May 2005 Archives

Today I went to the Dentist for a cleaning. I was scared. But when it was all over with - I had no reason to be frightened. No cavities. Yay for me. The End.

Why did Frist vote nay on the Bolton debate cloture when he really wanted to vote yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!

No...

Must...not...give...in --

can't be political again...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Ok -- I found it in this cnn story:

Frist voted with Democrats against cutting off debate in a parliamentary move that allows him to call for the vote to be reconsidered.

Senator Voinovich (R-Ohio) just gave an impassioned plea, choking back tears, to Senators on his side of the aisle not to nominate Bolton to be ambassador to the UN.

You may recall that Voinovich expressed his concerns on Bolton during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings, only to send the nomination to the Senate Floor for the Up and Down vote.

Voinovich voiced worry for the direction of this country, noting the costs in human life, as well as the continuing costs and financial burden of the wars we are fighting - and the plummeting opinions of our friends and allies around the world.

Having a spine and refusing to toe the party line - cheers to Voinovich.

Warning/Disclaimer: This is a lazy post, concerned more with getting this damn monkey off my back rather than details...

I think that quite possibly this has been the longest hiatus I've been on yet when it comes to the feeding of this blog creature. I must tell you -- however - that as with any hungry being - this blog was a whiny little bastard.

I couldn't sit down to the computer to knock off menial school tasks or question little curiousities of the world without hearing the plaintive wail begging me to drop a few morsels. There it was, sitting there, staring up at me with its blank forms -- and I could only pull my lips tight and shrug. The pressure was too much. I was stifling my outburst.

But here it is a couple of weeks later -- and I suppose I should finally go ahead and try to get it out of my system so that I can move on and get back into some sort of rhythm.

Two weeks ago -- grandma, aunt barb, mom and pops and I piled into the Ford Windstar and drove down to Spring Hill, Tennessee to celebrate my cousin Sean's earning a doctorate. Muchos personas that belong to the extended family were also present...and while there are several things that I COULD write about -- I'm lazy -- so I'm only going to concentrate on one aspect of the weekend...and besides -- For some reason, I don't remember much else.

What I want to relate are a few observations picked up while on a tour of the Saturn facility in Spring Hill. I won't rehash the entire tour -- nor will I give an extensive review of it -- as someone else, interestingly enough - someone involved in the Special Libraries Association - has already done that. So - some highlights:

1. There is a display in the visitor center with a shopping cart and a Saturn car door. If you push a button - the shopping cart rams into the "dent resistant" door. There is a sign nearby asking that the button only be pushed once. Unfortunately - I never saw the button - but I hear from Aunt Barb that the thrills were magnificent.

2. One warning: Do not for a moment joke about your name! At the start of the tour - a big burly man called us over and began asking, "OK, who's Patrick," and ripping off a sticker bearing "Patrick," moved on to, "OK, who's Michael?" When he made his way through the list, leaving only me to be called out, "OK, where's Kevin?" I responded: I guess I can be Kevin today..."

He was not amused. "What's your name?" He grumbled.
"Uhhhh. Kevin." I said sheepishly, looking for a pebble to kick.
He didn't belong in the visitors center.

3. It has now been determined that my seestore can indeed name her son-to-be "Aardvark." The family had been discussing the possibilities - as her husband's family has a tradition of the first born son being named with the initials A.J.

Seestore has expressed an interest in wanting to name him after something from nature - and since "Apple" is already taken - the most reasonable moniker she could come up with was "Arbor." We mocked and we mocked and we suggested, jokingly, Aardvark as an alternative.

Imagine the surprise of the ten or so of us when we arrived at the visitor's center of the Saturn tour and were told that our tour driver was named "Aartvark." While the speaking half of our tour guides went on about safety precautions, the Yezbicks all exchanged knowing glances -- until my mother interrupted with, "That's what my grandson is going to be named!"

Aartvark looked like he didn't know what hit him -- or was just plain incredulous. No matter. Seestore -- your child has been named. Aartvark would go on to explain that it was a nickname -- but I could read it plain as day on his ID card. So I says to him,

"I'm surprised they let you put your nicknames on your ID badges."
"Why's that?"
"Cause that guy over there got really upset when I made the suggestion that my name wasn't really Kevin."

