Derailed

You should have seen my to-do list this morning. It was epic. It rhymed in spots and it was a monument to ambition. But then there was this house...

I know, you're tired of it. I'm tired of it. Derailed. Drop everything, jump and run, feed the Hooligan a hot dog in the car. He gets to sit and eat a giant hot dog and read Calvin and Hobbes instead of cleaning up his junk. Best day ever for him. That's OK, though. It's all OK.

It has to be.

I suppose that I could whine and complain a bit. Wah. Things didn't go as I'd planned today. Wah. I have the luxury of a flexible schedule. Wah. My husband wants to buy me a house. Wah.

Seriously. Starving kids. Not just in Africa, in my city. I'll keep my guffing on the down low.

So, my Love Train got derailed. There were checks to write and paperwork to gather and cuticles to bite and Hooligans to feed and one thing led to another and I was just now standing in my kitchen making Muddy Buddies feeling like perhaps there was something else I should be doing. Is there really ever anything better to do than make Muddy Buddies? I think not. Not in the grand scheme of things.

But then this song popped into my head:

And I was transported to Michigan Avenue in Chicago about ten years ago. We'd gone on a weekender with some dear friends of ours and we were, of course, shopping. This song burst out of one of the store fronts and Alain started it.

I know it was him because it was so surprising.

He was usually so proper and French and intellectual and he suddenly clapped his hands, raised them over his head and started to dance down Michigan Avenue... people all over the world... and then Edward scooped me up and we followed ... join hands... arms aloft, beckoning the Chief Lou, who executed just about the finest Water Sprinkler you've ever seen on a Saturday afternoon... start a Love Train.

We danced in our motley parade of four amid tourists, amid shoppers, amid families.
Just a few steps of exuberance down the street. Love train.

Thirty seconds on a sunny afternoon amid a weekend away with friends, amid the chaos of a time full of stress at work and school, amid a whole lifetime of memories.
Thirty seconds of pure abandon that will likely stick with me forever.

We all moved on from there. We finished our shopping, we went back home.
They moved to California and eventually split up.
We moved on to law school and children and on and on.

All of us are always moving on. That's the nature of things, isn't it?
I could whine and complain about that, too, I suppose.
But the idea of standing in my home, getting ready to move on again, making Muddy Buddies and suddenly feeling that train again.
This idea sustains me sometimes.

The idea that these golden moments come and go, like the flash of sunlight on a river.
The river keeps moving, but it carries the sunlight with it. I don't want to be a stick in the mud of this river. So I'll move with the currents, see where it takes me, bask in the sunlight when it comes.
 I'll get swept into a brief dance and then go back to work.
It's all part of the same thing.

This is my Love Train.
This moving, this chugging forward.
 The dancing, the holding hands.
The dropping everything and running.
The hot dog in the car and the Calvin and Hobbes.
The making of Muddy Buddies and the signing of large checks.
The memories and the future.

Let it ride, let it ride, let it ride, let it ride.

Chocolate: A True Story

Once upon a time in the land that social consciousness forgot, there was an aqua blue Chevy Beretta. It carried them on long drives fueled by conversation and Venti coffees and mom's gas card. They talked about a future when there would be things like vintage homes tastefully renovated, a coffee shop with cats, and books and books and books. They were a complete unit and they and their turquoise V-6 bullet of dreams could go anywhere.

They stopped at a RiteAid and like the map with the big, black X, it was full of treasure. Beautifully packaged boxes of sweetness, two days past their prime and waiting for them there. The red cellophane, like lipstick, promised such soft and delicious delights within. Unable to resist the scarlet sirens that called like emergency, they bought the lot of them: piles of hearts and plastic flowers, I love you's in fancy script; shining with possibility and promise. The store had overstocked on love and they were the beneficiaries, purchasing this neglect at thirty cents on the dollar.

They bundled back into the car, breathless and laughing; unbelieving of their good fortune. Best to make a quick getaway before someone noticed the error and recalled such bounty. He drove while she ripped at the stubborn plastic with the shaking, impatient fingers of a lover. And finally opening that heart, she delved and reveled - the intoxicating smell, the neat and tidy rows of the beautiful morsels each in their own frilly paper skirts. Where to begin? Greedily, at random she grabbed the first with a reckless abandon and shoved it in his mouth. She watched as he chewed, waiting for the relief of satiation to soften his features.

"What was that?!" he choked, and spat it out his open window. "I think it was filled with dish soap!" Horrified, she grabbed her own and took a bite. "Blech! This one is cough syrup!" The garish, gooey center stared back at her with its wicked teeth-mark grin. It mocked her with its indecency and frightened, she threw it out the window. "Let's try another one," she said and went back in for more.

Photo credit

They sped the afternoon away through hill country and subdivisions alike, partaking of this strange sacrament. A bite, a chew, a judgement, a toss. Their fingers and mouths were sticky with disappointment and chewy, artificially flavored bites of love. Their heads were spinning with cloying sweetness and false promises. Yet still they tasted and licked and sniffed and hoped. This one will be better, they thought. This will be the one that changes the rest of what went before. Sick with trial and error, they worked their way through boxes and boxes of misbegotten gain. The red became leering and cheap, no longer an enticement, but a tiresome bore, motions to go through to inevitably reach that empty discouragement of dashed hopes.

