Taproot

IIIIII've got another one!

I loved growing up in Calexico but, let's be honest, as a kid there was not a whole heckuva lot to get excited about.  We were a long way from everywhere except Mexico, and until I was old enough to "club", that wasn't much of a draw.  The nearest "real" mall was in San Diego, a good two and a half hours away.  There were two movie theaters in the Imperial Valley, the Crest and the Fox but, though you could still catch a matinee for under five bucks, they were more vintage than modern.  True, we made our own fun, riding our bikes into the surrounding fields to shoot things with our BB guns, or to make the Border Patrol chase us, but when it came to marquee fun it was slim pickings.  There were two main events, though.

The first was the Mid-Winter Fair, when the fairgrounds turned into a smorgasborg of carnival rides, cotton candy and stalls selling cheap crap we bought just so we wouldn't go home empty handed.  My older brother and I waited all year long to ride the Gravitron and the Zipper, spinning perilously close to nausea while the carnies blasted White Snake and Def Leppard.    Some of my fondest childhood memories have the barkers' impassioned pleas to come see the Wild Woman, and other oddities, as the soundtrack.  To small town boys, it was like Disneyland had come to us for a couple weeks, and it came regular as Christmas.

Not so regular, was the circus.  I couldn't honestly tell you how often Circus Vargas came to town, but I vividly remember going.  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my God does that woman have a beard?  I have vibrant memories of the big top, the elephants doing tricks, the trapeze artists.  And the clowns.  Now I hate pictures of clowns as much as the next guy.  There's something creepy about clowns in photos, I don't care how good they are.  But at the circus they were different.  They were all OVER the place, piling out of cars, chasing each other around and throwing buckets of confetti into the audience.  I loved them.  But there was one clown routine, in particular, that made its way into the Tittle family Lexicon.  Two clowns.  One with a a squirt gun, relentlessly chasing one without.  Over and over, the victim would wrest the aggressor's weapon away from him.  Game over.  And over and over, after a brief crestfallen pause, the squirt gun clown would suddenly say, "IIIII've got another one!" in a high pitched voice and, impossibly, pull a new squirt gun from some different hiding place in his costume.  The routine was hilarious, but the punchline never died.

To this day, my mother still whips it out whenever she thinks the situation calls for it.

Mom, I got another dog.

IIIIIII've got another one!

Mom, I have another kidney stone.

IIIIIII've got another one!

You get the point.  It has never been as funny as it was when the clowns did it, but we put up with it.  I've even said it a few times myself.

My creek has been saying it to me for months.  I've emptied cans and cans of water feature foam into various holes.  IIIIII've got another one!  I re-lined the upper pool beneath the fountain.  IIIII've got another one!  I've emptied all of the rocks out of the lower pool.  Twice.  IIIII've got another one!  Yesterday, like a good boy, I spent my afternoon tearing up the section of the creek I suspected was the newest culprit.  I pulled up lining.  Laid down sealant.  Waited 24 hours for it to dry.  Filled it up and ran the pump.  Do I even need to say it?

I'm keeping a good attitude about it, I think.  I even found the new problem spot and plugged it with foam.  But I'm pretty sure that meddling creek has another leak tucked away somewhere I can't see it. 

Sharon has watched me through this whole process.  Today she offered her opinion as to why it hasn't worked.  God, she said, told you to landscape the yard, not build a creek.  When you started, He was probably thinking "that's gonna be nothing but fuckin' trouble, that. (God always has a Scottish accent when He talks to Sharon) I tried that once and ended up with Grand Canyon!" 

We had a good laugh at that.  God probably had a good laugh, too.  He's cool like that.  Now if He would just make sure this last fix does the trick, we'd be all good. 

More on Magnolia...

I was just looking at my web-traffic reports, because I'm a masochist like that, and I noticed yesterday's post got a hit from Google.  Since, typically, the only hits I get from them are from people looking for the chords to "I Come to the Garden Alone", my curiousity was piqued.  So I followed the link to the search page and found that my post had come up during a search for "magnolia blooms dying".  Just for kicks, I clicked on another one of the search results.  And got this picture.