4. While touring the factory grounds, being towed around by something akin to an airport luggage hauler -- the shuttle winds its way past several workers on the line. Passing them by, they often stop their tasks to raise a hand and smile in greeting. There is such a pattern to it all that one begins to lose sight of where the robotics end, and the workers begin - reminiscent of the animatronics of Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz pizza.

5. In the Q-N-A session afterwards -- I was happy to see other Yezbicks peppering the guides with questions. Barb asked perhaps the one question we were all really thinking,

"How do they feel about being forced to wave to all of us?"
"Oh they love the tours!" Cheryl insisted. "There are about 4 tours a day and the workers wave because they want to. No one is forced to wave."

Which led me to follow up with a question about safety. Having toured the Ford Rouge plant - I knew that Ford explicitly forbid the tourists from drawing attention to themselves by either waving or calling out to the workers. In light of this, I wanted to know,
"How much of a concern is safety?"
"Oh, safety is one of our top concerns at Saturn. Our workers are very important to us..."

To which I followed up with the rather morbid:
"So, when was the last time you guys had an accident on the line?"
"Uhhhh," Cheryl paused. "I don't have that information."

WHAT?!? Hmmm. Oh well.

6. Only later did it occur to me just how much of a threat we truly posed to those workers on that fateful day. While they may be used to 4 tours going through during their shift -- they must've been thinking during their break:

"Hey, did you notice anything weird about that last group that came through?"
"Yeah. Yeah there was definitely something odd about them."
"They all looked kinda, uhhh, I don't know...weird?"
"Yeah...Yeah I did notice that. Weird."

7. Then - on top of all that...(it has come to my attention, or it has been recalled for me, that not all involved are aware of this occurrence yet, and therefore this piece has been edited) congrats again...

8. There are some movies now sitting in my brother's yahoo mailbox -- waiting to be edited together in some shape or form -- that capture some sort of semblance of the weekend...

Peace Out Obligatory Family Post!!! I'm free of your bonds!!!!!!

Entrance to Comerica Park. Detroit, Michigan. "Roar!"

Went downtown today to volunteer for the 2005 All-Star Game...

Why are you looking at me like that?!?

Things have been rather quiet around here lately because things have gotten rather hectic in the head. Real life is screaming really loud and it can be difficult to sort through the piercing cries long enough to sit down and ramble out a few words, especially when real life has tasks and chores and concerns and other obstacles with rusty, corroded edges that skin your legs as you meander by.

Someone should really buff down those edges.

Things have been quiet around here lately because things have not been around here lately. These things are namely me. (I suppose I could argue that things haven't been around me lately, but can one be a moving centrifugal unit? Wouldn't that create a world of chaos where all other sentient beings thrown into this plenitude of existence are constantly pushing against each other's opposing space bubbles? I suppose...brings to mind monads...and the world is chaos...but I have managed to digress sans elegance.)

What I mean to say is that I recently spent the week between my last final and the beginning of grad school in the state of Georgia -- and the week escaped me. I couldn't stop it. The damn thing spun too fast. If ever I was centrifugal it was in relation to last week.

There were many happy moments of music, drinking, experiments in child psychology, and an incredible, phenemonal dinner of delirium that won't be soon forgotten.

Then, all of a sudden, I was eating a Jumbo Chicken Burrito, sipping Sangria and saying my goodbyes on 05.05.05.

Yet this time I was ready to go. Not because I don't love my friends. Not because I was anxious to get back. Rather it was because I didn't belong there.

This dawned on me darkly while driving somewhere between the eighth and tenth hour of the return trip. I've been trying to sort it out since -- sketching it out in my little black book in the hopes of turning it into some resplendent piece -- but it has managed to remain somewhat grizzled.

There's probably a reason for that -- and I should just get down what I've gathered so far -- and allow you to make your own inferences into why I might have arrived at this supposition.

