'd tiptoe out the door to the hammock and lay there and stare up at the Milky Way casting some white light across my face that no one was there to see. At 2 AM, I'd walk up to my room and the covers would feel cool and the fan in my room would be making a humm, humm as it turned on its axis. And I'd fall asleep dreaming of a girl who I crushed on, or thinking of the next day, or the satellite outside.

Tonight, I'm getting new music left and right. I didn't mean to. I saw Kristen Chenoweth on West Wing on Sunday and it reminded me I knew and liked who Kristen Chenoweth was, so I came online to get "Girl in 14G," but didn't stop there. Instead, I found new Iron and Wine, Death Cab for Cutie, and Yann Tiersen from Le Phare. I feel exuberantly young tonight and exponential with how long I can stay up to write a reaction paper, which should be sooo easy, but instead I'm delaying on it because of APA stuff--my true achilles heel having felt somewhat educated on MLA for the past several years. You'd think I could do this with the help of a manual, but APA's 5th edition reads like instructions to assemble a tool chest in japanese. And besides, I'm just like that... I won't do the homework until I have to. And knowing that tomorrow pits me at my desk all day means that technically, I can do it there--and who knows, I may.

My eyes feel heavy, but my soul is feeling light. And I can feel myself standing in the mud at Bonnaroo listening to Sam Beam and I'm soaked from the rain and the people around me are smoking pot and the smell of people and the rain and the pot is good. I'm a hundred miles away from all responsibilities and I'm in the midst of 100,000 people who have muddy feet. The rain seems to be washing away the bad stuff that goes on in all the world... on the news, the bad things you've witnessed, like someone's backpack breaking as they rolled it along, or them losing their keys, and all of the worries that you carry for your family. They're all gone. It's just mud.

an excuse, and one story out of many

2005-11-02T19:19:00.000-05:00

I still love my blog and I appreciate those of you who still stop by here. However, you might have noticed I have less and less to say these days. It's not because I really have less to say. In fact, I could write an entry right now praising Taylor, MS; telling you about my trip to MS, about lunch at Buckhorn, or about my new favorite small town in Kentucky (Berea--idealic). But, (and yes, you guessed it, I have an excuse).... I don't have time. I've got letters to write, work to do, and HOMEWORK oozing from my arm pits. In other words, I'm in the midst of a busy time.

But I will tell one story, briefly, just to keep your reading buds perked (that's a not-so-obvious and not-so-effective play off of "keep your taste buds wetted").

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Monday I lost cell phone service at about 7:20 AM, as soon as I turned south off of I-64 near Winchester, KY and headed down to Campton and then to Frenchburg later in the morning. I had plans to go to Natural Bridge State Park and hike.

Instead, I got distracted. I was almost there. Then, I came into the Red River Gorge. This was on October 30. Leaves had to have hit their peak that day. The sky was a deep, watery blue and the road was covered with leaves so that as I drove with my windows down I could hear them crunching.

When I should have turned right to go to Natural Bridge State Park, as if pulled by a force, I turned left. I found myself at a visitor's center two minutes later and I was buying myself a camera and two old National Forest employees were giving me a map of the vast woods and circling and highlighting the trails that I was going to see. I changed clothes from my tie and dress shoes into tennis shoes and a t-shirt and went to the woods.

STUNNING.

Red River Gorge is full of natural arches... big ones that you can walk across and you're as higher up than all the surrounding trees, and small ones, ones so small that you can barely walk under.

Red River Gorge is full of views, captivating ones. Unlike most of the mountains out east, the Gorge is full of rocky cliffs that trees can't grow on. This allows for views rare in the eastern Kentucky mountains.

One trail that was recommended was Chimney Rock. Keep in mind that the Red River Gorge is in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town is about 15 miles away and it is the kind of place that just wishes it had a Wal Mart. Now, Chimney Rock is even more secluded. Just to get to the trailhead (it's a short trail), you have to drive five miles on a gravel road, passing nothing. At the end of the gravel road is a small parking lot, two picnic tables, a little outhouse, and the trailhead. I walked out on the ridge trail. As I walked, I could see through the trees on either side of me and tell that there was a vast nothingness beyond the trees. As I walked the trail, late afternoon settling in, the autumn sun's shadows getting longer and the hues of reds and yellows on the trees looking redder and more orangish as the sky got bluer, I could tell that the ridge was narrowing. Now I could not only tell that there was a great vastness of nothingness on either side of me, I could now see the edge of the ground where the ridge fell off into great cliffs. Then, it all came down to a point... a Land's End in the sky, if you will. I walked out onto the cliff, about the size of a small dining room and except for the sliver of land behind me that I had walked out upon, I was surrounded by miles of river valley in every direction, hundreds of feet directly above every tree around, and a few miles off in every direction, mountains. I stood out there for ages. Dreaming, closing my eyes and feeling the wind, listening to nothing, waiting for someone else to show up and talk to and maybe take my picture (no one showed--I took pictures of myself--and, well, talked to myself). I imagined what it would be like to be up here in the rain. Or when a summer lightning storm was off in the distance. I imagined camping near here and walking out here with a girl to see the stars. I prayed. I held my arms up in a "V" and felt like I was going to take off flying. And, finally, I could think of nothing else to do up here; and, I walked back.

Note, the photo is not of Chimney Rock, but Chimey Rock is very similar, and so was the foliage on Monday. My own photos may make an appearance if/when I find time.

principessa, come down from your balcony

2005-10-25T22:43:00.000-04:00

Incredible sense of loneliness has settled in tonight. I don't know if it's the Iron and Wine and Calexico I have on repeat and the operatic spread that it falls into and me thinking of "Life is Beautiful" and the scene where Guido is staring up at Dora in the balcony waiting to catch her eye or if it was the gray afternoon and the cold and the feel of wearing a fleece and knowing that winter is basically on now.

But the loneliness reminds me of something that I can't place and it's comforting and frustrating all at once.

I'm avoiding a minimal amount of homework I have to do like the plague and wishing for my past or my future, but feeling relatively unenthused with this particular October, 25. I mean, it was a relatively worthless day for me. I ate at the first Kentucky Fried Chicken. That was the highlight. What did I accomplish today? Nada. And, I think this is the essence of the whole notion of loneliness... it's just a certain stagnancy that's plaguing my life. I'm kind of fenced in by graduate school and waiting until I've completed my Master's and after that... then what? Ph.D? A new job? Is that what I really want? Sure, someday. But right now, I want to be traveling, seeing, experiencing the world. And one thing I've discovered, the world is not in my hotel room tonight.

I just need a glass of wine on a street in a European city and a good discussion. Why is there no place to sit on a street around Bowling Green, even when I'm there? And even if there was, would there be anyone to sit and share that glass of wine with?

I'm sure I've said something about this in the past, but when I was Italy, on one particular night I had dinner with two Dutch and a guy from Michigan and after dinner, we walked up the winding street straight uphill to our hostel and as we walked, two Italian girls yelled at us out a balcony window and flirted and said the word "spiaggia" (beach) among others and the world just felt young and unpredictable that night... like anything could happen. It was an invitation.

A life less ordinary, a life less sedentary is needed tonight. But instead, my world is as predictable as bad comedy. And Iron and Wine and Calexico free samples on the Iron and Wine website has just made another round and the world inches on towards daylight and a Corbin, KY sunrise and all remains status quo.

What does Colonel Sanders and William Faulkner have in common?

2005-10-25T16:07:00.000-04:00

My job has certain perks and one of those perks is being able to drive around and find interesting places. Today, was no exception. You're looking at the place where I had lunch today, the first ever Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was inside this building where Colonel Sanders perfected his recipe. The restaurant itself is a museum, so that while you eat, other patrons are walking around your table looking at the first kitchen, the place where he did all his work and where the floor, ceiling, and all appliances were white so that he could see dirt immediately wherever it might be. Perhaps Colonel Sanders' greatest contribution is that he revolutionized the fast food industry when he started pressure frying chickens, taking the cooking time from 30 minutes down to 9 minutes.

The Colonel had a motel adjacent to his property and right inside his restaurant he had a model motel room so people could check it out while they ate and decide if they wanted to stay the night or not. The table where I ate with some of my colleagues was immediately beween the old kitchen and the model motel room. It was the primo table.

This KFC isn't your average place. The workers are happy. They are friendly. They retain the old spirit. Chicken here is a serious deal. I've never been treated better at a fast food restaurant.

They sell souveneirs on the cheap. A friend of mine bought a button that said, "I ate where it all began" and had the Colonel's silhouette on it. For myself, I came away with a hand fan in the shape of the Colonel's head. It's going in my office with other memorabilia I'm collecting from my travels in eastern Kentucky.

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On to huge news: I'm leaving Thursday morning at 6 AM for Oxford, MS on Thursday. My fingers are crossed that the Taylor Grocery Band will be playing Thursday night when we go for catfish. I'm so excited about going back. How it worked out, I'll never know--makes me requestion fate. Thursday night I'll be going to Dr. Charles Noyes' house, who was the provost at Ole Miss in 1962 when the school was desegregated and fell into riots the day James Meredith was to attend his first class. It took 20,000 military personnel to restore order after two people had been killed and sixty injured. Dr. Noyes is nearing 90, but remains an almanac of the deep South and the changes it underwent in the 1960s--after all, he lived it as an administrator at one of the focal points (and what a timely discussion this will be with Rosa Park's passing yesterday). I'll be going on a tour of Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner, for the first time on Friday morning. I've been to Rowan Oak twice, but both times when it was under restoration. I have never been inside the walls. On Friday morning, I'll walk around with Bill Griffith, the curator, and hear stories from one of the most knowledgable of all Faulkner scholars. I'll stand in an old slave cemetery later this week, I'll hopefully drink at William Faulkner's grave under a dark October sky, and I'll attend a live taping of the Thacker Mountain Radio Show. All in all, this trip, organized for his WKU literature students by Walker Rutledge annually, is the most absorbant and far-reaching exposure to the character of the South that I've ever experienced. I simply can't wait.

opportunities

2005-10-23T13:40:00.000-04:00

I carved this pumpkin Friday night.

So lately my life seems to be all about opportunities. And my philosophy is, when opportunity knocks, go for it and go for it with complete gusto.

Let's look at Thursday night as an example. Thursday night I was invited to an emo party hosted by an undergraduate student. If you don't know what emo means, check out urbandictionary's definitions which shall englighten you (I recently had to refer to this when, in Lexington one night, a Sonic carhop told me my glasses made me look emo--I didn't know if this was a compliment at the time, so I said, "thanks" and went back to my hotel room and read the definition and realized I probably wouldn't have known how to respond if I knew what "emo" meant in the first place). So, I went to the party against all rules of what might constitute professionalism in the university workplace. I knew no one but the hostess, and her barely. The word that could best describe walking into that party is awkward. I walked in and just started looking at stuff on the walls since I didn't see any familiar faces, not even the hostess herself. I wore my black rimmed glasses, a black t-shirt, I spiked my hair and looked as emo as I can get with what I own. The whole notion of the party was to mock the emo culture, and those who showed out for the party did a good job. There was lots of talk of "being so depressed" and "just wish I could end it all" in the name of fun. Sounds perverse? Yeah. But then there was a familiar face, the hostess, and she grabbed my hand and led me around to introduce me to loads of people that I felt I had leagues of nothingness in common with. But it was still nice to be led around the room by the hostess as if I were the party's grand marshall. Eventually, familiar faces showed up and I found people to talk to and the night ended with a warm hug from the hostess and I walked back to my car thinking, I'm glad I came to this.

As another example, let's look at Friday night. I had been invited to a pumpkin carving party. It was kind of a work event, with mainly the student workers from my office in attendance. I was one of only two actual employees of the office to take the invitation up and go out to fraternize outside of the normal office. Even A, who is fairly reliable about such events didn't want to go. Friday afternoon, I almost changed my mind about going. But then, I realized it was an opportunity to do somethingness instead of nothingness for a Friday evening and I went. Between eating pizza, sitting outside on a cool, windy Fall evening by a bonfire with the drying leaves rustling all around my head, carving pumpkins, and exchanging ghost stories, I realized that yet again, an opportunity had arisen, I went with it, and the result was idealic. As I sat on a log by a campfire, telling a ghost story about "my childhood," as if on cue, the dogs laying around the fire started growling and then went into a fit of barking hysteria at the perfect moment and made the girls around the fire scream. And, I carved a kick ass pumpkin to top it all.

Which brings me to present... I got my lazy arse up this morning (OK, this thing does have a timestamp), this afternoon, and came in to check my email and found an email entitled "Oxford" in my inbox:

Derick, I'm leaving for Oxford this Thursday...and as it turns out here at the last minute, I've had some student cancellations--which means that I've got some space in the van. Would you like to go? I'd enjoy the company. We would return, of course, on Saturday night.

This is of course a reference to Oxford, MS, William Faulkner's hometown and the trip will be centered around the Natchez Trace, the Thacker Mountain Radio Show, catfish at the Taylor Grocery Store, and of course, the author himself. These, my friends, are four of my favorite things in all existence. This, my friends, is an opportunity. And now, dilema... can I go or can I not? I'm in dilema purgatory, as I won't be able to get an answer until tomorrow, when I have to approach my supervisor, with the best Monday morning greeting I can, and ask if I can have this Saturday (crucial day for my work) off.

2005-10-16T12:31:00.000-04:00

December 24, 2003

She picked me up in the snow in downtown Cincinnati in her old red car. I had lunch with her at Skyline Chili and watched the snow and the people and we talked about the next few days. Then, we drove over the Ohio River on the Brent Spence and up the hill where all the trucks slow to a crawl in the right two lanes and everyone else flies around them and we came back to my apartment. I wouldn't see her for two days, until the day after Christmas when she'd join me at home, and it seemed like I was leaving to go overseas for a year.

The snow got heavier as we came up Collins Road and I remember it looking almost like fog as I looked back towards Villa Madonna. The flakes were big and some homes had their Christmas lights on early and it was not unlike a Kincaid, with people's footprints through the grass starting to show up in the snow. She said she had a present to give me early and she pulled out a CD that she had burnt that had some live REM tracks, an Ani DiFranco tune that I'd heard on WNKU and loved, and two songs from the Love Actually soundtrack, a movie she'd taken me to see about a week earlier that she still cried so hard after it was over, even though she'd already seen it just a week before. I had cried with her.

We went back to my apartment and I grabbed all of my stuff and we kissed and held each other and I felt young and it was snowing and it was Christmas and I drove home with this constant beat of "I can't rest, I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me" playing in my car and my back seat was full of wrapped Christmas presents and my backpack, which over the past few months had transitioned to being a suitcase instead of a bag full of books.

The snow was wet and it was only making a dusty coat on the grass and on rocks along the interstate. I drove. I listened. Everything I saw, everything I heard, told me--this is the best Christmas you've ever had.

Antony and the Johnsons

2005-10-12T16:04:00.000-04:00

My drive into work this morning was a total NPR driveway moment only I had to sit on the side of Center Street where I was parked curbside, so I guess I'll call this an NPR Center Street moment.

Here's the story that was the culprit:

NPR music review on Antony and the Johnsons

I love the sound... it's like melancholy, gothic blues. Something that both stirs and soothes the soul about his voice.

If you like and want to check out the official website, here's the link: Antony and the Johnsons homesite

The House with Thin Walls

2005-10-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I wrote something worthy. Tonight, I went browsing around my normal blog stops and lo and behold one of my favorite bloggers had written a good one, so I'll give him props (did I just say give some props?) for inspiring me to write something that I'm looking forward to writing. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote about coming back to life in his foreword to AMERICA by Jon Stewart (circa 2004), "I've been yearning to get back to the ole quill and parchment." To which I say, Thomas, buddy, I hear ya. It's been way too long since I wrote something.

_____________________________________________________________

The House with Thin Walls

In the book, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, she writes of the windswept moors, the old farm house high on the ridge, and of the neighboring Thrushcross Grange, where society came to mingle. What would you say if I said I have stayed in Thrushcross Grange? Well, probably you would say, "I don't really care." But, if you're a former English major, I might have just impressed you.

I have really stayed in Ponden Guest House, which is really a newer building, much newer than Emily Bronte's dead and crumbling bones that are lying in a churchyard in Haworth, England. But, just across a one lane gravel road are the slowly decaying walls of Ponden Hall, reputed to be the true Thrushcross Grange that Emily wrote about around 1845.

One day, in July of 2003, the moors were alive with growing grasses. The falls in the dales were burbling, and above, pillowy clouds of puff were floating across a blue sky, (yes, a blue very much the color of the task bar of you Windows XP users--a beautiful blue, when worn by the sky). It was on this day that I, and a fellow student traveler, had taken the train to Haworth, then a cab to Ponden Guest House. We checked in. Our hostess was hospitable. She cooked us dinner and we set in the living room as other guests checked in for the evening. They were all Brits; we were the only foreigners this evening. There was the couple who had driven up from outer London to visit friends in the area the next day, and another couple just needing an escape. Then, there was the old couple who was traveling with their even older mother/mother-in-law and were occupying two rooms. And, thus, Ponden Guest House was full for the evening. Brenda Taylor, our hostess, was quietly zooming about, making sure everyone was happy and seen to. Evening seemed to fall early this day. After a walk around the lake, my friend and I came back and settled in to our room. I should make notes that my friend I refer to is a girl, a petite one, my age, 20, who is strikingly beautiful, incredibly intelligent, but extremely, how shall I put this politely, boisterous. OK, loud.

The room that was ours had two twin beds--we'd arranged this ahead of time, I half regretedly, as I booked the room from a payphone and a calling card in central London. We split the cost of the room, 17 pounds each, which I felt would eternally break me--oh, the woes of being a college student. And the room, it was told to us upon check-in, had belonged to our caretaker's daughter before her child had gotten older and "went off to uni." But, the room had retained the sense of the little girl that had been. In this room, Brenda Taylor's daughter could always be 12 years old.

We sat across the room from each other, my friend and I, idly reading and chatting back and forth when our books got a little slow. Eventually, it was as if we were confined prisoners who felt compelled to invent a game. Like I've always belived a B&B owner must prepare themselves for, we took to looking around our room for the evening--as if we were looking for the 12 year old girl's diary. We looked around at the furniture and our interests eventually settled on her bookshelf. For there, there was a book that would become legendary. I don't recall the exact title or copyright date, but I think a fitting title would have been: "I'm sprouting hair around my groin, somebody please help me, what does this mean?!"

This book came off the shelf really quickly. At first, we read, and the reading was hilarious to two hormone driven just-turned-20-year-olds who were confined to a room together. But then, we flipped the page and we realized it was illustrated. I laughed; but my friend, oh my, I didn't realize even how loud her laugh could be. We both, tickeled and delighted at our lucky, naughty find, devoured the pages, laughing harder at each page turn. There were the illustrations of the maturation of men, the maturation of women, the monolithic seed-sewer in all its glory, and even the act of sweet love itself. Our laughter sent us into hysteria. Eventually, the book was closed and the laughter ebbed down to a gentle sigh and "hoo" and I got up to return the book to its shelf.

As I did this, I noticed a slip of paper was under our door. I picked it up and there, carefully written in the penmanship that only a witty, polite, and experienced inn-keeper could produce was the following message:

Quieter please, the walls of this old house are thin!

The night ended for my friend and I on a note of having been scolded, caught red-handed, but with intermitten giggles from each of us from beneath our covers.

--------------------------------------------------
When morning came, we went down to breakfast where everyone acted the part of the forgetful. There was no mention of noise, a rowdy or even fun night, or of loud giggles coming from the youngster's room. After all, we were quite the juniors in the house. The proper and prim couple from outer London offered us eggs and said that the juice was really quite good. The couple who needed "to get away from it all" told the group of their ramble they were planning for after breakfast. The older couple with their even older mother/mother-in-law were wrapped in a conversation all of their own, talking about nephews or whatever it was, and only spoke to us to say, "she made the jam herself!" And, I was enjoying my bacon, paying no attention to my friend, who suddenly burst, as if she'd been containing a balloon of a secret within her lungs that she could no longer hold. Surely, the humour of the night before had not been exhausted in our giggles or even our sleep. I remember my head dropping to stare questioningly into my lap as she started off, "SO LAST NIGHT WE FOUND THIS SEX BOOK AND I'M REALLY SORRY IF WE WERE LOUD, BUT IT WAS HILARIOUS!"

I shall never forget the way the jaw dropped ever so slightly of the man who was from outer London, before he realized it and started chewing his eggs again.

The Facebook

2005-10-09T14:14:00.000-04:00

The facebook, if you've not heard of it, means that you're likely not a student in America today. It is unbeknownst to the graduated, and a crucial fixture to the undergraduated. It is, in colleges today, a necessity.

Someday my opinions on the facebook may change and I'll realize it's an addictive tool that allows for nothing but the "checking out" of others and mindless flirting that happens when two people have never even met. It subtracts students away from their academics and hurts their interpersonal skills, as an avid member of the facebook rarely actually gets out to the parties that he or she is invited to on the facebook, talks less with the friends that comment on their walls, and perhaps most of all, uses their "friends" page as a point to look popular on campus.

But for now, I'm in love with the facebook... the whole idea of finding anybody that you see on your campus, learning more about them, and seeing who they know that you know before ever talking to them.

Facebook me!

Interview

2005-10-08T20:07:00.000-04:00

If you've been visiting my blog for a while, you'll know that I appeared on WBKO, the local news ABC affiliate back over the summer talking about blogging.

A friend of mine has been generous enough to put this into windows media player format so I can post it here.

Here is the link to see the video. It doesn't seem to open in Internet Explorer, so if there are any IE only users out there, sorry.

Derick on TV

soul mates: fact or fiction

2005-10-03T17:23:00.000-04:00

Dear Abby,

And what if I'd been born 50 years before you, on a street, in a house on a street where you lived? Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your bike, and would I know?

--The Luckiest, Ben Folds--

Hmm, I've often thought about these lyrics and whether they creep me out or intrigue me. Are they incredibly sweet or is it possible that some old woman feels like she's my soul mate every time I walk by her house? Because, if you're reading creepy old lady, I appreciate the attention, but I'm not into that kind of thing.

And this whole notion of soul mates, while I've mentioned it, needs to be discussed. Does it exist? C'mon, does it really exist? I'd like for those of you who read this and who are married to respond to this question.... is there really just one person or can it work with any number of people?

Because I am facing serious issues daily that need clarification. Should I cultivate relationships with girls who I know and kind of like or should I just let them go because I don't know that they're the one already--whereas clearly, if someone was the one as Ben Folds says, I might just intuitively know?

I have like 24 candidates... seriously. There are like two dozen girls out there that I think, holy moly, she's perfect. And, I realize that they really all aren't. Heck, half of those I've only met once or twice and I've just made the assumption of perfection based on pheromones or perhaps that was the smell of something else altogether, like burnt pizza from two blocks down, and my senses just mistook the smell of the burnt edges of peppers and thought it was the girl.

I haven't blogged in like 16 years and this is what I come up with, you're wondering? Well, if I tried to update you on the last two weeks, dear reader, you'd ask why I'd chosen to tell you about a life of work. And remember, as I've stated in the past, this is not to be a diary of my life, but rather an expose of some of the more timid things that go on in my head.

