Weddings, Funerals, and Being 48

I just had this thought...not exactly sure of its provenance...that being 48 is a lot different from being 40....

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Forget about the obvious...that 48 is so much closer to 50 than 40...although that, of course, is not nothing. It's something. It's a big something.

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No, what I was thinking was, that when I was 40 it seemed entirely plausible that I was about halfway through my life, barring of course any accidents or diseases. Live until 80, that seems pretty reasonable. I've known a lot of people in their 80's. I've known a lot of people in their 80's that still get around pretty damn well and are all there mentally. It's not far-fetched.

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But being 48...if I'm halfway through my life that means I would live to be 96. I've known very few people that reach 96. I just read an obituary in the New York Times about a famous feminist biblical scholar who passed away. She was 92. And I thought, "Wow, what a nice long life."

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I'm getting to that age now where a bunch of the formative people in my life are getting up there. My dad is 77 and his siblings, all blessedly still alive, range from 73-82. I'm close to all of them and can't imagine not going to any of their funerals. My mom was the youngest of 11 and over half of her siblings are still alive. I'm not as close to that side of the family, but still...they're my aunts and uncles. Also, due to the age gap, a lot of my first cousins on that side are already tired an into their 60's and 70's themselves.

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You know when you were that age, between 20ish and 30ish, where your siblings and cousins and many of your friends and maybe even yourself got married? You sort of had your wedding protocol, especially if you were close to them. Buy a gift, bachelor party, rehearsal, wedding, reception, dance, hangover. It was almost muscle memory.  And you stayed up drinking far past the end of the dance and wondered what it was about old age that made them retire earlier. For the most part, I have been blessedly spared thus far, but I know some time in the near future, and it's probably not too far off, I'll come to have a funeral protocol.

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Just a day or two ago, for some unknown reason, just one of those things that pops into your head, I was remembering one wedding I went to, it must have been the fall of 2007. I can pinpoint it because we had just found out Sonia was pregnant with Orlando and Niko came to the wedding with us. I would've just turned 30. The guy getting married I knew from the Pizza Ranch in high school but the wedding was in Ames, and I don't think I was psychologically ready for all the old friends I was going to see. All these people from Sheldon--some of them I hadn't seen in 10 years--were there and I ended up getting quite drunk and having ever-longer conversations, which was fun but also (I realized in sobriety) very unfair to Sonia, who only knew about 4 people and wasn't drinking because of her pregnancy, and dealing with a very active one-year-old up way past his bedtime. But I was at that stage of drunkenness where everything was beyond dandy and couldn't quite get how someone COULDN'T be having fun. Also, while Sonia wasn't around, a woman from my high school days basically propositioned me, and while I wasn't at all interested, it was extremely flattering, increasing that high, that high I wasn't anticipating, that feeling that all that mattered was the moment....

....and I went to the bar, because by then the free kegs of Busch Light had run out, and a woman I'll call Janet in the interests of anonymity, who also was from Sheldon and worked at the Pizza Ranch, came up to me. "Melvin!" she said, "I've been trying to talk to you all night! How the hell are you?" Now, two things need to be made clear here for context: one, that Janet was an extremely good-looking woman who never minimized her sexuality, and was not minimizing it that night either; and two, that Janet and I were strictly platonic friends: despite her attractiveness, I basically considered almost a guy friend, because...well, I don't know why, that's just the way it was. But we must have stood at the bar for damn near half-an-hour catching up before Sonia finally came up and asked for help with Niko. I introduced them to each other and as we walked away I could tell Sonia was upset but I couldn't fathom why, I was just catching up with an old friend....

...and then it was later, much later, or maybe not, and I was by myself, and they were playing that song they play at all the weddings, or at least they did back then, the "Cha Cha Slide", and I NEVER participate in that, so I was just watching, and I kind of focused, that way you focus when you're drunk, on an old friend I'll call Jeff. Jeff went to college, flunked out, and ended up back in Sheldon. He was a groomsman that night but was down to his shirt and suspenders, and I remember the joy he displayed as he did the Cha Cha Slide, because I (very condescendingly) felt sorry for him because he was back in Sheldon, but he was having so much fun and I was very, very happy with life. Sonia approached again and said it was time to leave and she was not happy, not at all. And I didn't find this out until later (when she resumed talking to me) that apparently Janet had been RIGHT IN FRONT OF Jeff and she thought I had been watching JANET with a huge, dumb smile on my face. 

Needless to say, I couldn't convince her otherwise.

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Yeah. So. Weddings, right?

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Part of the problem with that game of "being halfway through life", of course, is simple math: for every year you age, you have to add two when you double. So double of 40 is 80, but double of 48 is 96, 16 more years even though I've only aged 8. 

So what if I add 8 on to 80 instead. 88. Does that sound reasonable? You know, it does, I've know quite a few people who were 88.

So, 88 it is.