There is a town in Georgia that lies on the map approximately halfway to Atlanta from Athens, and, thus, approximately halfway to Athens from Atlanta. That town is called, for some odd reason, Between. It is neither here, nor there. It just is. And perhaps that is where I should go for to do my living.

From what I can recall - the day of my awakening was brilliant. Nearly perfect. Blue skies, sunshine, not too hot, not cold at all. The kind of day that sickens people if they are forced to watch it pass from the interiors of some personal Bastille. A day of romantic romanticizing, jubilant jollies and dreamy daydreams - all of which can be accomplished without the presence of such a day, but prosper in an environment that fosters such fancy.

In plain speak, it was a perfect day for thinking.

As I drove along, crossing into the eighth hour of a planned 11 hour drive, I was getting plenty of thinking done. There were certainly distractions to be had. NPR's Day to Day was flowing from the stereo, other cars were around to be avoided, the Ohio landscape was stretching out to the horizon - but the day was just too bright to be ignored. Too damn cheery. The day was becoming an intrusion. It was the antithesis of my own feelings.

Wrapped in that sunshine, my arms extended onto the steering wheel, my feet pressing and releasing the gas and brake pedals with no real harmony, my body began to disappear - and I began to sink. I sank into myself, I suppose -- and the brightness of the world seemed to pour down into my blackness, two streams spilling into a great vacuous shell. From my vantage point I was able to observe the deluge from its two entry points merge and fall, spilling down from above, the light of the cars and land and sky and world segueing into dissolution. (I wonder now whether this is the same point at which another's intuition and/or empathy begins to fail.) Perhaps the most marvelous part of all was to watch as my own reactions rose into the light, manifesting themselves as something akin to flitting butterflies.

Watching those golden Lepidoptera rise to the mouths of the cave meant that I had become something of a third party to the whole process. It was the first feeling of comfort that I had felt in quite some time. I was alone -- with great distances not only between myself and others, but between myself and my self. There was none of that charge of expectation, that electrical energy that surrounds one when in familiar places. That energy was now a cradling wind of reality that billowed about in the cavernous depths - touching everything without selection.

Perhaps this distinct disconnect, this self-awareness is the aim of meditation. But the immediate difference is that in meditation one is attempting to control thought. Here I was simply observing - almost being struck by thoughts, much like the bugs meeting their timely ends on the grill of my Ford Focus.

And what thoughts come? What surfaces out into the world and eventually overtakes me - from either the week past or from conjectures of what is to come?

There is a recognition that I had lost a lot of what I had taken with me when I first moved. I had forgotten details about certain people - certain mannerisms had managed to recede into what they should be -- nothing worth remembering. Certain frailties in relationships -- or even relationships that had managed to mingle themselves among those ugly little beasties -grudges- had all scattered and run for cover once I had escaped their area of communion. Since my return they had on occasion come out to remind me of their existence -- but upon realizing that they were no longer relevant - simply shrank away in shame. Those are the details I had lost -- and with that realization - a particularly amazing member of the legions of golden lepidotera flitted by with this quote emblazoned upon its wings:

"The devil is in the details."

The quote brought me closer to the surface long enough to hear Ridley Scott on NPR declare that, "Someone once said God is in the details."

There were moments in the week when I was hit with those sudden remembrances of lost details: some which certainly should not have been forgotten - but losing many of them had made life just a bit sweeter. Could it have been selective memory? I can't say. But to be in a situation where they suddenly drift in and distort the picture of reality you are struggling with is disconcerting to say the least.

In the end, standing there at the bottom of that cave as my body drove for Michigan, I came to a realization that seemed rather timely:

I am neither here, nor am I yet there. I am in between. I am constantly between. Upon leaving Atlanta, it was to begin school, and upon beginning school it is to get a job, and constantly there will be something to set at either end -- so that I may remain between. Always between.

So...
That's that. I'm gonna be setting up another blog as a repository concerned with class notes and whatnot -- stuff not likely to be of interest to very many. I'll drop a link along the way once it's done. I can't be sure how much time I'll be spending here...Although I do have a couple humorous moments from the first day of class that would be better suited here. All business there -- all funny funny here.