Man vs. Bottle of Water

It was a cold December day and Yuri's bottle of water was a bottle of ice. He was elbowing his way through a crowd of people in an underpass, when he reached down without looking to grab the bottle for a sip. Through leather gloves, he waited for the cheap crinkle of the plastic, but the container was inert and solid.

Yuri paused and glanced down at his bottle of ice. He'd been walking outside for nearly an hour, and that was all it had taken to freeze the little guy. He thought of his arms, his torso, and his head -- all sheathed in canvas and nylon and cotton. He was warm, sweaty even in some places. The water in the bottle was frozen.

"Take that, bottle," he thought to himself.

All this ruminating on his drink filled Yuri with the urge to buy a snack. At the next underpass, he found an open kiosk window and asked the lady inside for a small Snickers bar. The childishness of the request caused the attendant to giggle, which made Yuri blush. The water in his bottle, however, was still cold and pale as ice. It was ice.

After gobbling down the candy in two bites, Yuri hurried on, still a ways from his destination. The temperature was starting to dip, and he realized that he was walking, by necessity, on the colder, shady side of the street. In no time, Yuri was cold, his sweat now pinching his skin in chilly discomfort. The bottle of water was frozen as ever.

Soon Yuri passed a garbage can, where he threw away the wrapper of his Snickers bar. He took a few steps onward, before halting and turning back to the trash. Again without looking, he reached down into his shoulder bag and grabbed the bottle of ice. Yuri then tossed it into the bin and walked on.

The Lost Thrill of Loving the Song

I'm not Alex Chilton's biggest fan.  "Thirteen" is one of my favorite songs, but I don't know much about his oeuvre, have no particular fondness for his albums.  And yet, hearing of his death yesterday brought back so many memories of being young and the endless hours I spent chasing down music.  More than the person himself, Alex Chilton represented a way of understanding, finding, and thinking about music that I now realize was a distinctive era, which I feel has now come to an end.  Today I am remembering being thirteen, and thanking Alex Chilton for being the white rabbit who led me through wonderland.  

There were three major phases of my adolescent music listening.  The first began when I was 7 years old.  When I couldn't fall asleep at night, which was often, I would stay awake listening to the radio, 92.5 Kiss FM in Toledo, Ohio.  My favorite songs were "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS and "Stand" by R.E.M.    In the next few years, I listened every week to Kasey's Top 40 and obsessively made mix tapes called "Pop Hits, vol. 3."  Like any collector, with the resources I had available I made these precious and fleeting songs mine.  To have access to them at any moment.  This era reached its apotheosis in 1991 when U2 released Achtung Baby, my Favorite-Album-of-All-Time.  It came to a crashing end in 1993 when U2 released Zooropa, and I was Very Disappointed.

I was 13, had an excessive amount of knowledge of the pop music of the previous 5 years, and I was sick of what I could access through commercial radio.  By then, I was listening to the weekly alternative radio shows from Detroit and the local college station, reading Rolling Stone at the library, and most importantly, checking out CDs at the library.  I rarely had money to spend on music, but the library gave me access to the back catalogs of the bands I heard on the radio.  When New Order released "Regret" and I fell in love with it, I followed their career backwards to Power, Corruption and Lies and back to Joy Division.  Same for the Cure, REM, and all the other "little" bands of the 80s who made it big in the 1990s.  I had discovered the musical world beyond commercial radio.  More than liking or disliking, I was addicted to the process of finding music.  It was slow and time-consuming, but the highs were so high!  You were so deeply invested in the music you found.  And it was this process that led me to Alex Chilton.

For the next couple of years as alternative rock became a popular category of music thanks to bands like Green Day and Weezer, and films like Singles and Reality Bites capitalized on the Seattle Sound, I discovered Paul Westerberg.  As I waited patiently through the week to hear "Love Untold" on the Sunday night alternative count down show, I found out through the library computer catalog that he had once been in a band called the Replacements.  I found my way to "Alex Chilton."  "I'm in Love.  What's that Song?"  It was so cool.  Alex Chilton was at least 4 degrees removed from mainstream music and it was thrilling to be in the know.

Everyone is writing about "Alex Chilton" today.  Its lyrics are the headlines of many articles, and deservedly.  It's a beautiful song, and I think it gets at what I am trying to write about.  It's about loving music, about the idolatry music inspires, of the feeling of belonging to the millions who scream for Alex Chilton.

