From dusk til’ it’s gone

July 18, 2007


Dusk, by far, is the best time in our area to walk. It’s the perfect combination of the day being left behind and the night slowly creeping ahead. It’s a mellow cool that forgets all of the hots and colds of the past twelve hours. It’s a time of maximum voyeurism, of inhibitions being shed with the work that has passed, of the lights burning bright while the shades stay up.

In an effort to get the labor ball moving, we took a long walk through our gentle McKennan Park neighborhood. This is the routine you begin when pregnancy is about to become parenthood – you walk a lot, and hope that the baby decides to kick labor into high gear. And soon.

As dusk approached, I thought of how long it had been since we had taken a walk under the slowly darkening sky. It’s one of my favorite things – and since the summer makes night come a lot later, I had gone without for a while.

It’s one of my favorite things because of how open everything seems. It’s the one time that everyone is making a similar change, from day to night, from work to relaxation, from lights off/shades open to lights on/shades closed. I’ll admit – I love to walk around our area of town and see the lives inside their houses, safely, from sidewalk level, as people make their way from high stress to low impact.

While we walk, we dream. We point out our favorite interiors. We see if a beautiful exterior hides a unkempt interior. We think about our next house, just like we thought about our first house long before we moved back to Sioux Falls. We place ourselves inside, marveling at the ancient details and loving every wooden banister, every stained glass window, ever hard wood scuff and every last cobweb and other pest.

Some houses are as familiar as our own – houses we pass often, families who never have their shades closed, themselves voyeurs to the outside world, hoping and praying that everyone who walks past gets to see what they’ve worked so hard to create. It’s as if their life was painted onto the glass, securing the Norman Rockwell vision for all to see.

I’ll admit, I’m like that myself. If I had my way, I’d leave every window open, every light blazing, so people could see what I’ve designed. I’d invite everyone in to tour my modest little house, to see our national park themed basement, our quaint living room, our abandoned dormer. I’d take them from room to room, asking them to admire every last detail, every small change we’ve made in the name of perfecting our personal space.

That personality is the real allure, I think. We don’t gaze because people have expensive or exquisite furniture or amazing views. No – I’m interested in the fact that these people have polished every detail for themselves. When you look into someone’s dusk-riddled home, just after the lights go on, you’re looking into that person’s personality. You’re seeing their tastes and their hobbies and every physical aspect of their life.

For just a second. Just a glimpse, you can imagine yourself there. And then, when the key turns and you’re back inside your own house, you can appreciate the differences. You can appreciate that there’s no other house in the world that could feel as comfortable as the one you’ve spent years building up and placing just right, like a hibernating animal going down for its winter nap.

That’s dusk. The mixture of light and dark. The fleeting moments when everyone is open to the world. And then, just like that, the shades are pulled and your access is gone.

Tags: On..., Outdoors |

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Famous last words

July 16, 2007


A post over at Condalmo led me further into the book-o-blog-o-sphere to the Now What blog, where I discovered a fun little piece of book news – a proposed collection of the 100 Best Last Lines from Novels, created by the American Book Review (the same group that thought up the 100 Best First Lines from Novels, a fun read if you have the time.)

Though the list won’t show up until January 2008, I look forward to it. The list should be interesting. More than that, it will be educational. Writing that last line isn’t easy, and the list will serve as a testament in the difficulty of the task.

Now, I know nothing about how an author decides to end a book – if a book slowly fizzles out as an ending is naturally devised or if there is a grand plan to end in a bang – wrapping every loose end up and delivering several rounds of blistering prose. I do know that writing an ending to a simple, sappy blog post about nothing is difficult enough – I can’t imagine developing an ending to a 600-page masterpiece.

When you think about it, there’s a lot of pressure there. Really, that last line serves as the author’s last chance to make an impression. They are the last words a reader will read before delving into synopsis and discussion and postscripts and the like. Everything rides on the story, sure, but nothing ends without the final line’s say. And a classic book, just like a championship basketball team, needs to be strong and steady until the final end, keeping the naysayers at bay and running away with the win.

