What can I write that will for me subdue this urge to cram everything in my mind into words to create an amalgamation of text to describe this overwhelming . . . feeling? I suppose I could start by describing the most perfect worse day of my life so far. Really, it was perfect in that this was the kind of day that hollywood execs write scripts about where famous stars play leading ladies and there is this huge triumph over insurmountable obstacles . . . with exception to that whole triumph part, for me there was no triumph, no win, just despair.
So picture this:
It’s Monday morning. I woke up. Lying in bed wondering why I made myself get out of the comfort of down and cotton. The sounds of Public Enemy are in the background . . . with “Burn Hollywood Burn” sounding out from my alarm clock. It’s kind of the perfect song to wake up to in the morning.
I roll over to look at the clock. For some reason it reads an hour later than it should. Maybe I subconsciously set the alarm to go off later than normal so I’d purposefully be late to work. I still haven’t actually figured whether it was a slip of my subconscious or faulty manufacturing, but either way I was late and when people are late they rush. They pull themselves out of the state they are in and try to make up all the time lost by moving quicker than normal.
Because of this I walked out of the house forgetting my wallet, scarf, gloves, and the sack lunch I had prepared the previous night. I sped down the highway to the sounds of the album “thickfreakness” by The Black Keys . . . you know, a little roadway blues. I pulled into the parking lot and then proceeded to run to the campus building to both fight off the cold and make myself feel like I was going to be less late than I already was.
I arrived to my office with red nose and blossoming cheeks. I soon realized after arriving that I had forgotten to grab my satchel and rucksack containing all of my work files out of the backseat of the car in my rush to make to the office. I run back to my car. I search my pockets, searching for my car keys. I realize I forgot them in my office. I run back to my office. I search my desk, bags, and all the drawers for the missing keys. They aren’t there. I realize I must have dropped them in route somewhere. I backtrack. Twice. Then, finally out of desperation I run back to my car and peer inside the window. I see my keys dangling from the ignition. I try to open the door. Locked. I try to open every other door. Locked.
Fuck.
I walk miserably back to the office. I hear the dulcet tones of Elf Power’s “Come Lie Down With Me (and sing my song)” playing from somewhere in background, possibly the adjoining office. I phone John. He has my spare. He doesn’t answer and continues to not answer for the next 6 hours. I do what work I can without my files. I mill around. Get that bitter chiding from my superiors for being late. Finally, John answers. He brings my spare and says he’ll meet me in the parking lot.
I run out to meet him. I see him in the lot walking around as if searching. I wonder what he’s searching for. Then I realize what it is. My car. It’s not there. It seems in my rushing pace I had inadvertently parked zone that my permit did not authorize. It had been towed. I crawl into John’s car to . . . relax. I made all the necessary phone calls. From the speakers I could make out “Put Us Back Together” by Headlights chiming out. It was soothing. Of course, once I got to the tow yard I realized that in the rush of the morning I had forgot my wallet with my license and registration in it . . . so I had to bum a ride all the way home to retrieve it before I could pick my vehicle up.
After the fiasco was completed, I reunited with my auto in the tow yard, paid the overpriced fine and charges, and left feeling quite joyous. I mean was else could go wrong? However, joy must cloud the senses somehow, because halfway through the drive home I heard the flashing whirring of a police car pulling me over. I was speeding, apparently. I began to search for my wallet. I couldn’t find my wallet.
Fuck.
Here, I don't exactly know what happened . . . apparently somewhere between me obtaining car car at the tow yard and me thanking John for his helpful services, I misplaced my ID. I would later find out that it was left, somehow, crammed between one of John's car seats. So not only did I get a ticket for speeding but also one for driving without a license. My drive home was spent listening to the Starlight Mint’s album “The Dream that Stuff was Made From” and thinking about how I could pinch my savings to cover all the money that had to pay “the man” today.
Then in no time I was home. I got out of the car. I grab my bags and paperwork. Then, I slipped. I don’t even think it was icy but as I walked up the steps to the doorways my footing became misplaced and I tumbled down about ten stairs and rolled into bushes in front of the steps. I felt . . . pain . . . from the fall naturally but also because the bush I had rolled into had thorns that were quite large . . . and they were poking into my skin. I crawl out of the bush. I saw red. I felt red. I wondered where my glasses were.
At this point I heard John walking from his car over to me. He gasped. I would soon know why. Looking into the mirror, I gasped. My nose had taken a beating. It was bleeding slowly and bent in some abnormal position . . . quite hideous really. At that I had myself drove to the hospital. While in the car, I was still wondering where my glasses where because without them I’m practically blind and I heard The Violent Femmes coming from the speakers. It seemed far off.
At the hospital I found out that my nose was broken. The doctors proceeded to pop it back in place and bandage it. Thankfully I couldn’t see any of this happening . . . oh, and thankfully they gave large doses of pain meds to “deal’ with this. I couldn’t really think about anything other than the fact of how this was really going to eat up my savings.
Then in no time it seemed everything was fixed, so with bandages and pain meds in tow I arrived home, again, finally. I needed a nap . . . a long sleep. Thankfully, I didn’t have office hours the next day, so I wasn’t technically required to come in . . . and my classes . . . oh yeah, I’d be skipping them. I made a large cup of strong hot tea and put on whatever was easiest to find. It turned out to be Citay. It was kind of fitting. Then I fell asleep.
I woke up this morning to the sound of the phone ringing. I managed to find it. It was John. He called to say that when he left the house that morning he found my glasses near the steps. He’d left them on the table. I said my thanks, popped in my contacts, and made my way downstairs to pick them up.