Respond, and tell me: am I only fruitlessly trying to be witty, charming, and look my most handsome around 24 females that I already know and think are hot stuff, thinking that perhaps some day one of them will be my mate when this really has no chance of happening.... or b.), should I keep it up?

Yours truly,
DericoKY

please don't burst my bubble

2005-09-21T23:26:00.000-04:00

I'm staying at one of the finer establishments in all of Kentucky, in a small town that I posted about some while ago--Maysville, KY.

I checked in to my hotel this afternoon and after the first timer's demonstration on how to get the shower to pour water from the facet that they do at the front desk (they really go out of their way to take care of you here), I came up to my room. I have a two person jacuzzi tub. Let me just take this moment to say, SA-WEET!

The only other time I've stayed in a hotel room with a jacuzzi tub was in Niagra Falls, Canada and the tub was heart-shaped and red and I think I got up early the next morning and went on Maid of the Mist. What was questionable was what was more impressive... two billion gallons of water falling off a cliff around me or the fact that there are hotels out there that have heart shaped red tubs.

This afternoon I caught up on all work emails and started some homework when I realized I had time before dinner to go get in the jacuzzi. I started filling it. It's huge. It's about two feet deep and took about thirty minutes to fill. I sat down inside it while water was still pouring in and thought to myself, 'hmm, I'm needing some bubbles.'

So I went through the fun-sized deluxe, imported, English soaps that they provided and settled on some kind of bath and body wash that I thought might create some bubbles. I tipped over the miniature bottle and poured a dab out. I watched in the water as only a few bubbles formed. Then I thought I'd just pour the whole bottle in. More bubbles formed and the surface was now covered with bubbles and I could no longer see my toes in the water.

It was when the tub was nearly three-quarters full that I realized I should turn on the jets. I stepped out of the tub and with a loud WHIR of a hidden engine, the jacuzzi roared to life and I realized my blunder with the bath and body wash. Bubbles seemed to double themselves each time I blinked my eye. I sat down in the tub and within seconds I was over my head in bubbles. I realized it was getting out of control. The book I'd been reading was on the tubs edge and I went to save it first. I grabbed the book and through it across the bathroom. The bubbles were piling up and I was grabbing arm loads as if I were bagging autumn leaves and started moving the bubbles away from the tubs edge. They were stacking up like a heavy snow drift. I realized something had to be done, but what? I was laughing and yet panicing. The bubbles began spilling over the side of the tub. I stood up and they were all over my head and in my ears and it sounded like white noise as I could hear them all popping and new bubbles reforming all the while. I was waist deep in bubbles and I had to make them stop. I climbed out of the tub and left foamy footprints everywhere I went. I shut off the tub's jets and solved the problem.

Some six hours later, I have finally turned the shower head off and almost all of the bubbles have washed away.

I have a new hobby

2005-09-20T22:08:00.000-04:00

Before I even get started tonight, let me just say that because of the merits of wireless internet, I can now blog from the throne. Yes, you know what that means.

I thought I was going to start a travel blog when I started traveling out here in what I now affectionately call the "orient" or the "far east." I'm about as far away from home as I might be if I were traveling in more known, populated places like Atlanta or St. Louis. In fact, I'll be going to a town in Kentucky on Monday that is actually farther away by car from Bowling Green than Chicago is. And my I'll be shocked if they have even one Renoir in their art institute in Phelps--though I hear the L is easier to navigate.

Today, this exposure to a region so culturally different lent itself in a serendipitous demeanor though. I was done working at noon. I drove the hour east from Ashland to Morehead and checked in to my hotel. I had lunch at a chinese buffet (OK, if the food was any indication, I'm going to need to rethink the nickname) and then it was me and the email for a while. Around mid-afternoon, I had all I could take of a quiet hotel room and I decided to get dressed for hiking.

I went to Cave Run Lake, which will be holding the Cave Run Storytelling Festival this weekend--side blurb for an event I know too little about, but still, a side blurb.

Cave Run Lake is gorgeous. It's as clear as Walden Pond and Walden was formed glacially. I stood on the bank and could look right down to the lakeshore. It was all I could do to not strip down and hop in.

The plan was to hike, but after ten minutes of walking, I found myself cutting down a side trail to the lake's edge and sitting down on the shore. The sky was beautiful. It was that kind of blue that makes you think you can see stars in the middle of the day if you look hard enough--so dark that you feel like you're riding in an airplane above the troposphere. But there were also clouds--fickle clouds--clouds that would accent the sky at one moment, be gone the next, and would cover the sky some minutes later.

I sat on the bank and found myself getting sleepy (a result of last night in Ashland--another story to tell in its own right). And here we get to meat of what I want to say: I have a hobby that I finally recognized that I find has emerged in the past six months of my life. I like to sleep in places that I find paradisial.

The first time I ever did this was in Positano, Italy. I slept the better part of a day away on the beach in two seperate naps and I can't imagine a more perfect day if it were to rain money and I had a Brinks truck to drive around. That day stayed sunny on the shore and it was warm. I had turned down the opportunity to go hiking up the mountains along the shore with my roommate in the hostel and I was glad. I kept looking up and on top of the mountain it was dark and cloud covered and looked cold. The second time I did this was at Bonnaroo during a Dave Matthews concert. Right there on the lawn, with about 80,000 dancing feet around me, I just got tired of standing, took a seat on my blanket, and was out in about ten minutes. I remember waking up when Warren Haynes took to the stage with him to do "Jimi Thing." And then today, I just laid down there on the shoreline. I took off my socks and shoes and put my feet in the water. I moved the big jabby rocks aside out from under my back. I took one shoe and put it under my head for a pillow. I crossed my arms. And then, I closed my eyes and had the most perfect nap. At some point, a boat went past that caused some small waves to come to the shore that covered my legs over and made my shorts a little wet and I woke up. The view from that spot was elysian.

Tonight I had to drive to Owingsville to use my cell phone. That's right. You've never heard of this place and neither had I until about a month ago and I had to drive there because that is the nearest place my phone gets reception. Before I took off, I asked the girl at the hotel front desk here where I should eat in Owingsville. She said, and I quote: "Owingsville has some good restaurants. They have a Dairy Queen and a McDonalds."

bar fight

2005-09-18T10:57:00.000-04:00

This weekend has been full of interesting things. For example, on Friday night, what happened is this: a guy and three of his friends walk into a bar (I may be the guy). The two guys behind the bar ask to see their IDs. The guy and his three friends give them their IDs. One of the friends happens to have an ID from Oregon. She's 27, a prestigious person on the local university's campus, and is pursuing a PhD. She also happens to look young. They inspect the ID under what has to be the brightest lamp never used for fake sun-bathing before decisively saying that her ID is a phony and she must leave. Now, the guy, who has thought of making this bar "his bar" doesn't like this. After all, his face has been seen in here many times in the past two months since he came home to his hometown and he was starting to feel like quite the patron. There is nothing like playing pool in this place, with eccentric students from all different walks of life, and young 20 somethings that either work in construction or in an office, and with your occassional smoked-out, middle-aged whacko who claims to "love everybody--you and you and you" and goes around and pokes them with her index finger. Yes, this was his kind of place. Great for people watching and just had the potential of being the kind of place where someday he could walk up to the bar and say, "I'll have the usual," and they'd make him a screwdriver.

But, it all changed when they said the Oregon ID was a phony. When the group of friends said, almost in unison, "But she's 27!" the bartender said, "well, maybe I'll just call the cops and let them decide."

This is where the guy really comes in to play. He said, "yes, call the cops. That'd be great. What a stupid threat. I'm going to sit down here until they get here and then when they tell you that she's 27 we'll go back there and play pool."

At this point, the bartender said, "Get the fuck out of here."

The guy really doesn't like it when people talk to him that way, and though he is skinny and capable of doing no harm to anyone, the two glasses of wine he had up Main Street a block were making him braver than normal.

From here, it becomes unclear exactly what the guy said in protest to the bartender but he recollects his mind working at an enormous pace. He kept his language clean and sharp--it was just extremely condescending to the two bartenders' intelligence and also tried to evoke guilt on their behalf for losing his respect and his patronage. He was leaning across the bar so far that he could actually see the glasses that were kept beneath there. He remembers being pulled by his three friends from the back--they actually had a hold of his shirt--and they were saying, "Let's go. Let's go." And, he was thinking: "yes, we should probably go."

The bartenders were replying, "we don't want your business anyways," to his arguement, "I'll never be back in here."

It was perhaps his former life as being an English major, or perhaps it was his current mindset that writing letters is a good form of protest, that evoked him to shout the following as soon as he walked out of the bar onto the small-downtown street that was quiet and empty of traffic:

"I'M GOING TO WRITE A LETTER!"

I want to save the world but my hotel won't let me

2005-09-12T16:19:00.000-04:00

Dear hotel where I'm staying,

In the bathroom, there is a sign that says:

"SAVE OUR PLANET!
Dear Guest:
Every day tons of detergent and millions of gallons of water are used to wash towels that have only been used once.
PLEASE DECIDE FOR YOURSELF.
A towel on the rack means 'I'll use it again.'
A towel on the floor or in the tub means 'please exchange.'"

Last week, I hung my towel on the shower rod every day. And every single day the cleaning staff took it away and gave me new towels. So last night I read the Save Our Planet sign again... "on the rack...." This morning, I very deliberately moved the other towels off the rack and put them on the shelf up above and hung my bath towel on the rack.

This afternoon, I came back and my bathroom looks as tidy as ever, all used towels and laundry gone and replaced with clean(er) towels.

I'm not an all-out environmentalist, but every once in a while I try to help. And, I care! I really do freaking care about the environment. Leave my towels where they are so I can feel glorified by doing my part to save a gallon of detergent, OK?

Give your washing machine a break,

Derick

PS: Leave my sterofoam drinking cups alone too! I can't catch my own mouth germs.

for Francesca

2005-09-11T16:36:00.000-04:00

I rode, well, rather, I pushed my bike up the 13 kilometer hill road to San Gimignano, which I just called San Gimi (Jimmy) because I couldn't say Gimignano correctly.

When I got to town, I locked my bike against a post beside one of the old city's gates and my butt was sore. I wondered if I was fooling anyone and blending. Or, did they all know? Was it obvious that I was a foreigner?

Already in the past few days, I'd been mistaken by more than one person as a Brit. This was OK with me. I liked it, actually, that they didn't assume I was American. And I thought how they couldn't distinguish English accents from American or Austrailian the same way I can't tell dialectal differences of Great Britain apart.

I walked into the gated old city and wandered up the street to center of town and climbed some steps and then more a dirt path and then more steps and ended up at a grassy knoll above the city where there was a gallery and a girl named Francesca outside painting. I was wearing shorts this day. She was wearing a black overcoat and a black scarf. I came up and looked at her finished pieces and began talking to her.

She told me that during the month of April, her mother had always said to wear a coat to avoid getting sick. I told her I'd be burning up if I were her and she said that's why she sat in the shade. Her English was broken and so we spoke in short, simple sentences. And I don't remember what else we talked about. But the conversation went on for ten more minutes and I liked the girl very much. She was like an Italian hippie. She was thoughtful. Before she would speak, she would always think for a seconds. Her hair was somewhat dirty looking. But she was quite beautiful. I got a sense she was poor. Her art was very good. I remember at one point, during the conversation, something was said that made her gaze off. From where she had her easel set up, she could see across dozens of miles of Tuscany. The day was full of brilliant sunshine, but not completely crisp air. It seemed hazy, or smoggy, well back on the horizon. And I remember thinking that she looked troubled as she looked off for that few seconds.

I bought a piece of art from her for 10 Euros and then that wonderful moment arrived where I realized I was saying goodbye to Francesca forever and I wanted a picture of her. I got out my camera and I told her that I was going to photograph her. She reached for the camera, thinking I wanted the photo of myself. I withdrew my arm at her approach and told her, "no, you."

She gave me a shy smile and stood up beside her easel and she made her posture very straight. She looked awkward, but confident. She smiled. And I took my picture and I said, "Grazia, Grazia, ciao Fracesca. Buena fortuna."

I walked down the hill and stopped at a public restroom where both men and women went in and used the toilet side-by-side in stalls. Then, I came back in to the plaza at the center of town and descended the steps. I went into a pizzaria and got funghi pizza and ate outside, sitting on the lip of a fountain. The newspaper outside the pizzaria in the stand had the Pope's grave face on it. I went back in and I got more pizza from the same place and the lady gave me a discount this time. The Pope would die in approximately six hours from the time I ate my final slice.

Eventually, I felt afternoon getting late and I got back on my bicycle and coasted the 13 kilos back to my hostel, downhill the whole way, not even needing to pedal--just me, the wind, and a carefully wrapped piece of art from the high knoll in Tuscany.

if I advocate one thing too much, this is it

2005-09-07T21:56:00.000-04:00

At 9 tonight, I was looking for a place to have dinner. I was driving on Harrodsburg Road in Lexington and just deciding on eating at the Big Boy when David Dye's voice came over the radio.

The World Cafe was being broadcast... through my car radio... ah, hallelujia, sweet relief.

Nostalgia hit me and hit me hard. I missed Cincinnati at that moment. I actually said, aloud in my car, "David-freaking-Dye. It's been a long time my man." (maybe I'm just becoming deliriously lonely after being away for three days and have taken to talking to the radio).

So now, I've had my Big Boy fill (such a Cincinnati thing to me)--the Buddy Boy sandwich. And I'm listening to David Dye and the World Cafe in my hotel room right now, remembering yet again how wonderful the show is. I need a girl to dance with, and hell, I don't even dance.

www.worldcafe.org

NOTE to my one reader in southern Indiana: DAVID GRAY is the guest on Friday!

a post with several google image links

2005-09-06T16:24:00.000-04:00

I'm now a nomad.

That's right. Yesterday, "travel season" began. I'm in a hotel room (accidentally booked a suite, not just a room--sweet) and will be for basically the next three months with the exception of weekends.

I had a fitfull night of sleep. I'm sleeping on a bed that is roughly the size of a helicopter landing pad. The mattress is awesome. The pillows are feather pillows and it takes three of them just to stretch across the bed. But I couldn't sleep at all. I'm not sure if it was the banging coming from upstairs (youthful lovers without worries of stamina or kids without a bedtime--I don't know), if it was the fact that I felt oddly nervous about working today (kind of like the first day of school--or trying to eat dinner before going off to a school dance), or if it was because I hadn't yet gotten a successful internet connection in my room even though I spent two hours trying to set up a bridge (please tell me your reaction is "what the hell's a bridge?" too so i don't feel so stupid) in lieu of my wireless connection being unable to establish itself.

Me without internet access = an unhappy me.

This morning I got up, had free donuts and hot chocolate that burnt the roof of my mouth (I fwear my speef will come back wight soon). I went out, did my first school visit and met a nice bunch of kids and then I came back and got the internet connection squared away. I've been much happier since.

Lexington is a good town. I have dinner plans tonight with a friend I made in Jabez last month and tomorrow I think I may even have lunch plans. I'm making full use of my limited contacts in Lexington. I feel comfortable here and happy about being nomadic (for now). But, then again, I'm in the midst of civilization. Ask me again in three weeks, when I'm spending my Monday in Phelps, KY (Kentucky's version of Land's End--just look at this place on a map!) or on that Tuesday when I'm in Hazard. I'll be sure to say hey to Bo and Luke for you all.

I was born in the wrong century

2005-09-04T23:29:00.000-04:00

I went hiking in Mammoth Cave National Park today because the weather was gorgeous--a little hot, but with a definite sense of Fall in the air. Hay fields are growing once again because of all of last week's rain. The fields in Edmonson County are green and the forest floors are drying out a little bit. In a month from now, farmers' fields will be laying, drying with the season's last cut of hay waiting to be raked up and baled and the corn crop will be in for the most part.

Hiking in Mammoth Cave N.P. is a nostalgic experience for me, and it's not worth going into anywhere but in my head. Today it was remarkable to be out there though. I'm horribly out-of-shape again after a sluggish summer of sitting behind a desk while working and coming home and doing... what have I been doing all summer?

As soon as I was out of the car, I heard broken English being spoken. The accent was European, maybe German. I love going to Mammoth Cave for this reason. Half of the people who live in this area have never been there, but every single traveler who passes through Kentucky stops. It is really the most worldly of all of Kentucky's spots.

The parking lot was packed. I actually had to cruise around for a spot. I felt like I was at Wal-Mart for a second. A tour was about to go off and as I walked near the Visitor's Center, there were probably a hundred people milling about waiting for their tour to begin. I was just going there for a map of the trails before getting started, but I'm glad I did. The whole notion of Mammoth Cave N.P. being an international draw was reinforced. It felt like I was walking around the platform of the London Tube as much diversity as there was sitting around. I love that feeling. I also noticed that a high percentage of the park rangers are female, and they're kind of hot. But I didn't stick around long to check them out--hard to with those big goofy hats on (they kind of look like state troopers).

I headed down the River Styx Trail which I've been down probably a dozen times over the course of my life. It goes straight down to the Green River where some couple was lying on a blanket having a picnic. I took off west down the river and two guys came up with fishing poles and part of me wanted to ask them if it's really legal to fish in the park. But, theywere rednecks and they were arguing. The trail ran right over the bank of the river and the bank itself is very steep and very muddy. "You want to chance it here?" "Fuck it, I'm going for it." I didn't stick around to watch them fall in the mud and go sliding down in to the river (I've done that before, actually).

I walked on, actually turning around and going back east upstream on the Green River Bluffs Trail, which has a lovely overlook at one point, but there was a couple there all lovey-dovey, so I couldn't interrupt that. OK, so I did for a minute as I stopped to take a drink of water and listen in on their conversation--they were talking about Chicago and as I walked off I heard him talking about London. I liked them. They seemed kind of dorky.

Finally I came back around out to the Visitor's Center area and as I did I saw a turkey. Odd coming up on a turkey in the woods. Of course as I had walked, I had fantasies about what it must have been like to have lived in America before Europeans ever got here. I was in this mindset of Native American-man and that wild musical motiff that defines The Last of the Mohicans was playing over and over in my head (it all started when I walked across these white rocks that jutted out over a cliff--a natural reaction, c'mon) and that's when I saw that turkey. I swear I had a notion to reach down to my side and pull out a tomahawk and kill it (maybe that's not the most PC thing I've ever said). I was even thinking how cool it'd be to "just liv' off the fat o' the lan'" (I read Of Mice and Men this week, give me a break).

Two minutes later I got in my white Honda Accord and listened to Car Talk as I drove down the freeway on the way home. I miss the trail.

A Very Important Guest to Campus

2005-09-01T10:11:00.000-04:00

Barbara Ehrenreich is coming to WKU's campus in March to speak!

She is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.

If you've never read this, you may wonder why I'm excited about this. If you have read this, you know why. Ehrenreich took jobs across America as a low-wage employee in various service-sectors (i.e. as a cleaning lady, as a wal-mart employee, as a waitress) and was an undercover author. The book is a real-life detective case of America's shittiest jobs. The book serves as a virtual expose of what America's working class endures, both in work conditions and in personal struggles as a result of their low wages. Ehrenreich uncovers the treatment of such employees. She calls for higher pay and a higher appreciation. Her work, as an author and investigator, has been called revolutionary.

A review of the book:

"Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour?

To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor."

Wait a second, this isn't Fort Knox

2005-08-30T23:25:00.000-04:00

I'm having the internal war that I thought might rage once I got moved back down to BG and back on WKU's campus: I'm finding myself drawn to the academic side of life at WKU, not just administrative or student affairs or whatever it is that I do for a living. Both intrigue me really, but I have more respect for the academic side. I can never forget the advice of one J.W.R. in August 2004 though: "Just get your doctorate while you're young and you can do anything you damn well please after that. You can travel--you'll have all the time off you want. You can study literature if you really wanted to--you'll have time. And best of all, you'll have money."--JWR on going into administrative life at a university instead of academic

For the reason of missing academe, and because travel writing is my dream, I'm organizing a study abroad travel writing contest on campus. The thing started as a flicker of thought. Then, I started sharing the idea with other people. And then, I happened to meet the right people a couple of weeks ago to just light this thing up; now, it's almost ready to advertise. Somewhere along the way, the New York Times' American Democracy Project got involved through a sheer grace of God and they are funding the entire thing--prize money and advertising. I've got support from faculty members who now see me buying a burrito in the food court and are asking me when they can announce it to their students--they're really excited about it. It feels good. I love my life at this moment. In about two months, I'll be posting a link to a webpage that has the winning essays on it.

Today I went to Frankfort. I always feel weird when I go to Frankfort and don't see the State Capitol Bldg. It just feels wrong, really, to not even catch a glimpse of the cupola. I did, however, see some kick ass gold teeth. Did you know that on a hillside above the Kentucky River in a cemetery in Frankfort, there is a great tombstone for Daniel Boone? But no... oh nooo... don't be fooled like I've been. Last year, I sat up there alone on an autumn day for about twenty minutes absorbing it all... me sitting there communing with the remains of Daniel Boone, just feet below the soil, thinking about the legend of this man, the bond I was sharing with his spirit. But to my crumbling shock, I've been told recently that he's not really buried there. Where is the punk?

Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-29T22:20:00.000-04:00

Lately my blogging has been coming with less and less frequency. My apologies to anyone who is still loyal enough to stop by on occassion. With the onset of work travel beginning for me in one week, I think my frequency will once again increase as I find myself spending long nights alone in hotel rooms.

I will say very little tonight, except that right now, I'm tingling. It's raining outside. The winds will pick up overnight and in my sleep, they'll howl through the screen and inside the window sill, stirring the dust of the last few months into a muddy trickle down the side of the house. And, I will sleep through it. Tonight, there will be no bad dream.

Haunted Nights

2005-08-22T02:32:00.000-04:00

I woke up 25 minutes ago from a dream. My heart was beating so audibly I could hear it. My face felt flush and part of me felt sick.

