The Perfect Song Blog

Mansfield University shuts down for 10 days over the holidays.  For many years I looked forward to this mini vacation as a time to get a lot of my projects done.

After many frustrating years, I now know that there is no free time leading up to Christmas.  Leigh is stressed out with cleaning the house, Christmas shopping, decorating, packing and wrapping, in addition to her business.

So I’m called in to help cook, play with the dogs, and wrap presents, a job I absolutely hate.  In my hands, scissors turn crooked and cut the paper in jagged lines.  I never cut it the right size.  The presents I wrap always look like they’ve been slept on by an overweight insomniac.

Christmas day is a physical and emotional rush. The post-Christmas recuperation time has lengthened into about three days.  I kid you not, I was up and around after surgery faster that I felt half alive after Christmas 2007.

One of the presents for Leigh was curtains for our living room which she’s needed for two years.   This year I gave her a note saying I’d buy them but she had to pick them out  Kim, our daughter was here.  Kim had to leave a few days after Christmas.

It worked.

What I hadn’t thought about was the unholy hassle of assembling rods and putting up the hangers.  I did one set the first night and found that the holes already in the wall  were not right for the new hangers.  I took everything apart, moved it over an inch and drilled a new hole.

There was, of course, no stud there.  I measured and re-measured,  screwed in the new hanger and found my level was no longer working correctly.

“I’ll just have eyeball it,” Leigh said.  I hate it when she eyeballs.  “Okay, just tap the bottom a litttttle to the left.  Nope!  No!  Too much.  Back just a tich.  No!  That was  more than a tich!

“What in the Hell’s name is a ‘tich’?”

“You know what a tich is.”

Obviously I don’t know if I just moved it more than a tich!”

“Don’t make such a big deal of things.  Just tap it –a tich.”  She did that just to anger me.  It worked.

I was now sweating and wanted a drink, something with significant  dose of alcohol in it.

“Ah! Ah! Close.   Now put it back to the right a tich.”

I found myself angry that the term tich was getting on my nerves.  I tapped it.  She stood and stared, studying it.  Time dragged on.

“Did your body freeze up?” I asked.  “Are you breathing?  Communicate, please!

“Over just a freckle of a hair,” she finally said.

I curse the carpenter who first came up with this non-existent universal measurement.  I curse all carpenters who keep it alive.  And, I realized, I was in a general, all-encompassing cursing mode.

I touched the hanger.

“It didn’t move,” she said.

I touched it harder, the old freckle-of-a-hair-touch.”

She nodded.  “Perfect.”

When shared projects like this are over, there’s a feeling of cautious relief.  Slowly, we speak to each other to make sure neither one was offended  too much.  She happily began hanging the first curtain.  I fixed a drink and went downstairs to watch The Family Guy.

The slate colored clouds lie like a rumpled blanket as the misty rain melts the snow. Everything is a texture of various shades of gray.
I don’t mind. I’m in the Jeep with three dogs headed to the transfer station to unload my garbage and recyclable cans and bottles.
We pass a hawk sitting on a post staring over the barren cornfield. He looks like he’s waiting for a 12 noon mouse rush. I park by the garbage bins where I contribute to an American landfill yet another week’s worth of trash, most of it made in China.
My horse-faced man who traveled the world to give advice to third world countries about his company sits in the trailer selling bags that we have to buy to put our garbage in.
“Kind of a gray day,” I say, knowing about a hundred people have already said the same thing.
He nods. “Yes it is. But it least it’s not snow.”
“True. I can’t believe Christmas is only three days away.”
He nods. He wears a baseball cap and has big, even white teeth. He’s in his 70s and smokes even though he’s had two pacemakers. “My wife passed away on this day three years ago,” he says quietly. “So Christmas don’t mean a whole lot to me anymore.”
I suppose anyone else would have said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” Instead I asked: “How did she die?
He nodded. “We were havin’ breakfast. We have a little enclosed patio where we would go out and have breakfast and watch the birds. She loved birds. We had birdhouses, you know, scattered around. We were eating breakfast when she put her hand up to her chest and said something hurt bad. She fell off her chair. . . and that was all she wrote. . . . She was gone.”
“I’m sorry to hear that but if you’re going to go that’s the best way,” I say.
He nods in complete agreement. “Yes, it is. No pain, no suffering. She was a nurse. Never no problem at all. Just came on that quick.” He looked out past the airport into the sky. His pale blue eyes were far away. He shook his head slowly. “I sure do miss her.”
We talk a little more and I give him three dollars for a garbage bag. “I’ll see you next Saturday. It’ll be here before we know it.”
The phrase Merry Christmas is worn and hollow and I did not wish him one.
He had shared his story and that was enough.