Now listen to me, Fate.  I'm not going to tell you how to run your business, but it's stunts like this that make people want to punch you right in the face.  So, go ahead and play your little game, but you should know I'm ready for you.  And I have an ass-kicking with your name written all over it.

Have a nice day.  :)

Magnolia

My first apartment was at 15101 Magnolia Boulevard.  I was 23, fresh out of college, and the only thing I knew about magnolias was they were sometimes made of steel.  Not that I thought much about the name of my street.  I was on a mission.  I had just graduated with distinction from the best university in the country (That's right, Harvard, I said "best".  Suck my Lux AND Veritas.)and was all set to claim my birthright as a successful actor in Los Angeles.  No time to think about flowers, or trees, or flowers on trees.

Irony is only delicious when it's being served to someone else.  So it is that, as I've contemplated the magnolia tree flowering outside our kitchen window over the past week, thinking about whether the fact I started my LA journey on Magnolia is metaphorically relevant, I've found myself struggling to force my own generous portion of irony down.  Suffice it to say, that as I pursued my budding dream at 15101 Magnolia, it might have served me to know a little bit about how magnolias bloom. 

To begin with, they bloom big.  (No pansy ass little blossoms here.  No, sir.  Bloom big or go home.)  Since they refuse to settle for smaller blossoms, flowering takes a while.  You look out one day and see all these little slivers of white poking their way out of the ends of the branches, but then you've gotta wait a couple weeks for them to actually turn into recognizable buds.  But it's worth it, you tell yourself, because they're going to be SOOO freakin' beautiful.  And you're right, when the buds appear they are impossibly gorgeous.  They look like enormous rose buds, ivory bulbs that make you think of soft-serve ice cream on a summer day.  And if you catch them blooming, you realize why it pays to bloom big.  Because when it happens, it's nothing short of spectacular.

Except for the fact the magnolia's flowers seem to start dying from the instant they bloom.  Blooming big has its consequences.  The bigger the bloom, the harder it is to sustain it.  And if all your blooms are that big, you must continuously look to the newest ones and let the previous ones die.  And they don't die gracefully.  They sometimes don't even last a day before collapsing onto themselves in an ugly brown mess.  When I went out to take pictures of the flowers, it was almost impossible to find a beautiful new bud that wasn't set in contrast to a decrepit "old" one.

I know! I know!  This metaphor is as subtle as an offering plate.  But this is the way my mind has been working through magnolias for over a week...I came to LA with a big dream.  Several big dreams if I'm honest.  Actor, writer, singer, successful business man.  I started off at Magnolia Boulevard.  Maybe it means nothing, or maybe it means everything.  But for ten years, I have had dreams bloom spectacularly only to shrivel to wasted vestiges of former glory.

What does this all mean?

I guess it depends on what part of the picture you're looking at.  It's pretty hard to deny that the dying flower is hideous.  It makes me think of Dorian Gray's portrait, absorbing the sins and excesses of its subject, a decrepit reflection of unnatural beauty.

But looking at the bud, it's damn near impossible to wish it were anything different.  Isn't it?  I mean, no one looks at magnolias and wishes they were something that lasts longer, not if that means them becoming something smaller, less dramatic...something other than what they are at their core.  Their root.

Sigh.  No easy answer here, I'm afraid.  Which, I fear, is exactly the way I tend to like it.

A few days ago, our neighbor came over and told Sharon that our magnolia was flowering more than she'd seen it do in years.

Well, at least there's that...whatever that is.

  

My Man Friday

In an inconstant world, you are one of my most faithful companions.  No matter what time I come home from my week, you are always there to greet me, to offer me solace, rest, or a stiff drink.  You never fail to provide me with a schedule of potential activities, and are never upset if I forego some of them to get a couple more hours of sleep.  You guard the entrance to my free time zealously, inviting me and my loved ones in, while fighting to keep the rest of the week out.  Though you may not always succeed in that defense, I am ever grateful for your efforts, always thankful to look into the distance and know that, if I can only make it through the battles at hand, you will soon be there to reinforce my efforts.

I thank God for you, Friday.  And it is always good to see you.

