Middle Of The Road

The thing about Sound Garden is that the workers seem pretty hip or grundgy or whatever it is that I'm not. (I am many things but cool is not close to being one of them.) The workers are friendly unlike record stores of old where you ran the risk of bullying and derision if you bought top forty or, God forbid, smooth jazz. (I cringe thinking what the guys at Spectrum Records must have thought of me in the eighties when I brought Spyro Gyra to the counter.) It's good that the Sound Garden folks are kind because this fifty-year-old brought the middle of the road to the counter.

I bought a used copy of Supertramp's Even In The Quietest Of Moments... and a new copy of Paul McCartney's Tug Of War both of which are very good albums but neither of which is genius or cool. They are albums from my past — I owned both on record and then on CD — and listening to them today has felt good on all sorts of levels not entirely about the sound.

The guy who rang up the sale was nothing but smiles.

The Supertramp album is good but frustrating. Everything Roger Hodgson wrote for it is good or great. In fact, every good song on the album is his. The frustrating thing is that Roger Davies wrote almost half the songs. Imagine Lennon and McCartney if one of them couldn't write well. Hodgson's "Fool's Overture" might be the best song the band ever recorded and his "Give A Little Bit" is one of their most catchy and enduring.

Then there's Roger Davies' "Lover Boy." I'm not going to even start on that one. Oy.

McCartney's album doesn't have Lennon of course but he brings Stevie Wonder along instead and gets a hit out of it with "Ebony And Ivory" a tune I could do without. The thing about this album is that although there aren't many songs on it that stand out as great, there is something about the album as a whole that works on me and that's why it works better on vinyl than streamed. Brush the record, drop the needle, and it's likely that you're there for the whole side at least and in my case I'm pretty much guaranteed to flip it and catch side two.

I should say that there are three excellent songs on there: "Tug Of War," "Take It Away," and "Wanderlust." I'm also a total sucker to "Here Today" a song all about his relationship with John Lennon.

Where Quietest Moments can be challenging to listen to straight through because there are songs I'd rather skip, Tug Of War grows through complete listenings. Or maybe "Fool's Overture" sounds even better after getting through "From Now On" which is actually the best of the Davies tunes. There's a lot to consider. I should go back and listen again. Now, which one to put on first?

Diagnoses & Cures

For as long as I have known her, my wife's eyes have itched. In college I remember her enjoying a good eye rub the way a dog enjoys a belly rub for as long as you'll give it. There were times when her groans of pleasure as she rubbed her eyes were almost obscene. Her eyes, almost always behind glasses or capped in contact lenses, have never been kind to her though I've always found them lovely, penetrating, and warm.

Lately though her eyes just hurt. Something has been really wrong. After rubbing she clenches them closed, grits her teeth, and shakes her fists, pain radiating from the sockets. Often, reaching to rub them, she catches herself and its as if she's tying herself to the mast. Must not rub, she tells herself. The pain and burning go on and on.

We had a snow day this week. She and I are paid to teach and did the usual dance of having a surprise day off. I sat down to write (trying to write my way out of teaching) and she grabbed her phone, called the eye doctor, and asked for an emergency appointment. They had one that morning and she took it, got ready and went out into the horrible cold.

She has long figured she's allergic but a downside to living in Syracuse is that we don't have the best doctors. So far no one had determine that she is allergic to anything. But just look at the skin all around my eyes! she says. The doctors shrug and leave her worrying that she's making it all up, that she's weak, or that this is just bad luck. She knows it's not make believe but hasn't found any help.

At the appointment, the eye doctor figured it out: contact lenses. She is allergic to the contacts she has worn nearly every day. They've aggravated her condition like tearing at a scab every day. The doctor prescribed drops, daily (disposable) lenses, and a return in a few weeks. We picked up the prescription at Wegmans and she started on the drops right away.

Oh my God, she said. My eyes don't itch. They don't hurt.

There weren't the moans of her eye rubbing days, but the relief and wonder were a magic to behold. One trip to the right doctor, a few drops, and already relief. So simple yet so elusive.

---

I have taught in the same school system since 2001 and felt it to be the wrong place at least since 2006. Sunday through Thursday nights I get maybe five hours sleep and wake often, sometimes restlessly shifting from two until four in the morning when I finally get up to write. I wear a nightguard at night because I have ground my teeth down measurably. Since September I have gained up to fourteen pounds. I've seen my therapist every two weeks for more than a decade because I feel anxious and removed from real contentment and balance. I sink regularly into depression, sometimes for weeks.

I feel these things except when school is on break. Summer, I'm a healthy man. Christmas, February, and April breaks I'm a happy man. On the weekend I'm almost happy and healthy but the school week looms large and I cannot come all the way down from anxiety. This seemed like regular life.

My new dentist mentioned my grinding. I asked, "any ideas what I can do about it?" He said, "reduce stress?" I rolled my eyes and, now that I think of it, clenched my jaw. I'm clenching now. A previous dentist suggested a glass of whiskey before bed. There doesn't seem to be enough bourbon in all of Kentucky.

No amount of rubbing makes it any better.

