NPR Filler Music

Where do these interludes
interspersed between such intellectual intercourse
come from?

Not the actual album songs they play
for some meaningful or ironic connection to a story;
I mean the random, untitled stuff.

Is there an official NPR music man
(mute - I imagine him,
letting everything out he can't say
in his music)
who conceives of all these artisanal arrangements
and then layers recordings of himself 
in his one-man-band studio?


Or is there an eponymous NPR band
of taciturn proto-über hipsters,
vowing silence for the art's sake,
with idiosyncratic clothing 
and 
carefully cultivated coiffures
typifying their auditory taste
for eclectic mixes of styles and instrumentation?

Can you imagine him
or them
going on tour:


the concert posters,
the confused yet enthused radio personality promoters,
the attendees?

The posh pits.

(For a taste of the music to which I'm referring, 
go to 4:24 at this link.)

Halvsies

My family doesn't just
eat cake;
we conduct a ritual
that is simultaneously highly
mathematical
and also
emotional.

After the celebration,
the leftover cake is lovingly placed
on the altar of the counter.

As each supplicant approaches,
he or she raises the ceremonial butter knife
and carefully calculates the quotient
of the remaining cake
divided by the individual's current hunger
(or sweet tooth),
factoring in the number of worshipers
likely to visit the baked mound
before the demon of Stale
steals the moistness away,
which requires a cleansing wash
of the offering
in a bowl of milk.

As this rite is performed
by each family member
multiple times,
the divine mystery of Zeno's paradox*
seems to come to fulfillment
as a seemingly infinite number of halves
are cajoled out of this finite cake,
no one being willing
to be that jerk
who takes
the last bite.

*Zeno's Paradox:

The Amazon Wish List

source here

Clicks on the mouse and keyboard
are all it takes to populate
the Amazon wish list
and see those beauties arrive
at the doorstep on time
either at gift-receiving seasons
or
when the harvests of said times
are insufficient to satiate
the professional consumer within.

This ease and convenience prompts me to attempt
to populate my less selfish wish list
with a few more
intangibles.

I imagine searching for sellers
of some key items for my kids:
a strong work ethic,
a solid sense of family and identity,
a positive, helpful attitude,
an enduring testimony of and quest for truth.

And I wish I could see the
cost,
delivery date,
and product quality
of said items.

I try to calculate the cost
as I imagine clicking on my cart and checking out.

My payments are installments,
incomplete,
often overdue and in the wrong denomination,
the only common denominator
being a hearty yet ultimately lackluster
attempt on my part
to model such traits.

I see signs of pending delivery
but am still waiting for
the tell-tale brown truck,
the sharp, short crunch of that smug, smarmy box,
the slippery snap of the bubble wrap.

It's not as easy as rubbing a lamp or
looking longingly at Venus after sunset,
pretending, with Jiminy Cricket, that it's a star.

This must be an amazon I must trail blaze
on foot
not phalange.

Wearing Genes

I understand,
sort of,
how the genes work
that allowed for an experienced nurse
to tell from an early ultrasound of my son
that he would have my gooshy lips.

I get that there are genes for that type of thing.

But is there also some
other pair of genes that compelled him
at the age of a few months
to sleep with his arm crooked over his head
just like I do?

Or, years later, to
ask for a magazine while
sitting on the potty
(a thing I'd done regularly in middle and high school
but have since lost the luxury of time to do
and thus for him to observe)?

Which genes
have I foisted on this
poor child,
like a parent dressing their toddler,
and which ones can he
choose to wear,
changing them with the seasons,
fashion trends,
and personal taste?

I see so many genes
walking through my classroom door
each day:
skinny, sagging, hole-y, faded, flared, capri.

Which one(s) must he 
or will he choose to
be?

Negative Narrative Space

I don't mean 'negative'

As in pessimistic

Or bad

Or gloomy.

I'm talking about the voids

between the elements that usually command our attention

as the center of illustrative or musical or written creation.

This negative space

is what gives us the two ways 

or more

of viewing this optical illusion:

source here

It is what makes the chalice in The Davinci Code movie 

(as well as the book,
presumably,

I imagine in the void of my

own literary ignorance):

Source here.

It is the silence
of a Buddhist meditation.

It is what makes Miles Davis cooler
than what Billy Madison thinks 

because he knows where to

pause

(unlike my own
empty reasoning).

This in-between state is
perhaps one of the only things
that could travel
faster than light

and also hold
the intriguing capacity
of conveying
infinitely more
and infinitely more diverse
messages
than can be confined
in one finite communicative transmission
of any substance.

It's the untold portions of the stories,
the windows positioned within the created architecture,
where we find both
egress from our own minds
and entrance into another world
of multifarious variety.

For example,
I imagine
what Obi-Wan Kenobi ate
all those long years on Tatooine
and how he knew
he would turn a ghostly blue
upon Darth Vader's final hew. 

And I try to feel
the wind through the dry grass,
the accumulating perspective of identity
and its accompanying sense of forboding
that isn't included
in Luke 5:16.


And perhaps if I pause long enough

The Kindest Hacker

A symbol I suggest should signify kindly hackers,
composed of a proposed symbol for hackers (from here)
overlaid with a loving heart (from me via Microsoft Word).

The kindest crook
I ever didn't meet
was the one who apparently
hacked my PayPal account.

The company contacted me
saying any money I hadn't touched
in the last several years
was going to go to some state agency
if I didn't do something with it.

"What money?" I asked.

"The $258 in your account."

<pause>

"Where did it come from?"

They sent me the transaction history
showing companies and entities
of which I had no knowledge,

transactions occurring between a mafia member

and a CIA operative,

I'm convinced,

and out of their sheer goodness

and appreciation for my 
unwittingly allowing them to
achieve their questionable ends
in the safe haven of an
identity-thieved account,
they left me a little something.

Now
I'm left with the decision
of what to do:

Part of me wonders
if it's morally permissible
to take money that isn't mine
in any scenario.

Another part of me says,
"Duh yeah! It's from some jerk
who hacked your account
but wasn't bright enough to clean it out."

But would a second wrong
really make me feel all right?

All this moralizing makes
that part of me that wants
another Weezer album
and a superfluous piece of technology
kowtow to the now growing voice in my head
saying I ought to donate this windfall
to a charity like Kiva
or use it for the family
by chipping away at the mortgage
like a responsible adult.

The possibilities for spending are endless
when it's someone else's money...
or your own,
I guess.

Surprisingly, at times -
but maybe more often than I think -
it's hard to tell the difference. 

Attack the Hill

12 years after high school

during this 40-mile bike ride

beneath carrion birds

as I approach yet another

in a seemingly interminable sequence

of inclinations I'm rather disinclined to ascend,

Coach Turchyn's words

somehow reach forward to me

instilling the will to follow still

one of his few but oft-repeated directives:

"Attack the hill."

These 3 words came whispered but urgent

at almost every cross country meet for 

7 years to our cheer-tired ears

as the only audible thing

worth processing and applying,

for everything else is almost automatic:

the pace, 

keeping eyes on the guy ahead,

breathing and stepping,

but

when that slope rises,

the instinct is to go into

lower gear,

attack your competitor,

or attack yourself,

worrying about all the hills ahead;

you need someone there 

to remind you of this

1 task:

to just attack the hill that's next. 

Start of a race.

The high school crew.

Coach T on the right. Coach Mac on the left.