Retaining Water

Ever have one of those days when you feel like a stuffed sausage?  Like someone poured the essence of you into your skin...and then added another half dose for good measure?  I've been feeling like that for over a month, everyday feeling a little more like a visitor in my own body.  Today, sitting in a meeting, I looked down and saw the ring finger on my right hand turning red.  My hands had swollen up during the course of the day and my ring, which fit fine this morning, was cutting off my circulation.  With a little spit and no shortage of effort, I forced over my knuckle and into the palm of my hand.  Afterward, I told my sales rep about it.  He looked at my hands and said, "You must be retaining water."

Though I'd heard people say that many times in the past, even said it myself a few times, today it struck me as funny.  Isn't retaining water a good thing?  I mean, if we are 70% water, isn't water retention exactly what our body is supposed to do?    Otherwise, we might spill two thirds of ourselves out onto the ground, with the last third collapsing like a deflated balloon. 

I knew what he meant, though, and as I wrapped up my day I had to admit I was feeling a little (dare I say it) bloated.  I knew why, too.  It has been two months of almost non-stop stress at work.  And it's been months since I stepped in a gym...and, Lord knows, I'm getting too (dare I say it) old to expect to stay in shape by playing softball once a week and swinging a pickax on Saturdays.  Especially when the candy jars at work seem to be much more persuasive these days.

So, I came home pondering my increasingly old, fat ass.  I was only slightly comforted by the fact that my bloated-ness was due, in some part, to me being an excellent water retainer (everyone likes to be talented).  However, as I walked the garden, checking to make sure my plants were similarly gifted with retention skills, the creek caught my gaze.  Yes, I have a creek.  I built it from scratch.  Dug a 70 foot ditch and a six foot long, 3 foot wide and 3 foot deep pond, all by myself.  Put in a ton of rocks.  In the heat of the summer.  I haven't written about it much.  Or posted pictures.  You know why?  Because, unlike me, my creek SUCKS at retaining water.  I've been waiting for it to work perfectly before I brag about it...so far that's not working out so well.

Truth is, I know exactly what's wrong with it, exactly where it's losing water...but to fix it, I'll have to tear up a section and do it over, and just the thought of it makes me tired. 

So there it is.  Me retaining water.  My creek losing it.  I have a pretty good idea how to fix both, but I don't do it.  Why?  Because I can't stomach the hard work?  Uh-uh.  That's not gonna fly, boy.

My first post about my creek is about how it doesn't work.  You better do something about that...and while you're at it, get your water logged ass to the gym. 

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

I'm not a big fan of musicals (excluding "Sound of Music", "My Fair Lady", "Mary Poppins" or any of the other musicals I grew up watching with my mom).  As an actor, I avoided acting in them.  My one turn in one was as Judas/John in Godspell.  I hated the choreography so much that I decided it was my "character" to screw up every number.  After that, I was done with them.  However, I did go through a phase where I liked the music in Andrew Lloyd Weber's plays.  Don't judge, I was young and ignorant.

In any case, there was one song from "Les Miserables" that really hit me in my clinically depressed, teenage angst sweet spot.  Towards the end, Marius is bemoaning the death of all of his revolutionary friends, which in true ALW fashion, he does with the over the top melodramatic "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables".  The last lines of that song always made me a little emotional (you can judge a little on that one, but again, I was young, ignorant AND clinically depressed, so cut me a little slack).

Marius sings:

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me

What your sacrifice was for

Empty chairs at empty tables

Where my friends will sing no more

I have no idea what it was about those lines that got me.  I was a "cool" kid with plenty of friends and they were most certainly not "dead and gone".  Yet, for some reason, something about the loneliness in the song resonated in a deep place.

Years later, I was again at the center of a cool kid crowd.  Most every night, Sharon and I were hanging out with people we called friends, laughing, drinking, eating family style meals.  We wondered how we had ever had fun without these people.  We told ourselves we were lucky to have such great people around us.  We thought we would all be friends forever.  We were lying to ourselves.  Overnight, it seemed (though in truth it had probably been a long time coming), it all imploded, becoming a blackhole that swallowed everything: the group dinners; the game nights; the laugh-filled nights.  Before it devoured itself, that dying star almost took our marriage, as well.