The dream had been weird, but not a nightmare until the very end. It was like one of those surprise endings to a well-crafted movie that you never dreamt could have come--the kind of movie that earns its monumental reputation in that one second of complete shock and discovery--like Shawshank or The Sixth Sense. I didn't see the end of my dream, but it was bad--very bad. It was a dream where I had forced myself to wake up. My concious stepped in to censor my unconcious. In my dream, I was hearing an unearthly croak from my Mother as she was staring at my sister. The dream had unfolded like this: I had been in a schoolhouse in the woods somewhere in the mountains with my sister. It was like a large cabin that the school was in and outside, it was very wooded. There were nuns there than ran the school, and I had been there with my sister and we had been teaching these children teachers. The children were very young, and I think they were orphaned. It was nighttime. The nuns had put the children to sleep and forbidden them to make noise. I don't know what would have happened if the nuns had discovered that the children were awake, but we all knew they would be in very big trouble. They were laying above me, all in a theatre-like setting where they descended down tiers of beds on both sides of me. I stood on a stage-like pit beneath the children and my sister walked in. For some reason, we were leaving in the night. It was as if were escaping. There was this weird connection to the children, though, as if, we were abandoning them. They were all awake and watching us pack up our stuff. I remember telling my sister, "They are all awake. I want to make them laugh, but they can't make noise." My sister packed stuff out of a chiffarobe and into a bag. Behind her back, I did a chicken-dance and the children covered their mouths and giggled and tried not to let an audible snicker come out. My sister wanted to do the same thing, but I waved her off, when I realized I could hardly control my own laughter. Over the next couple of minutes, we finished packing our stuff and some of the children succumbed to sleep. We climbed to the top of the theatre-like room, and were now at the top of the all of the children. Both my sister and I whispered across the room, "Dear Children, I'm sorry, I love you, Goodbye." and some whispers came back from the children who were still awake. My sister left the room and I stepped out on to a porch outside of the cabin-school and locked the door. As I did so, two odd things happened, I looked through one of the glass windows and realized that I had just seen a younger version of my sister across the room asleep, and I was now looking at two younger versions of myself through the glass. There was me as an infant and me as about a ten-year old. The infant me was crawling across his bed, heading towards the ten-year old me. I felt an overwhelming sense of worry, but I comforted this worry by knowing that my ten-year old counterpart would take care of the baby me. Then, as I got the door locked, two cats appeared at my feet wanting in. They were my cats, and I felt like I was leaving them, but wherever I was going, they'd be there also. I unlocked the door again and let the cats in and relocked the door. I then started down a long stone staircase down the side of the mountain. It was covered with dry, cripsy, brown leaves and had a handrail that ran along it that was wood and smooth, like a rail at a themepark that has been worn down my thousands of hands. For some reason, I was running down these stairs as fast as I could and that is when I heard my mother scream. I knew I was trying to catch up with my sister, but when my mother screamed, I looked down the mountain ahead of me and saw her. She was horrified. There was another lady standing well off to the the left of my mother staring at the same thing my mother was looking at. She seemed frozen. I, however, could not see my sister. I sprinted down steps, and I was screaming, "MAMA! What's wrong?! MAMA! What's wrong!?" And my Mother kept croaking a sob from somewhere forbidden within her and looking horrified at something I couldn't see. And then she stopped. She looked up at me from the bottom of the hillside I was sprinting down and she commanded me to "STOP! DERICK, PLEASE STOP! LISTEN TO ME! DO NOT. DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR SISTER! PLEASE. YOU'VE GOT TO HELP HER, BUT YOU CAN'T LOOK AT HER."

This is when I forced myself to wake up.

Tales get passed down, and I've always believed in the supersticions that generations of my family have brought me. One of these comes from my mother--DO NOT TELL THE DREAMS YOU HAD BEFORE BREAKFAST UNLESS YOU WANT THEM TO COME TRUE. I hear this supersticion rattling in my mind right now.

I woke up and my entire body was wanting to go back to sleep. I could tell my mind was wanting to go right back to the dream. Everytime my eyes would blink closed, I would see the wooded hillside again and I was having that internal struggle: look over the hillside and see, or turn and obey your mother. But, the sound my Mother made in the dream made me wake up. I blinked my eyes rapidly. I stared at the green light on the fire alarm in my otherwise darkened bedroom. There were two lights until I put my glasses on. I expected it to be 5:45 AM or later. It always seems I wake up right before I'm actually supposed to. It was 1:15 AM. I had only been asleep for just about two hours. It seemed impossible. I lay in bed with chills across my body thinking of the croaking noise my Mother had been making and feeling like something was wrong with someone I love. I thought about praying and I managed some kind of weak, feeble prayer that I don't think ever found an ending. In a few minutes, I got up out of bed. I walked to the door and I hesitated before opening it. I felt like some blood-bath scene would be on the other end. How does my mind convince me the world is so evil while I sleep? I opened the door to the silent night. I stepped into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and took a drink of water. I sat down on the toilet and stared at the blank wall in front of me, my mind racing and dark, grotesque images popping into it. It was as though my mind had taken on a new character to create the most fantastic and crudest images possible in its sleep.

Now here I am. I am afraid to go back to sleep, and I feel as though I'm charting some Poe-esque driven phenomenon where the concious and the unconcious meet up to imagine or to experience something completely haunted. Is there something real in this night--a spirit, a ghost, that is here with me, whispering these thoughts into my head? Or, am I really creating these things--my mind?

There was a night in my childhood that I know I'll never forget. It was haunted. My entire family experienced it. And on that night, I know something was really disturbed, but I don't know what it was exactly. As I type this, a wave of chills is blanketing itself on around my waist. I was about 17 or so at the time. My dog Ben was lying in the floor beside me as he did each night. I was in my upstairs bedroom and the window was open to the night air. At the time, my family lived at the end of a gravel driveway that stretched into the edge of a wood and we were without immediate neighbors.

Ben was an excellent watchdog, but though I had had him for almost ten years at the time, he had never barked upstairs. He could not see out any of the windows up there and therefore, he didn't bark. On this particular night though, I was sleeping soundly, when as if coming out of a hynosis where the psychiatrist had snapped his fingers, he and I both woke up at the same time. The air didn't seem right. Sounds were amplified, and we had both heard something in our sleep. I rose into a sitting position in my bed. Ben stood up and walked to my side window and looked up and growled and sniffed the air frantically. I scolded him, as one does his dog when he is frightened by something that he knows should be innocent. "Ben! Shh! Go back to sleep!" But, I could tell something wasn't right. His body was rigid and he was staring straight up at my window growling intensely. Outside, there was the sound of a tin pan stirring on the sidewalk 15 feet below my window, yet there was no wind. Fear overcame me. I walked out of my room and Ben jetted down the steps and to the front door. His speed sent me into panic mode. I rand behind him to the front door and flipped every light switch I could get my fingers on and I swung open the door for him. He ran barking and growling out of the door like a mean dog sat on chase of a rabbit. My dive for the light switches had woken my parents up in a startle. They came to the door and asked me what was going on, blinking in their sleep. Ben ran back across the front yard the opposite way, and I'll never forget what I saw him do. He was an excellent tracking dog. He could track my trail if he ever lost sight of me to the very zig-zagged lines I'd try to trick him on. He could be feet from me, but when his nose was on my trail, he could be so intent on tracking me that he wouldn't see me until he had almost ran into my feet.

This night, as I watched him out the window with my parents demanding answers, he ran across the front yard tracking something. Then lost the scent, turned back and follwed it back across the front yard again. Then, he seemed lost again. He returned to the middle of the front yard and leapt into the air. His nose was extended to the air, upward, trying to track his scent. Several times he jumped, his body extended horizontal like a person standing, and he'd twirl in the air--reaching for the scent.

Ben came back to the door a moment later, his body trembling. I had thoroughly freaked my parents out by this time and I was asking and they were demanding that I stay in their room and sleep on the floor the rest of the night. Ben slept by me. I fell back asleep some time later. But during that same night, my Dad woke us all up screaming at the top of his voice in his sleep. It was almost as if he were begging or howling. I woke up screaming in fear as to what was going on. Ben, in the floor beside me, started howling. At that point, I was pretty much begging for daylight to get there. I've never forgotten that night. Days before this, I had visited the Vontress Cemetery, located in the woods behind my house. I had wandered its graves, trying to make out the names and dates, and for some reason, one of them had struck me. It was a girl who had died in the late 1800s at the age of 17. I had sat down beside her grave and I had stayed there for ten minutes or so. I don't remember what compelled me to do this, but something had. And as I had sat beside her grave, I had felt like I had been communicating, in some sacred way with something ghostly--whether it be the girl, or the spirit of the girl, or God, or just my imagination.

But that night, I have always felt like she visited my house.

Tonight, I think my bad dream was caffeine-induced. But still, I'm so weirded out by my mind. How does it create such weird stuff as I found myself seeing as I looked into that blank wall as I sat on the toilet after I had gotten up from my dream? Why was I led to such fear to even open my bedroom door? Why, in the peace of my slumber, did my mind create such a wretched, wrenching sound out of my Mother? And what, if I had let myself resuccumb to sleep, would I have seen if I had let the dream go on? What was it that my Mother was so adamantly telling to turn away from.

People criticize Freud, but he was on to something. There is something that exists in our subconcious that is weird and different than who we are when we are in our normal waking hours. We feel that we exist and live our lives during our time spent awake, but part of me in convinced that our minds live dual-existences some times in our unconcious. And sometimes, thsi dual-existence gets so extreme that even our "daylight self" notices that it's there within the same body.

Where I've been: a chronology

2005-08-18T18:51:00.000-04:00

Update on where I've been:

Sunday: left at 2 PM CST for Jabez, KY

Sunday, 5 PM EST: drove past a sign that read "CAUTION BLIND PEDESTRIAN"

Sunday, 5:04 EST: Slam brakes as curvy country road suddenly ends in gravel

Sunday, 5:04:03 EST: Realize I found the place--the Kentucky Leadership Center

Sunday, 8:37 (all times are EST until otherwise stated): Confess to a new group of friends that I have two uvulas (hangy-ball things in the back of one's throat). I also promise to show them these later, but no one ever approached the idea.

Sunday, 11:46 Get up out of one of the hundred perfect rocking chairs on the absolutely biggest porch I've ever seen to play ping-pong

Sunday, 11:48: Remember I'm horrible at ping-pong

Monday, 2:03 AM: Crash into bottom layer of a bunk bed.

Monday, 4:23 AM: wake up with an ant crawling across my face

Monday, 6:27 PM: after a long day of conference workshops, walked a mile down a dirt road and into a idealic lake scene. Just like a Countrytime Lemonade commercial, I went running off a dock and into a placid, clear Lake Cumberland.

Monday, 6:45 PM: canoe out of cove to the main body of the lake with new friend from Thomas More College. Take deep breath as the view opened up around us. AMAZING. Off to the east there was a huge supercell with the evening sun on it, all around us was miles and miles of water and around the perimeter were tall hills and cliffs.

Monday, 9:59 PM: Play a game called Psychiatrist.

Monday, 10:23 PM: Finish playing Psychiatrist and head to the rocking chairs to play a game called Mafia with a dozen of my new closest friends.

Monday, 10:23-Tuesday, 2:06 AM: Play the game that will forever define this conference. I was a townsperson five times in a row before I finally got to be Mafia. Then, the next game, I was the sheriff, but I was the first one killed by the Mafia in that game, so I didn't really get to be the sheriff (yeah, that probably didn't make sense).

Tuesday, 1:35 PM: realize that I don't want to go home

Tuesday, 2:05 PM: Leave Jabez, KY

Tuesday, 2:16 PM: Almost hit a pedestrian on the side of the road and wonder, "NO--Could it have been?"

Tuesday, 5:10 PM CST: Meet friend at Sad Sam's Fireworks off I-65 in TN to carpool the rest of the way into Nashville for Ray LaMontagne concert.

Tuesday, 7:45 PM: Ray LaMontagne walks immediately beside me and I decide at the last second that taking a picture of him would be rude.

Tuesday, 9:03 PM: Ray LaMontagne comes onstage and chills go up my spine as he sings for the first time and I remember how powerful his voice is.

Wednesday, 9:30 PM: Get home from eating dinner out and realize I'm dog-tired

Cooking refound

2005-08-12T23:29:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been a bit of a vegetable when I've been getting home from work. Honestly, I don't know what I've done this week in hindsight. One day I played golf after work, another day I had my nephew, niece, and sister over and I got in the swimming pool (kiddie pool--c'mon, we're not made of money). But tonight, I got home, had a headache, had an overwhelming desire to just go to sleep. I fell asleep on the couch for like two minutes and my phone rang and woke me. And then I was in that state where I really, really wanted to fall back asleep but was no longer tired. The two minute nap was like a miracle nap. I laid there and watched the Daily Show with Jon Stewart until the cat wanted out and when I got up a huge burst of energy occurred. Sometimes this spoken conniption of energy comes along and when it does stuff gets done.

I let the cat out, walked straight to the garage and got a water sprinkler out, went out front and set it up on the front lawn to water the grass (dang--it's so dry the grass crunches), started pulling weeds out of the front landscaping and did that for an hour and a half. The sprinkler kept hitting me and so I was soaked.... like water dripping from my hair and everything. It felt very good. It got dark and I kept working. People walked by. The family that just moved into the house next door got home. A kid rode by on his bike. And, they all looked over and saw me soaking wet, pulling weeds out of the garden, even though the crescent moon was hanging overhead and all remaining glows of the sun had vanished from the west.

Well, the landscaping looks dazzling now. With all the drought, the weeds were very easy to pull up. On top of this, I watered the front lawn quite heavily, so I was even able to put a bit of an edge on most of the landscape. In the darkness, this looked very good and I'm anxious to see it by daylight.

I then came inside, cleaned up a bit, and got to work on dinner. I haven't been much for cooking since I moved back to Bowling Green, and honestly, I wasn't much looking forward to it tonight. But then I started. My love for cooking totally came back. I made a full meal in 40 minutes. I was slicing vegetables, grilling, boiling, frying--all at once. I can really multi-task like a freaking wizard when I really get myself in a zone. Dinner was fabulous. The reminder that I like to cook, and that there is something satisfying in sitting down to a dinner that one has just created, was welcome.

And now, I feel my burst of energy wearing off. Slowly, slowly, I am drifting.

Reflex

2005-08-10T23:11:00.000-04:00

In my indiscriminate quest to hear music from all genres, I provide today's song of the day with no reservations even though it'd probably be best described as girl-pop:

Take it Back by Loquat--listen to the MP3 from their website

Speaking of music, six days until Ray LaMontagne's show at City Hall in Nashville. I read on a message board the other day that one fan described the Bonnaroo show I saw as "a tidalwave of emotion" which I liked, but it also has me worried I saw him at the absolute pinnacle of his ability. I guess this will be better answered after Tuesday.

If you don't know who I'm talking about, go here and listen to the tracks.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

On to something besides music....

Do you ever just sit and you're just kind of idly thinking, or not thinking, doing nothing at all really, and all of a sudden you just get choked on your own saliva? It's as if you're so lazy your reflexes even stop caring that you're trying to live. This has happened to me now two days in a row. What's with me? Geez, my mind is numb.

Odd things happened today--I went to play golf after work and on the 10th hole, I hit my fairway shot, an 8 iron, and as my ball was about at its summit, it hit a bird that was flying over. Maybe there is just something about reflex shut down today.

Regarding my post about canoeing... one final word. I got a great comment today from a reader who is looking for information on the Green River Monster... I know I have several readers in and around Bowling Green, so anyone have any stories that have been passed down through your family to help out in this family's research?

Canoeing photos

2005-08-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

My post from last week about canoeing probably would have been a more timely unveiling of these photos, but hey, I might as well post them. Here are photos from canoeing on the Green River in Mammoth Cave National Park. That's me clinging to the canoe in the bottom photo after flipping over a few minutes after getting started. It got easier from there.

I'm not desperate

2005-08-08T17:00:00.000-04:00

On Friday last week we had an office retreat. Part of our office retreat included a games chapter. One of the games required us to fill out a survey, which I didn't take completely seriously. The survey had 25 questions and the purpose was so that our co-workers could learn something about us that they didn't already know. Two of my questions got shared with the group:
1.) If you were a cartoon character, which would you be and why?
I answered: John Arbuckle--terrible luck with the ladies.
2.) If you could meet one person, living or dead, who would it be and what would ask them?
I answered: Natalie Portman--Date a guy like me?

None of my other answers to questions hinted at my singleness--they were, I like to think, just witty responses. Yet, these two chosen questions, when paired together, make me look like I'm screaming for a mate. And, I take it as not coincidental that my co-worker friend was in charge of selecting which questions/answers made the cut. The momentary embarrassment I could handle, but now this has implanted a seed within the mind's of my co-workers that I'm a hopeless desparado. Take for example comments that have been made to me today:

1.) Derick, how old are you?
Me: 23
Co-worker: Oh, right, you don't like older women do you?
Me: --laugh-- Um, how old are we talking?
Co-worker: Maybe ten years older than you?
Me: Hmm, do I like 33 year old women? I'm thinking that's a little old for me.

2.) (in a conversation about having kids)
Co-worker: Kids can sure be a headache.
Me: Yep.
Co-worker: You should sure consider whether or not you want kids long and hard with your wife before you have them.
Me: Yep.
Co-Worker: (as if remembering that I'm hopelessly single) That is, if you get married. You may not want to get married. Some people don't like the idea of marriage. I just had an uncle pass away that was 82 and he never married. He seemed happy.

Ouch. Geez, I'm not desperate here. To understand this phenomenon, one must consider the geography of my location. I'm in the zone of Kentucky where if you're not engaged to be married by the time you graduate high school people start questioning your sexual orientation and if you're not engaged by the time you're out of college, people start fearing the worst for you. I'm not going to be 82 and never married. And, I'm not ready to date a divorcee either.

Note to self and all others: I'm 23.

Subway confusion

2005-08-08T14:47:00.000-04:00

Maybe I'm supersticious, but I truly believe in "good" days and "bad" days. I believe that things happen in suquential order that makes days good or makes days bad. Once one good thing happens, other good things follow. Once one bad thing happens, you're screwed until the sun goes down and comes back up. Today has been off the bad-day radar for me. Usually, on a "bad" day, I'll go to Subway and order my usual. I get a six-inch on white bread with turkey breast and ham, American cheese, lettuce, tomatoe, green pepper, and I always say "a touch of oil and a dash of salt and pepper." Saying the words "touch" and "dash" as descriptors for what I'm wanting on my sandwich makes me feel somewhat cool, even if the people at Subway think I'm a dork. But anyways, I always get the six-inch sandwich.

Now, if you've ever been to Subway and watched them cut the loaf of bread in half to make it a six-inch sub instead of a footlong, you notice something immediately: they never, ever cut the footlong loaf equally. It has never happened in the history of mankind. In fact, Subway, as a restaurant chain, holds a world record for never having cut a loaf of bread equally in two despite having made well over 11 million sandwiches.

On "good" days, I always benefit from the uneven cut. I always get a seven-inch sub for the six-inch sub price. On "bad" days, I'll get a short sub--one that's about five inches long--and it just adds to my already existing frustrations that I pay for lunch and I don't even get full.

Today I fully expected a shortened sandwich. The way things were going, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was a four-inch sub. I half expected the lady to let out an evil squeal as she cut the loaf and gave me the short end. But no, I ordered and she gave me the longest six-inch sub I've ever had. It must have been eight, pushing nine, inches long!

What's going on? Is the continum that is my bad day being tampered with? An extraordinarily good thing can't just be tossed into my bad day! I'm not sure what to expect for the rest of my day now: good things or bad things?

Since I've been writing this, I felt a sharp prick on my left hand on my ring finger. I looked down to see a tiny red dot. I looked more closely. A miniscule red spider just bit me. It looks like this answers my questions: the bad day is definitely back on. Now, let's just hope that I don't die of spider poison. If I don't post again, please let my loved ones know that I enjoyed a filling lunch as my last meal.

the best in the world has died

2005-08-08T00:43:00.000-04:00

I have a friend who used to kid me for giving superlatives to things too frequently. I'd say, daily, "this is the best fried chicken I've ever had," "that's the longest drive I've ever hit," "she's the hottest girl on Earth," "it was the funniest movie I'd ever seen"--things of that nature.

Throughout my life, there have been things that have been great, and I've been witness to many of them. The things that I've named the greatest and the best and the world's most awesome really weren't. They were little things that, for a second in time, pleased me. But tonight, news came that the world's greatest journalist died. I say that without reservation and with the full knowledge that I've overused strong superlatives in my past. Peter Jennings deserves the superlative and it'll be next to impossible to ever replace this honor with another man or woman.

I remember on September 11, 2003, my Mom woke me up and told me a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I turned on my television and watched. As always, when I wanted to know the news, I turned to ABC, because I knew Peter Jennings would be there. Throughout that morning, I clenched the knot in my throat and faught back tears and my whole body kind of trembled. I remember thinking of Jennings and how he was only city blocks away from what was happening--there, in his own hometown. He was so calm, so informative, so moved, as we all were, and yet, his poise was unwavering.

I left my home around 10 AM and drove to class and I remember walking up the Hill that day and the sky was brilliant blue. I had headphones on. It was a radio that had the capability to pick up the audio of TV stations. I'd bought it to listen to while I worked at the post office during college and I'd listen to sitcoms most nights and then the news and then I'd listen to Nightline and eventually, it'd be time to go home. But, on this morning, I found that I couldn't seperate myself from what was happening in the world, so I got out my work radio and listened to ABC. As I walked up the Hill, it was as if the world was silenced, but in my ear, Peter Jennings was still giving me his narrative on the world.

That evening, I got home from school and went outside. It was one of those cloudless, hazeless early Autumn days that was warm, but when evening started setting on, it was getting cooler. I walked out into my front yard and watched the sun go down in a bright orange glow and looked up at the sky and felt chilled by the realization that I wasn't sure I'd ever seen a sky this clear--after all, when else could one look up and not even see a contrail?

I walked in and the TV was still on ABC and Peter Jennings was still there.

Life is defined on days like September 11, 2003. We'll think back and we'll remember. In our parents' generation, there was the question, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" and in our generation there is and will be the question, "What did you do on 9/11?"

There are other days that define our lives: "Do you remember when Princess Diane died?" "What did you do on New Years Eve of 1999?" "Can you remember when the Berlin Wall fell?" and "Were you watching when Challenger crashed?" For each of us, there are dozens of these days that we remember so clearly because something stark happened that stuck a knife in the history book and etched out another story.

I trusted him with everything. His commentary on Presidential debates, on election nights, on American infrastructure on the World News, on the Person of the Week, and most of all, on days when history is written has made me a smarter individual. When I am old and my grandchildren come to me to interview me for a school project for my take on the history that I've seen, I will be telling part of it as Peter Jennings told it to me.

Sigh of relief

2005-08-05T00:18:00.000-04:00

Lately my blogs have been infrequent, and well, honestly, not very reflective. I just now (about two minutes ago), turned in my final exam for my last summer term course. This was easily the best course I've had so far in my graduate program, but on the same token, it required so much work (sad to say that very much of this was "busy" work). Anyways, I'm exhausted with being a student for the moment. I have an entire month to bask in the glory of no classes. This basking will end on September 1, when I'll start two more classes which will last through the Fall semester, but by then I'll be rejuvenated. For anyone who's out there wondering, I'm now 18.75% of the way done with graduate school. Woo hoo!

I have no car for the next three days. I don't remember if I mentioned it on here or not, but I backed into a sign at an Arby's drive-thru in greater Louisville about a month ago. The damage to my car was slight, but that didn't prevent the Arby's manager from giving the concrete post of his sign the once over about nineteen times before determing that, yes, it really was undamaged as one might expect a two-hundred pound block of concrete to be when hit at a whopping 2 mph by an Accord.

Anyways, I'm drifting off topic and into a rant about the Arby's manager. Nonetheless, my car is now in Allen County, Kentucky for the weekend getting the damage from my run in with concrete fixed. I've got a guy who knows a guy who fixes cars cheap and so I called my guy who gave me his guy's name and I called his guy and now that guy is fixing my car. Cue my Sicilian music now.

I'm making no sense tonight. I hope the 11-page paper I just turned in has more clarity that this entry. I think this is why this entry has nothing going for it... it's like free time for my brain to just wander.