Finally they parked, ill and afraid that taste would never go away. They sat amid the destruction of wrappers and the heart boxes all opened now, their insides prodded and shoved aside, revolting, distasteful. They sat and they laughed. They laughed until the tears came and they laughed some more. The tears for the miles of road with jettisoned promise that lay behind them. The bites and bites and bites of all those little loves, tasted and discarded, now melting in the gravel on the side of the road, forgotten or collected by birds. They laughed because now it was just them and the wreckage of a failed experiment - all those paper candy box hearts. They laughed and they promised never to believe that lie again. They laughed and she kissed him, tasting of coffee and all that had gone before.

Self-Evident

So I was thinking about the US Declaration of Independence the other day. I would like to say this turn of thought was because I am the sort of bespectacled intellectual who sits in her garret and strokes her goatee in her lint-free black turtleneck sweater and ponders the important documents of civilization. While I am bespectacled and I do have that one odd whisker, this was not the case. The monkeys checked a DVD of old Schoolhouse Rock! songs out from the library and there was rather a catchy tune to the Declaration of Independence one. Be that as it may, it got me to thinking.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Call me a nerd, but that bit of writing still gives me chills every time I read it. Was there ever a more ingeniously crafted rhetorical sentence? Probably, but this has at least got to be in the top ten. For starters, do not let the tights deceive you. These men had some big brass ones to sit down and write this little love note to the King of England. "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Thomas Jefferson sat down and licked his quill and said "Look buddy, we got together and there are some pretty obvious things you're missing here." Self-evident. Duh. And then they went on to outline a few of these no-brainers and started a war. A war that started a country. I'm a citizen of that country, as are many of my readers (To my non-American readers: I promise this won't be some sort of flag-waving manifesto. Just keep reading.) In spite of the many shortcomings of this country and the particularly embarrassing way that we behave when abroad and the really obnoxious xenophobic things that we utter publicly, it's a pretty cool country. It's kind of like your mother. It drives you crazy, but you love it anyway. But I promised no flag waving. (Oh! Have I got a flag story for you! I'll have to remember to tell that sometime.)

What I really want to talk about is that last little bit. The "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" bit. I know, I know, they originally wrote "pursuit of Wealth" and then changed it, but let's assume they changed it because they realized that wealth does not equal happiness. So let's stick with Happiness. Are these truths self evident? Is it obvious that all men are created equal? Is it such a no-brainer that our unalienable rights are to these things first and foremost? Do we live as if they are? (These can be answered by my non-American friends, too.)

According to our wig wearing granddaddies, you have the irrefutable right to Life. Do you choose life? Do we go out there and exercise that right every day? That right to live and live fully and as we believe we ought to? Or do we loiter around the edges of it wondering when it will come and give us a wink and a nod? Is it obvious that we've got this thing called Life going on?

How about Liberty? Liberty is tricky, isn't it? We certainly believe that we are free, right? No one is my master. I am free to be me. Just like the magazines and the television and my parents and my peers and that stray nagging voice in the back of my skull tell me I am. I am at Liberty to say what I want, but you over there! You shut up because you're wrong. Or what about just the quiet acquiescence of our Liberty to someone else because we step silently aside and look the other way when someone needs defending? Liberty is tricky and her head is very spiky, so I wouldn't want to give birth to her, but she does have that poem that she mutters when anyone stops to listen: "Give me your tired, your poor/ your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Just as long as those huddled masses don't irritate me or want to breathe my air or don't try to take my money or live on my block or want to marry my kids or something. Yeah, Liberty is a bit thorny. Moving on.

This is my favorite. The pursuit of Happiness. If I walked up to you and snatched your purse, you would pursue me. You would run like the dickens in my direction and try your hardest to catch up with me. You wouldn't worry if you happened to stub your toe along the way, or what other people were thinking about you while you ran, heaving, panting, arms and knees akimbo. Honestly, if you were actually chasing me, you would catch me in no time flat. I'm not a very fast runner and I'm quite clumsy so I would probably run into a lamppost or something and knock myself out. But have you been in a high-speed chase with Happiness lately? I'm no expert on such things, but I have found that when I hang out on the corner like a hooker and wait for the Happiness car to drive by and ask me "Hey, you wanna have a good time?" it doesn't really pan out for me and it takes forever and my feet start to hurt from the stilettos and my pleather skirt chafes and it seems like all the other girls are getting theirs and I'm left standing between a Honey Bucket and a hard place. But, but, buuuuut... when I don my running shoes and head off in hot pursuit, Happiness is just out for a morning jog and I smash right into it and knock it over and roll all around in it before either of us know what hit us. [Side note: If ever I start an ironic throwback indie rock band, I will name it the Dreadful Metaphors. Don't know why I just thought of that.] But like I say, I'm no expert. But you are. You know what makes you happy. You know who has your purse. Are you running after it?

In conclusion, (Ha ha! I just love that. It's like the end of a speech in a grade school oration contest.) these fellows with their slaves and their shiny buckles on their shoes and their giant signatures (way to make those calligraphy lessons work for you, John Hancock!) didn't have it all figured out yet. Over two hundred years later we're still figuring it out, but they sat down at their feathered old-timey laptops and said "Look here. These things oughtta be a law. They should be obvious and they should be guaranteed." Were they at the time? No. Are they now? They should be.

What are your self-evident truths?