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I used to fear death. I mean, I'm sure I still do to an extent, I don't claim to be that unbelievably zen, but when I was 19, I literally started having PANIC ATTACKS because of death and its unpredictability. After several months of trying to just "toughen up", I went to the doctor and he gave me Prozac. It cleared up my head enough to think about death more rationally and come to terms with its inevitability. I got better.

But about ten years later, the whole depression thing swung back around, when I had a little baby and I "should have" been in complete bliss. I think this time around, I wasn't afraid of death but afraid of life. Was I doing it right? What if do it all wrong? This time I didn't mess around and went straight to the meds. I needed something stronger than Prozac, but my head cleared enough to realize that all God wanted out of me was to do my best. I didn't have to be scared to live.

I don't know what's worse, being afraid to die or afraid to live. I suspect they ain't all that different, once you get right down to it.

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Permeating this whole entry is, of course, a wrestling with mortality combined with a nostalgia for youth that I think almost all of us deal with. 

But I guess you'll have to take my word for it when I say that, for the most part, I'm pretty damn comfortable being 48. I mean, yes, I wish I could take the weight off easier, I wish it was as easy to be active as it was 20 years ago, I wish that I had more energy after work. But those are pretty damn small prices to pay to still be alive and well at 48.

Not to mention that I've gotten to see my baby boys grow into young men, I've gotten to spend over twenty years married to a wonderful woman, I've had the great pleasure of working with literally hundreds of fine young men and women over a quarter of a century of teaching. 

To think I could have 20 or 30 or 40 more years of this...I'll take it....

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Also, "toughen up" and "should/shouldn't" are phrases people would generally be better off avoiding. 

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Yes, there will be funerals in the future, and I'll probably develop some sort of protocol. But there will also be weddings, kids and nieces and nephews and all the other assorted young folk. I'll buy a gift, go to the ceremony and reception, and leave after the dance starts--that's for the young people. And, God willing, I'll DEFINITELY skip the hangover.

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Around and around we go....

I'm 48. Mazel Tov, motherfuckers.

--Mark 

He's got tickets to a Broadway show

It is hot outside, another early August day, late-teacher-summer day, where my mind wages battle between getting ready for the school year (or at least getting other things done so I don't have to do those things during the school year), and just taking it easy, enjoying the last few days off, getting wrapped up in a book or in a video game or a board game or just chatting away on my language app. In other words, things I can get done from the couch.

If you know me at all, you know which side wins more often....

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Anyway, it's fucking hot outside, not crazy hot, but enough for a heat advisory, what with the smoke coming down from Canada and all. And I was up early this morning. So I couch up, full on, blanket, glass of water. I open my computer--would it kill me to at least check my school email? Work on a syllabus? Check class lists?

I turn on the TV, and it opens to Netflix, Niko's profile. Seinfeld, Season 8, Episode 4, "The Package". 

Niko's 900 miles away.

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We dropped him off at the airport this morning. He disappeared past security around 6:00 A.M., heading back into his other world, behind the hedges of Seton Hall University, RA training, phsyics classes, honor programs, and philosophy club, weekends in Manhattan. He's going to a literal Broadway show tomorrow night. The Outsiders.

He enjoyed his summer but he's ready to go back, and that's good. Last year he only came back at Christmas and I suspect it will be the same this year. We told him he's welcome back for a 4-day weekend, we'll pay the airfare, but he's happy out there. And believe me, I'll take that a thousand times over a homesick kid, not sure how to navigate a new world (I was that kid 29 years ago--I loved the University of Iowa, but couldn't always reconcile my Sheldon self with my Iowa City self (although I dare postulate, that there is more cultural distance between Sheldon and Iowa City than Iowa City and Orange, New Jersey)).

Of course we hugged this morning but neither of us cried. I think our eyes moistened a bit last year but we didn't cry then either, although the hug was stronger and longer. Two, three days ago, I was battling a bit more emotionally, not just with Niko, but other stuff, too, and I thought I might bust out bawling this morning. But alas, it was not to be: I don't hold tears back, but I don't force them either, and after we hugged the boy (man?) entered security and his other world, his New world, the one Without Us.

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And here in Iowa City his Netflix screen continues to flicker in the periphery. Me and him and Sonia watched a couple of episodes with him last night, we knew he was leaving, and what else can you really do once the suitcases are all packed and all you have to do is drive to the airport? His mom just got home and wants to call him, but right now I'm content just writing this piece. Content, not the right world. I was driven to write this. It even erased once, halfway through, and yet the words poured out onto the screen as they haven't in a long time. Good sign. 

And it's 4:10 in the afternoon, 5:10 in New Jersey, and I'm SO glad he's found a place where he's thriving, and it's still hot outside, and I'm still the same person and so is he, but he's also freaking going to a literal Broadway show tomorrow night, no big deal, just something you do on the weekend when you live in Orange, New Jersey, and I can access his Netflix profile whenever I want, right now as a matter of fact, but every now and then, maybe a couple of days ago I felt this, with him enjoying this Other World so much, is it only a matter of time until Dad is just another Outsider in his World?

