Robots Made Me Break the Law

Last week I got a traffic ticket for the first time in 17 years–and that one was for going the wrong way down a poorly marked, deserted, very dark one-way alley, hardly a premeditated felonious offense. This time, I was speeding. I was going very fast. Normally I don’t do this (much); I prefer to set my cruise control at 65 or 70, both to curb any unintended bursts of speed and to keep my MPGs high and therefore costs and pollution low. However, that day I forgot all about cruise control, moderation, and saving the planet. I was insanely happy. I was flying high on a post-inspiration glow and feeling giddy and invincible...plus I was going downhill. Add to that the fact that I was blasting “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” on my radio and gleefully shouting along, and you have a pretty solid recipe for speed violations. The cop who stopped me asked me what my speedometer said and I had to admit that I honestly didn’t know. I was much too busy singing about karate chicks kicking evil mechanical ass to notice a trivial thing like how fast I was going...

I was extremely contrite, in actuality. To be more precise, I was horror-stricken–both by the fact that I had been zooming along so cluelessly and gotten pulled over, and also because my financial situation is in a state of flux and I’m pretty sure that the fine for going 80-plus mph in a 65 zone isn’t small change these days. In fact, I started crying my eyes out while he was at his car running my license and noting that I have a spotless record. Once he deduced that I was not a cracked-out moral reprobate in a stolen vehicle (initially, he had actually asked me if it was my car), Mr. Policeman was kinder to me than I had expected. He told me that I may be able to mitigate my fine by going to see a particular judge-type person in the county building and asking him very nicely to lower my fine since I’m a good citizen. As soon as I figure out who he meant exactly, I’m goin'!

So, kids, the moral to be gleaned from my harrowing brush with the law is this: Don’t sing songs about robots while you drive.

Notes: 1) According to the University of Birmingham Computer Science page: The word "robot" was first used in the 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by the Czech writer Karel Capek (pronounced "chop'ek"). "Robot" comes from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor."
2) The photo is from the movie Devil Girl from Mars (1954). Nice cape! I think she looks more like a Space Dominatrix than a devil girl, if you ask me...

Zen Pizza

I know you've heard me say it before: I love my neighborhood. I love that I can walk to so many colorful, friendly, locally owned businesses. I love the fare at the gourmet pizza shop right around the corner from me--it's so un-freakin-believably yummy it can't be described. But most of all, at this particular moment, I love what is printed on the pizza box that contained my dinner tonight. The illustration is a standard scene with two portly mustached Italian stereotypes, happily rolling out dough and tending the oven. Nothing unexpected there. But the words at the bottom are special:

"Enjoy your delicious moments!"

Now that's just poetry.
Think about it...whoever designed this box may have merely been talking about the pizza, but if you wanted to (and I do), you could certainly take those words and run with them. Turn them into a savory metaphor for living mindfully and joyfully. Ain't life wonderful? Just when I thought I was getting too tired and emotionally worn down, I find spiritual guidance on a pizza box.

MMMmmmmmmmmm....

A Literary Breakthrough

photo ©2006 eric hart

I was standing in the bathroom this morning getting ready for work, reminiscing about how prolific my writing was when I was younger, and lamenting the loss of my muse. I've been a bit stressed lately wondering how in the hell I'm going to live up to my goal to write two poems per month. I know two is not very many, but I've never been the kind of person who can force myself to write. I can't just pick a subject and go. Every time in the past that I sat myself down saying, "I'm going to write a poem!" it just fell flat. What came of my efforts was universally trite and awful. I can try to encourage something to develop by reading more and by editing some of my old work, but typically it's the poetry that finds me, not the other way around.

When I was much younger, my muse was not only active, she was a downright pest who made me have to carry pads of paper wherever I went in case she suddenly grabbed hold of me. This morning, no sooner had I finished lamenting her loss all these years when she popped back into my life and bit me so hard I had to drop everything I was doing and run to the computer before the words disappeared from my mind. I finished the first draft of the poem, the first original one I’ve written in over four years, in about twelve minutes. I swear it was like sex. Afterwards, I was grinning and breathless and so full of joy I just can’t properly describe it. I wrote a poem! I was so happy I was quite literally jumping up and down hugging my hands to my chest. It's no masterpiece, but it's something, and that's a lot more than what I've turned out these past many years...

I know you probably would like to see it, but it's still too new and too personal, and I'd be uncomf0rtable sharing it here. As a consolation, I will post something I wrote ten years ago--one of the three or so solidly decent poems I've ever penned (or keyboarded, rather). Even so, this is a milestone occasion: I have never before publicly posted any of my writing. Ever. I am usually highly selective about who reads my poetry, so this is a big scary step for me. I hope it's at least a little entertaining for you.

Spring

On the playground, jackets flung
from small bodies lay on the ground
like the remains of
dissolved children.
Lured away by the sun’s Hamelin,
the heated slopes on the other side of the world,
they scrabbled through rock and soil
disturbing the blind traffic of worms.
I could still hear their
singing, muffled by layers of earth
as they burrowed like hungry tubers
seeking a warmer place.
Left behind--their snakeskin
and feathers in shrapnel heaps,
casualties of the season’s advance.

1-27-99

Scream Real Loud!

Hey Kids! It's that time again! I haven't posted a word of the day in ages. Have you ever woken up in the morning and inexplicably had a song stuck in your head that you hadn't heard for months or longer? I do that sometimes with words. For instance, the other day, I woke up with the word "plangent" running through my brain incessantly. I hadn't read it recently, and I certainly hadn't heard it in conversation with anyone--when was the last time you used that in a sentence? So, in the interest of broadening your semantic horizons, I offer you plangent as your word of the day (screaming is optional).