Lately I've been getting a lot of random hits off of google and yahoo and other search sites. Statcounter.com keeps excellent records of who visits here and how they're referred to my page. Tonight, I'd like to just post some of the examples of the searches that people have conducted to arrive at my blog in the last five days. These make me wonder three things: 1.) what kind of people are visiting my blog and 2.) hmm, how did I make yahoo love me so much when I use a google-owned blogging site? 3.) what the hell am I writing about that makes my blog pop up on some of these net searches. Here they are:

Yahoo search: Infinite Symbol (with another variation some days prior- "The Iinfinite Symbol")
Yahoo search: Hollister employee discount
Yahoo search: CAN DEBIT CARD BE USED IN PRAGUE
Yahoo search: i love nerd shirt
Yahoo search: i caught you a delicious bass
Altavista search: naked girls in bowling green kentucky
Google search: ray lamontagne pronounce
Yahoo search: reason of destruction of rainforest
Yahoo search: am I boring

Unusual things I did today:
Caught our dishwasher smoking in the kitchen
Ate dinner at 5 o'clock--crap, that's early
Left work on time at 4 o'clock--crap, that's early
Met a redneck wearing a Stone Cold Steve Austin shirt that I actually liked (the guy, not the shirt)
Baked cookies

Lori McKenna

2005-08-02T00:33:00.000-04:00

A song, with my highest recommendations: Beautiful Man by Lori McKenna

Down the River

2005-07-31T16:27:00.000-04:00

The Green River, Kentucky's longest interior river, runs through Mammoth Cave National Park in a jagged line. Yesterday, I and five others canoed a 12-mile stretch of this river. Water levels around Kentucky are low right now because it's summer and rainfall has been unimpressive this year. The Green River was about the only option to canoe without portaging between puddles. I didn't want my first canoeing experience to be puddle-jumping.

The six of us that went are all colleagues and what started out as an adventure outing had turned in to almost a work function out of accident. But, it didn't matter most of the day. Five of us had never been in a canoe before. At 7 AM, we'd met up in Bowling Green, and at 8 AM we were all standing on the bank of the Green River and a van hauling green canoes had pulled up with a girl driving that had a pink shirt on and a piercing through her lip. I thought this was funny and I trusted the girl immediately.

She drove us out of the park and back into the park, all the while heading upstream and some thirty minutes later, we were carrying canoes down the ramp to the Green River Ferry and throwing our coolers in them. Some of us put on life jackets and then we hopped in.

The Green River is lazy. That is to say that at almost all points of it, it is wide and the water really is green and so clear you can almost see your feet when you fall out of your canoe. There is no white water on the Green River. At most points, you could paddle upstream almost as easily as you can paddle downstream.

My first taste of the Green River came when a buddy and I flipped our canoe over. Yes, literal taste. I wound up under the canoe, which was echo-y, but actually quite roomy. I stayed here for three seconds and realized the cooler with my lunch in it was not under the canoe with me. I submerged my head enough to get back out from under the cooler and reemerged to the laughter and picture taking of my cohorts. My blue cooler had come open. Water bottles, sodas, a huge block of cheese, my deli meat, Little Debbie brownies, and worst of all, my loaf of bread, were all scattered about floating around the canoe. Who knew deli meat floated? In hindsight, this story would be told that I emerged to be saying, "MY LUNCH! MY LUNCH!" but I don't remember if this is true or not. All I know is I started frantically salvaging things so I'd have something to eat through the day.

Later in the morning, the six of us stopped along the shore of what is normally an island. The river is too shallow now for water to flow on both sides. Where we stopped, the river cut sharply against a hillside and at this lone location had quite a current. The river, which was over 100 yards wide in most locations was probably only fifty feet wide at this point. In other points where it's over one hundred feet deep, here it was only about five feet deep at the deepest spot. The water of the river was being pushed through a pinhole, in essense. Along with us was a group of Chemistry researchers from WKU and one experienced Mammoth Cave canoer. They didn't canoe with us, per se, but we did share this stretch of river with them for the day. The guy that new this stretch of river pointed us to a location around the bend where there was a cave. We grounded our canoes against some rocks when we saw the cave opening. Even from the water, one could feel the expulsion of cold, 55 degree air from the cave. We walked up to it and found a chilled cavern that didn't seem to go back very far at all, but we questioned how accurate our assessment was and decided to go back to our boats where life was warmer.

My loaf of white bread stayed remarkably dry despite its swim in the river. We stopped for lunch on an island about six miles up river from our launch where someone had camped the night before. The remains of a fire was still smoking. The island was sandy and the sand was loose like a beach in Florida so that when you walked it left a huge dimple in the sand that looked like tiny moon craters. The river here was deep and calm and bubbles from somewhere deep underwater would sometimes emerge in weak blurp-burps and it is here, after lunch, that I swam the width of the river and jumped off an old fallen tree trunk that had algae all over it and bobbed under my weight.

The last six miles of the river was long and calm and seeing that my steering had improved, my partner and I worked out a way to make the river creative. We stuck to the left bank, where the shade was and where the wind was blocked by the high hillsides and cliff faces, and we canoed between the fallen trees and branches. It made life fun for the next few hours, her saying, "TREE!" and us both paddling hard on the respective side to turn our boat just enough before slamming into something. There were points where we didn't turn fast enough.

Eventually, on a long, straight stretch of river, I saw something that looked white in the distance and asked if it was the ferry. We canoed on and after a minute, it became clear that it was. Our exit.

Song of the Day (download from this link for some river music): Down the River by the Reeltime Travelers

Shaking hands

2005-07-28T22:35:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday last week, I mowed my parents' lawn. After a week of rain, it had shot up. The flower bed out back had weeds shooting all up in. After I got done mowing, I got down on my knees in the yard and started yanking weeds. This led me to the realization that I needed to weedeat around the house too. But, the weedeater has been torn up all summer.

So, I went that way on my knees too and started pulling up weeds. It was sweltering and I was really into it. I was going to town on the weed pulling and so when I got under the back porch and realized I was pulling at some viney like something with funny looking weeds, I was thinking, "that looks like poison ivy, but it's really too late now even if it is." I kept pulling.

I forgot about this until Friday when I noticed little small blisters all over my right hand. It took me two days after that to figure out that it was poison ivy.

This week, I have refrained from shaking hands with all people. It's a very awkward thing to meet someone and they stick their hand out and to say, "I can't shake your hand." Of course I go on to explain the poison ivy thing and I've gotten my story down so it gets a little laugh: "I pulled weeds for my parents last week and picked up poison ivy out of it. See if I do something nice for them again!"

This brings me around to my point though... shaking hands. Holy cow. I didn't realize until this week just how many freaking hands I shake. It's like a dozen times a day I'm now doing my lame two-liner above to get myself out of shaking someone's hand. I usually say the words "poison ivy" and they jump back like I've tried to bite them. Chill people. It's almost well, and I'm watching out for you.

Three Brothers, Bowling Green

2005-07-28T09:11:00.000-04:00

Last night I had dinner with two friends and then they took me to their local haunt, the Three Brothers bar just off the Fountain Square. First off, dinner. We ate at Yuki Japanese Restaurant. Phenomenal little place. I had barely heard of it, so when they suggested it, I was agreeable, but skeptical. The place was packed out though--and on a Wednesday night. I had hibachi shrimp and a Sake Plum Wine. Delicious.

So then Three Brothers. Here's an actual conversation I had with a lady there when my friends got up to go to the bathroom or something:

Her: I don't believe in much.

Me: OK.

Her: I don't believe in much.

Me: Hmm. (I start realizing that this statement isn't going to go away.) What do you believe in?

Her: I don't believe in much.

Me: Well, do you believe in love?

Her: No. I don't know. Well maybe I do. And maybe I don't believe in love. What's love?

Me: What's love?! I have no idea how to define love in words.

Her: Will you be my friend when I die?

Me: Huh?

Her: Will you be my friend when I die?

Me: Sure.

Her: (smiling and looking satisfied) That's what love is. (She jabs her finger into my shoulder. Then, she starts pointing around the room at other people and actually getting out of her chair to go poke other people with her sharp finger, saying...) That's what love is. That's what love is. That's what love is.

Me: Er, yes, I think I see your point. What about aliens? Do you believe in aliens--like people on other planets.

Her: (now wide eyed and looking scared) YES. YES. I definitely believe in aliens.

Me: Really? You're so confident in saying that. You must really be sure.

Her: I've been with aliens. I've been to outer space. I've seen aliens. I know there are definitely aliens.

Me: You've been to space and seen aliens?

Her: YES.

Me: What about ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts?

Her: (Wide-eyed, but not so alarmingly so as in the case of aliens, but still she looks scared.) YES. But I've not seen one yet. But yes, I definitely believe in ghosts. I was on an airplane once and it started going down. (At this point she stands up and puts her arms outstretched miming an airplane. She is swaying back and forth and hunched over so that it appears the airplane is plummeting downwards. She evens makes a WHIIRRR sound at one point to simulate engine noise. Her outstretched arms are hitting people sitting at the bar and people who are trying to walk by.) I was scared. I thought I was going to die. I thought I'd be a ghost.

At this point, my friends walk up. The lady is still doing her airplane by our table. They smile.

My friends: So you met Donna, huh?

babble-on

2005-07-27T00:04:00.000-04:00

Tonight I feel oddly sensational and weird and down and happy and angry all in one. Not really sure which is dominating. I'm just a real hodgepodge. I once dated a girl who's favorite word was hodgepodge. For some reason this word reminds me of the word sledgehog, which one hears much less these days now that Sonic is on his way out.

I had class tonight and we had a guest lecturer. It was flat out one of the coolest lectures I've ever sat in on. This guy was brilliant. He lectured over Islam. It was like Islam 101. What Muslims believe, why they believe it, the story of Muhammad. It was like he brought to life the yellow book that is Islam for Dummies in the form of a two hour lecture. We tied it to events in current events (i.e. London), ideas from past popular culture (Malcom X, etc.), and even the Heaven's Gate cult, which reminded me of the SNL skit that got me started liking SNL to begin with way back in like '96 or something. I think it was at that exact moment, watching this skit, that I understood what SNL was out to do... the whole idea of satire, social commentary, finally made sense to me.

The commercial followed the Heaven's Gate mass suicide (discovered March 26, 1997) within a month (air date of SNL show was April 17, 1997. Note to readers that these dates were found while browsing for a photo. Didn't want to come off as a total freak who remembered the dates of mass suicides, but hey, why not be informative when you can be? It featured feet, all wearing Nikes, on the bodies of Marshall Applewhite and the dead cultists. The song in the background was The Beatles' "Revolution" and then a Keds logo popped up on screen with a voice over that said, "KEDS--Worn by level headed Christians."

Yes, so that's where my daydream went in class. But wow, awesome, awesome lecture. I find myself now wanting to take a religious studies course with Dr. John Long.

This concludes random thoughts from Derick on this very sultry day. I'm going to go bask in the glory of a few pages of Harry Potter before bed.

Linda's Diner

2005-07-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

This weekend my family went on a weekend vacation. The family vacation is a staple of our summers. As a child it consisted of Panama City Beach, Florida each year staying at the Sunbird on Thomas Drive and playing mini-golf and taking a day excursion out to Shell Island on a glass-bottom boat. One year we really shook it up though and stayed at the Horizon South Condo, down on Front Beach Road in Panama City.

Yep, vacations were always pretty predictable. But, in recent time, there's been this whole introduction to new people into our family... like babies. Babies have a tendency to completely alter the traditional family vacation. For one, two out of the past three years, we've had to alter vacation plans around my pregnant sister. Additionally, there are just some places you can't take a newborn baby feasibly... a nine-hour car drive to a hot, sandy beach in the Florida panhandle, for example.

So, this past weekend, in a full effort to save the tradition of the family vacation in some respect, while still giving yields to the new reality of babyness in my family, I decided that we would go to Lake Cumberland for the weekend.

Lake Cumberland is a splendid landlocked vacation destination for the individual who owns a boat. This having been said, my family doesn't own a boat. We rented a two-bedroom cabin that was on a hillside over the lake. During the winter, there is a fantastic view across one of the lake's widest points, I'm convinced. But, it being summer, this view is obstructed entirely by thick foliage. Throughout the day, even well into the evening really, the sound of jet skis and powerful motorboats and the distant and faint echo of a scream of someone falling off an innertube could be heard seeping through the foliage. The sound literally was in our own backyard. Yet, we couldn't take in any of this view.

The plight of the family became clear early on. What do we do? If there are two things I know about my family, it's that they are slow to make decisions and they like to eat. So we slowly made the decision to go eat. For three meals, we ate at the lodge. State park food rocks the first time. The second time it's still good, but you're getting less hungry. The third time you eat there in a 24-hour span you find it hard to lie to the waitress. "Everything is just fine," you say, tounge-in-cheek.

So, Saturday, for lunch, we decided it was time to venture out. We must find food and we must find it outside of the state park's confines.

We drove north on Highway 127 into Jamestown, KY. I was the navigator of this exhibition and my family sat back and heckled me as we drove into a town that looked like it'd be flying high to have a Pamida. We pulled into the town square and I parked in front of Jamestown Cafe. We almost went in here. We almost made the mistake of not eating Linda's Diner.

Linda's Diner caught our eye just in time. Unassuming, it occupied a little yellow building right off of the town square. The front door read something like, "There's sunshine inside," which seemed kind of lame and cutsie-tootsie, but then I remembered that lame cutsie-tootsie women named Linda were phenomenal cooks.

My dad, mom, sister, nephew, niece, and I walk in. There are 9 tables in the restaurant, three clocks, and one window unit air-conditioner. Two of the tables were occupied by old men. Two of these old men were smoking cigars. Two others were smoking cigarettes. They all stopped talking and stared at us as we walked in. We went for the table by the air conditioner.

Conversation regenerated after we'd gotten sat down. I felt like the city slicker walking into the old western bar where the piano stops. Ironically, I'm the small town guy everywhere else I go.

We hear the old men say, "We don't got no business over in Iraq," and I'm thinking, hopefully, that the southern Democrat still exists. My nephew is alseep and sweating and drooling on my shoulder. Our waitress comes and my entire family uniformly orders the catfish, though we alternate between drink choices of tea vs. sodas.

The catfish comes and it's delicious. My nephew wakes up and starts eating pinto beans like they're reeses peanut butter cups or something. I mean, really, when did pinto beans become a treat for a kid?

When he gets done eating, he wants down. My dad has already struck up conversation with the old men about the local college that he attended decades ago. My dad is asking questions about people he knew from this area and are they still around here? The men know who he's talking about immediately. They know the answers. The rest of the crowd seems safe. I let my nephew down and he roams freely around the nine tables exploring.

The catfish is awesome. It's dipped in some kind of cornmeal. I also have fried corn, fried potatos, a roll, and what remains of the pinto beans.

Towards the end of the meal out waitress, who disappeared after we ordered to go cook our lunch comes and plops down at our table. She starts cooing over my niece.

"Are you Linda?" My Mom dives in for the question that we all want to know.

"No. I just work for'er," the waitress-cook says.

A conversation ensues. The old men in the background have been periodically getting up to help themselves to an assortment of things that one would not expect to see them do. They've refilled their coffees and they've helped themselves to a pieces of pie from under the counter. They're all wearing caps advertising brands of feed and tractor stores and tobacco companies. I even see a couple of the men disappear momentarily into the kitchen. I wonder if they've gone to use an unseen employee restroom or if they're back frying up a platter.

We order pie and I get the chocolate. It is the best chocolate pie I've ever had and I say this immediately. My Mom looks over at me offended and says, "You don't eat my chocolate pie," which is a complete crock. My Mom is famous for her chocolate pie in a local circle of friends.

"Whatever. I eat your chocolate pie. You just don't ever make it anymore."

My pie really isn't enough, but I stop eating. The waitress-cook gets up from the table and kisses my niece on the head. She's practically family. I feel the need to call her Linda since she never said what her name actually was. As I wait on everyone to wrap up, the old men are through with their afternoon chat and all stand at once. The waitress-cook has disappeared into the kitchen. They don't summons her. Instead, they just pull out change and a few dollar bills from their pockets and leave it on the counter by the register in a neat row and they walk out. As the door closes behind them, I hear them murmur about the hot sunshine. Even though I realize I'm lame and cutsie-tootsey, I'm grinning from fullness and perfect chocolate pie; I mouth to myself, but the sunshine's inside.

I need to get outside

2005-07-21T22:54:00.000-04:00

I'm heading out to Lake Cumberland tomorrow around lunch and I can't wait. After this week, I'm so ready for water and open, green land and nothing to do. I'll be taking a couple of books with me, but mainly all I want to do is sit back and enjoy the company of my family.

In my office at work, I have a map of the AT on the wall. I get a comment on it about once per day. It's definitely nearing time for me to get out and try it. This Fall, I think I'm going to take a few days and go somewhere on the trail for a long walk that will stretch a few days. October would be good--yeah.

I need some hiking buddies.

The photo of the day above comes from the WKU Outdoor Rec files so photo credits goes to someone down there in Preston probably.

A sneak peek at fatherhood

2005-07-20T22:03:00.000-04:00

Three weeks ago today my baby niece was born and tonight was the first night I had watched her alone. As soon as her mother, my sister, left for the grocery, of course she woke up. She started crying. I was thinking, great, just great, what the heck do I do? I picked her up and that seemed to have some soothing effect. That lasted for about one minute until she realized I have no tiny-baby-holding skills and that she wasn't comfortable. So then we went through that awkward, ritualized shifting that all guys do when they're holding a newborn baby. I try to be delicate and twist her around, but of course a leg gets caught on my arm or something and she realizes I have no clue what I'm doing and senses this and starts wailing. I can read her mind and its thinking this guy is going to drop me, he's going to drop me, Mom, MOM, where are you?

And of course she is reading my mind as well and I'm thinking, Just don't drop her, just don't drop her, Michelle, MICHELLE, where are you? Babies are very intuitive.

After a few seconds of this, I have her tucked away securely in my arms and up against my chest and she feels safe again. She looks up at me and her little dark eyes are perfect. She's doing the mouth-open, mouth-closed bit so I know she's hungry. I grab the bottle. She eats. Then, I try to burp her which leads back to awkward shifting of baby niece. Of course she doesn't burp but instead gives me back all the stuff she's just digested in a nice spritz on my shirt. I grab tissues and clean her mouth and clean my shirt. Then, she gets the hiccups. She doesn't seem to mind this. In fact, it seems to amuse her at first and she gazes up at me some more and almost, maybe, smiles.

Seven minutes of hiccuping baby time passes. I think back on ways I've heard to get rid of hiccups. Hold your breath... no, out of the question. Scare hiccups away.... hmm.. no, that's out of the question too. I break down and call the sister at Kroger.

"how do you get rid of a baby's hiccups?"

"feed her."

"that's how she got hiccups."

"feed her more. reverse the hiccups."

I feed the baby more. And, of course, moms know best. Five minutes later the baby was happy, not spitting up, with a full belly--and, best of all, not hiccuping. She looks up at me with three-week old eyes and I feel a developed trust between our new relationship that consists of me being caretaker. It feels good.

I rock her in the chair until I almost fall asleep. I look down and at last, she sleeps. I tiptoe into the bedroom with her and ever so gently try to lay her down without waking her. ... ...

Success.

I lay down in the floor beside her, exhausted from my own lullabye-ish rocking. I'm just starting to doze when I hear the "aayyee--whhaa" of a three-week old baby girl.

Summer anthem

2005-07-19T10:12:00.000-04:00

NPR did a great report this morning on anthems for summer. A former editor of The Onion suggested these. According to him, there are two types of good summer songs. The kind that makes you want to roll down your windows, and the type that makes you want to roll your windows up so the music is louder.

Hear the songs that were featured on today's report from this link and even listen to the story.

Song of the day: Mushaboom by Feist

Another minute of fame gone, but at least to good use

2005-07-18T21:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my blog, new readers!

Before tonight, I'd been on TV twice. There was the time when I happened to appear behind contestant row during a taping of The Price is Right waving like an insane monkey. I had on a yellow t-shirt, had my hair spiked (I was in my punk-wanna-be stage) and it was my dream to make it onstage with Bob; but it didn't happen that day. Then, there was the time that a camera swooped down from the ceiling of the Ed Sullivan theatre during a taping of Letterman and caught me for a flash. This time I looked more like a waving chimpanzee. As you might gather, my television appearances to this point have been brief and, admittedly, embarrassing. Slowly, I'm whittling away at my fifteen minutes through inconsequential appearances that will make my future children say "Daaaaadddd, not this story again."

an example of my lame appearances on TV up until today

But tonight, I was interviewed by WBKO about, of all things, blogging. WBKO is the local ABC affiliate and really the only news television outlet in Bowling Green. At this point the 10 o'clock news is still a couple of hours away, but I'm hoping a lot of the viewers from WBKO will head this way in upcoming days to check out what I do here. Most of all, I hope a few of you will even come back.

I started blogging in February. I started simply because I was an English major at WKU and for my first two years out of college, I realized I was letting the practice of writing go completely unpracticed. The dream of writing a book that every English major had was looking like a lost cause. I simply started writing on a blog because I missed writing. Then, in about a week, it became a habit. Like a journal, I'd find that I'd come here to post thoughts on a range of subjects: what I found meaningful about a particular event in my day, my reflection on travels, a thought back to childhood. Some days what I'd write would be mediocre at best. Other days, there'd be this real sense of "yeah--that was good" after I finished writing. It was because of those days that I kept writing. I didn't write for an audience, but slowly, a few people found my blog. A couple of them started coming back. They posted comments about what I'd write and it became a forum to share ideas on nothing important usually, just simple ideas about living.

Everything I've written since February can be read in the archive section there on the left side of your screen.

I also read a handful of blogs on a daily basis. My favorites are on the left column there. I recommend that if you like what you see here, that you check out their's too.

So, thanks for stopping by. If you like what you see, come back. If you want to try it for yourself, you can start your own blog through a variety of websites like Blogger (what I use), Live Journal, Diaryland, or Xanga. I use Blogger because it's run by the guys at Google and it's relatively advertisement-free.

I'm going to re-post some of my past blogs on the opening page here to provide an example of the kinds of things I do here. I hope you enjoy.

Revival

2005-07-18T21:03:00.000-04:00

originally posted on May 9, 2005

Today was edging hot. It was in the 80s--hotter here, weirdly, than in Bowling Green. I went running after the sun got behind the clouds of the evening and it looked like it was going to storm, but it never did. I just ran around the lake with the fountain in it tonight. There's a family of geese out there that just had seven babies. The babies were up by the sidewalk, so everytime I'd do a lap, the parent geese would eye me and I'd run by and they'd be rigid, but they never did hiss. I hate it when geese hiss at me. They're intimidating. Once, at the Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, I sat down out by a pond just to have a whole flock of geese come charging at me hissing. I ran like such a pansey from those things. Like I said, they're very intimdating.

After I got exhausted tonight, I walked up and lay down on a park bench. My shirt was wet with sweat and I left a nice wet outline of my body that I noticed when I got up. I lay there and let my head fall off the bench so I looked at the world upside down. When you look at the world upside down, suddenly there seems to be much more sky than land. It's odd that one never notices this otherwise. Also, the earth, at least where I was looking, seemed to be almost bowl-like. The sun came out for a second from behind the hazy west and it felt and looked like mid-summer for the first time this season. I half expected an evening firework to go up like it does for the couple of weeks after the 4th of July as kids slowly expire their stash. Even the bugs were out. I felt like mosquitos were biting me through my t-shirt. Gnats were swarming in the mown grass and landing on my neck. I kept hitting my neck and killing gnats that were on me.