Alex Chilton was the end of the road in more ways than one for me: the genealogical era of my adolescent listening came to an end fairly soon after I discovered him.  There were various reasons for that, and since this is a blog, I'll list some of them.  Partly it was because I got really tired of the alt music--I couldn't stand the big alt stars, I had another Big Disappointment with Radiohead's Kid A (I know everyone likes the album, but I didn't), the radio show I had been following ended, and the Modern Rock station in Toledo turned into Classic Rock.  The Beatles got really big, and I fell hard for the 1960s.  I was already listening to so much older music, but I cut off all contact with contemporary music, and I made the 50s, 60s, and 70s my sonic home.  I also found a friend to share these obsessions with.  Looking back, I see the major change was that I was coming to see access to music as unlimited.  Music was no longer a precious commodity requiring specialized knowledge, but music was increasingly available, a torrent, to be dipped into when desired.

When I got to college, we were the first class to have cable television and internet access in our dorm rooms.  I remember discovering you could listen to anything you wanted at any moment.  Many others have written about what the internet revolution has meant, and I just want to highlight the ready access to everything.  I became saturated with music, suggested by friends and random acquaintances, recommended by websites, and the only delay was how many other users I could download from at a given moment.

I had listened to so much music by my early twenties, that I forgot Alex Chilton, until I came across him again, in much the same manner as our first introduction.  A recommendation to listen to the Replacements, and I was again one of the millions.

The brown squirrel jumped over the lazy fox.

The brown squirrel jumped over the lazy fox.

"Hey, Mr. Fox," that squirrel turned around to say, "why the fuck you so lazy, huh?"

The fox was shocked by this. He opened his eyes and rolled over onto his back to face this unexpected accuser.

--Mr. Squirrel, man, why'd you wake me up, man?

--Foxy, this ain't no game, son. This the forrest. You ain't even realizin' that crazy animals be circling around everywhere.

Mr. Fox, truth be told, had not given this idea serious thought. He was only a few months old, and life had been pretty easy so far. There was a park nearby and humans could be counted on to regularly leave behind the most wonderful foods. As he forgot again about the threats circling around him, the squirrel addressed him again.

--Dammit, Fox. This is for serious. You can't be no lazy fox all your life. Motherfuckin' winter be coming. You ever been to the park in the snow, bitch?

Mr. Fox had never in his life seen snow, it was true.

--Fox, you need to wise up soon. Your weak ass can't just sleep while I'm fuckin' dancing above your head, fuckin' writing lyrics and dunkin' nuts. I'm a champion, but you're making this shit too easy.

With that, the little animal hopped up a tree and spiraled off into oblivion. The fox was still lying there on the ground, his head and neck awkwardly turned to the spot where the squirrel had just delivered his grave warning.

The Light Is On For You

"The light is ON [picture of a church with a star inside] for you."

This is what the billboard outside the tunnel read. Every morning, Steven looked up and noticed it. "The light is ON," he would repeat to himself. The advertisement was plain enough (cmon in, it's a church, and we'd like to help/proselytize), but what was the meaning of the emphasis? The light is ON.

Earlier in the week, his wife had asked him to leave the light on in the bathroom. As he pulled his hand back from the light-switch, he thought, "I will leave the light ON, not OFF." When he bought his morning coffee, the cashier offered him room for cream in his cup. "I don't want to put any cream IN," he'd answered. The cashier's response was quick, but Steven thought for a moment that she had winked at him. "Fill it UP all the way," she told her coworker.

Steven spent about four hours every weekday commuting. It was during these hours that the nagging details of an unexplained conspiracy teased him. "Now arriving AT...," he thought he heard the conductor say. The person sitting next to him called the office to say, "I'm going to be late TO work this morning."

Was it somehow connected to the church in the advertisement? Could it all be some kind of ecclesiastic campaign to alter the way people speak? Worse yet, was this divine intervention? Might God, should He exist, be speaking to Steven through the lips of others?

One day, he resolved to explore the matter and he called in sick to work, though he pretended to his wife that he had left for the office. "I'm off TO work," he said to her, studying her reaction out of the corner of his eye. He thought she raised an eyebrow, but when she answered "okay, sweetie," Steven couldn't be sure what her pause signified.

When he finally walked through the doorway of Holy Oak Church of the People, he found a small table and on it a stack of blue pamphlets. "The light is ON for you," they read on the cover. Steven stopped to pick one up, when a man in a robe entered the lobby.

"Are you the electrician?" he asked.

"I beg your pardon?" Steven said.

"Are you the electrician? I sent for you hours ago. We have service tomorrow and need the power fixed."

"No power?" Steven asked. The priest shook his head. "No lights even?" he asked again.

"We have candles, if need be," said the priest, gesturing to a cabinet in the corner. "So can you help us OUT?" he added.