Here’s some quick fun stuff, the 2008 Miller family Christmas tree in a few easy steps!

It’s a warm gray Sunday morning. Light rain is melting the 10 inches of snow. Hours are collecting into days that are quietly trudging toward the end of the year. Al Gore was one of the few bright spots in another year cluttered with drug-dumb entertainers, lawmakers who aren’t gay and never have been, baby battles and and Paris Hilton. (I have never seen her on TV, listened to her or watched her have sex.)

The final days of 2007 are a frenzy of Top 10 lists. I read them, recognizing or understanding maybe half of the listings. I always wonder: why 10? But it doesn’t matter. It’s an encapsulation of our collective year. I’m gong to search the Net and share as many top 10 lists as I can. It was a quick and frenzied year and I need to better understand it before time’s tide sucks me into 2008.
First top 10: Simon Dumenco’s Epic Media Meltdowns from the Dec. 17, Ad Age on Line.

Reality check: I’m reading Journey of Souls while the media is serving up Britney.Okay. I’m off to find more top 10s.

It’s now one week after surgery (more on that experience in another post).  So did I meet any of my sick-bed goals?  link

Well, I didn’t stay in bed a lot.  I created a nest in the lower living room with a direct shot at our large flat screen TV, my computers on the other side of the room, a pile of books and a stack of movies.

My mp3 player was on the stand behind me full of podcasts, spoken word stories and music.

The first night I didn’t feel like reading, so I watched the four episodes of Masters of Science Fiction that I had recorded.  Why ABC buried this series on a Saturday night and stopped with just a few episodes, I’ll never know.  It contains some of the best acting and thoughtful, intelligent writing on TV.

I finished Journey of Souls in a couple nights and  Deadline in three sittings (“lyings,” actually.  I couldn’t sit).  I have read  some Hemingway short stories and will read more, appreciating again the concise  and powerful writing.

I will get to Jim Harrison.

I went through several TV shows that I had recorded, including The Dog Whisperer, The Office, and in a sweeping bow to my 70s past, recorded WKRP in Cincinnati.

Though I’d seen Once Upon A Time In The West, I watched it again, totally intrigued with Sergio Leone’s  sense of composition, and those hypnotic, lingering close-ups on Charles Bronson,   Claudia Cardinale,
Jason Robards,  and of course, Henry Fonda, who shocked his fans by appearing as a murderous villain (yes, he even shoots a young boy, a scene censored from the TV versions).

I followed this up with watching the director’s commentary version of Pan’s Labyrinth.  Director Guillermo Del Toro goes from formal to very informal  -even colorful — in his description of how a masterpiece is constructed.

I went completely to the other side and recorded a few episodes of Family Guy.   It’s irreverent, written by joyously brilliant politically incorrect fiends.

More next post.

I’m going to have the surgery I’ve been putting it off for years. It will knock me out of commission for at least a week.

So I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to accomplish while I’m down. I’m looking at this as a kind of forced, albeit painful vacation.

Here’s a partial list of what I want to do.

Revisit some old movies:

Casablanca (for the fifth time).

Unforgiven (for the fourth time).

Raiders of the Lost Ark (lost track of number of times I’ve watched this).

B horror movies that I loved as a kid and appreciate anew as a trash loving adult. You know, classics like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Attack of the Giant Leeches

TV shows:

The Twilight Zone (I taped the whole series during a marathon on the Sci Fi channel a few years ago)

The Office (may be my favorite show of all time, right up there with 24, Lost, and The X Files.

Books:

Deadline by John Dunning who combines a great detective with the world of rare books which was a passion of mine for years.

At least one book by Hemingway to reconnect with a great author who was an early influence on my writing. Maybe A Moveable Feast, one of the few Hemingway books I haven’t read.

One book by Jim Harrison, one of the great living authors.

On The Road. My son bought me the 50^th anniversary edition for my birthday. It was an influential book on both my literary appreciation and my writing. I’ve read it three times. The second time was at lunch hour in my car in the parking lot of Ames where I worked as a shoe salesman for two weeks. (That is truly a footnote).

Seneca Myths and Stories, which my daughter gave me for my birthday. I’ve always been interested in myths, which you can see in my novel The Perfect Song.

Firefox for Dummies to learn some more things on this browser that I’ve been using for two years.