And the onset of bugs took me back to thinking, as I lay there, about a summer night in my childhood.

I grew up in southern Kentucky where there's so much moisture in the summer air that you forget about keeping your skin dry. Always, on everyone's upper lip, there are thin beads of moisture, the hair right around your grandma's forehead is always wet, and when you kiss your baby cousin, she always tastes like salt. The grill starts up as the sun goes down, looking like a huge orange as it gets close to the horizon and sets into blue hazy clouds. Kids chase down fireflies and put them in jars and by the time they're back to the porch, darkness is on. Some nights there's a thunderstorm. Other nights you look up and can see the Milky Way strewn across above you, and if it's a new moon, you might even be able to see a satellite slowly make it's ruler like trek across your county. But no matter what the night is like, there are bugs. Big, thick bugs. There are moths and crickets, mosquitos and praying mantis, ants and spiders.

I was raised in a church where our summer revival was held on the week of the 4th of July, every year. It was a church that was at the crossroads of two country roads. It was on a hill. To the left of the church was a grassy lawn where cars would park in neat rows every other Sunday of the month. Preaching was only twice a month, because we shared a preacher with another church. Every sixth week, it was my daddy's turn to take care of the church and we'd go and he'd mow the yard while mama, my sister and me'd clean the church. I'd always sweep the porch. At the end of the porch was a ramp where Doug, the man who'd fell off a tractor, would get unloaded from his van. He'd come down out of the van in his wheelchair and roll right on into the church. When I'd finished sweeping, I'd come inside to see what else I could do. Mama and Michelle'd always be cleaning the bathrooms. This was the only time I ever went into the women's room at church and it didn't feel natural. There was one toilet in there and a sink. Under the sink was a bucket that'd catch the drip from underneath the pipes. It also didn't feel right to see mama scrubbing the urinal of the men's room in the house of God. I'd stand and watch until I was told to do something else. My favorite job was vacumning between the pews. Every once in a while, I'd find a matchbox car that someone had left behind. Once I found one of my own.

The summer revival was unpredictable and tiresome for a kid. On the night of the 4th of July, fireworks would start at the lake at 9 PM. I always wanted to be there and asked each year if we could skip church, just for that one night. We never could. Mama and Daddy would always say we'd go after church got out. We never made it in time. Sometimes we would get to the bridge just in time to see the grand finale--red and blue sparks falling over the trees a couple of miles on. Other times we would't make it at all if someone was on the altar and the spirit was there. It just depended on the night. Some nights church would go on until 10:30, everybody just waiting, praying, for a kid, or for a grown man who had come from the Church of Christ and had seen the light of God through the words of a visiting preacher.

On those nights when church went on a long time, even the matchbox cars would get old after a while. It was always Lee who left first. Then Josh. Then the Wilson boy (there were about twelve Wilson kids, so you never knew any of their names). Then the red-haired kid. I'd pull Mama's sleeve and ask her if I could go out to the bathroom. I didn't have to go to the bathroom. This was just code for, "Mama, can I go outside on the porch with the other boys?"

Out there, we'd spit off the porch and pick up gravels and toss them across the road over into the cow pasture. Conversation would be had about baseball games and about how fast Lee could throw a pitch. Above the porch there was one light. It was a florescent light like a street lamp, but it was posted over the sign that said Basil Chapel United Baptist Built. 1938. On the porch were slugs, crickets, and spiders. They looked dark and shadowy from the lamp light. Around the lamp there were swarms of fluttering creatures... all wanting a spot closer to the lamp. Across the church yard was a bug zapper and every few seconds a blue spark would hiss as another bug fell its prey. But this lamp above the door was brighter and attracted the most bugs. On the red bricks of the church building were the grossest bugs. The beetles that grow an inch and a half long during the summer and lurk under their hard shells. If you picked one up and threw it at the ground, it'd make a thud as if you just threw a hard piece of candy down, then it'd flip over and crawl away.

Lee was probably talking about a homerun. Or maybe the Wilson boy was in a mid-throw with a piece of gravel. But all I remember is the red-haired boy. He screamed. He had been at the back of the porch, kind of under the lamp, but beside the bricks of the church. He was hurting or possessed or something. He had glasses that were thicker than my sisters. His hair was shaggy and hung down over his forehead. His nose poked out far and made his glasses seem to sit higher on his eyes than they should have. His cheeks were usually pale and covered with freckles. But when I looked at him, he looked as red as his hair. We'd seen enough revivals to know what was going on. It was his time. He was lost. The Wilson boy said, "The devil's got him. Ya'll watch out."

But it wasn't exactly like the devil had him. He wasn't crying. He was just screaming. And then he did something I'll never forget. He took his head into both of his hands, almost looking like that scary painting of the screaming man, and he hit his head up against the brick wall.

"What the heck's wrong with him?" Lee said.

I was scared and I was late from coming back to the bathroom. I ran into the church and came up close to my Mama's side. I stood rigid and faced the front of the church. The men were down on their knees around the alter praying again. The church was all quiet except for the last two old men's voices who were saying a long prayer, and the lost kid was quietly crying.

Then it all happened. It really happened. The back doors of the church came wide open and the red-haired boy came in screaming. The silence was broken by the thumping heartbeats of two-hundred sweaty churh parishoners as they heard that scream. I'd already heard it outside, but this one still gave me chills. The old praying men scrambled to their feet and the red-haired boy's mama ran after him. But she didn't get to him in time. He was going mad. He still had his head in both of his hands and he ran halfway down the aisle between the pews, right to where old Mrs. Coomer was sitting and he stopped and started banging his head on the church pew.

The pastor said from the alter, "oh Lord, help us" and looked up at the ceiling. The only mouth in the church that didn't drop down in scared shock was the photo of Jesus Christ on the cross that hung above the mourner's bench.

The red-haired boy's mama was wailing. Lee and Josh and the Wilson boy had all come in behind the ruckus of the boy and were standing unblinking and scared in a pew near the back of the church, acting like they didn't know nothing else.

The choir leader started a song and within seconds the whole church was filled with that pulsing noise that sounded like the roof would lift off the top of the church and Jesus himself would be standing there holding it. It was probably the loudest singing I'd ever heard. The red-haired boy's mother just kept wailing and he just kept screaming and poor old Mrs. Coomer looked like she was going to faint.

As we sang and watched the boy, all of us thinking he'd been taken by the devil, Mama grabbed me around my neck and pulled me close under her side. I felt like crying, but I was too scared to. I was sweating. And I was breathing hard.

By the time the song was over, some of the men had gotten enough sense together to get that boy out of there and to a hospital. One of them picked him up and the red-haired boy was twitching and his face was like the inside of a tomato and somewhere his glasses had come off. The man threw the boy over his shoulder and carried him out, but even on his way, he was still trying to bang his head on something.

The song ended and the whole church had forgotten about that kid that was lost on the altar. The preacher didn't ask anybody to dismiss us in a word of prayer like usual, he just did it himself, and it was the scariest prayer I'd ever heard. That preacher thought the moon outside had surely gone red.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

My sister and I sat buckled in and staring at each other in the back seat of the old Thunderbird that we had. We were on the way to the hospital. It was five minutes later. Daddy was driving up over the hills of the backroad at 50 MPH and our stomachs were turning over on every hump. He usually only drove like this when we were late for church. He and Mama were talking to each other, low, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

Michelle and I didn't say anything, but I remember the whites of her eyes. I don't think I'd ever seen her eyes that wide open. Maybe it was just her glasses magnifying her eyes and making them look big. Maybe it was just because it was nighttime. But they looked awful big.

When we got to the hospital, we pulled in in the long caravan that had come straight from church. Most people weren't even finding parking spots. We just pulled up to the emergency room and rolled down the window. It was Russell, the song leader, that was standing there at the curbside, telling us. Everyone was looking his way. He had the news.

"Japanese Beetle. Way up in his ear. They've already got it out."

The next night the lost kid was back on the altar and the red-headed kid brought the Japanese Beetle to church in a glass jar, that had held fireflies two nights before.

Fattoria del Bassetto

2005-07-18T20:59:00.000-04:00

originally posted on May 29, 2005

Bowling Green is once again my home. All of my stuff is moved. I've got boxes sitting everywhere right now. But, I honestly feel like when I set myself to working at it, it'll all be done in about two or three hours.

I was exhausted last night. I slept for ten hours. The night before my move I couldn't really sleep. I had that constant sensation of too much to do... or worry... like before taking a flight somewhere and leaving for a long vacation. I was up before my alarm went off yesterday.

All went about as well as it could be expected to go. I think I'm going to my office this afternoon and getting it in shape. I was planning on doing it tomorrow, but why not really do Memorial Day the way it's supposed to be done... by not doing anything.

Last night I got my computer hooked up here and I checked my email. I had an email from the Australian guy who runs the hostel I stayed at in Tuscany:

hey derick how are ya?

i just wanted to drop you a line to say thanks for the kind report you filed on us to hostel world. you know how it is; we are a small place not in the guide books, so traveller referrell's bring us most of our business.

its been pretty busy here lately and the weather is really heating up. things are good! i hope all is well and am glad you had a good time here.

cheers,

brad

I was glad to hear from him. Lately I've been thinking of this place in Tuscany. And, though he thanks me for it, I've been regretting my appraisal of Fattoria del Bassetto. I could have/should have said much nicer things about it even than I did. It's the kind of place that you don't realize the quality of it until you've had time to get home and digest your trip. Then, it's the kind of place that you realize created a truly unique experience and you feel like you experienced something authentic.

Easily the nicest place I stayed was a hotel in Frascati (short train ride outside of Rome) the first two nights of my trip. But, I don't think about that place. It was a beautiful hotel. Big deal. The people there were completely aloof.

This is why remember Fattoria del Bassetto. I was treated awesome there. The night the Pope died, I was the only guest at Fattoria. Instead of having me in the hostel, they gave me an entire villa to use. This place is a 14th century home that was a former monastery. And it was mine for the night. I paid like $20 USD for this experience. The place was creepy as hell. I biked into town, bought a HUGE steak from a butcher who chopped it right off the side of a cow hanging from the ceiling in front of me. I walked out of the butcher, and found two cute Italians girls and tried to tell them I had meat, carne, but now I needed vegetables to cook.. how do you say vegetables in Italian? No idea. Where can I find vegetables, I asked in different ways, until they understood. So it took a couple of minutes and then they got what I was trying to say, and they grabbed my hand and pulled me three blocks and across a square that had a carousel and a beautiful little church and they walked with me inside a place where strawberries and potatos and peppers and olives were displayed around in cardboard boxes. All of it looked like it was picked that day. The girls waited while I shopped, telling the shopkeeper something about me in Italian. The shopkeeper was a lady who was maybe 40 and she seemed impatient with me. I wondered if one of those girls was her daughter or something. Then, I realized that they must have been on their way somewhere before I asked them directions to find vegetables. So I just said, "Grazia, Ciao" in my most sincere fashion and then they waved goodbye and went out the door.

I took the steak and the potato I bought and the strawberries I traded my oranges for at the last moment when I saw them by the register and realized they looked perfect, and I loaded all of this into my backpack while I pedaled back to Fattoria del Bassetto. I got in, went into the huge kitchen and started cooking. I had to build a fire to cook my steak. Right there in the kitchen, there was a massive fireplace/grill/old stove type sort of thing. I went outside and got wood and twigs and lit a fire and in ten minutes the whole kitchen was filled with a smoky air and I had a roaring blaze and in came Brad. He was done working for the day. I gave him some strawberries and we talked about what was going on that night. Next door, there was going to be a huge reception or party or something. He didn't know what for, but he was planning on going by.

He told me how they cook potatos in Australia. Then, he went out for a run. I ate dinner on the back porch and watched the sun go down over Tuscany. My steak was awesome. One of the dogs came up and I gave him a few pieces of the meat. Then the sun went down and the shutters on the old villa were closed up for the night and it grew very dark and the place earned that reputation for being creepy. The paintings of monks and saints that were on the wall came alive. Suddenly, I couldn't walk by one of them without looking at the eyes of the subject. The stone floors grew cold and I put on socks and the bottoms of my white socks were red when I took them off the next day... some type of floor wax, I think, but I can't be sure.

I was watching Gladiator (in English) on the television in the library and Brad came in and watched it with me. He fell asleep on a couch across the room from me and when the movie went off, I turned the TV on, and the Pope was dying. Brad woke up and we watched Italian TV anchor's faces grow sad as they told of the Pope's death. I couldn't understand anything that the television said, except "il Papa" and Brad could only understand a little. When the tone changed, he listened. Then he said, "now, he's died."

How haunting it was to fall asleep in a 600 year-old villa in Italy that was once a former monastery on the night that the Pope died. How haunting. How perfect.

Harper's Catfish

2005-07-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

originally posted on May 16, 2005

I'm back from a weekend in Bowling Green. Undoubtedly the highlight of the weekend was the moment in time on Saturday evening when I pulled up to my parents' house and my mom was standing outside holding my nephew. The kid loves me and I'm even more nuts about him. He's 20 months old. I pulled up and I stopped in the street and waved at him. I'd give the world if I could see the look he had on his face every day of my life. I pulled over and got out of the car, and said "HEEEYYYY!!" and he said "HEEEEYYYY!" He'll mimic anything you say at this point. Recently, the television in my sister's was on Kid's News and one of the kid reporters said after a report, "thanks John," so now my nephew walks around saying, "thanks John" all the time.

For Mother's Day, both for my Mom and my sister, I took my family out to dinner last night at Harper's Catfish in Scottsville. This would have been my choice if I were choosing a place, but the choice was left up to my Mom. I think she might have chosen Harper's because she knew it's what I wanted. That's how good of a mother she is. Scottsville's about a half-hour drive from where my parents live, so we all got in my parents' van and made the trip. You take a highway that goes immediately by our old house. It's a nostalgic trip down that road, no matter how many times I go down it.

Harper's is in a first-place tie for my favorite restaurant in all the world. Also in first-place position is the Taylor Grocery Store in Taylor, Mississippi, which also serves great catfish. It's not that I have an affinity for catfish. I mean, I like it, but it's not my favorite food. It is, simply, the atmosphere of these places. It is the South. Raw, exposed, eccentric. The restaurants are noisy and chairs are packed in close together. The dress code is t-shirts. The drink of choice is sweet tea. The first question you get is, "do ya'll need a menu?" because chances are, you don't.

Harpers is two miles south of Scottsville off of the Gallatin Road, a two-lane highway that has more curves than stoplights. It's not a place that's advertised. In fact, if you don't know the old sign to look for, you'll pass the restaurant by. It sits about a quarter of a mile at the bottom of a hill down a gravel road.

Saturday night we pulled up and stepped out of the car into mud. It seems that it's always muddy at Harpers. It's one of those places that you tend to go on a summer evening when there's a thunderstorm. The building itself is an old concrete structure that's white on the outside and has window-mounted air conditioning units in each window that are always humming. It's not easy to get in the door. There are always lots of people.

Immediately, upon entering, I start seeing familiar faces. The waitresses that are there are girls I went to high school with, and they've worked at Harper's for at least seven years. I comment, to my family, after we're seated, "No one ever leaves Harper's," and it seems true.

We request a table from the old lady sitting at the front table smoking a cigarette. We wait for a couple of minutes and an old man comes out with a plate full of catfish from the kitchen and hands them to my Mom.

"Now watch it because they're hot, but will you pass them around while you wait?"

I grab a piece of catfish. It is hot--so hot it burns to hold it between my fingers. I'm packed into a corner with people I don't know who are also waiting for a table. They're talking to me. About catfish, about my nephew I'm holding, and a minute later, when I start to give my nephew a little piece of fish that I tore off, the lady behind me says, "Did you blow that off first? It's hot!" It's perfect. Her motherly/grandmotherly instincts have just invaded my own nephew's well-being, and I don't mind at all. I reassure her and give my nephew his first taste of Harper's.

Cold air is blowing on us from the air-conditioning unit that's hung in the window above where we stand and all of our hair is tossing about. Then, we're seated.

We're seated in what is my favorite room at Harper's. I always get put in this room. It's one of the smallest, and not just coincidentally, I think this is because it's the non-smoking room. Harper's may be one of the very few places left where it's more popular to ask for a smoking table than a non-smoking table.

It is my favorite room for two reasons. 1.) It looks like it's a trailer bolted on to the back of the building and it gives off two sensations--that it could come unattached at any moment and that it seems unlevel. I've tested the unlevel thing before by trying to set a round bottle of ketchup on our table to see if it rolls obviously toward the back of the room, but it doesn't. It's just an odd illusion. 2.) This room looks out over the lake.

Our waitress comes and leaves ice water and says the line, "Do ya'll need menus?" She is 22, I'm guessing. She was one year behind me in high school. She has red hair and she's wearing a t-shirt. She's about eight months pregnant and her belly practically hangs over our table.

"No." We could order in our sleep. In fact, every one gets the same thing at Harper's. It's just what you get. You get the child's fish plate. It's huge. If you got the normal fish plate, it'd be gigantic, and then your waitress would come back around to your table over and over and say, "Do ya'll need more fish?"

We order four child fish plates with french fries and hush puppies and we all choose to get the salad bar, not the coleslaw. We also order drinks. She brings a pitcher of sweet tea and leaves it on our table.

We eat until we're full. My nephew sits the whole time in his high chair--an accomplishment--and he's even had a good dinner and learned how to say tartar sauce. Around us, the conversations go on and chairs slide back from the table and their occupants get up again to go get more coleslaw from the salad bar. The women in their t-shirts and the men in their caps. I hear a little boy somewhere in the room saying over and over, "Can we go fishin' tomorrow?" It's a place that draws the old, the young, and the very young. New born babies are sitting in car seats on tables while young parents sit talking to their parents who sit beside their parents. Harper's is that kind of place. It's a place you go with family. You go to eat catfish, and for the feel of getting motherly advice from a stranger. You go to step in the mud and to drink sweet tea.

a general update on my life

2005-07-16T18:47:00.000-04:00

I've kind of been in blogging drought the past few days. I've been busy, which I love, only being a student always adds an aire of procrastination to the mix of things. For example, today when I really had hours and hours I could have filled with playing a round of golf or something, I instead mulled about in I-don't-want-to-do-homework mode until finally I picked up a book to read for class and fell asleep. I'm reading Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and I'm a quarter of a way through this book and would you believe the author has yet to mention the cafeteria? I'm wanting the answer like now.

I'm working on a really cool class project where I'm interviewing single mothers who are college students about their worries and problems that are unique to them as a "minority population." Oddly, I've not learned anything that I wouldn't have suspected. In fact, the mothers I've spoken with so far have been impressive and have not given me stories of hardship like I expected... they're the queens of proper time management and hard work. They have jobs, they are students, they do the whole mothering thing, and one of them even finds regular time to herself. I think this is great for their situations, but it may not make for the most insightful project.

So I feel that this class is draining my life right now. I love it. It's my third course this summer, and definitely the best of the three, but it requires some serious outside work. The new Harry Potter came out last night and I still don't own it, a whole 18 hours after it was released. In fact, I won't be able to start reading it until after Thursday has passed. Thursday is like total crunch day for this particular summer term for me.

This entire summer is going by at warp speed. Yesterday morning, I realized this, and I realized that I needed some sort of vacation like now. So, I got on the phone and reserved a cabin at Lake Cumberland for my family next week.

This excites me because now I kind of have two trips lined up for the next month. Neither of them are exotic by any means, but they are short get-a-ways, which tend to make life better. There's the Lake Cumberland thing, and then I'm going to a conference in August that's out in the middle of nowhere, never heard of, Kentucky. This conference is full of young higher ed. personnel and it's been described to me as "going away to camp." I've been told that down to the food, it's like camp. I love this idea, because I've never been to a true camp before, even as a kid. They don't even give you directions to find this place. They just tell you what time it starts and you have to find your own way. Again, I love the idea of this.

Ideas are in swarming in my head about how/when I can get abroad again. I've got considerations to apply to be a Fulbright Scholar or to volunteer as a trip coordinator for professors I know who are taking trips abroad this winter. And of course, my desire to backpack again is ever-constant.

In a few minutes, my family will be here for Saturday night dinner. I think steaks from the barbie are on call.

Last night my nephew (now 22 months) snuck into his kitchen at home, got a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator, broke them open and smeared them all over his body. My sister walked in and found him in the floor with broken eggs everywhere and she said he had pulled his shirt off and at the time he was rubbing his belly and chest in eggs. Weird, I know, but this image makes me laugh. Then, of course I have to be telling this story for a reason, he had an allergic skin reaction to eggs and his body broke out. But, he's fine now. She bathed him and gave the egg-fiend some Benadryl at the bequest of his doctor and all was well.

ADDENDUM: OK, so I couldn't wait. My sweet, dear Mother bought me a surprise copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on Saturday, so I spent two hours last night reading that instead of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? However, I am happy to report that I've made soaring progress through the latter book, and I have found the answer to the question the title poses. It makes more sense; and slowly, the book is gaining merit with me. The answer... at about the time of puberty, students start seeking out the answer to their identities. Black kids assess their identity including the factor of race, whereas I, as a white kid, probably never did. For me, that was easy. I was white. I was the majority. However, for a black child, the identity of race is an important factor and through friendships with other black children at that age, a child comes to answers regarding their race. That, my friend, is why the black kids sit together in the cafeteria, at least according to Beverly Daniel Tatum, PH. D.

A word from Thomas Jefferson

2005-07-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

I don't have tons to say today or about today. I came home tonight and watched two hours of television. I flipped between Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, and The Daily Show. I needed to laugh, I think. Then tonight I've actually started doing homework around the 9 o'clock hour and look at me go, I made it to 11. A two hour stretch is not bad. For those who care and are keeping count, I'm now working on my third graduate course. It seems like they're flying by in retrospect, but as the over-quoted New Hampshire poet said, "miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep."

If anyone feels so inspired to laugh, I highly recommend doing yourself a favor and reading the foreword to Jon Stewart's book America: the Book (I can't recommend the rest of the book, because I haven't read it myself). The foreword is by Thomas Jefferson. Really. The cover says so.

Listen to the foreword from this link read by Thomas Jefferson himself: http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/extras/book.jhtml

Quote of the day:
"Yes, we were very accomplished. We discovered electricity, invented stoves, bifocals, the lazy susan, efficient printing presses and the swivel chair. In the 18th century it was nearly impossible not to invent something.
'What if we put this refuse in a receptacle?'
'Oh my God, you've just invented a sanitation system!'
We lived in primitive times. Hell, I shit in a bucket and I was the President!"
--Thomas Jefferson, 2nd President of the United States of America--

Today's photo of the day is of Mt. Fuji in Japan. I feel like I need to go to Japan.

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

2005-07-11T00:36:00.000-04:00

It is no secret. I'm a weather nerd. I love the weather and I always have. There are pictures of me as a kid standing outside in my He-Man rain coat and an umbrella.

I'm the kid that kept his own daily weather records between the years of 1991-1996. If you ever need to know what it did in Alvaton, KY on a day during that time period, just hit me up, I'm your guy. Precip records? I got em'.