Of course, with a list of this magnitude, I was bound to think of my own. Will any of my favorites end up on the list? Will I have even read more than five of the books? Will I recognize any of the epitaphs as ground-breaking sentences in my somewhat meager reading experience?

Why wait to see? Why not just pick some of my own?

Okay. I will.

According to the rules, “A novel’s final line will usually consist of a single sentence, but not always.” I advanced this rule a little, if only to add a tiny bit of context into what is really the final scene, not the final line.

My personal favorites are dredged from my current collection. I scanned the last pages of the books I’ve read that I’m still in possession of, and found that many of the last lines are, on their own, rather incomplete. However, I did find some favorites – some lines that were both chilling and memorable – at least, memorable enough that I recognized them when I read them for the second time.

And once I had narrowed it down to five, I realized that they came from two distinct times in my reading history – my “the world as it will be” angsty high school days, where Animal Farm and The Jungle butted heads for my young, slowly forming political mind; and my current fiction literature revival period, where I’m rediscovering everything I passed over in college.

So with that, here’s my current five:

“We shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep it before us – and Chicago will be ours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”
– Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
– George Orwell, 1984

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens were they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
 – Cormac McCarthy, The Road

All good – all leaving an indelible image burned into the reader’s mind and all just as memorable as the novel that preceded it.

My two favorites, however, are dark, yet hopeful – phrases of death (or near death) that actually shine a clear light on the protagonist, serving as not just an ending, but a release from the shadows of their pain and fear and trials.

The first comes from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World:

“The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.

‘Mr Savage!’

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east . . .”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The second comes from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead – which actually also has one of my favorite opening lines:

“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.”

So it’s only natural that it this beautiful line, which I had the honor of hearing Robinson read herself from memory at last year’s South Dakota Festival of Books, serves as a beautiful bookend with one of my favorite ending lines – a plea to a son that is ready to grow up and take on the world to live free and life safe.

“I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep”
– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

And because there’s no chance of topping those tonight, I’ll leave you with your thoughts.

Tags: Books, Literature, Writers, Writing |

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Learning to drive

July 15, 2007


It’s summer, which means a proliferation of vehicles sporting signs that make everyone grip the wheel a little harder, slow down a little more cautiously and change lanes prohibitively, like people skulking away from a leper after noticing its scarlet “L.”

“Student Driver.”

I, however, have pity for them. I sympathize with the fear that comes with learning to navigate a multi-ton piece of machinery – a vehicle that is worth more than a student’s combined high school salary and worth as much as several years of college.

I never learned to drive from my parents, the way farmers’ children do in the wide open spaces of Midwest farming or the way city kids do in the wide open spaces of the Arena parking lot. Instead, I learned from the most formal place I could – Drivers Education class.

Truthfully, my first visions behind a wheel were in a simulation setting. I wasn’t equipped with a learner’s license. I didn’t have a car, after all, and I didn’t see the point in getting a driver’s license – especially one that meant nothing in the long run – when I had nothing to use it with.

Because I had no experience whatsoever, I was a frightfully timid student driver. My vehicle wasn’t festooned with a large bright orange sign – one that called attention to my inexperience, causing those around me to treat me like a fragile egg, not a driving machine. My teacher wanted us driving in real traffic, not traffic that has been notified of the sudden youthful danger that has just pulled alongside it.

My turn in the car was one of utter fear. I had no concept of how hard or soft to push the pedals, and so my automatic transmission manipulation felt much like someone learning with a manual – jerky, with sudden stops and frightened faces within the vehicle. The teal colored Ford Taurus that served as my first learning vessel was jarred, reeling back on its suspension during take-off and lurching forward as if vomiting as I would stop.

Eventually, it all just clicks, and the movement of a vehicle becomes second nature. We all start to feel how the car moves, in touch with its inner stabilization and privy to its most intimate sounds. The operation is done without thinking, as if the vehicle becomes an extension of our mind, delivering us through town and across the country with mental prowess instead of mechanical science.

Those first few drives, though, are as cautious as can be. When I notice a Student Driver placard alongside or behind car, I take notice. I look for the fearful turning, the overuse of the blinker, the analyzing of every move. I feel for the students – being supported and judged by an audience inside their own vehicle; their peers and authority, fellow students and their teacher.