MacBook for Dummies. I’ve had a Mac for a year and barely used it. It’s time to change that.

Is this enough? I don’t know. I want to mix the classical and the cheesy.

Escargot and French fries.

That’s what life is all about.

Anybody have any other suggestions?

We live in the sprawling suburb of Big Flats, NY.  I work at a Pennsylvania university 40 miles away.  Because of this,  I don’t know anyone in Big Flats.   When we need something quick we drive to Miniers, a small grocery store three miles away that’s been a fixture in Big Flats for decades.   Because I work at a university about 40 miles away, I know no one in Big Flats.

I don’t know any of the Miniers staff, most of whom are local high school students.

The other night I took bottles and cans to Miniers to feed them into the recyclable bins.  A young cashier who I’d never seen before was unloading the cans bin.  As I stood  waiting for her to finish, she looked at me and did a quick study.

“Are you Dennis Miller?”

I’m sure I looked shocked, trying to figure out how she could have known me.  The owner doesn’t know my name.

“Uh, yes.”

She smiled.  “You’re supposed to buy pecans.”

A Twilight Zone moment  froze brain synapses as I searched for Rod Serling floating in a corner with his cigarette.  Once things unfroze, I started connecting the dots  pretty quickly.  I was supposed to get pecans the day before and forgot them.  I felt my shirt pocket.  Yup, I’d forgotten my cell phone.

My wife called Miniers, gave a description of me and told the girl to be on the lookout.

The girl finished emptying the bin and told me to go ahead.  I was so preoccupied – and a little unnerved – I forgot to pull my receipt from the bin.   The girl, still working with the bottles, pulled it out and handed it to me.

I thanked her and headed down the aisle.

“Don’t forget the pecans,” she called.

I’m looking through some remaindered books at Barnes & Noble.  It’s November and dark outside.  I scan the customers in the cafe because I’m a writer can’t help myself.

On the wall up next to the ceiling are blown up likenesses of Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Amy Tan and Faulkner.  Beneath them in wrap-around sunglasses is a middle-aged man sitting up as straight and motionless as a pine tree on a still day.  He’s so still I wonder if he’s dead and nobody has noticed yet.

I watch.  Finally he moves his left hand but the rest of his body remains still.  His fingers are long and smooth.

I realize he’s blind.

The phrase comes to me: “As out of place as a blind man in a bookstore.”

The writers above him stare out over the customers who are meandering, thumbing through books, flipping through magazines.  The man remains still as a three-dimensional portrait.

Is he here for the ambiance? The smell of new books? The warm sound of quiet voices of the men playing checkers to the right of him? The smell of strong, fresh cafe coffee and the perfume of passing women?

Does he long for the time when he could see, when he could read?

Then I wonder self-consciously if he can sense my focus on him.  Many studies show that blind people develop their remaining senses beyond which most others can.

Another man enters the cafe, walks over and sits down with the blind man.  My intrigue is gone, my questions are no longer important.

The blind man moves now, leaning forward, smiling, talking.

He is no longer out of place.  He has a friend and they are engaged in something that has a much longer tradition than books.

Humans have been reading for a few centuries. We’ve been talking, sharing thoughts and emotions, for thousands of years.

The blind man sips his coffee, leans forward and talks to his friend as Hemingway, Chandler, Tan and Faulkner stare with fixed expressions into their own worlds.

I continue past the loaded shelves where a million conversations are aching to begin.

I just discovered a new social site, Kickstart, that Yahoo is developing for recent college graduates and alumni of all ages. It’s been described as a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s designed to connect alumni of all ages to help young graduates contacts kick start their careers.

I love the concept and I think it has great potential. It goes a long way to helping recent graduates with that frustrating Catch 22: “They want someone with experience but how can I get experience if no one gives me a chance?” This is a good, practical way to network and help our own alumni with job availability information, advice, etc.

It also has the potential to link up college classmates from all classes. It will also be interesting to folks like me to see where other graduates are working. I’m interested in this for a couple of reasons.

1. I graduated from Mansfield in 1971.

2. I’ve served as PR director at Mansfield since 1980 so I know a lot of graduates.

I also like the clean, practical approach. I’ll be interested in watching the site’s growth.

Joining is easy. I registered and completed my profile in about 10 minutes.

Yahoo is offering the incentive: a $25,000 donation to the college with the most alumni registered on Kickstart by the end of the year. I would love to win that contribution for MU.

So, if you’re a Mansfield grad of any age, check out the site, register, and let other MU grads know about it.

You can see my profile here.