Anyways, I hope it rains a ton here from Dennis. Here's a picture from weather.com from Panama City, FL, as a band of Dennis moves over St. Andrew's Bay:

Watermelons and strawberries

2005-07-10T19:17:00.000-04:00

This has been the summer of the strawberry for me. It all started in Italy in late March.
One night, I decided I'd cook myself dinner and I rode a rented bicycle into town. I had an empty backpack on my back as I rode in to town that I thought I'd fill at a supermarket called Co-Op, but I couldn't find Co-Op, and I got distracted at the town's center by all the people who were out. It was passeggiata, a time in the evening pre-dinner when Italians go out for a leisure walk. It results in social interaction between one's neighbors and town's people that could be described as Mayberry-esque.

I bought myself a steak and then proceeded to get a potato and a pack of strawberries at a fruit market on the opposite side of the plaza at the town's center, opposite the carousel.

They were the best strawberries I've ever had. They were roughly the size of a child's fist.

When I came home, I craved strawberries. I bought packs of them at the Kroger at home in northern Kentucky. I was always disappointed. I told my family about the strawberries I had in Italy and made them hungry. My parents went and picked strawberries out of a field here in southern Kentucky and I tried those, but they couldn't hold a candle.

This morning, I had breakfast with my parents and I ate strawberries that were cut up and covered in sugar for the night. They were good, but had a phony fakeness that made them seem to say, "This isn't real strawberry taste that is in your mouth. It's sugar. And that sugar came from a five-pound bag that's in your pantry." Really. My strawberries are mocking me.

And it was at breakfast today that I realized I haven't tasted a watermelon all summer long. Peak strawberry season is now long gone. The weather has turned hot and June was dry. Strawberries won't be good again until next spring. My focus now must shift to the watermelon and the promise of midsummer and the hot weather's pride. I must eat watermelon, and soon.

Photo is from Newport, KY, last summer, at a farmer's market.

London

2005-07-07T09:44:00.000-04:00

I keep a London travelcard in my wallet all the time and I notice it at least once a week when I reach into my wallet to get a dollar out, or to retrieve my debit card. To me it's a symbol that always says, "I'll go back soon." Many of my best memories of the city come from the London transportation system. For anyone who has ridden metros and subways in more than one city, you realize that these systems become bragging rights and comparison points between cities. In London and Britain, the citizens complain about their system as much as they do anything else, but it really is amazing. I hesitate to brag on its complexity, because I don't have that many cities I can compare it to, but I can say that it's easily the most complex, yet easiest to navigate system I've ever ridden on. It was always clean, felt completely safe, felt worldly even; and, it was fast.

This morning has been rough on me. I hate seeing the images of things that are so familiar to me. I feel like I should be there. I wish I was there, in an odd way.

The London Underground is a place where you can walk through the tunnels and around each turn a busker is playing a different instrument and a different genre of music. They're always good. People are everywhere. People of all different races, dress, destinations. You ride through places with interesting names that evoke images of the neighborhood that must be above you. And, then, you come to your stop, nearest wherever you're going, and for a minute, or maybe three, you ride escalators up and eventually you see the light of day filtering from up above. Near the entrance, there are news stands, fruit stands, sandwich bars, then restaurants, shops; the city begins well before you're even out on the sidewalk.

Yesterday, I heard a person describe June 6, 2005 as one of the greatest days in the city of London. London was revered as the greatest city in the world at the moment, and, I considered my opinions on this, and I agreed.

I'll share the image above, just because I love it, and we'll hope for good things to come of this somehow.

Three Years Ago... Part II

2005-07-05T21:59:00.000-04:00

Song of the Day: "Orange Sky" Alexi Murdoch

The airplane took off from Charlotte. I thought we'd fly off of the East Coast immediately and be over the Atlantic the rest of the night, but to my surprise, the screen in front of me displayed our projected course. What was it? A mistake? A whacky way to pass the night? Or, a true example of science applied to my life in the form of the Coriolis Effect? I loved the idea of it. Flying northward over the East Coast on the evening of the 4th of July, flying over Canada, crossing the north Atlantic during the middle of the night, and coming down in London by way of Scotland. It felt so round-about, it felt so wasteful, but what did I know? The Coriolis Effect to me was a principle from eight grade. Since then, I'd become an English major. And, my intent in England was to study literature, not physics.

In Charlotte, I'd sat in a Cheers at the bar with a girl who smoked cigarettes. I was young then--not in age, but in mindset. I felt so adult sitting at that bar with a smoker. CNN was on and LAX had just been evacuated. It was the first Independence Day since September 11, and so, of course everyone felt the need to be terrified (after all, we were on a red level warning from the Pentagon), their fingers on the triggers, if you will, ready for anything. I didn't buy into it though. I never have. Maybe I do adopt some idea of fatalism, but tonight, for example, I sat at the dining room table watching TV with my Dad and a news blurb from Channel 5 came on about three shark attacks in the past week and still middle-Tennesseans are flocking to the Gulf Coast for their vacations. What can be done to save ourselves?

My Dad said, "People are still getting in the water? They're crazy."

And I responded in protest. I'd get in the water. I would. I'd get in the water and I'd lay on my back and stare at the clouds like I always do. Maybe I'd keep an eye out. I won't tempt fate, I give you that, but I'm not going to let my life be dictated by things that could happen if I were a statistic.

So, I ignored the news that day in that Cheers. I don't even remember if the evacuation of LAX was meritable or not. All I knew was I was flying overseas in an hour for the first time in my life, and I was ready.

I had the window seat on the left side of the plane (if facing forward). On the northerly course we'd take, this put me looking out my window to the west, over America. As we flew up over the Chesapeake, night began falling, and by the time I was over the Jersey Shoreline, darkness was established. I watched out the plane window like it was my peephole into something forbidden. The rest of the plane was starting their dinner (beef tips or chicken... they ran out of chicken before they got to me... UGH) and watching movies or repeat episodes of Friends. But, I was looking down on America's backyards and seeing tiny flashes of light underneath trees. It looked like a darkened arena with thousands of camera flashes. I loved it. It brought the tears in my eyes near my cheeks. The plane roared, the 220 people in that tube a mile in the sky went about their thing, and I felt like I had this secret world out of my window that I knew about that no one else did.

The guy in the seat next to me was from Belmont University and played the guitar in his spare time. He got beef tips, too, unwantingly. He asked me what I was looking at out the window once, and I tried to explain, and I tried to lean my seat back so he could look down and see, but he couldn't see anything looking over my lap.

To me, it was amazing to think of all of those backyard barbeques happening just below me, of all that mass synchronization of people in America doing the same thing all at once for the very same reason: tradition. Making this even more poignant was the fact that I was flying away from this familiar ritual to something completely unknown.

Eventually, the flickers of camera-flash-fireworks gave way to a sprawl of lights and a visible, shaped darkness that I recognized as Boston Harbor; and then, looking down, I saw miniature, professional fireworks exploding in a fury below me. It was then that I realized I wouldn't see anything better than this, potentially ever in my life. I had felt like a God-like voyeur on America and the sensation was humbling. I knew I needed to sit back in my seat, eat my beef tips, and absorb what was happening. I was leaving my country for the first time. Something big was on the other side of the ocean and I'd wake up to it tomorrow morning, after a shortened night.

Throughout the night, I snuck peeks out the window between restless naps. I'd raise the cover of my window a smidge, to see what was under me. Each time, there was always light on the northern horizon. It was July 4, turning July 5, and only two weeks after the solstice. The midnight sun was occuring on the northern pole and I was looking at it, off in the clear distance. Stars were over the roar of the engine wings and then they melted into an orange sky.

Eventually, I napped hard, and when I woke up, I raised my window cover and a harsh sunlight poured in. Above me was a crystal blue sky and below me was a thick cloudscape. An hour later, we descended below the cloud deck and my first thought was one of total greenness. The landscape of the country was amazing. In that lapse of seconds that took us from beneath that cloud shield to touchdown on the runway, I saw total greenery, and I saw a highway where the cars were on the wrong side of the road. I knew that fireworks were not shot here last night. And I was ready to disembark.

Three years ago...

2005-07-03T17:57:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, July the third was on a Wednesday. At about 8:40 that evening, my family had finished a dinner in my honor at our home in Alvaton and someone remembered that the Church of Christ up the street was supposed to be shooting off fireworks. I called my neighbor and ran up the yard to his house. Within minutes, we had gathered up nine people to make the journey a half a mile up the street. My parents, my sister and her boyfriend, my neighbor's entire family, and myself... and at 9:05 the last bit of daylight was waning away in the west and overhead for the next 40 minutes fireworks lit up the sky over our head. It was a community affair. We had pulled off the side of the road beside what is now Kenny's Garage, where folks from Alvaton take their lawn-mowers to be fixed or call to get a tow-truck in the winter when they run off the road. This old white building on the corner of two roads was once the store in Alvaton. When we were building our house when I was eight years old, we'd walk in there and order sandwiches from in front of huge white Frigidare cases and a man in a white apron would cut off thick slices of meat.

During the fireworks that night, I wandered amongst my family, my friends, and other people in the community talking. Everyone wanted to talk to me and hear about my embarkment.

I was leaving the next day. And already, at this point, I could tell my life was changing from this day on. But I didn't know the magnitude, and maybe, hopefully, I still don't.

---------------------------------------------

Later that night, the wind was cooling down as all remaining signs of the sun's daylight had now faded. I sat on my neighbor's front porch watching the night-time and letting conversation wander where it would. My phone rang and I answered and the girl who I was mad over at the time was on the other end of the line. She insisted that her father, a doctor, write me a prescription immediately for the poison ivy that was on my leg from where I had been in the woods earlier in the week. She was going on the trip, too, and her concern was warming.

My parents drove me in our van and I can still remember the way I absorbed my hometown that night as we drove down the near empty, red-lighted main street to Walgreens.

In reflection, this was the last night of my childhood.

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Now onward to July 3, 2003, two years ago, a Thursday, my life had already been greatly altered. I woke up in a Motel 6 in West Virginia. This was the first and only Motel 6 I had ever stayed in. The night before, I had convinced her we needed to stay another night on the road. It was raining and I didn't feel like the roads were safe. I had a foreboding feeling about the night. We were out of money and the $35 we scrounged together to get us into that Motel 6 drained us both. I remember thinking how plain the walls were and how cheap I felt staying in a Motel 6.

The past three weeks, I had lived a road-trip. The status symbol of every graduating American college student who is seeking freedom. But, it hadn't been free. It'd been restricting. In retrospect, I wouldn't necessarily change those three weeks. I wouldn't change them because I don't know what would have made it better. Those three weeks were far from perfect, though; and it was freedom that approached me on that trip, but rather a spotlight on the looming adulthood that awaited back home. The foreboding feeling I had felt the night we stopped at the Motel 6, I now realize, wasn't a reflection of the danger of that night, but it was instead the re-entry to home... now a college graduate, now having to move away from my hometown, now having to find a real job and make a real income and not knowing how I was going to do any of those things.

On July 3, 2003, we drove back over the Ohio River and onto the AA Highway in northeastern Kentucky and went up and down those long hillsides in a near silence. And when we hit Alexandria, the familiar traffic of greater Cincinnati welcomed us, and she was home, and I was lost.

The next day, I would stand with her in front of Villa Madonna up over the river in her hometown of Villa Hills and together we'd stand there and cry about my leaving to go home for a week and she begged me to stay on one more night and spend the 4th with her. I should have. Maybe it would have set a pace of greater commitment. Maybe it would have brought me more into a inclusion with her family. But, something took me away that day, and I suppose if I could go back now, I'd change this decision just to see if it would have made any difference.

-------------------------------------------

One year ago, on July 3, I took her to the airport and watched her roll her suitcase in. In that suitcase was something she meant to give me before she left. But, she forgot. It arrived some days in the mail to me later, postmarked from Bakersfield, CA.

The day I dropped her off at the airport, I rode back home and got dressed and went to work. I was a hotel front-desk clerk. One year ago, I was a hotel front-desk clerk. This shocks me still. I was working for $7.15 and hour and hated my job. One night, a father of a little leauge tournament participant called the front desk repeatedly asking me for more pillows in his room. I was the only employee at the hotel and wasn't able to leave the front desk. I tried, repeatedly, to explain this to him, but to no avail. Hours later, just after my relief had arrived, he came, overweight and huffing, to the front-desk. While he cursed, yelled, and went on a tirade, I got a calculator out of the drawer and handed it to him. When he was finally quiet, I said, "While I round you up some pillows, why don't you figure out how much money I've made listening to you bitch tonight. I make $7.15 an hour. See if you can tell why I don't give a shit." It's probably the most rotten thing I've ever said to a person I didn't know. It felt liberating, though. I thought, and hoped, I'd lose my job for that, but I didn't. Instead, that guy got his room free for the night and I got reprimanded and had to sign a form saying I had been officially warned. I think it was like a strike. Little did they know I'd go ahead and take my other two strikes two weeks later when I quit that louse of a job.

The night that happened, I went home and climbed the fence of my apartment complex's swimming pool that had closed two hours earlier. It was the best swim of my life. Underwater and in my head, I could hear REM's "Nightswimming" echoing. She was in California and I felt unguided. The package from her had come and so Alexi Murdoch had been in my CD player, and I thought when she came back, we'd begin the new era of us, but instead, her return home signaled the end.

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Today I drove out to Alvaton and looked at my old house and went golfing with my old neighbor at the place we used to work. The grasses are dried up and the ground seems harder than I ever remember it. I saw my elementary school and saw that they were building a new school right beside it and I wondered why I hadn't heard about it, and immediately, a fear was fostered inside of me that the old building will be torn down. I drove past Kenny's Garage and got hungry for that thick ham sandwich that I used to order from there as a little kid on the Saturdays that we'd go out to our new land to try to clear things off for the house we'd build. And, I drove past the Church of Christ and saw their sign for community fireworks, and I realized it was three years ago today.

Things We Hate About Acadia

2005-06-28T19:27:00.000-04:00

The following was written in the summer of 2003, after returning from a three-week road trip through New England that had alternative goals that made the trip sound legitimate to my parents, my then girlfriend's parents, and the educational institution that gave me college credit for such an endeavor. However, it should be noted that the true goal of this trip was to be young and do a road trip. I post this because it's two years old and growing dusty in MY DOCUMENTS folder waiting for someone to read it.

Things We Hate about Acadia

June 13 was a Friday this year. Maybe that explains why we had such rotten feelings leaving Acadia National Park in Maine. But really, who can blame a calendar or superstition? I think the park just sucks. Driving out of Bar Harbor, heading back south, our final exit from Maine four hours down the road, I made a list entitled Things We Hate about Acadia, as my girlfriend drove the car and called out additions faster than I could write them: “Now hold on a second, dear, what did you say about the guy at the booth?” and “Where was it in Bar Harbor that we got lost?” The park really is beautiful—don’t get me wrong. It’s unfortunate that it rubbed us in such a bad way. Mother Nature is not to blame with anything—she made no mistakes in this part of the world, unlike in Indiana, where she forgot to, you know, create. Acadia is very deservedly recognized as a national treasure. I’ll never forget how it felt climbing around on the rocks atop Cadillac Mountain, the place where, if one comes here at sunrise, he can be the first person in the United States to see the sun. Cadillac Mountain is also the highest point on the East Coast at 1,527 feet. Not impressive by Western standards, but for the New England vacationer, this is quite a rock. And then there was the sound of Thunder Hole, a rocky crevice where giant waves have eroded away the Earth in a small ravine so that swell after swell of water rushes in and slams into the park with a solid Boom! Acadia National Park has pristine fresh water lakes where cattails grow at the foot of mountains, a beautiful and tranquil stretch of sandy beach creatively called Sand Beach, lighthouses, and forty-five miles of old carriage roads that are now closed off for biking and cycling. Doesn’t it sound wonderful? Well, it isn’t. And I’ll tell you why.

Erin and I had called two weeks earlier to reserve a site at the Blackwoods Campground inside the park. What we didn’t realize, being from Kentucky, was that tourist season in New England doesn’t begin until the end of June. We were used to Florida rates, which go up in March for Spring Breakers and never recede again until October (hurricane season). Just last year, my family tried to save money by planning a week on the Gulf of Mexico in October. As soon as we were on our way, a hurricane was coming onshore just a couple hundred miles down the beach. But New Englanders aren’t waiting on the weather; they are waiting to travel when their kids get out of school. I’ve always seen it on cartoons and T.V. shows, kids getting out in June and going back to school in September (a song that I remember from a cartoon: “We almost went Looney/From counting days till June-y/And this afternoon-y/Summertime is here”), and I thought the people creating these shows were just off. But whereas schools let out in the South in May and moms are shopping for school supplies by the Fourth of July so that their kids can start back in a couple of weeks, moms in the North are really still picking their kids up at school in mid-June. Bar Harbor and Acadia were busy, but I got the very distinct feeling that this was a tourist destination about to welcome in throngs of guests, nothing like what I was looking at.

Even with this absence of family vacationers (by the way, Maine actually calls itself “Vacationland,” as if it is one massive theme park—right there on the license plates), getting into and out of Acadia National Park was a mess. I blame this solely on the town of Bar Harbor. It seems simple enough on the atlas. We had taken Highway 3 all the way from Augusta to allow ourselves a more scenic drive into the area, and the 3, it appears on the map, runs a smooth, uninterrupted course right onto Mt. Desert Island (where Acadia National Park is concentrated), at which point it seems to do a gentle loop around the shoreline before connecting itself back up with the same 3 that was entered upon. Well, if I learned one thing on this trip it is that the guy we so fondly trust with our automobiles and our lives, one Mr. Rand McNally, is a complete screw-up. We drove into Bar Harbor, with little worries up until this point, eager to get into the park. But Bar Harbor is a trap of unmarked roads and overgrown highway signs, leaving one with nothing but questions. Highway 3 was already crammed with traffic on the afternoon we arrived (if ever there was a road that needed to be widened to more than two lanes, this would be it), and everyone seemed to be defiantly marching into Bar Harbor in a long, snaking line, up to an odd intersection where it seemed every car that approached the stop sign (as there seem to be no street signs in Bar Harbor, there are few red lights as well) went a different way than the one before it. It was as if the intersection were the captain on the school playground. “Okay, you be a 1, you’re a 2, you a 3, and you’re a 4. Now 1’s go left, 2’s right, and 3’s go straight. And well, if you’re a 4 you can sit at the intersection confused until the cars behind you start honking and you decide to just turn around and give it another shot.” Well, I was a 4. I had no idea what to do. Whereas I had traveled into Bar Harbor with all these people, the 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, and fellow 4’s on Highway 3, now we were all disbanding like a boy band on the way out and no one knew which way Highway 3 ran. I turned around and thought I’d approach it again—maybe I just didn’t see the sign.

“You see a sign, Erin?”

“Zilcho. Say, I’m hungry.”

Finally, after several hasty drives up neighborhood streets, where school kids were playing ball in front of my car and everyone under age seven was on a bike pulling out from behind trees and hedges, I found the center of Bar Harbor and a sign directing me to Acadia National Park. And I do mean finally. I had just arrived, and I was ready to get out.

Bar Harbor was a beautiful town, perched adoringly over its harbor on Frenchman Bay, but boy did it feel phony with its faux-rustic décor. Even though it was June, there were people walking the streets in fleece pullovers and hiking boots. I felt as if I had found the cast from Northern Exposure wandering the streets looking for work. Every other store was a restaurant, serving lobster for $22 a plate and a burger for $12. It was not a place of variety; that was for sure. We drove the downtown streets for maybe five minutes and felt ready to find our way into the park and set up camp.

The first approach into Acadia National Park is one of surprise. One drives into the park even before he gets to Bar Harbor, and a mile and a half later, he drives out of it. This is one of Acadia’s biggest downfalls. Leaving Bar Harbor, I felt sure that I was trekking into an untouched and perfect wilderness, but again, after driving only a few miles I found myself in a town called Otter Creek.

“Erin, did you see a sign for Blackwoods Campground?”

“Zilcho. Say, was that it for the park?”

Acadia National Park is full of towns. That is to say, the government, when establishing this as federal land, could not clearly decide which land was sacred environmental property and which was prime real estate, so they just let loose at it: “Between hexameters 6 and W8, we’ll put a town. And this stretch here between Otter Creek and Seal Harbor will be park. And that over there we’ll sell at auction to some primo real-estate company from Boston.” Well, let me tell you something—it’s not a good approach. It seems very off the purpose of preserving beautiful lands and the National Park System if they are going to litter it with rinky-dink vacation towns. And I’ll add, neither Otter Creek nor Seal Harbor were towns I’d consider an asset to the park.

Otter Creek, it is fair to say, is a town that doesn’t take long to drive through (thank goodness—I was not up for another Bar Harbor experience), and I give them credit for allowing Highway 3 to continue unbothered through their villa. After a short drive through Otter Creek, where my mouth gaped at run-down homes selling firewood for $3 out of garages and off the backs of trucks, I drove us back into the National Park land. At last a park sign announced that our campground was near: “Aha! Blackwoods Campground! And what, only an hour and a half off schedule? That Highway 3 wasn’t so bad after all, now was it.” We pulled in, up to a brown, park-service booth. “Hi there. Reservations for the night at a tent site.” I handed him our receipt of purchase from our preset reservations; then, he asked me for money. This guy would become known as “the guy at the booth.” For the rest of our time in Maine, and even well down into New Hampshire, we hated—no!—loathed—no again!—detested the guy at the booth.

The guy at the booth looked a lot like Jim Carrey and seemed delighted that I did not know about the Park Fee that every automobile must have displayed on its dashboard.

I looked at him confusedly. After all, I had just come four hours on a winding, traffic-clogged Highway 3. “So, what you’re telling me is that even though I have reservations to stay here for tonight, even though I have already paid you, and even though this is a National Park, park being that word which the dictionary defines as ‘a piece of public land,’ you’re saying that I have to pay you $10 to go to my campsite?”

From his mighty booth, Ace Ventura looked down at me, sitting in my tired Honda Accord. “I think you got it, chief.”

I pursed my lips and looked at Erin for a minute. Then, I turned to Truman and stared at him with my fore fingers tee-peed across my lips, thinking. I tried again. “So, the sign says that the $10 pass is good for one to seven days. What kind of discount do you give to the person who is just spending the one night?”

Bruce Almighty looked at me and smiled; it was a smile fit for Hollywood. “Well, if that person wants to look at it like he has paid $10 for the first night and getting the next six free, then okay.”

I threw a ten-dollar bill at him, and he handed me my Park Fee. It was a green sheet of paper. In twenty hours from now, I would be leaving Acadia National Park, but this pass would have 148 hours of unexpired time left on it.

“Erin,” I said, “do me a favor. Tomorrow, when we leave this place, don’t let me forget to set up waiting outside the booth until someone comes through without a pass.” I was determined to recycle the pass, even sell it on e-bay for a discounted rate if I had to. But I wasn’t letting the guy at the booth have more satisfaction.