Travel Blog: España, Days 1 & 2* **

*These blog entries will be a description from my point of view and only my point of view. The students who were traveling with me may have different viewpoints or ways of remembering. 

**This first entry will cover two days for reasons that will be clear from the writing. Most entries will discuss one day at a time.

It's a cool day at the peak of the afternoon here in Iowa City on June 30, cool for late June anyway, and I'm in my garage still trying to sort through the physical and mental disorder that a full school year, an inopportune cold during finals, and a whirlwind trip to Spain has left me. 

Well, let's be honest. This disorder here in this garage is almost completely caused by my tendency to not want to clean up after myself, to leave all my gaming components where I last actually used them and not organized and not dispose of things that need to be disposed of, such as this dusty black fan that has not worked in over a year. That sort of thing. 

But the mental stuff, that's real. That is what I'm really trying to sort through now, to put it down on paper (well, on a screen) before I forget it all. After nearly two years of planning, Spain went by so fast I feel like I couldn't capture it between my fingers. 

So now it's time, 3 weeks after it all started. Exactly three weeks ago right now, I was in the passenger seat of a van being driven by John Martinez, a father of a student who would be traveling with me, on our way to O'Hare airport....

Monday, June 9, 2025

The meeting time was 1:30 PM in the West Liberty High School parking lot. I was there early, early enough to do a little reading and drink some coffee, and at 1:15 I rolled my suitcase outside. One student and his parents had arrived and I went out towards them. We made small talk, just the four of us, for a few minutes, but strangely it felt like somehow we had gotten the day wrong before a second car showed up.

And then the sensation was gone, as the other students arrived, one on top of the other, and before I knew it, all nine of us were there, saying good-bye to our loved ones and loading our suitcases into the vehicles that would take us to Chicago. Nobody seemed to know who was riding with who, so I made an executive decision, the first of many I would have to make over the next nine days: Boys with John, girls with Katie. 

We made sure we had our passports, loaded into the vehicles, and BAM! My eight students and myself were driving east to meet our plane to Barcelona.  

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Four hours later, after the obligatory stop at the DeKalb Oasis, we were at O'Hare. We parked and took out our luggage. As John and Katie stayed behind, it was very quickly becoming real. I was alone with eight students--two seniors, two sophomores, four freshmen, four boys, four girls--as we maneuvered our way through one of the world's busiest airports. 

We got to the United desk and I asked the kids to stay together with all our luggage. As always, nothing was quick in an American airport; they kept wanting me to do everything via automatic kiosk. I patiently kept explaining my situation until someone finally realized that an adult traveling alone with eight minors may need special attention. I collected the passports and then each of us was called one at a time to check in and check our luggage.

"Let's keep moving," I said. "Once we're through security and at our gate, we can set up a little headquarters and you guys can do what you need to do."

Security was fun, as it always is. But we made it through and walked who knows how far to gate C10. It was about 6:45 and our flight wasn't until 9:30; we had arrived early; C10 was still full with people leaving for Frankfurt in the next hour, so we moved across the way to C11 where there was more space. 

International travel is a lot of "hurry-up and wait". We waited. I encouraged the kids to eat something good because Barcelona was a long ways in our future and a good meal even further. I myself downed two personal pan pizzas and then, sensing some boredom from the students, went and bought a couple decks of cards and taught some of the kids how to play gin rummy.

Eventually, the plane to Frankfurt left and we made our way across to C10. The kids started to get silly as the hour advanced and we continued to wait. 

Soon enough, though, it was time to board. We were not seated together, but spread out throughout the rear of the plane (otherwise known as the cheap seats). Once I made sure everyone was sitting, I settled into my own seat. "Settled" is not exactly the right word: I despise being in an airplane and as the plane made its way towards the runway, my stomach somersaulted with increasing frequency. As we powered to take off, a strange mix of sensations hit me: the nerves that always attack me at takeoff, the excitement that we were FINALLY in the air towards Spain, and a quiet satisfaction: once we arrived in Barcelona, I would have adult help in the form of our tour director. And we had just successfully pulled off Step 1 in what I hoped would be an incredible trip for all.

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Between time zone changes and flying eastward, I'm not exactly sure where we were when the date changed; my best guess is somewhere over Ontario or Quebec. Wherever we were, I was asleep.

When I awoke we were most of the way across the Atlantic, just in time to eat a surprisingly good pizza roll with a glass of orange juice. I was in the middle of the plane so there was no way I could see out the window, but I could watch the screen in front of me as we approached Spain:

We landed in Barcelona right on time: 1:30 P.M. local time. We did everything in reverse from O'Hare: There was a line at Customs, but nothing excessive; we were basically waved right through. As we waited for our luggage, I collected the passports from the kids and put them in my red canvas pouch I had purchased exclusively for this purpose. It's a little nerve-wracking being responsible for 8 passports other than your own. 