Though I will always be sorry for the way it came to pass, there is no question the outcome was the best thing that could've happened.  We had chosen our friends badly, and now they had been blown away like so much chaff.

So it is, that today I found myself in the backyard looking at empty chairs, thinking about "Les Miz" and Marius' cheesy song.  Not because I was lonely and missing those people, but because I was glad that they weren't around to screw all of this peace up.   I like the fact that, for the most part, no one sits in these chairs but Sharon and I.  In my life, there has been noise and fun and revelrie.  But there have been very few true friends.  I love these empty chairs, because it seems to me like they're reserved for a VIP crowd of two.  A place to have a cup of coffee or an afternoon beer.  A spot to watch the last bit of light ebb from the day.

These empty chairs have seen a lot of the good life, without having to deal with a lot of the bullshit that often keeps the good life at bay.

None of this is to say I don't have any more friends.  Throughout the last couple years, I have managed to keep a couple.  Managed to make a couple more.  I think Sharon and I would both welcome new friends to fill our chairs.  They just have to be the right ones.  They have to understand what this place means, and respect how hard we have worked to make it look like this...feel like this.

We must both be feeling optimistic about how many of those new friends are out there...because we just bought a BIG ASS TABLE!!!

   

Collateral Damage

My rat poisoning campaign was an unqualified success.  They disappeared and, with two exceptions, went off to die where I couldn't find their bodies.  Unfortunately, they seem to have left the poison they stockpiled somewhere where other animals could find it.   So, today, I found out the hard way that it's difficult to poison just one type of animal.  Upon noticing Holli sniffing furiously near the deck I've been working on, I went over to see what she was into.  I lifted a couple loose boards to find two squirrels in the space below them.  One, an adult, was clearly dead.  The other, a baby, was clearly not.  He was huddled against the cold stiff body of the adult, and was looking up at me in the way that only baby animals can.  My stomach turned.  I had done this.

I reached into the space and the baby squirrel abandoned his vigil over his mother and tried to run away.  He was unsteady on his feet, and I knew he'd been poisoned too.  Still, there was a part of me that prayed he was okay.  Maybe, just maybe, he would get himself together and make it up the trunk of the palm tree he was desperately trying to scale.  Then maybe he'd be okay, or at least he'd be where I wouldn't have to see him anymore.  But, after watching him fall off two or three times, I knew he wasn't going to be okay.  There wasn't any way I was going to fix this.  I had done this.  I needed to end it.  So I did, choking back tears and apologizing the whole time.

Afterward, I called Sharon in Juneau.  When I told her about the baby, she asked, "Why couldn't we just adopt him?"

I used to be like that.  I used to bring home baby birds, gophers, stray dogs and cats.  I used to believe I could save all of them.  I know that little boy is still around inside me somewhere, because every time I think about how this afternoon, Hope lost an argument to Reason, I cry like a 4 year old.    

Guest Gardeners

Here's to friends in floppy hats,

Who sacrifice Saturdays because they miss

The dirt they dug as children, because they miss

You.  They know

Where you came from, remember

The night you slept on their couch,

When everything had been torn from the Earth

And stacked in the back of the truck on the street.

That night, they said, would be sleepless. 

Tomorrow worse.  But someday

Would be better.  Now,

We laugh about the shape we're in, sweating over beers and shovels, 

April sunshine painting

The white we have worn on our skin all winter,

The marks the dark has left fading to red, and maybe brown.

It is hard work

To believe I have worked so hard

For this happiness. 

But as we take pickaxes to clay on this Spring

Someday, it pays to recall the price 

We've paid for it all -- how this soil still only newly turned,

Was bought with so many lessons learned with the help of friends

In floppy hats.  

  

OWAID?

A while back, WWJD made the rounds as a new Christian fad.  An acronym for "What Would Jesus Do?", it found its way onto t-shirts, bracelets and other sundry chochkies.  Though the question itself is a valid one, I dismissed it as just another annoying way we out ourselves as hypocrites, placing people who sported WWJD kitsch in the same category as people who flip me off on the I405 as they drive by with their Christian fish decal.  Personally, I try to keep my road rage options open by limiting my Jesus bling to a small cross hanging from my rearview mirror.