At last, we made it to our campsite, a pleasing spot, and pitched our tent. We had gotten very good at pitching our tent. As we were going to be on the road for over three weeks on a very tight budget, Erin and I had decided that about every one in three nights we should camp. We found camping in New England to be a satisfactory experience overall. Already we had pitched our tent in two places: on Lake Champlain in Vermont and near Lake Winnipesaukee in the town of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Both of these campgrounds had provided us with everything we needed: friendly service, clean bathrooms with showers, and best of all free parking. Well, by the time the tent was set up at Blackwoods in Acadia, we had already deducted some points from our encounter with the guy at the booth. But Blackwoods seemed okay. We had looked at it carefully on the map and noticed its proximity to everything—just a fraction of a mile from the coast, a mile to Thunder Hole, a mile and a half to Sand Beach. We were excited to be settled at last. Then, I had to pee.

I went into the restroom to find it completely devoid of anything except running water. There was a sink, there were toilets, and there were bugs—but no showers, no hand soap, no paper towels, no air blower, not even a mirror on the wall. Our camping fee had been $20, an amount we had found standard at other campgrounds. Previously, this $20 had bought us a clean shower for the night, fully loaded hand-towel dispensers, and hand soap. The National Park System had offered us none of these things; instead, it had greeted us with the guy at the booth. How much worse was this day going to get?

I came out of the restrooms and delivered the bad news to Erin.

“What? No showers? You’re saying we can’t bathe?”

I thought the better of the situation and left the part about the bugs out for now. We were heading to Sand Beach before finding dinner, and I wanted to salvage any hope the day had.

Hope is a fickle thing. Highway 3 appeared to rectify itself, but once we were out of Bar Harbor and looking at the Rand McNally close-up of Acadia, we suddenly emerged at Seal Harbor instead of the expected Sand Beach.

“What? Houses? This isn’t going to work. Where in bloody hell are we?” And then, pulled over on the side of the road, I saw.

Acadia National Park, or the sites of it which a visitor truly wants to see, is accessible only on a very long and hidden one-way loop road. The road is about 20 miles long, two lanes, and goes clockwise around the largest part of Mt. Desert Island. It started to become clear. To go to Sand Beach, which was one and a half miles from our campsite, we had to get in the car, drive back through Otter Creek to the outskirts of Bar Harbor, catch the one-way loop road and drive down it, parallel to the road we just took the opposite way, until we reached our destination some nine miles later. On curvy and unfamiliar roads, this is a twenty-minute drive. And again, let me say that we were just trying to get to Sand Beach, which was just over a mile away from where we camped. Well, to gather my composure and be polite, I will just tell you that we had some words about Acadia National Park right there in the car in Seal Harbor. We were appalled. What an American way to do things. There was not even a walking path to access these spots from our campground. Even to get to the shoreline, which was a matter of a few hundred yards from where we were camping, we had to get in our car, and at the nearest possible point drive six miles just to see the ocean. It was the poorest example of highway engineering ever. The Park System built this road to show engineering students what not to do. I was embarrassed for the government, for the National Park Service, for the guy at the booth. What is one of the most beautiful places in our country is booby-trapped with inhospitality.

We went on to Sand Beach that evening before dinner and arrived as the sun was already setting down behind the small mountains of Acadia. There was a party of overweight tourists lounging and laughing in the sand, one of which was straddled over his girlfriend in an “I can’t wait much longer” pose. The beach, besides the people, really was beautiful. But this party of obesity was a microcosm for the park. Beautiful land was sitting there, asking to be adored, this little sandy bay in the midst of craggy cliffs and blue water, and completely ruined by the effect man was having on it. We walked down to the water’s edge and dipped our feet in. The water was cold, and we were hungry and in a bad mood.

“Back to Bar Harbor?”

“Yeah. I want lobster.”

And so we trekked across the sand, by the fat people lying on top of one another, the lady’s shirt coming down, and up the steps to the car. On the way out, we saw a sign that proudly stated for the park’s benefit: “Lifeguard ON duty.” We looked down at the near-empty beach at the party in the sand and the empty lifeguard chair just behind them. Acadia National Park just doesn’t get anything right.

Dinner that night went better. We sat down an hour after leaving Sand Beach in a fancy place on the town common in Bar Harbor. I had my first Maine lobster ever that night, which the waitress had to show me how to eat. And the next day we looped our way around the nine-mile road back to Sand Beach and picnicked for lunch there, then drove a mile farther down to Thunder Hole and were mesmerized. Before leaving the park, we drove past Jordan Pond and up Cadillac Mountain and climbed on the rocks at the peak. The silence up there was amazing. I looked down at Bar Harbor from up there, down at Frenchman Bay where a large sailing ship was out for the afternoon, and down at a small lighthouse by the ocean. It was beautiful, there was no arguing that. It was mid-afternoon, the day had been gorgeous, but high cirrus clouds could be seen from the top of the mountain to the south. Our plans were to be back in New Hampshire in time to find a hotel for the night and be on with our trip the next day. A four-hour drive loomed along the same road we had driven the day before—four hours we would spend wondering what we came for. We were both anxious to get on the road. We descended Cadillac Mountain, a biker streaking ahead of us on the road, and as we did I remembered that I had one task left undone, even before Erin reminded me.
At a Visitor’s Station, I left the green slip of paper that I had paid $10 for only twenty hours earlier. Some incoming tourist will be thankful, I thought. And I wondered what it would have taken to make me enjoy my visit to Acadia National Park more and realized it would have been more than forgoing the Park Fee. Not even a beautiful day on the sea and on top of the mountain had done it for me—the beauty had been worth $10, even if it was a park. But something was bothering me, and Erin agreed as she drove, our car headed off of Mt. Desert Island, and I thought of the guy at the booth. And that’s when we decided to make the list of Things We Hate about Acadia.

Moment in the night

2005-06-27T23:46:00.000-04:00

He woke up on his right arm at 4:46 AM and rolled over. The arm felt lifeless and fake. And then he moved it and the pain came. He couldn't pick it up on it's own. His left arm came over and held the other rubber-like arm. In his half-awakeness, he imagined this being the feeling of dying in war.

just a photo

2005-06-27T00:57:00.000-04:00

Photo of the day: Hawaiian landscape

May I have your Frequent Baptist Member number, please?

2005-06-26T13:03:00.000-04:00

Blogspot/blogger users, a new feature has arrived! Forget your Flickrs or whatever photo hosting site you are using. There is no longer a need. Notice the new icon on the Create New Post screen that is for adding images. You can select whether you want your image centered, right-justified, or left-justified. Sweet! Wonderful feature. Now, if they come up with a blogspot/blogger search tool, I'll truly be a devout blogger user.

I chose a religious image to illustrate this new feature, because this post will stick close to that topic--hey, it is midday on a Sunday. I got up this morning with the intention of going to church. I'm in the predicament of wanting to find a church, but not being able to find one that appeases me. What would be ideal would be an open-minded, country church, that preaches acceptance, humanity, and at the same time, the teachings of the Bible. This, in rural southcentral Kentucky is non-existent.

I've thought I should keep the name of this church disclosed. Here is what was preached today by a preacher who would be in mid-sentence (a sentence that didn't seem very emotional to me at all) and he'd start crying. It didn't make sense to me. I mean, if he'd done it once or twice, fine, but this went on the whole freaking time. It was so distracting to me. The thing is, I never found anything he said emotional or evoking of the Spirit.

He preached that he believed Baptist was the denomination that most closely matches the Bible's teachings. This is great. I truly think every church should believe that they are following the Bible as closely as they can interpret it. One must have confidence in themself before they can lead a population, right? He also said that he believed that every person, no matter what their faith (as long as it was a Christian faith), that put their faith in Jesus Christ would go to Heaven. OK, I can agree with that too as a legitimate thing to preach in a Christian church. Here's what got me: the preacher thinks that there are benefits, or privileges, to being Baptist once in Heaven. He said he doesn't know what they are exactly, but he is expecting benefits. In essence, he was saying that because he is Baptist on Earth, he'll be a VIP in heaven.
This is appalling and tells me everything I need to know about this church. When he said this, I wanted to get up and walk out. I can just imagine a Heaven where people are segregated or treated unequally. I mean, come on, Heaven isn't an airport where frequent flyers (substitute Frequent Baptists) don't have to stand in line and get a Platinum Luxury Room.

So my search goes on, now back in Bowling Green, for a church that will at least not anger me during the sermon. It shouldn't be so hard, should it?

oh, oh, oh, it's the weekend--and my call to Karl Rove

2005-06-24T17:56:00.000-04:00

Today, more than most weekends, I'm elated that it's a Friday.

Today has been an 8 on my scale of days. Work today was very good. I stayed busy, and I felt productive. The whole notion of moving around and accomplishing things has a certain adrenaline rush to it.

I also had lunch with a friend who is now one of those on the other side: a married. Things are going great for her, and lunch was fantastically reminscient and fresh all at the same time.

I'm about to go out and wash my car. I don't think my car has been washed by hand in over a year. I've ran in through car washes a few times, but only those cheap kinds at gas stations. I stopped and got gas at Kroger a bit ago ($2.01 even with Kroger discount--wasn't it just last fill-up that I paid $1.79?) and as I was filling up, I used the little squeege thing they have there and cleaned my windows. Disgusting. I didn't realize what I'd been looking through. Black, bubbly ooze ran down the corners of my windows as I would squeege that crap off. It was then that I realized how dirty my car was. I'm in need of some serious car maintenance. Nothing is broken, it's just due for some preventitive maintenance and wear-and-tear stuff. I need:
1. an oil change
2. new tires (or, if I can't afford, a tire rotation at the least) and a balance
3. a timing belt replacement
4. a thorough car wash

With these things, I hope to keep my Honda Accord going strong for another 150k miles.

Anyways, I was talking about my day. So it was an 8. Now I feel the need to follow it up with a strong 8 night, but what to do? I have no plans. I feel horribly without a life realizing this after a good day. I don't want to be the guy who comes home on a Friday afternoon feeling good and then washes his car and comes in and watches TV all night--heck, Friday night TV doesn't even have a good TGIF line-up like it did when I was a kid. I need a date. I need a hot honey. Or, heck, just a click of unmarried friends.

___________________________________________________________________

On to a less superficial, less whimsical topic: Karl Rove and what he said Wednesday night.

Rarely do I let my opinions of the nation's administration bleed onto my blog, but the following quote is just irksome and unacceptable and I want my readers to react to this and I want to stir up some discussion. Rove said:

"(P)erhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

Not only unacceptable is the comment, but the Whitehouse's defense of it. It is complete slander and offends me to no end. The call for Rove to resign is far-fetched, in my opinion, but is a direct reaction to his and the White House's refusal for an apology for this. This administration has a bruised record for offending those they should strive to at least maintain diplomatic relations with (i.e. France, Germany, Great Britain's public). The notion that Democrats wanted to offer therapy and understanding for those attackers is offensive and counter-productive to President Bush's call for unity during his re-election speech given on November 3, 2005. On that day, President Bush said, "To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation."

Now, President Bush truly has an opportunity to display that he wants to reach out to the Democratic party to unite. Charles Schumer, a New York democratic senator defined Rove's statement as a "slap in the face to the unity America achieved after September 11, 2001."

Rove's statement makes it sound as if the Democratic party was against going after known terrorists in Afghanistan who are known to be responsible for September 11. None of us are so forgetful to remember how adamant and supportive the entire nation was. This is a clear example of another republican statement to confuse the public into a mind-set that the war in Iraq is related to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Let us be reminded that the war in Iraq was not an effort to even the score for September 11 or to punish any terrorists that has attacked us. Yet, Rove's statement of saying that conservatives "prepared for war" while liberals wanted to offer understanding for the attackers is completely, 100% off.

My words to Karl Rove? The Democratic party was in protest of the war in Iraq, Mr. Rove, not in protest of going after our attackers. The political spectrum and most of the nation's support followed the efforts in Afghanistan. Your insult has cut deep and your statement has undermined the President's call for unity. A retraction of your statement and an apology is not requested--it is demanded.

Contact lenses

2005-06-22T23:41:00.000-04:00

From the ODD file, song of the day: "Be Careful What You Wish For" by Gabby La La (visit Gabby's website and choose to listen or download the title track of her new CD. I saw Gabby La La at Bonnaroo last weekend (enjoy images from the show at this link), when she had white hair that was frizzed out and had Christmas ornaments in it. She played with Les Claypool, of Primus, who wore a pig mask the whole show. It was odd. But this song is very catchy, as is "Boogie Woogie Man in a Black Dress," which I have yet been unable to locate.

If interested, read the italicized AP review of Gabby La La's new album to try to come to an understanding of the weird attraction you might feel to her music:

Gabby La La, "Be Careful What You Wish For" (Prawn Song)

There's something not quite right about Gabby La La, whose debut album "Be Careful What You Wish For" has the qualities of a cartoon you'd be wary of ever letting children see.

A dainty woman who sometimes hides behind oversized sunglasses shaped like pursed lips, Gabby's doll-like voice and eclectic choice of instruments — toy pianos, a sitar, a Theramin and accordions tied together by fast-slap bass riffs — bring an absurdly disconcerting sound to an album that attempts to meld the everyday with the nonsensical and fantastic.

The lynchpin to that attempt is Gabby's ability to take the interests of children's fairy tales — cartoons, candy and creatures unseen — and throw them at adults like insults.

Bouncing slow and cute, her song "Walkie Walkie Walkie" sounds innocent enough, but its lyrics foreshadow an ominous ending. "Bread crumbs glowing in the dark," Gabby says with a screeching whine. "All little children in the woods, follow bread crumbs and be good."

It's what's not said that piques a perverse interest. And the entire album is like that, each song grinding listeners closer to a mania that begs to know what exactly is going on with this Gabby La La.

On "In and Out Of Dreaming," which is arguably the album's peak moment, Gabby takes minor key melodies that appear perfect for the denouement of a horror flick and plays them on a little plastic piano as she sings a bedtime song.

And you'd thought you'd heard it all before.

As the first act signed on Les Claypool's Prawn Song label in a decade, Gabby's approach falls in line with Claypool's anything goes vision by hitting listeners with instruments played in a way they didn't expect while singing about those things she just shouldn't.

But if Claypool's band Primus cut its teeth by going where no band had, punk or otherwise, Gabby La La's "Be Careful What You Wish For" ventures to that place you thought no one would.

• Ryan Lenz, AP Writer

Now, on to my blog of the evening...

I have soft contact lenses. I am the result of two people with kind of sucky vision that mated, so of course I got horrible vision. My contact prescription is negative 4.75. I think that basically means that unimpeded I have the vision of this. Without contacts, I would probably be married by now, though. I think I would have settled for many girls in my past that were less than attractive which makes me sound vain and selfish, but come on, like we all aren't looking for someone beautiful, so screw any ideas of fake equality--let's just be real.

But unmarried life is suiting me just fine thus far. I think I have veered off topic. I want to return to talking about contacts. So yes, I wear contacts. I have what are called two-week contacts. You're supposed to wear for two weeks and then throw them away and get two more out of the box. But that doesn't happen. I don't care how anal or precise or law-abiding one is, no one ever sticks to the two-week rule. I think I'm worse than most, though. I usually go about five months. This morning, I was droggy, just out of the shower, and ready to put in my contacts when I decided I was sick of putting in dirty contacts that make my eyes burn and I'd get some new ones out (the last new contacts I got were in late March, right before I went to Italy--I always change contacts before a big trip--just a weird thing).

It was at this point that the thought came to me, as it always does: I don't want to throw these contacts away--all the things I've seen through these. I saw Italy! I saw beautiful women on motorcycles, the Mediterranean, the Alps, the Aussie Griswolds, I saw my apartment in Cincinnati for the last time, sunsets, all the people I love, Bonnaroo.. and on and on. It's horribly sentimental and nostalgic and makes me sound sappy and it all sounds girl-ish, maybe. But damn it, I am cursed by being nostalgic. The only saving grace in this whole situation is of course the new contacts that are just coming out of the box and the hope that they bring... oh the questions these new pieces of clear, oddly concaved hydrophylic lenses bring! What sights will I see through these lenses? Who will I meet? Will there be a sexy woman seen through these lenses? Hope arrives and suddenly the changeover seems doable. I put the old lenses in a tissue and toss them in the garbage can. Then, I put in the new contacts and they don't burn. I walked out the door a few minutes later into the morning sun to live my life. And now, I wait. I wait for the next several months of life to ebb by while memories accumulate in my head, of things I've seen through these two new lenses.

Today, the world spun out from under me

2005-06-21T23:31:00.000-04:00

Warning: Personal blog

Tonight I feel rotten. Not in a physical sense. It's just unease and frustration. I'm uneasy because I feel the pains of my parents getting older and relying on me more and more heavily. That. That is tough. I don't know if I have the patience I should with them. Hell, I feel young, I feel like I shouldn't necessarily be in Bowling Green, especially in their house, and I feel like it's not time yet for me to take on some of these responsibilites. It doesn't seem fair. But, it's a necessity at times.

Today was one of those days when, if I were still living in northern Kentucky, I'd say, "this would be so much easier if I were in Bowling Green." But, of course, here I am now and it isn't a bit easier. Being in Bowling Green only makes the problems belong to me too. I have a real stake in them. They hurt more and require responsibility. Some days, things just go rotten with one's family and cars break down and babies have bad days and people are late for work because of these things and no one has gotten any sleep and you get home and your parents have procrastinated for months signing up for a 40th high school reunion that is happening this weekend and they realize that they want to go, and suddenly, it's me that has to email Steve who is organizing the thing and say, "Hi Steve. Is it too late for my parents to register for the reunion?" This stuff makes me just want to scream. It makes me want to move away. It makes me want to be five again (oh no, I'm sounding like Uncle Rico). It's the realization that my parents are becoming less and less competent in every day situations. But, I can't scream, I can't just move away, and I can't be five again. So, I try to exercise the basic virtues of understanding, patience, and sincerity and help out. Honestly though, I'm not the best at the second of those virtues: patience. I think I just feel angry and a little cheated by something: God, fate, the early onset of dementia/alzheimers/whatever the hell it is. Whatever it is, it's bigger than me. And it's moving forward and there is nothing I can do but learn to cope.

So in one week from today, I'll be an uncle a second time over. Scary and awesome. Right now, everything is accompanied by a little bit of stress and a little bit of worry. Hopefully, next Wednesday night, I can sit down with my new neice and she'll be beautiful and my sister will be lying there holding her smiling down at the baby in her arms and Cameron will already be saying "sissy" or "Brianna" or "Julianna" or whatever name they pick, and all will be eased.

The worst part of my day is just realizing that someday, I'm going to miss days like today. That draws a pit to my stomach.

Tonight, I've weirdly been thinking about a college friend of mine that went away to Austria and Germany between our junior and senior years for a semester study abroad and that never came back. I feel nostalgic tonight. I remember being at this girl's house one night in the summer several years ago and it storming. She lived at the end of a gravel road and on a flat piece of land in an old house that had fences down the driveway and dogs that'd bark at your tires when you'd pull in. It was storming that night. Lightning was streaking across the fields. And, while I was there, the storm came and it thundered and I left sometime later when the thunder was just a long, lone dish rattle off to the east and the rain was just gently falling making little circles in the puddle in front of my headlights. And, nothing happened that night. But, I think of Chopin and I think of "The Storm" and I think of this girl and I think of tonight and that night and I think of getting older and then I think of what ever happened to her? It's just a chain of thought. And it's just a sickly, nostalgic and longing feeling that kind of comes together as a product of all of these things.

user Id's and passwords

2005-06-20T09:05:00.000-04:00

Has anyone else ever forgotten a user name or password that they use daily after a weekend? I just forgot mine. I was like, "Why won't this let me in?!" One would think this would indicate a very, very good weekend, but no, not the case. The weekend was horribly blah.

So this morning I ate a bad strawberry. Hmm. Not so talkative this morning.

Heading West

2005-06-19T20:51:00.000-04:00

Sitting on my parents' back deck this evening, reading theories of counseling, and more so, daydreaming, I was distracted further by a whoosh that appeared over their house and proceeded over my head.

It was birds, all flying west, towards the setting sun. I proceeded to watch them as they continued, hundreds of them, in a tight and incongruent pattern, flying over my head and rushing off somewhere in the bleeding moments of this Sunday. The sound was paradisial and I closed my eyes and listened and then I looked into the setting sun like Hemingway's Santiago and wondered why it is that the evening sun is so easy to look into and get lost in.

Several years ago, I remember being on the Gulf coast with my sister at day's end. We were down on the shoreline to watch the sun as it sat over Mobile Bay. My sister is an absolute sucker for picture taking when she feels the moment is right. She gets giddy when a camera is in her hand and she feels like she has a good photo opp in front of her. This evening was one of those moments. She was on the shore, looking westward, and I was wading in the water, knee-deep, when I noticed fish schools of small fish swimming past my ankles and shins, all, rushing westward to the setting sun. Then we saw a V of Pelicans flying low over the water, not fishing, but just flying to go somewhere, maybe just wanting to make the day longer by chasing the sun. Then, a moment later, came the shouts of someone else on shore, elated, pointing at two dolphins out near the first sand bar that were swimming towards the setting sun, looking like they were knitting the water, coming up and disappearing, coming up and disappearing again. I came up onto the sand and Michelle and I ran westward. She had her camera at the ready and was wanting pictures. I was running to see the dolphins as long as possible, and because it felt good. And, it was during this run, that I realized we had joined the great chain of life that was chasing that evening's sun.

We probably ran a quarter of a mile or a half of a mile, until the dolphins out-paced us and we came nearer land's end, where Alabama's beachfront meets the Mobile Bay.

Last Sunday, I was driving through the "streets" of Bonnaroo, looking for an exit. It was overcast, but it was nearing dusk. I had my backseat full with dirty clothes, sleeping bags, a tent, and other miscellaneousness. The trunk was filled with a grill, three full-sized coolers, and folding chairs. The passenger seat had my friend sitting in it. I was looking for streets that would take me nearer the exits without getting me stuck in the mud. I pulled down one and saw a man wearing a backpack and walking towards the I-24 exit holding a sign that said, "NASHVILLE?" I knew I had to stop. I got out and told him I'd give him a ride if we could fit him in there, and so open came the doors and the trunk, and out came the coolers and the folding chairs and the tent, and the entire conglomeration was reassembled and in the end the bearded man fit snuggly into a one-seater space in the backseat of my car. The man was a hippie, wearing brown cargo shorts and a tie-dyed shirt and a hat that looked not unlike he had spent his weekend on a safari. He carried only his sign and his backpack. After loading him into the car, it occurred to me, mysteriously, where the sign might have disappeared to, because I didn't see it come in my car.

We got onto I-24 and headed to Nashville and he introduced himself and asked if I could drop him off at the airport and I said of course.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Home, to Colorado," the hippie said.

Photo of the day:
Chasing the Sunset
Photo credit to Cy Villegas

Another photo of the day, just because it's good:
Walden Pond, Concord, MA

Chaney's and the day Jackson's Orchard fell

2005-06-17T09:42:00.000-04:00

Ok, from the shameless commerce division (anyone, anyone?), I want to plug a venue for my local readers. Yeah, you know who you are... all three of you. I can see you on my stat counter, you know.

CHANEY'S DAIRY BARN

They've having a bluegrass music fest coming up next week called Barnfest. It looks fun to me. I might want to go with my family.

But I also wanted to provide this link so that you could see what they're doing this summer. This place is up-and-coming. It's the new Jackson's Orchard (more on this in a minute).