This done, we exited and I looked for a sign that said "Explorica". I couldn't find one; I knew there was supossed to be one, but, as we say in Spanish, "ni modo". I escorted the kids down to where it said shuttles. Still nothing. Luckily, our tour director had texted us via WhatsApp a few days before and I was able to give him a call. He was in downtown Barcelona but game me the number of the guide picking us up. After a bit of confusion we located each other. Turns out, there was another group, from Texas, that had arrived on the same flight and he had been with them.

We boarded the bus to our hotel. The world is small: the guide was from originally from Venezuela, so we had much to chat about as we headed to the hotel, clearly out in a suburb; later I found out it was called Molins de Rei (King's Mills) (Spanish-speaking readers may astutely notice that is not Spanish; many people are surprised that in Barcelona the principal language is not Spanish, but Catalan, and the people of Barcelona are very proud of this. Most signs are written in huge letters in Catalan, medium letters in English, and smaller letters in Spanish. I knew this, but it was interesting to see first-hand). 

We entered the hotel, put our luggage in a storeroom, and then boarded the bus to head into Barcelona proper. It was about 3:00 PM, and we were SO EXCITED!!

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As with all big cities, Barcelona only gradually revealed itself to it. We went from small road to freeway back onto smaller and ever-more crowded roads, our final destination being the Plaza Catalunha.

We also met our tour director, Javier, who would soon become a dear friend to myself and the kids:

We also met the other groups on our tour: 6 other schools in total. We had the second biggest group (but I was the only one on solo supervision 😜😜😜). Some of the other groups had been in Barcelona since nine in the morning and they were exhausted. It was hot and humid as the kid roamed the plaza and played with the pigeons. That's about all we had time to do, because dinner was set for five o' clock. Javier guided us through some streets until we arrived at our restaurant.

I don't think it was until we sat down that I fully realized it was real, because we ate authentic Spanish PAELLA!! It was all suddenly so real: the bus ride in, the fountains, the plaza, and now PAELLA!!

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By the time we finished dinner, it was time to head back to the hotel, get checked in, and settle in; it had been a long two days for all 51 of us (students and adults combined). I got an unexpected surprise at the hotel: I thought I would be sharing with another adult, but I was given an individual room! This would do wonders for my mental health as the trip surged along. 

As I climbed up the steps to my room, I saw a bunch of Domino's delivery motorbikes outside my window. There was also an Aldi just two blocks from our hotel. "Soft imperialism alive and well," I thought. 

After we had all settled in, I walked with the kids over to Aldi so they could buy snacks, health care items, or whatever else they might need. Then, finally, I was in my room. I unzipped my big suitcase and began to arrange things, trying to keep in mind we would only be here for about 36 more hours. 

Then, the most sacred part of my day: the shower and donning of pajamas. I opened up my journal and began to write. It was finally time to relax....until my phone started pinging and the knocks at my door.

"Mr. Plum, can we order Domino's?"  "Daniela can do it right from her phone!"  "We don't even need to leave the hotel!"

Finally I gave in. "Order your pizza, meet the guy in the lobby, eat, and go back to your rooms."  What with it being the first night, I wasn't going to leave them alone, so I waited with them in the lobby...and we waited...and we waited. "Daniela, are you sure you put the order in correctly?"  "I think so...."

After an hour of this, I was done. "Daniela, you and one other person walk over to Domino's with me. Everyone else wait here." When we got to Domino's I explained our situation to the woman who appeared to be in charge. "We didn't receive any order," she said, "but we're not very busy. Give me 15 minutes and I'll make your pizza."

It was approaching midnight and we finally had our pizza. We carried it triumphantly into the lobby of the hotel. The kids, more excited than hungry, opened up the box...and the pizza had not even been cut! I don't even remember what the kids did next, but somehow they found a way to divide the pizza into eight pieces. It was gone in under five minutes.

"Okay, guys, upstairs. I need to SLEEP," I said, and they were blissfully obedient. 

Back in my room, I lay down with my journal again, but I was just too tired. It was after midnight and I would have to be up at seven thirty for breakfast; we would leave at nine for our day in Barcelona. "Crazy kids," I wrote down. "We flew across the Atlantic so they could eat Domino's pizza at midnight."

But as I pushed the journal aside and closed my eyes, I was smiling. These were the memories these kids would have--Domino's pizza at midnight in the lobby of their Barcelona hotel. "This," I realized, "is why I arranged this trip. I got paella, they got Domino's."

"And after all," was my last thought before falling asleep, "after two years of anticipation, we are in BARCELONA FREAKING SPAIN. HELL YEAH!!!"

Spain and the Summer Solstice

It is 6:45 in the morning on the day of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year everywhere in the northern hemisphere, and I find myself at the Press Coffee on the northeast side of Iowa City. I have a french press for two of Peruvian (love you, honey) coffee in front of me and some banana bread to go along with it. I have a couple of books and a magazine to read. And I'm happy, I really am. But I still wish I was in Spain. 