And I think back to my first few turns of the wheel. I picked up my license and wondered what to do with it. My 0.25 credit hours showed up on my transcripts like a trophy, my South Dakota driver’s license like a badge. But I still had nothing to drive. And it stayed that way for a few more months, until my first car arrived – a used, battered 1969 Volkswagen Beetle with “automatic stickshift” technology.

I had no placard then, so maybe nobody saw me. But with white knuckles and the smell of aged faux-leather, I taught myself how to drive without fear. And once the fear is gone, the lessons are complete.

Tags: Vilhauer |

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No pun in ten did

July 12, 2007


Because I can’t go three weekdays without a post…

And because I laughed out loud when I read this…

I present to you the ten first place winners in the International Pun Contest.

Now, many of you have heard these before. You’ve probably even received the same e-mail. And despite a thoroughly exhaustive search, I’ve found no trace of the “International Pun Contest,” except in reference to a year (2004).

So it’s old news. But hell — I love puns. And these are very funny. (Thanks to my lovely wife for forwarding this to me.)

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says “Dam!”

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says “I’ve lost my electron.” The other says “Are you sure?” The first replies “Yes, I’m positive.”

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.

“But why?”, they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said,” I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.” The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan.” Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal

Her husband responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds.

Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to “persuade” them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close up shop.

Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath.

This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh.

No pun in ten did.

When you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal! Ha! Great stuff!

Another reason I’m sure it’s a fictitious contest — how can there be ten first place winners?

That is all. Maybe I’ll be back to real writing tomorrow.

Tags: Random |

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The allure of top 40

July 9, 2007


I’m feeling strong enough to admit it.

Yes. I listen to popular, top-40 radio.

I can say this now because I know there’s no shame in it. We all listen at some point. There’s a secret desire to do so – to discover what it is that the masses flock to, to sniff the opiate that seems to defy taste and class and talent.

Hi. I’m Corey. And I listen to Avril Lavigne on the radio.

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I started doing this recently for a few reasons.

1. My neighbors at work listen to it, so the songs were slowly being drilled into my head – enough that I actually recognize a few of them.

2. I have written a good chunk of the advertising that is being played on our top-40 station – the venerable HOT 104.7 – so it’s purely work related.

3. I’ve found that, at times, it’s not that bad.

It’s true – hear me out. Over the past two days, I’ve heard two former Left of Center (the Sirius indie-rock channel) standbys on our local super-cool top-40 mix station. Amy Winehouse is the most recent addition. Panic at the Disco is a rather older one.

Not only are these songs familiar to me – delivered through the ether from a former radio experience, it sometimes seems – but they are on heavy rotation. See? Good music can indeed become popular! Coldplay was an earlier example of this, as was Gnarles Barkley. Panic at the Disco (as much as I find myself annoyed at the singer’s voice) has three songs on rotation currently. It’s amazing.

Sometimes I also find myself drawn to the complete train wrecks – the songs that, as I’ve told countless people countless times, prove anyone can be famous with the right beat and the right voice manipulation.

For example: the aforementioned Avril Lavigne’s new song – “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” or whatever it’s called. Horrible. Brutal. It pains me to hear it.

But I can’t look away. It’s a sociology experiment gone awry. Same with Fergie – the talentless piece of Black Eyed Peas eye candy that somehow has weaseled her way into a solo career that involves spelling her name and adding “icious” to her name. And The Pussycat Dolls. Don’t get me started.

It’s not healthy, this new top-40 obsession. But don’t hold it against me. Sometimes, I’m intrigued. Often, I can chalk it up to work. And sometimes I can’t look away.

This is how it starts, isn’t it?

Next stop – reality television.

Tags: Career, Music |

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The dying interview

July 8, 2007


I’m not the first to comment on this – and I’m sure I won’t be the last. But when watching a preview for an ABC New Primetime, I was amazed that the hottest story was one of two blonde burglars – the Barbie Bandits – who stole money from a bank earlier this year.

They didn’t plan things very well – they were caught pretty quickly. They were both 19. There’s not much to the story, from what I gather – just that they were blonde with a debutante attitude and too few brain cells.