On the table, there they were, snapped in half and lenses smashed to bits. Kind of fitting, heh? I wallowed in this a little bit. I suppose one say that this day, yesterday, wasn't that bad. I mean, at least no one died . . . of course, I've dealt with the loss of death before . . . and I've got to say, it just doesn't sting the same way a getting hit with three different police tickets, a towing charge, hospital bill, a broken nose, and a smashed pair of glasses coming at you all in the same day.
Alas! I feel like a posting wizard today . . . I just keep writing and writing and writing. Obviously, from the title, you can see this post is about Tortoise, of whom I hold a special place in my heart. I first listened to Tortoise . . . well, many years ago . . . like seven years ago, actually. I was still an undergraduate at Northwestern University . . . and my then roommate and friend, Will, and I had embarked on a trip over the winter holidays, because neither of us had anywhere to go for the break . . . and for some reason we decidedly put our minds and money towards a road trip from Chicago all the way to Arizona (don’t ask me why . . . maybe for the warmth).
The whole way driving there in my old Volvo Wagon, through the snow and ice and sleet, we listened to Tortoise. It just fit that mood, you know, for going on an adventure with just a road map and an automobile to get you wherever on the map you wanted. Personally, I had only started listening to them because of their association with The Sea and Cake, which at the time I listened to nonstop . . . but after those couple days of driving through the night . . . day . . . and then night again listening to Tortoise, I became addicted. They just have that sort of nuance associated with them, which makes them easy to travel to, whether it is by car, plane, train, or bus. You can just put on the headphones, pull out your copy of The Western Lands by Burroughs . . . and well, actually understand what is happening in the book (I did this once while riding the Amtrak to D.C . . . I don’t whether it was Tortoise bringing me clarity or if it was just a good day).
However, despite the clarity Tortoise gives me when traveling . . . somehow for other situations, it just doesn't work. Like to prep myself to write these passages, I put some on, you know, as a refresher to get the sounds back into my head . . . it didn't work. Maybe my mood was completely off . . . or something, but I was not feeling it . . . at all. I had to wipe the slate off and switch over to something completely different, Grandaddy, to get back into the writing feel.
Anyways . . . I suspect on the flight to France in May I'll have a sufficient amount of Tortoise on the playlist, to get by. For now I think I will give pause and stop writing for the day. I'm going to put on another sweater I think, while I wait for the fire to warm up the house . . . and I'm probably . . . no wait, I am going to go russle up something in the kitchen for a dessert, I'm feeling kind of peckish, like I want to try everything sweet and fruity all at once. I think I have some frozen strawberries and blackberries leftover from the summer . . . maybe I'll whip something up with them. Yum.
I feel a little old. I just ate “dinner” at five in the afternoon, which for some reason as has signaled to me the sign of old age . . . early dinners, long naps, waking up at five in the morning to grab the newspaper. At least I still feel sprite. I have to give my defense tomorrow to be accepted into the “grant money program” for my doctoral research . . . otherwise, no
Anyways the dinner was fabulous! As mentioned earlier I started out making a winter melon soup . . . I thought that that would be filling enough and end that gnawing hankering I was having for Chinese cuisine. I ended supporting that with some stir-fry . . . which turned out quite nicely.
Onto the purpose of this article, I pulled out the Swell Maps a couple weeks ago. They’re one of those British rock bands from the 1970’s . . . and fittingly enough were influenced by other groups like Can (see prior post). They’re basically you’re fitting punk rock group . . . that you bop along to when you’re in need of one of those uplifting kind of beats that’s not too intense . . . but at the same time has enough push to get everything moving. When I was still in high school I would, pop the Swell Maps on after those painful days in the public school education system . . . now I pop the Swell Maps on after those painful days . . . at work, when I’m expected to complete piles of paper and readings and research and well, everything else.
My brother was a huge fan . . . he’s into that kind of stuff though . . . you know, the whole punk mainstream thing. Which in being, seems kind of . . . against his . . . docile, mellow nature, but I suppose he surprise the most of us with his quirky kind of tastes. Hmmm . . . I suppose I should write some more . . . describe more, but I haven’t really any more words in me.
Hmmm, come to think of it . . . I could use a little bit of The Swell Maps right now, to loosen up a little bit. I’ll post more later, when I feel a bit less strained.
As promised I’m going to start posting all these writings that I’ve been storing up for the past months. Here goes:
I’m going to start out with the music of my childhood, Can. Not going to lie, Tago Mago was the first album I ever bought . . . I remember being thirteen and my brother giving me fifteen dollars to go buy myself something nice. I came back with Can. Not going to lie I don’t remember much else about the incident, other than that I spent the rest of the summer with the music on loud, running the player from a series of extension cords going through the window of my bedroom, the roses in the garden outside, into the lawn, and past it into the fallow field that lie
beyond our house. There I could run, dig, pretend, burn the skin on my shoulder and back while still listening to those beated, semi-psychedelic tones.
I guess the entire push of this article is that Can is the music of summer, the summer of children, when running and playing is all one can ever think about. It’s reminiscent of the smell of sunscreen applied in liberal amounts because everyday you have to deal with parents ranting about how “Skin Cancer Kills!” and reminds a person of skinned knees, fresh strawberries and cut watermelon. I suppose this musing, about how Can makes me feel and the setting in which it should be listened, might be only due my close tie to it and narrow mindedness to branch out my listening to other situations.
Whichever, I think I’m going to slice up some winter melon . . . I’m making a winter melon soup for dinner, since it has gotten so chilly here as of late. Thankfully, I pulled my winter clothing out of storage in the closet last weekend . . . or I would have had to shuffle groggily this morning to find my gloves and coat (not that they helped . . . I forgot to go out and start the car earlier than normal, so I had to sit in it, freezing while it warmed up).