Infectious Spain.

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They told me, years ago, 15 years ago, that Spain was dangerous. And boy, was it. I went by myself to the city of Salamanca, on a scholarship, to "deepen my understanding of the Spanish language". We had 4 hours of classes every morning and then various activities in the afternoon and evening. But the sun sets late in Spain (today, for example, the sun sets in Iowa City at 8:43, but in Salamanca, it's 9:58) and the dangerous hours came after that. Everybody in the group came from somewhere else and we got to know each other real well in those 4 daily hours of class. One time, we went out for some drinks to what was supposed to be the "hot" bar in Salamanca and we were the only people there. I asked the bartender what was going on and he said, "It's still really early, dude". It was 1:30 a.m.

Fate brought me back to that bar about 4 hours later, and it was packed to the gills. Yeah, Spain was dangerous. Night-owl Spain.

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I'm a different man now than I was then, at least in some ways. And the mission was different this time: I was going to Spain not as a student, but a teacher. I took eight students with me. And I wouldn't be two weeks in one city, but eight days frantically trying to see as much as we could in eight days, in seven (seven!) different cities, not to mention have a day at the beach. The goal wasn't for me to deepen anything about myself, but to provide the students with as many eye-opening (eye-popping?) opportunities as possible. And instead of classes, we had lots (LOTS!) of time in a bus and miles of heat-drenched tours to get to know one another.

It was the first time I had done something like this, and I was a bit nervous. But the kids were PHENOMENAL. I'm pretty sure they had a great time.  I know I did, despite the constant bus-hopping, changes of lodging, WAY too many tours (for my taste) with guides talking to us through earpieces, and a suitcase that I overpacked despite all warnings to the contrary. We arrived in Barcelona a week ago Tuesday afternoon, the 10th, and flew back there from southern Spain a week later, because our flight home was Wednesday. Some of the kids had had enough, and were ready to get home to their parents (they're still kids, after all). But others felt like me: we had gotten a taste, we were just getting into the rhythm, and we were being forced to go home now. NOW? 

That night, it wasn't me who stayed up late (by Spain standards, anyway), but several of my students. Not ready to say goodbye to their new friends. Not ready to say goodbye to Spain. They, too, had found out that Spain was dangerous. 

Addictive Spain.

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I got back to my house about 31 hours ago, and last night, for the first time since before leaving on the trip, got some really solid, long-lasting sleep. But in Spain it's 2:20 in the afternoon, time for free time and lunch and our own, and my body and brain are still there.

Today I'll drink as much coffee as I need to to push through the day, and I'll try to stay up late enough for the solstice sunset at 8:43. It will be 3:43 a.m. in Spain at that time, and I'm sure that will pass through my mind as I prepare for sleep.

There's heat forecast for this weekend, as well, Close to a hundred degrees. Spain style heat. I'm sure Spain will pass through my mind as I deal with that.

All that, I suppose, is the sign of a successful travel experience. And for that, I am so grateful. The solstice, winter and summer, are occasions for introspection, the extremes of the heavens prodding us to examine our own extremes and offer a chance to moderate them. I have plenty of things in my life that could stand to be moderated. 

But these last 12 days, this God-given whirlwind of an experience with eight marvelous kids? It was extreme, all right. But I wouldn't moderate if for anything in the world. If it were up to me, I'd've kept going.

Beautiful, dangerous Spain. 

Album review: Alice in Chains, "Dirt"

On September 29, 1992, as I was acclimating to high school, the album Dirt by Alice in Chains (AIC) hit the shelves of music stores in the United States. I wasn't aware of it at the time, although by using Wikipedia I can see I had probably heard two if its singles by that time ("Would?" and "Them Bones"; more on that later). I also probably knew the band from the 1990 single "Man in the Box". 

All rock fans would get to know the band, however, due to the success of Dirt and the band's following work on Jar of Flies and the eponymous Alice in Chains, as well as their appearance on MTV Unplugged in 1996 (a show  which I appreciate more with each passing year). That, and a couple of other small shows, were the last live performances the band would ever do*, as lead singer Layne Staley's heroin addiction began to manifest itself in an extreme case of agoraphobia (Staley would eventually die in his condo in 2002). 

Alice in Chains would become one of the Big Four of the so-called Grunge movement in music, along with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. All four of these bands resisted the label, saying they were just playing music; AIC and Soundgarden, in particular, had released major-label albums before the "movement" even began. AIC never thought of themselves as "grunge", just heavy metal. Nevertheless, it's doubtful they would have become as successful without the "movement", for one simple reason: they were doing something absolutely no one else had ever done before, nor would ever do since.

*In the mid-2000's, AIC would reunite, tour and release new music with new band member William DuVall. 

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One has only to go to Youtube and watch AIC's MTV Unplugged perfomance to understand two things: one, that this band, supposedly heavy metal, understood and used harmony as well as any a capella group, albeit quite differently; and two, that Layne Staley wasn't long for this world. Indeed, one of the comments says "You can see this man dying from addiction in real time." 