They're doing Ice Cream and a Moovie this summer. Awesome. Tonight for example, they're showing Shrek II (broadcast on the screen--a side of a barn), for free. All movies, all summer long, are family-oriented. No admission, hopefully you just buy some ice cream. They're constantly doing fun stuff.

Now, the reason I said they're the new Jackson's Orchard

To me, Jackson's Orchard is on the way out. This all stems from one very bad day in October of 2003. I went to Jackson's with a girl who I was dating. I thought it'd be awesome. She was from the city, and so I thought this escapism to rural orchard would be awesome for the two of us. We'd walk, with the leaves brilliant around us, through a pumpkin patch, hand-in-hand, talking. Then, we'd stop mid-step. The perfect pumpkin would be in front of us and we'd both know it and we'd smile and cut it from the vine and it'd all be magical and movie-ish and not completely unlike Episode 7 of ED, like the greatest single television season ever (the show as a whole went sort of rotten after that first season--but oh the magic of that pilot year).

And the day unfolded almost exactly like that...

We rode up the steep hill to Jackson's. We walked through the apple trees and we went into the barn and it was a Saturday. Jackson's was at its glory. There were families everywhere. There were kids everywhere. And, everyone was smiling and leisurely and happy. Then, we decided we'd take the hayride out to the pumpkin patch (slightly altered from my fantasy, but this was gelling with me). So we walked out of the barn to the hayride line to find that it was full of about 90 kids and it would be about a twenty minute wait to ride the hayride to a pumpkin patch that was about a ten minute walk away. So, we thought we'd walk it. We walked through the lines of apple trees and popped out onto a gravel road that ran along side a low, boggy pond and then we were at the pumpkin patch. We walked about (the pumpkin patch was also altered from my fantasy, as the pumpkins were pre-picked and it was basically like shopping for a pumpkin at Wal-Mart, only there wasn't the mess of traffic, the huge blue building with the American flag hoisted up on the center, and people who were around had their teeth. I mean, it was OK.... just not the fantastical image I had of us walking and then seeing the pumpkin and us bending over and cutting it off the vine. But still, we found it. The perfect pumpkin. We bent over and just picked it up off the pile of other, less-perfect pumpkins.

Then, we started the walk back. This time, we decided we'd walk along the gravel road, all the way back to the barn. I carried the pumpkin. We walked and were involved in no doubt a wonderful conversation. This day hadn't been my idealized image, but it was going good. Up ahead the tractor pulling the hay ride full of kids was approaching us. It came closer and slowed.

When it pulled up beside us, the driver stopped the hayride and turned down his throttle. Not quietly at all, the driver said, "You know you've got to pay for that pumpkin. You can't just go walking off with it. That's what they call stealin'."

The kids in the back of the hayride were staring at me like a criminal. They fell dead silent. The only noise for a second, as my jaw fell a centimeter or so, was that pa-chump, pa-chump of the tractor trying to stay running with the amount of gas it was being fed.

"I plan on paying for it," I said. "I'm walking to the barn right now to pay for it. Where do you think I'm going?" I got a little smart with the guy. I was absolutely appalled.

"You've got to pay me for that pumpkin. Don't think you can just walk back to the pumpkin patch and take one."

"I'm going to pay for the pumpkin in the barn."

"You got to ride the hayride and then you got to pay me for the pumpkin."

"How much is it then?"

"It's $7."

"$7!?"

"Yes. Five for the pumpkin and two for the hayride that you're supposed to pay for."

"I walked. We walked. Now I'm walking carrying the pumpkin! I'm not paying you $7 for a pumpkin and I'm definitely not paying you for a hayride when I walked."

"Then that's what they call stealing," the driver said.

By this time, the kids in the back of the wagon had slightly dropped jaws too and all were intently staring at me. I was furious. I think a cuss word might have slipped to the tractor driver. The air was now no longer cool and soft like it had been. It was tense. It was nervous. It had hostility and a sense of climax. It had that noontime feel that you think of the old west towns having. There was that long pause and then I spoke.

"I'm not going to pay you for this pumpkin. I don't want it anymore. What do you want me to do with it?"

"You could put it back where you found it."

I was more than 100 yards away from the pumpkin patch. I wasn't carrying this pumpkin back there, especially alongside all these kids who thought I was thief. The girl I was with stood at my side, silent, scolded, shocked.

"No." I walked up to the tractor, sat the perfect pumpkin on the tractor tire, grabbed the girl's hand, and we walked away.

The throttle of the tractor stayed low and I listened behind me over the blood pumping in my ears as the farmer got off the tractor to get the pumpkin off the tire and as the kids in the back all burst into a whispered murmur.

That's the day Jackson's Orchard fell.

A dream, a prediction, and a movie

2005-06-15T23:52:00.000-04:00

Today on Derick's scale of days gets a very, very solid 7. It was a pretty good day.

For some reason, I feel tomorrow will be a good one. Maybe a 10. Ever just get a feeling? Maybe tomorrow will turn out being a 1, or even worse, not even registering on my scale. But, I have a feeling. We'll see. I sound like a horoscope.

I swear I have psycic tendencies. Last night, I was dreaming about something... no idea what... and H (girl I dated back last Fall) just showed up in my dream. I haven't talked to her in like five months and I really haven't even thought about her recently. And then there she was in the dream.

Then, this afternoon, I'm just sitting in my friend's office when my phone rang. I look down and see her name on caller ID. I just said, "WEIRD" and decided to let voicemail get it.

I have to get up at like 5:30 AM. UGHUGHUGH. I just want to sleep in for once. Tomorrow night, I'm going out with my cousin. This is a new trend with us. It's awesome. My family has never been the type to hang out together outside of family events, so this is a bit of a cool experience for me. I think we'll probably go to the movies. Anyone have any suggestions? She's 18, and as you might have guessed by my choice of pronouns, a female. Has to be friendly to both of our age and gender demographics.

Bonnaroo

2005-06-14T22:13:00.000-04:00

We took the back roads to Bonnaroo because we thought we'd avoid traffic. We, of course, is everyone but me. Me? I'm saying, "let's take the interstates. It's too early for traffic in Nashville to be bad." It was 3:00 PM and we were in Franklin. We would have been through Nashville by 4. But I was the rookie. So, next thing I know I'm driving through Gallatin and the sky has opened up and we're pulling off looking for a liquor store. Dave knows where one is. It's about a five-minute drive. It's time to stock up for a long weekend of camping, music, and who knows what else.

Ten minutes later, after the tour of Gallatin's town square, fast-food strip, and outer limits, we arrive at a liquor store. Purchased was $80 of beer (which came with unlimited free bags of ice) for them and a bottle of vodka and three quarts of orange juice for me and my screwdrivers.

Back on the road, traffic didn't come until Manchester. The interstate option would have definitely been better. But it's hard to know how that would have changed the face of the weekend. We would have definitely gotten put in a different spot in Bonnaroo for our campsite and who knows what fate that could have sealed.

We waited in traffic for an hour without moving. A police officer came by and told us to pull off the road and get out of thru traffic's way or else "I'll make ye go back to the back of the line." This redneck cop was already hating the crowd. Well, we heard that it would take five hours to get in from here. I found this doubtful since we hadn't moved yet and we had to loop all the way around town just to get back to the farm. I thought it'd be even longer. So we turned around, got back on I-24 and miraculously, we pulled immediately off the interstate onto the grassy fields of Bonnaroo's 7,000-acre farm five minutes later. We were overjoyed. There were shouts, screams of shocked happiness and high-fives around our three cars. We pulled directly into line to be inspected.

Dan, Brandon, and Dave (not my friends until this weekend, but just people I ended up going with, along with old high school friend Angela) had bought the beer. No glass bottles were allowed in Bonnaroo, and as luck would have it, they got picked to be searched (they had driven seperately). So, out came their coolers of beer and the guy was saying they had to either pour it into something plastic or leave it behind. They put up a fight while I acted like I didn't know them as I sat in my car behind them and stared like everyone else around was, thinking, "dude, that sucks for them." And finally some guy with authority walked up and said, "Damn it, you're holding up the line, just bring your beer in." So the problem was solved and those three drank happily the rest of the weekend.

My car wasn't inspected, of course. I never get inspected. I think I look like such a nice guy. This is probably a bad thing as far as my singleness goes, as girls, it's widely known, go for the bad-boy types. Security guards look at me and usually say something like, "welcome to Bonnaroo. Hot today, ain't it?" instead of "Open your trunk. Got any glass?"

We were directed across a muddy field to our camp. We pulled up. Very potentially one of the top five most beautiful girls in the world was immediately beside us. She looked like Natalie Portman in "Closer" only with dyed blond hair, but it was in a bob and was kept messy and she wore dresses all weekend and rain boots, somehow a hot combo. Anyways, I'm digressing.

We set up camp, the sun went down behind a massive thunderhead, and we cooked hot dogs. Dave pulled out his weed. I opened my vodka and had some drinks and everyone else reveled in the beer that they'd saved by arguing for just long enough. About midnight, the music started (bands that weren't on the original list) and I went down with Dan, Dave, and Brandon to see Gabby La La, who wore Christmas ornaments in her hair and played with a guy wearing a pig mask (Les Claypool). Gabby La La has the voice of a giggly four-year old and she's annoying, but she rocks it hard, and so the crowd dug her and the pig.

This was of course my first taste of the Bonnaroo crowd in masses and it was dark and the smell of pot and liquor was thick in the air like summertime humidity.

I was beat by the encore, so I left and went back and climbed into my tent and don't remember anything immediately upon hitting my pillow.

I woke early with the sun hot on the tent. It was 7:30. I felt hungover, though I doubted I had drank that much. I don't know, maybe I had. I went down to bathe.

The Bonnaroo farm becomes the home for upwards of 100,000 people for the weekend. In essence, their planning is brilliant. As we pulled in on Thursday, they sectioned us off (unknown to me at the time) into city blocks. What was a rolling farm field became a virtual tent city within a matter of minutes. Friday, before the rains came, the streets that ran between the blocks were wide and grassy. Our tent was on the corner of 7th and W 2nd St. in the Hans Solo Camp. There were dozens and dozens of camps that went on for who-knows how far in every direction from us. It's hard to explain without a map of the grounds (which I can't find online) exactly how Bonnaroo is laid out.

Let me try. There is Centeroo. Centeroo is basically the downtown business district of Bonnaroo. This is where it all happens. There are the stages, the tents (also stages, only covered), and the vendors. You can buy food, drinks, t-shirts, CDs, art, clothes, hammocks, essentially anything. This is where all the music happens. There's an internet cafe, a playground, a huge fountain, an arcade, a movie theatre... I could go on, and on. I won't.

Then, there is what is essentially the suburbs of Bonnaroo. Massive, massive sprawl of tents cars and sleeping bags exist for in about a mile away from Centeroo. This mass of "urban sprawl" is made feasible and livable by little centers of commerce among the suburbia, or what are called pods. The town center near where I lived in Camp Hans Solo was Fifth Street. Fifth Street was like any other street (grass at first, then mud later) at Bonnaroo, other than instead of being lined by tents where people slept and had sex and did substances, it was lined with tents that sold things that would assist people in their sleeping, sexual acts, and abuse of substances. Along Fifth Street, one could buy anything. Anything. This is where the spirit of Bonnaroo comes in. I know what some of you reading this are thinking right now, "oh the sin!" "oh the wrongness!" "what the heck is with Derick?!" If you're my Mom, my aunt, or seemingly anyone in my bloodline, you think I'm nuts. If you're reading this and thinking I'm nuts, then oh well, but I'm about to say what I truly believe.

Bonnaroo is the safest place I've ever spent a weekend away from home.

When you come into Bonnaroo, it's basically hasta luego to any law enforcement. This isn't completely true, because there are people who come around and pick up the trash who I think keep an eye on things. I kept thinking they'd want to tell me to stop selling my drinks (more on this later), but instead they'd come by and I'd give them a drink and we'd chat and then they'd drive on. One guy near us was busted for having a nitrous tank at his campsite. But all they did was come, pat him down, took away his nitrous tank, and left him alone. It was all cool. Anything else, other than nitrous, goes. Anything. This weekend, I saw and was offered many things. Warning, hippie statement coming up... but at Bonnaroo, it's not about being illegal or being wrong, it's just about relaxing, finding peace, and forming a bond with a mass of people. Bonnaroo is, without a doubt, the most utopian-ish society I have ever stepped into.

Fifth Street is crowded. A guy had a white van backed up to his tent that had a full sized oven in the back of it. He was cooking pizzas and selling them right there. Next to him were tents after tents of more food, drinks, vendors yelling "Jello shots, whiskey, liquor, we've got your liquor," tables and tables and tables of bongs and pipes. Through the streets there is a guy and girl pushing a mobile cart. She is yelling, "Traveling bar! Traveling bar!" There are guys on the curbside saying loudly every synoym that exists for marijuana. There are guys walking down the street just saying out loud the drug that they have. It's a complete name your price type of place. This is a market. There are people selling geodes, dream catchers, drums, ukalales, and jewelry. There are people walking through the streets sellling t-shirts, cargo shorts, bug sprays. A beautiful, smiling girl walked past me wearing a long, homemade dress. Her smile and eyes had to have been out of a poster of another era. Her image is now an etch in my memory. She was just walking, smiling, saying, "Chocolate-covered mushrooms, chocolate-covered mushrooms." A guy walked by saying, "who needs dessert? I've got brownies."

Farther on down Fifth Street, the road curves and it becomes the true nucleus of my neighborhood. There is a row of about 30 port-a-potties here, a cluster of outdoor showers, a refrigerator truck selling ice, a medical station, and a weird boxy room that was lined with trough-like water dispenseries where people came to bathe and get water.

Being disoriented with where you live is easy. It would be almost impossible to leave one's campsite and find it easily on the first night, except for Bonnaroo attendees are quite well-prepared. As the sun had gone down on Thursday evening, hundreds of things had went into the air... balloons that looked like the Jack-in-the-Box (restaurant, not the toy) character, Big Bird, and Harry Potter. There were flags from Texas and from Canada. There were poles with Christmas lights dangling on the tops of RVs. The landmark I looked for was a large, orange balloon that hung in the sky somewhere in Hans Solo Camp that looked exactly like a setting moon when viewed from Centeroo.

On Friday, music started at noon. Instead of going day by day with each show, I'm just going to list here now with comments on shows:

Gabby Lala (Christmas ornaments in her hair and pig bassist says it all)
Old Crow Medicine Show (put on a great show and played their music total rock bluegrass style. My only complaint here was the constant mention of I-40 and geography. Every song had to be introduced with the mention of an interstate highway for some reason. But oh well.
Joss Stone (hot, sounds soulful, sounds almost R&B/hip-hop/soul music. It's hard to look at her and know that's she's like 17 and white and of all things, British. I dig her.)
Allison Krauss and Union Station Great show of course. Played a huge stage and I sat out on the lawn what seemed like a mile away under a stage for the handicapped where people were doing acid and all wanting to use my friend's misting sprayer thing to cool off. I laid back, listened to some perfect music, and fell asleep. Allison wore overalls and it felt perfect and summery and like a true festival.
Herbie Hancock w/ John Mayer I only listened to a couple of songs. This style of music isn't my style.
From a long, long distance, I saw Bela Fleck and Acoustic Trio doing their thing at This Tent, which I didn't go to one show at.
Dave Matthews Band There is tons of anti-Dave sentiment at Bonnaroo. People feel that he is too Abercrombie and Fitch (it was said patrons of the DMB show were popping their collars--a definite, definite no-no at Bonnaroo). They also feel that Dave has lost his edge. I read one shirt that read in the font that all DMB shirts are printed, "Dave Matthews Band Sucks." It's said that DMB hit their peak in the late 90s and has declined since. Bull. They put on an awesome show. Unfortunately, and ironically, the crowd didn't get into it until "Crash." After that, Dave brought out Warren Haynes as a guest, then Robert Randolph. The Robert Randolph collaboration was amazing. Dave had 4 hours onstage if he wanted it, but he only took 2.5.
Blue Merle amazing live. tons of bluegrass elements with the coldplay sound. The mandolin and fiddle accompany almost every song. Great, great show.
Jack Johnson His show had the best feel of any I went to. It drew a huge, huge crowd for an afternoon show and it poured the whole time.
Ray LaMontagne Simply the best show I saw. As soon as Ray came out, his crowd was had an electricity. Ray opened with a song and the crowd could be felt. There was really something in the air the whole time during his show. Ray cried after that first song... not like wept... just got teary-eyed. He wiped his eyes and said, quietly as he does, "Thank you, thank you," and nothing more, then he sang "Jolene." I looked at the girl beside me about half way through this song and she had tears streaming down her face. Ray live sings with liquid emotion. His voice is strong. He played first and finally alone. He brought out a guy who played the stand-up bass for him who was awesome though. They communicated so well onstage. It was awesome. That guy on the stand-up bass is the best instrumentalist I saw at Bonnaroo. The girl beside me at that concert had a tatoo that said La Reina on her neck. I was completely intrigued with her. I don't usually go for girls with tatoos, but this one was different. I asked her what her tatoo meant and she told me it meant The Queen and then I didn't ask her anything else, but I still wonder what it was that made her cry such an intense cry.
M. Ward good stuff
My Morning Jacket ok stuff
Rilo Kiley exactly what I expected. Jenny Lewis is hot and looks even hotter in what she was wearing. Rilo Kiley plays like a punk rock sound with a female singer who could best be described as punk folk, in my opinion.
Amos Lee about exactly what I expected--great
Yonder Mountain String Band played some solid bluegrass music
Old 97s not exactly what I expected. they described themselves as country rock, but I saw them as just rock. They play kind of hard and every song is the same tempo and intensity. I wanted to hear "Adelaide," but I didn't.
Iron and Wine Phenomenal. Samuel Beam improvises his music tons when he plays live. It keeps that relaxed, southern feel, while at the same time captivating and never easing up on the audience. Probably the 2nd or 3rd best show I saw. Blue Merle would also be in that top 3 with Ray LaMontagne. From what I hear, Samuel Beam played an awesome, awesome acoustic set a public interview also on Saturday.

The thing about the music is there are four shows going on at any given moment. You simply can't see it all and before long, you don't even want to. Here is my confession: I fell asleep during two of my favorites bands--Dave Matthews Band and Allison Krauss and Union Station. Pick up your jaw. You know who you are. Yes, I did. I really did. During each show, I slept for about ten minutes. I have nothing to attribute this to except for sheer, utter, complete, perfect, blissful relaxation (100% au naturale) and music overload.

During the Jack Johnson show some kid got the idea to scale a tree (mature tree, about 70 feet tall--maybe more). He made it to the first branch and then slipped and fell. The crowd went wild for his effort, of course. That started a trend. People went to the trees. One kid was awesome. He went straight up the tree in the center of the crowd, right out in front of the stage. When Jack finished the song he was on, he said, "Hey everybody, there's a kid that's climbed all the way to the top of that tree. Dude, be careful up there and don't do anything stupid. You've already impressed us." The kid was standing at the very top of the tree, about 70 feet above the crowd and the crowd of thousands and thousands had their arms in the air screaming for the kid. He grabbed a hold of the branches up there and shook them. Chills went down my legs, maybe from the rain, maybe from the unification of the crowd. I had to leave before the kid came down. It was raining so hard. I had no poncho, no umbrella. I did exactly what I hoped to do. I looked up at the sky, my shirt soaked through, my hair dripping, and I closed my eyes. Then, it was 7 PM and I left Jack Johnson. Iron and Wine was coming on at a tent nearby. I couldn't miss this. So, I trudged through the mud. Bonnaroo is a mud fest. People have mud up the back of their legs, on their shorts, on their face, in their hair, on their mind. It stinks and it feels great to walk through and it makes it hard to walk fast and it's really quite perfect. I was walking through Centeroo as fast as I could, but the mud was making it near impossible to make any time. I didn't want to miss any of Iron and Wine. I was freezing with my shirt clinging to me the way it was. So, I stopped, right in the middle of the street and I took off my shirt and I took off my shoes and I just took off running. I ran all the way to the tent and right up the right side of the stage and then snuck in about 35 feet away from Samuel Beam as he was finishing up his first song. The tent was warm.

More stories to come in upcoming days... must go to bed now though.

Here are some photos:

Centeroo

Bathing

Selling drinks

Brandon and Angela in our "living room"

Dan

Dave

M. Ward and Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley

Amos Lee

Food Stand

Tree Climber at Yonder Mountain String Band show

Jack Johnson show--notice the person going up the tree in the center of this shot. Note: this is not the super-talented kid that made it to the top

Camp Hans Solo

The Old 97s

Ray LaMontagne

Our Camp

Blue Merle

can opener, check. pillow, check. flashlight, check.

2005-06-08T23:38:00.000-04:00

Today's Ranking on Derick's scale of days: 9

Question of the day: why is like every single guy discussed in my counseling text book from Vienna?

Wish: I wish I was all packed up so I could go straight to bed right now and get 8 hours.

Bill I forgot to pay, again: this danged new storage unit. UGH. They're going to hate me.

Other thing I didn't get done today: missed out on going to the bank, again! Why am I so busy since moving?

Wow. Two niners in like a week. Yeah. Today was just kind of serendipitous. Lots of good stuff happened all day. Some I will disclose: 1.) Work was super rewarding and tonight has just been one of those moments in time where I've been able to sit back and think what I was doing this time last year and I realize this past year has been really awesome. 2.) made new connections around WKU today which I always find fun. 3.) Took my test tonight, made new friends in class, made an 85 on the test (but I suspect this will be an A after the grading curve takes place). 4.) I'm in the process of packing for Bonnaroo and in the process of printing off schedules for my weekend. 5.) Woke up with a The Decemberists song in my head and this made me happy, considering it was 5:50 and I already had good music in my head. Yesterday was the first time I'd listened to this band and I'm liking a lot.

Someday when I feel like doing songs of the day again, expect them to pop up.

So about #1, today I was reminded why my job is awesome. Last year at this time I was doing my dinky hotel front desk job up by the Cincinnati airport that I kept for about a month and I was also doing lots of freelance writing for The Community Recorder. And while that was really good experience and I had tons of fun with it, it still wasn't at a level of competency that I felt I was at.

Alright. I'm off to Manchester tomorrow at noon. I wonder if this weekend will change me. Will it take away any lingering naivete? It's going to be really nice to just be young for three and a half days.

Today I talked to my friend who I'm riding down with. She was like, "bring a poncho if you like, but I recommend not. Last year I just stood out in the rain and watched music and it was the most freeing thing." And so yeah, that made up my mind for me: I'm definitely not packing a poncho. And I'm definitely hoping it rains. I want to stand out in a fuddy farm field in Manchester and let the rain pour down on me and stare up into the sky and watch big drops fall down at me while some kind of sweet music plays in the background. That's my only hope for this weekend. There are no other expectations. If it doesn't rain, I'll stare up at the stars and think that, and I'll be just as satisfied.

I'm going to go explore the infinite abyss for a weekend and when I get back up, I'll let you know how it was.

Ahh, screw it. You people need to be hearing this. Not sure what to pick, as these are all good, so let's just go with this one. Song of the day: We Both Go Down Together, The Decemberists.