Steven felt the sky outside darken and the room, it seemed to him, was suddenly smaller than before. The priest was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

An Old Man's Reflection

Henry would sometimes stare at his reflection until he didn't recognize the face. The game reminded him of another he'd played as a boy - one that involved standing in a darkened bathroom and repeating the name of some ghost, with the rumored expectation that a monster would appear and snatch out your eyeballs.

'But whose eyeballs are these?' Henry would say to the mirror. He would stop and look at himself in the glass window of a shop, watching his figure do the same and wait there staring at him. 'She'll get your eyes,' he joked in his head, 'but only yours and never mine.'

Henry was on his way to visit his son today. He went into the shop he'd stopped in front of, and he bought a cup of coffee, which he finished "for here," having no need "to go" for another thirty minutes. He drank his morning brew and tested himself on trivia he'd remembered as a boy. "The weight of a rabbit's brain," "The year George Washington died," and so on. He'd forgotten everything.

Henry finished the drink with a shrug and went off to meet his boy. A few minutes later, he was standing before what appeared to be a much younger version of himself. The younger man was tired, but his smile had more energy than Henry could muster on his best day. Henry experienced a sense of powerlessness, like an old woman holding her thin hand out to block the sun. What a smile!

"Son, you're a sharp looking one," he said in a meek voice, praying secretly that no ghost should plot against either of them.

Reversed Cigarettes

Two haggard dudes sat on a park bench. Their shirts were stained with dirt and what looked to be blood and, if you ventured near enough, you'd be unsurprised to find that these boys were stinky, too.

Sergei, the fella on the left, turned to his friend Mark and punched him hard in his right arm. "HaHA! Didn't see that coming!" Sergei attempted to yell, but he was interrupted midway into "didn't," when Mark landed his own fist in Sergei's kidney.

The two sat a little longer is silence, rubbing their sore spots, before laughing together loudly, at which time Sergei pulled a flask of liquor out from his pocket and announced his intention to toast.

"You sonofbitch," he began, and then concluded without another word, having decided instead to laugh a great deal more. "Yes!" Mark agreed, and each of the two took a long, healthy swig from the little metallic bottle.

"You know," Sergei began again, looking around at the park's many trees, his eyes finally resting on blue sky. "Yes!" Mark screamed again, initiating another gurgling round of booze.

Two hours later, Sergei and Mark were still at their park bench, now joined by a third man. Sergei looked away from his companions, having grown uneasy after the arrival of Bob the Homeless Man Who Lived in the Park.

Mark, on the other hand, was deeply involved in a heated conversation with Bob. "Can I have a smoke?" Bob had been asking the two men. "Why not!" Mark concluded, handing the drifter a clean, stiff cigarette.

"You know, I used to smoke these all the time," Bob said, turning the object over in his hands. "But then they reversed them," he added, holding the filter away from his face.

"They reversed them?" Mark asked with great concern.

"Yep," Bob said sadly.

Sergei shot Mark a nervous look, but Mark was feeling nothing but unhappy sympathy for his friend Bob.

Within a minute, though, Bob flipped the cigarette again and said with a smile, "But I think they changed them back."

Marked

The NPR building in Washington, DC, stands at the corner of a busy street. It looks like a giant wedge landed in the road by some uninventive creator, who perhaps only ever looked at it from a birds-eye. From the ground, the whole thing is plain and dreary-looking, save the very front, where the colorful NPR logo hangs proudly.

Five minutes to the south is the even larger behemoth Union Station. Within its walls is a secular hell populated by the miserable people of our nation's capital. What the bureaucratic gods seem to have miscalculated, however, is the fact that most people assembling at Union during the worst hours, the commute hours, are not DC locals at all (the bad guys) -- but suburbanites and Baltimorians from the north.

And then again, perhaps those were precisely the people who deserved to suffer. Certainly, anyone tainted by the poison of DC has it coming.

A few minutes from Union Station, you'll find K-Street, that home for lobbyists that is, in fact, far bigger than a single street. I saw a headline recently proclaiming that over four-hundred thousand people are employed by private organizations in Washington. The federal government employs another two-hundred thousand in the area. That's more than half a million people whom any sensible judge would sentence and subject to whatever small tortures available.

One needs only to visit the restroom in order to understand both how and why the people of Washington suffer. Whether you're sharing the urinals with an unwashed homeless man or a spiffy think tanker, you can feel that you're in an unhappy place. Your teeth will break from the smell. Somewhere in the coughing and the squirting, the indifferent momentum of the city's life cycle creeps into you.

And you feel yourself a marked man.