Still, the WWJD craze served to solidify the growing stature of catchy acronyms in our English language.  I take some responsibility for that tragedy, since I work in an industry that has made text messaging ubiquitous, and acronyms are an easy end around character limits.  However, my Stanford siblings will tell you that acronyms had infiltrated the bastions of slightly higher learning before cell phones ever found their way into the hands of pre-adolescents.  Truth be told, though we blame acronym-mania on the deterioration of our educational standards, those of us who have made education a priority shoulder much of the blame, calling our best museums MoMA and LACMA, while lazily referring to our country's highest positions as POTUS and SCOTUS.  At Yale, for instance, we took derisive pleasure in calling the Department of University Health, DUH, long after the school tried to correct the implications by renaming it the Yale University Department of Health. 

Given the intellectual roots of my acronym fetish, it should come as some surprise that my current acronym of choice did not come from snooty linguistic laziness, but from a toddler.  As my niece came into her own as a Tittle Talker, she developed the amusing habit of prefacing all her questions with "Oh".  My favorite exchanges would go something like this:

Katie:  Oh, what are you doing?

Me:  I'm sitting in the car.

Katie:  Oh, what am I doing?

Me:  You're sitting in the car, too.

Katie:  Oh, am I sitting in the car, too?

Me:  Yes.

While she has since grown out of that phase, the habit has stuck with Sharon and I...call it a fair punishment for all the times I've tried to teach her to say things that were, shall we say, off color.  In any case, her verbal stylings have become a regular staple of the way Sharon and I communicate and, since we text each other a lot, the phrases have been shortened to OWAYD, OWAID, etc.

As the title of this post suggests, it is OWAID that has been on my mind lately.  As, I'm sure, was the original intent behind WWJD, it is a question that can be asked of any situation, at any time of the day.  But lately, it has become a life question:  OWAID?

I have been blessed with a great many things in my life.  A loving family.  Healthy (mostly) relationships.  A good job.  A nice house.  A huge yard, increasingly filled with beautiful living things.  A tremendous amount of ability and talent.  And yet, here I sit, unfulfilled.  OWAID?  Oh, where am I going?  The brutal truth of it is this is not where I expected to be at 33, buckling beneath the weight of my pedigree and expectations.  I am not unhappy, but I know there's more to everything than this.  I can't have been given so much to accomplish so little.

Oh, what is the point?

I don't know.  As I said, I am not unhappy.  In fact, in many ways, I am happier and healthier than ever.  My life is good!  Perhaps, what I am experiencing is divine discomfort.  Maybe, just maybe, what I experience as OWAID, is God asking me OWAYD, nudging me forward to the next step.  If God were to speak in pop music lyrics, perhaps He'd be saying "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Great.  OWTHDIDN? 

  

Weed

If you're a gardener, you know the fight against weeds never ends.  They show up everywhere you don't want them.  They're impossible to eradicate.  They choke the life out of plants you're working to protect.  To put it bluntly, they are the enemy.

But, every now and then, I see them in a different light.  They are remarkable organisms, masters of innovation and proliferation, the ultimate survival experts.  For all the care and attention that goes into maintaining "good" plants (which in some instances, are simply weeds we like), weeds grow and thrive entirely on their own, sometimes in the face of repeated assaults on their existence.  They take their circumstances, such as they are, and make do.

The other day, as I walked out to my car, licking the wounds inflicted upon me by my 9 to 5, I saw this guy next to my truck.   Maybe it was the fading light,  maybe it was my frame of mind, but I found him incredibly beautiful.  As I knelt down to look at him, I heard no complaints, no lament for the lot he'd been given.  He was just growing where he'd been dropped, seemingly enjoying what little sunshine he could in the time he had.

I would like to be like him, to find room to grow in whatever crevice I am wedged in.  To bask in the sunshine and dare the world to rip me out, knowing full well it might take me up on my challenge.  I am increasingly surrounded by asphalt, but I am humbled that a weed can still show me what it takes to make it through this.  A little space, a little creativity and precious little time.  If I use what little I may feel I have, maybe I, too, can make someone stop in their tracks, take a closer look and have them think I'm beautiful.