If you compare that Staley to earlier live shows, the difference is striking. The early videos show a man dominating the stage and his crowd, his indistinguishable voice carrying throughout the arenas, harmonizing perfectly with Jerry Cantrell's voice and lead guitar. The man on MTV Unplugged has dyed his hair pink and is wearing shades because his addiction has damaged his ablility to deal with light. 

Nevertheless, the show is mesmerizing. The performance stage is candlelit and Staley had enough left, indeed probably just, to make the lyrics work, perhaps even better than when his voice was healthy. Him and Cantrell trade off on lead vocals while the entire band would back from time to time; Sean Kinney, the drummer, often uses brushes instead of sticks.

Back in December, when I was deciding what the next album I would buy would be, I watched this performance once again, and, reflecting that only had in my collection Jar of Flies, decided to give Dirt, their best known and most highly acclaimed album, a shot. I listened once and got only halfway through a second time before putting it away. I usually experience some light seasonal depression around the holidays and certainly didn't need to be listening to lyrics such as this one, from the title track:

I have never felt such frustration

Or lack of self-control

I want you to kill me

And take me under

I want to live no more

One who doesn’t care

Is one who shouldn’t be

I try to hide myself from what is wrong for me

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Eventually, as it generally does, the seasonal fog began to lift, and when we had some days off in February, I decided to give the album a second chance. I have probably listened now to the album on and off now about twenty times, mainly because I just can't quite get a handle on it. It's certainly a great album, though it will never be one of my favorites. It's a concept album without presenting itself as such: if you simply took out one of the tracks (more on this later) the concept is quite simple: drugs and death, not necessarily in that order.

From a musical point of view, it's easy to see why this album made an impact, As I said before, no other band had done what AIC did. What I mean by that is, although the band has its roots in heavy metal, the band's distinguishing feature is not heavy drums or guitar licks (although these do have a part): it's the dual lead vocals shared by Staley and Cantrell. Cantrell's voice is the straight one; there never was before, nor will there be, a voice like Staley's. When they join forces, the sound is simply magical. 

Furthermore, the backing music certainly wasn't like that of the heavy metal of the 80's: more subtle and almost acoustic at times, using light backing vocals at unexpected times (especially on "Rooster" and "Down in a Hole"), it's easy to see why mainstream audiences eschewed the "heavy metal" label and lumped them in with "grunge": this band certainly wasn't Megadeth or Black Sabbath.

Finally, one can't discount the lyrics, some of the most honest and frightening I've ever heard, and lyrics that would have never gone mainstream before the "grunge" movement. A sampling:

From "Down in a Hole":

Down in a hole and I don’t know if I can be saved

See my heart, I decorate it like a grave

Oh, you don’t understand who they thought I was supposed to be

Look at me now, a man who won’t let himself be

From "Junkhead":

Seems so sick to the hypocrite norm

Running their boring drills

But we are an elite race of our own

The stoners, junkies, and freaks

Are you happy? I am, man

Content and fully aware, yeah

Money, status, nothing to me

‘Cause your life’s empty and bare, yeah

From "Sickman":

I can feel the wheel but I can’t steer

When my thoughts become my biggest fear

Aaaah, what’s the difference, I’ll die

Aaaah, in this sick world of mine

You're probably getting the idea....

***********

In my opinion, the album is bookended by two of it's three best songs, with the third right in the middle:

--- "Them Bones" kicks off the album with a scream from Staley and a heavy guitar, followed by Staley and Cantrell harmonizing right off the bat. "Them Bones", about the inevitable nature of death, is the most traditional heavy metal sound on the album, along with "Dam That River", but again, the harmonization of Cantrell and Staley somehow make it sound atypical. 

---Halfway through the album, the song "Rooster" appears. This is the song I referred to earlier as the one that really doesn't meet the concept idea of the album. Cantrell wrote the song about his dad, nicknamed Rooster, and his experience as a Vietnam veteran experiencing what we know now to be PTSD symptoms. The song is over six minutes long and Staley's voice give maximum emotional impact into the mind of a Vietnam vet:

Walkin’ tall, machine-gun man

They spit on me in my homeland

Gloria sent me pictures of my boy

Got my pills ‘gainst mosquito death

My buddy’s breathing his dying breath

Oh God please, won’t you help me make it through?

Yeah, they’ve come to snuff the Rooster

Yeah, here comes the Rooster

You know he ain’t gonna die

*********

Dirt is many things, but it is not metaphorical. It is an unflinchingly honest, raw portrait of the addict/musician in freefall, who only manages to deal with their fear of death by dismissing their fear of the substance. One hopes for a lyric that would indicate that he wants to stop, but one hopes in vain: very little of the album's lyrics are about any sense of hope of getting better, or indeed, any real desire to do so. 