The OED defines plangent thusly:
Especially of the sound of waves, the sea, etc.: reverberating, mournfully resonant.

I think I must have used it in a poem years ago and since forgotten its meaning (I could only remember that it had something to do with sound), so this is a learning exercise for me as well. As I get older I have noticed that my vocabulary is dwindling rather than expanding. Last year I was reading through some old research papers from my undergrad work and noticed at least three words I had used that I no longer have any inkling of what they mean. I wish I could afford to go back to school and flex my brain a bit more. I miss being smart.

Recycling Madness, Fat, and Yoga

Sylvie has her own version of yoga.

I am so spastically happy right now it's just unbelievable. I love the rain. I absolutely adore rainy cloudy windy wet weather--I feel so invigorated! I've also accomplished a lot of things today that are good for me. You may remember reading that one of my New Year's resolutions was to go to yoga once per week. Well, I just got home from my third class in one week! I feel so good I can't put it into words properly. I feel like hugging the whole country. I feel like kissing strangers. I feel like the whole world is going to be all right after all.

There is one small glitch, however. I've discovered that fat and yoga don't mix gracefully. Granted, my tummy fat isn't that big, but that one little roll really gets in the way when I'm trying to contort myself into one of the really twisty poses. It actually hurts. Yes, you heard me: yoga makes my fat hurt. It's a little hard to describe, but I've never had this problem before. It feels as if I could just reach down somehow and slide that little pansa out of the way I could more fully sink into the pose. Ah well, the other resolutions should take care of this problem soon. And I've already noticed in just three classes that my stretchiness is really coming back. I'm overjoyed! Nothing feels as good as being able to rest your torso on the ground as you stretch out your legs...just relaxing into the floor....aaahhh.

And to top off the maniacal glee-fest, I spent a good portion of the day divesting my garage of the numerous electronic junky things that I've accumulated over the years and didn't quite know how to get rid of. I'm dead-set against just chucking everything in the garbage and sending it off to the overflowing landfill. Aside from space issues, it's a particularly bad idea when you consider the fact that electronic appliances tend to be full of toxins that you really don't want leached into the ground. So, my friend Jen found a guy that will take used and broken electronics to recycle, including CDs, floppy disks, and cords. Even better is the Freecycle group on Yahoo. It's a group that allows you to post messages about stuff you need to get rid of but don't want to throw away. Then someone else emails you and says, "Wow, boy did I need one of those! Thanks! I'll pick it up tomorrow." I got rid of four garage parasites in under 30 minutes using it. It's truly a beautiful thing. I even found someone who wants a bunch of freezer gel packs that I don't need. Freecycle rocks my world!!

A Historic Job

Some of you know how extraordinarily busy I’ve been the past few months--I was working seven days a week at two different jobs. One of those is, of course, my tour guide gig at Stone, and the other was a temporary project downtown. I haven’t had a downtown job in years, and I reveled in the vibrant craziness that inhabits the heart of our sprawling city. I enjoyed taking the bus downtown, and I loved the diverse thrumming street life that I witnessed every day. I will really miss those parts of the job. I will miss buying tea from the little coffee cart owned by Ryan, the friendliest human on earth. I will miss looking up at the scrolls and brickwork of the early 20th Century architecture. I will miss watching the pigeons nesting in the now-defunct Spreckels sign on the side of the building next to our office window. I may even miss the disturbing ventriloquist lady who parked her wheelchair on the corner every day hoping to garner change with her scary puppet-child...

The job was part II of the archaeology project I was working on last July--the first phase was the excavation of a significant site next the Mexican border, and in the office we had the monumental task before us of sorting and cataloguing our way through hundreds of boxes of artifacts; particularly a lot of shell. What I did nearly every day was sit at a large table cleaning the dirt off thousands of pieces of marine shell and sorting them according to species. This was a daunting task due to the sheer volume of shell, but also because many of the pieces were smaller than my pinkie fingernail--and I have small hands!

The company I was working for has made a temporary lab space out of an office in the Spreckels building on Broadway. For those of you who have not been lucky enough to view this fine edifice that graces our downtown landscape, here’s a very brief history of the building: it was built in 1912 to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal, as well as the Panama-California Exposition that took place in San Diego in 1915. It houses a grandiose theater and four floors of office spaces. My favorite historical tidbit is that the theater contains exactly 1,915 seats in honor of above-mentioned year. The building is a lavish cacophony of marble, gilded moldings, Deco light fixtures, numerous marble staircases, intricate tilework, and ornate iron banisters.

I absolutely loved working there. Every day I got to walk into the sprawling marble and tile lobby with its over-the-top baroque moldings I just had to smile and sigh in awe. As far as I can tell, almost 100 % of the interior is still original. The office doors still have their original doorknobs and mail slots and those neat glass transom windows above the top lintel. Even the bathrooms are havens of bright and airy marble and tile. The office windows are huge double hung wooden windows with no screens, and they take up almost the entire wall, beginning only a foot off the floor and nearly touching the ceiling. Truthfully, I’m amazed that in this age of litigation madness and catering to stupidity, these windows haven't been bolted shut to prevent people from falling out. I’m so very glad that they haven’t been; during much-needed breaks to rest my eyes, I loved going to the window and leaning as far out as I safely could and watching the activity six floors below.

There is one secret wing of this building that spooks me, however. Check out the disturbing resemblance between this remodeled hallway on the 6th floor of the Spreckels building and one of the creepy hallways from the hotel in The Shining. The first one is the Spreckels; the pic with Danny in it is from the movie. Different carpeting, but dang!! Makes you shiver, doesn’t it? It looks a million times more spooky in person, too. I have gotten in the habit of averting my eyes every time I have to use the womens’ room--which is located at the other end of that very hallway, of course.