Two weeks ago, writing an assignment from a book, I decided to quit my job. It won't take effect for a few months, but I won't go back next school year. I felt better. Suddenly. Measurably. That feeling surprised me enough I stopped writing and sank warmly into that feeling. The clouds parted. Blue sky. Sunshine. Warmth.

I told my wife and kids. I told my brother and mother. I told friends. I told colleagues at school. This is it, I said. I revised my resignation letter. Each mention of my plan was frightening but leavening. I felt myself rising, buoyed up toward the surface. I ordered business cards to hand out at my next writing conference and will no longer introduce myself as a public school teacher affiliated with that job. Every step felt like a release, a benediction, a healing.

Oh my God, I think. I'm not filled with dread. I don't hurt.

Friday night I read Dani Shapiro's Devotion until I was tired enough to turn out the light. My wife dropped medicine into her eyes. "How does it feel?" I asked. She said, "it burns a little, but the relief—" she shook her head and smiled. I closed my eyes. My thoughts drifted away. I was quiet. The night was still. I slept through the night and rose Saturday morning ready to write, feeling no pain.

Analog FTW

Ignore that I typed this on a Chromebook. Just go with it for now.

This video about Saturday Night Live's cue cards is lovely in every way but especially because the show runs on about a thousand analog cards a week, filled with block letters in big old magic marker, and edited using white tape. How great is that? They don't use teleprompters because those break and the show is live. Analog cards are forever — until they use them as drop cloths for set painting. Go figure.

On my desk is a Smith Corona Sterling manual typewriter manufactured in 1938 here in my hometown of Syracuse, NY (from which many good things come). I've inserted a ribbon with blue ink and the print is as gorgeous as the machine itself. Later, I'll type toward a project I'm struggling with on the computer. Blue ink on yellow copy paper rolled through an analog machine. Think how long that machine has been in service. Come on, do the math. Alright, since you can't find the calculator app on your phone, it's about eighty one years. Eighty one freaking years. My laptop won't make it eight years.

I had the typewriter serviced shortly after I bought it to replace the rubber roller (platen), align the keys, and fix a couple things. I asked the repair guy when he thought I'd be back. He made a snorting noise in the back of his throat and shook his head. "My only repeat customers are ones who buy more than one typewriter. This thing will go on forever." I'll bring him my other typewriter just because I want it perfect and guys like that deserve medals or at least some more business.

Look, there's my paper planner, its cover papered with post-its. I just filled the page for this week with notes and ideas and they'll be there forever. At the dentist I flipped it open to schedule a cleaning in July. On my phone, I put in the wrong times (PM instead of AM) and once scheduled a seventy-two-hour therapy appointment. I'm not saying I wouldn't benefit from such a thing, but there's only so much my therapist can endure. The planner limits us to an hour every other week and has never crashed, cracked, or run out of battery. Crazy.

And there's my Lamy 2000 fountain pen which I refilled this morning from a three-ounce bottle of blue Noodler's ink and which writes like a dream. Designed in 1966, it is sumptuous enough to be on display in art and design museums. There's a rumor that it is part of MoMA's permanent collection — and it damn well should be — but though that rumor was on the internet (quoted, I think, on Abraham Lincoln's blog) it turns out not to be the true. Still, as Ferris Bueller said (about a Ferrari instead of something as important as a fountain pen), "if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

A couple other things:

• I'm reading Dani Shapiro's Devotion in hardback with real pages and ink. It feels right in my hands and before my eyes. People ask me about books I carry. They spark conversations.

• Sufjan Stevens' album Carrie & Lowell is on my U-Turn Audio Orbit turntable, its signal amplified by the Kenwood KA-5500 that has worked since the 1977 and will go on probably through 2077. That's all wired to Boston Acoustics A70 speakers I bought at Gordon Electronics on Erie Boulevard in 1982. Come on over. I'll pour whiskey and we'll put on your favorite record. It will be great.

• Today I carried and read the January issue of The Sun Magazine which includes Debbie Urbanski's story "You" which is so exquisite I've read it three times, the feel of the page between my fingers like a character in the story.

I have more to say about analog things — maybe a book's worth — but I'm okay with having written this on a computer. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

The Real Power of Post-Its

Quick thoughts:

• Keep a pad of post-it notes on the bedside table
• Stick some inside the paper planner
• Have a pad of them on the desk
• Get used to scribbling, jotting, and writing ideas on them

It's not just that I'm trying to hold onto an idea, though that's part of it. I'm more forgetful at fifty than I was at twenty and I was already forgetting too many things then. Remembering the one idea I have is good. I can't write every idea passing through my mind but quickly scribbled post-its save ideas for when I can write my way into them. All this is important but not the most important reason to have those post-its available to my whim.

Writing the idea down, capturing it in the confines of that yellow square, allows me to find the two other ideas to which writing the first one down leads. Writing generates new writing because thinking generates new ideas and writing just might be the most eleveated form of thinking. (That's the sort of thought that on paper/screen makes sense but runs circles if left inside my head.)

I can stand to lose the one idea, but those other two that come to being only as a result of writing the first, I can't stand to lose them or the process that brings them about. Ideas written down beget more ideas.

Which has me thinking of a new idea. Let me grab a post-it and jot it down.