Dirt will not be filed amongst my favorite albums: it is too dark for that, for 47-year-old me anyway, and I find it hard to sympathize with an addict who cares not what they do to others, nor refuses to even try and find a way out; I've seen too many addicts come (happily) out on the other side for that.

And yet, Dirt fascinates me. While I may not sympathize, I admire: the lyrics of Dirt don't glamorize, they simply describe the world as Cantrell and Staley see it, and very few people in this world ever get truly honest with themselves, let alone on a record that would go on to sell over five million copies. And as I have mentioned before, AIC and Dirt do crazy things musically, things that seem genre-breaking even 33 years later: a heavy-metal group whose principal calling card was vocal harmonization, whose drummer used brushes.

Dirt was not an album that could only have been made in the 90's (indeed, the material is timeless), but it most definitely is an album that only could have sold five million copies by being released when it was. Five years earlier, and people would have wanted to hear mainly about sex and money; five years later, and people didn't want to be depressed by music anymore. 

And perhaps it is that, at its core, that ties me to Dirt. I turned 15 in 1992; "grunge", whatever it was, was an integral backdrop of my formative years. The calling card of "grunge" was that we didn't have to pretend to be okay; that materialism sucked; that the most important thing was authenticity; that if you only had bad things to say, to say them anyway. I can't think of a better example of that then Dirt. 

**********

The last track, and in my opinion AIC's best, is "Would?". The song opens with an intense, medium-paced bass line that paints the darkness of the song and its theme matter for us. The song is about a heroin user's inability to stop using despite the fact that it is no longer pleasurable, and despite that it is ruining his life; he is both imploring the listener to understand while also understanding that the listener can't: addiction can't be explained rationally. The song--and the album--ends by posing a hypothetical: If I would try to get better, could you accept me and my sickness?:

Into the flood again

Same old trip it was back then

So I made a big mistake

Try to see it once my way

Am I wrong? Have I run too far to get home?

Am I gone, and left you here alone?

Am I wrong? Have I run too far to get home?

Am I gone, and left you here alone?

If I would, could you?

The listener doesn't have the chance to answer. One is left wondering if Staley would ever let them. 

There's a sun in Iowa City, too

 Friday, October 25, 2024   10:46 A.M.

Waking up to the alarm you set 12 1/2 hours ago, right before you had your milk and cookies. No wake-ups, not even to go to the bathroom. You get up, use the bathroom and turn on the coffee you prepared the night before, and snuggle back into bed. You'd note the time, but it doesn't really matter, now, does it? It's the sleep that matters, twelve hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep (even if there were a few very-very-strange dreams).

*****

A half-hour later you're up again. You pour yourself a cup of coffee. You slip on a long-sleeve tee 'cause the cabin is chilly. And then--you open the blinds. Sunlight fills the small space, the sunlight of New Boston, Illinois, tiny town of 600 people with no bridge connecting it to your native Iowa, where you've come to lift up your angels and chip away at your demons. 

But let's let the coffee cool off first. You take the six steps separating the kitchen counter from the bed and snuggle back in under the covers. And thus begins your retreat weekend in New Boston, Illinois. 

*****

Sunday, October 27, 2024   3:18 P.M. 

And so we're down to it--the final stretch, the big hurrah, the last gasp. The final three hours or so of retreat weekend, a retreat I've looked forward to for over four months; this 4 nights and 3 days to myself, to stop the sensory assault on my brain, to ever-so-briefly step away from my world of pleasing others, my students and co-workers and bosses and especially my family, so many places to be when all I wanted to do was be: be who I was created to be, be who I was formed to be based on ALL of the experiences I've been blessed to have over 47 years of gracious life; be who I picture myself becoming, based on those things I anticipate myself doing; be who I am; no, be who I is.

*****

Without even turning my head, I can sense the light of the sun twinkling into the corner of my eye; its rays reflect off my pale white thighs. About 2 1/2 hours ago, that sun reached its peak in today's skies: I took a picture just after walking past New Boston's baseball field. Now, that sun is in descent, which means the day is on its way to closure. The closure of the day means the closure of this retreat. 

For the last three days, I have assiduously followed the sun. I have (tried) to wake when it wakes, peak when it peaks, peacefully close my retreat work when it settles below the horizon. If the sun were a human, I would have been its stalker; and even now, from my cabin, from which I cannot see the river but in which the sun has dropped below the upper portion of the window frame, I can see in my mind's eye how it shines off the water, so great has my attention to the sun been.

And alas, when it drops below the horizon this last time, two and a half hours from now, I'll write in this journal one last time for this retreat, say a prayer, take a shower, and read something trashy to relax. When the sun is done, I'm done, too. 

*****

On only one of these three days did I actually rise as the sun rose. I am, on working days, by force, a morning person; but by nature I am not; and of course, to see the sun rise, one has to rise before it; and since I can't see the sunrise from this cabin, I also had to move. 

My alarm rang early. I am a slow riser by nature, and I knew I would need the tie to get up, make coffee, get dressed, and walk the three blocks down to the river.