No, I wasn’t amazed about the burglars. I was amazed that this was the hottest story. The lead. The most important thing on the program and, from the way they were advertising it, the most important thing this week.

And it wasn’t just a slow news day – this is a heavily hyped interview.

Just a week or so ago, two networks were frantically fighting to secure what could be a big ratings boost – a once in a lifetime interview that transcended all demographics, one that would single-handedly result in more viewers than any other show in that time slot. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were thrown around, until finally the interviewee’s party couldn’t agree to a price and announced that the interview would be for free – a perfect example of great public relations and a altruistic heart.

That person? Paris Hilton.

What happened to the real interviews?

Are they still on? Do big time decision makers and important Americans still get interviewed by prime time network reporters? Or am I just missing all of this – so bogged down in the hundreds of network and cable choices that, even though we only get four channels, we miss the biggest interviews, their listings buried deep in the quagmire along with Shaq’s fat camp show and the seven hundredth new “flashy lights and intense music” game show?

Seriously, I can’t tell you the last time someone that made a difference in the world was interviewed during prime time network television. If it’s happened, I’ve missed it. Instead, it seems to be tabloid star after tabloid star, bandied across the circuit, telling their stories of woe, or joy, or whatever it is they experience throughout their often-dreamed-about but never-to-be-believed lives.

Two years ago, I read both Walter Cronkite’s autobiography and the biography of Edward R. Murrow. What struck me was the distinguished air both reporters took on as they would interview the most important people of their time – right there on network television, during prime time, taking no prisoners, pulling no punches, etc.

I’m sure during their day they had to interview their fair share of flighty Hollywood stars and rumored debutantes. We only remember the most memorable subjects. But there had to be weeks – months – worth of drivel. They had to mail it in sometimes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an interview of Lindbergh’s nanny’s cousin aimed at grabbing dirt on the baby-napping scandal. Or an expose of Shirley Temple’s fortress of cuteness.

Or maybe they didn’t – maybe times were so different that we took a more respectable view of fame. Maybe petty scandals didn’t drive public opinion as much as they do today. Regardless of what bad interviews they did, Cronkite and Murrow and all of their contemporaries balanced out the fluff with well-timed exclusive interviews that didn’t just make waves – they changed policies and caused massive reforms throughout the nation.

There are several reasons these interviews have gone by the wayside. First of all, the viewing public isn’t locked in on three or four channels anymore. Now, they’ve got hundreds of stations vying for their attention.

Maybe the Internet and the long tail of instant information have spoiled us to the art of the meaningful interview. We’ve spent so long gazing at the unattainable that we don’t bother to understand – or even care – about the people that are truly changing the world. We don’t need to watch those interviews. Those people don’t have exclusivity anywhere – their stories are being told to everyone, everywhere, for free through a million different avenues. Would Diana Spencer’s sons have even been interviewed if it wasn’t for Diana’s tabloid following, the tenth anniversary of her death, or their relative silence throughout the past several years?

Difference-makers are boring now. They’re black type on white background, columns of figures alongside the colorful tapestry of American fame. We want the secrets that come along with fleeting notoriety and wealth. We want to hear the gory details of the most trivial scandal.

Am I harking back to a day of golden television interviews that I never really got to experience?

Let’s be honest – even if the nation’s attention was ripped away from skinny social icons and twisted scandals, even if Edward R. Murrow came back from the dead and sent hard questions straight at someone that made worthy decisions on our daily lives, would anyone even care?

If we got what we thought was right, would we bother to even watch?

Tags: Annoyances, Journalism, Television |

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Please refill the ice cube trays, or die

July 5, 2007


From Passive Aggressive Notes

I love this site.

PassiveAggressiveNotes.com.

As someone who has had roommates, and who has worked in a large office where lunches were often stolen, and who was a resident hall advisor and frequented other residence halls throughout my life, this site is purely awesome.

No one’s filling up the ice cube trays? Someone pees on the toilet seat? Loud noises that sound strangely like animalistic sexual acts are keeping you awake at night?

Don’t confront them! Leave a Post-It note!

It’s my new favorite site for today.

That is all for now.

Tags: Random Links |

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