It was cold, under forty degrees, so I dressed in layers. It was a comfortable walk, though, and I arrived down at the end of the boat ramp just as the sky was starting to lighten. I knew that, from my position, I wouldn't actually see the sun break the horizon: it would be a few minutes later before it broke the the bluff of trees in the distance (God bless compasses built into cell phones). I tried to empty myself of thought and focus on the sight of the inky river water slowly growing blue, the lap of the water on the rocks around me, the early morning birds going about their business. 

Before long, I realized that I had calculated my angle just a bit wrong. Just a few feet, really, but what a difference those few feet can make! Not long after my phone notified me of the "official" sunrise, it was clear that the bulk of the light was emanating not from beyond the bluffs, but beyond a very tall tree just to their north, still, at this autumn date, fairly full of leaves. My wait was to be considerably longer than I had anticipated.

I began to grow cold in the shade. I drank coffee to stave off the cold, and felt my belly getting upset. I found it harder to concentrate on the lap of the river on the rocks and its now-blue water. When I turned around to look up at New Boston, I grew resentful that its rooves were bathing in sunlight, and I was not. Still, I hung on.

It must have been between 8:00 and 8:05 when I saw it. It was just a speck between the leaves of my nemesis the tree, but it was astonishingly bright, and my gut told me it was the sun. As I glanced back every thirty seconds or so, the speck was brighter and bigger, and my suspicions were confirmed. Soon, the star was reaching the outer branches, and I could not sustain my eyes in that direction.

But that was not good enough. On this morning, I needed to see the ENTIRE sun hanging in the sky, and feel its rays touch my body. Every minute, it inched further and further up and to the right. By using my left hand to cover the sun itself, I concentrated on the upper end of the tree's branches. I was waiting for total clearance. Finally, at 8:20, there was, for certain, daylight (the word had never been so adequate) between the tree and our star.

I took a couple pictures. I took a long look over the water. I said a prayer. Then I walked back to my cabin.

*****

4:12 P.M.

Fifty-four minutes and a bathroom break have passed since I began writing. I plan to leave the cabin in under ninety minutes for my last stroll along the river, my last Mississippi sunset for--months? years? my lifetime?

I'm not sure why I wrote that whole spiel about the sunrise. It's not very interesting, not even to me. I'm not sure if I just want to remember, or if maybe some part of me thinks there's an insight in there, or if my pen just lost control. Probably, even if the latter is the case, it meant something to me, even if I'm not sure right now what that is.

The town around me is ignorant of how little time remains for me. Ignorant of me, to be more precise, the way I wanted it. Kids play and yell, and Sunday gatherings continue their merriment. Basketballs bounce off gravel and backboards. 

I will leave this cabin in about 70 minutes. I will enjoy the river and sunset one last time. I'll come back here, journal, say a prayer, blow out a candle, take a shower, read a trashy book and say good-bye to the day. The retreat will be over.

Tomorrow, I'll go back to Iowa City. But my absence shall not matter--the sun will once again fight its way through those tree limbs, this time a couple minutes later, this time a couple ticks to the south. No, I take that back: the sun never fights. At all. The Earth will just gradually give way to it, whether it's clear, cloudy, rainy, snowy, cold, hot. The sun will shine for however long it's supposed to shine, as much as the sky lets it, and then it will descend, despite my absence, below the horizon, to await the next day.

We're the same. We arise, we shine, we descend. We do it daily, and we do it over a lifetime. 

May I be like the sun and not fight it. 

How Jim and Pam made "The Office" the best romantic sit-com in my lifetime - Introduction

 Yes, that's a bold statement. Yes, I realize many will not agree with me. But I believe it to be true.

I am quite nearly forty-six years old--45 days away, to be exact. (I get to have my first colonoscopy!). My sit-com life starts with Cheers, one of two major challenges to my thesis. Sam and Diane. Well-done comedy, but also, many times the focus of the comedy, with their "opposites attract" dynamic. Sam, a former big-league pitcher, and Diane, a forever-grad-student idealist. Not exactly relatable characters. Their relationship was nearly always front and center, often animated by their sex life. Sex was a stand-in for love. It was a well-done relationship--a great show--but the romance was not as relatable as that of The Office.

And of course, the other one. The elephant in the room. Ross and Rachel. Friends. Another great show, at least the first twoish seasons (after that, I'd argue it's up for debate). Characters a bit more relatable than Sam and Diane. But it's still a bit cliché, particularly the whole "Ross has loved Rachel since high school" bit, and again, the show makes "coupledom" synonymous with "sex". Who can forget their first time...in the Museum of Natural History, the juice box leaking, everyone seeing them? It was great TV....

But the Jim and Pam story is almost anti-great TV. Very millennial. It depends on the viewer catching subtle, yet important cues.

And now, without further ado, I will watch the first three seasons of the The Office, elaborating on what makes the romance story great, occasionally contrasting with other shows to sharpen my point. 

Yes, I know this is a banal activity. But...what the hell?