August 22, 2010. Sunday.
Situation: Work all day today, and when I get home Jazz and Matt and the Boy and Jennifer are here for a cook-out to celebrate Moi’s and my 30th wedding anniversary. (At one point I ask Jazz how her job is going. She says it’s going okay, and she asks me how mine is going. Then she looks at me square in the face and says, “I’m not really sure what it is you do.”) No opportunity for me to take Mway for a walk today. However, while the Boy and I are out firing up the grill, we end up throwing the stick for Mway in the back yard, with Atlas trying to join in. What happens is that I throw the stick for Mway, and both she and Altas run after it and end up playing tug-of-war with it. Mway eventually drops her end of the stick, and I end up playing tug-of-war with Atlas to try to get the stick out of his mouth. The Boy then takes the sides of the stick from me and starts trying to spin the big dog around in circles. Atlas finally lets go, and as I hold Atlas by his leash, the Boy throws the stick for Mway. He throws it high in the air, and when it lands, I hear the “pro-quality” stick (which lately has been showing signs of stress) crack. I tell the Boy I’m trying to preserve the stick for as long as I can, so I give him Atlas to hold and take over throwing the stick, more delicately, for Mway, until she finally tires of it.
August 23, 2010. Monday.
Situation: Work late morning, early afternoon. When I get home, Mway is waiting anxiously for a walk. When the Boy and I go out on a shopping errand (to buy a new car stereo I’ve been thinking about buying for a year), she runs along beside us to the car, picks up a stick she finds by the house. I have to tell her that we’re not taking her for a walk. When we get home, though, that’s the first thing I do. It’s about 3:30.
State of the Path: It’s been drizzling on and off all day, and I check the grass in the yard to see if would be dry enough to mow. Out on the path, there are raindrops on the weeds, which are bent over and flopped down in the path, and by the time I’m wading through the grass in bug land, my boots and pants are getting a little wet, and I feel a thorn sticking in me at the upper part of my boot. Near the beginning of the walk, as I squirm around a briar, I use the “pro-quality” stick to support myself, and it gives way a little. When I look at it, I see it’s cracked half way through at its midpoint – I curse Atlas, whom I blame for putting too much stress on the stick. As I approach the creek bank, I hope I see some dayflowers blooming, but all the plants that I think are dayflowers are still flowerless – perhaps it’s too shady here under the trees. But as I’m looking over the green plants I suddenly see a spot of pink, and I realize I’m looking at the same damn plant that I’ve seen by the “chokeberries” and which I would like to believe is some sort of butterfly pea. The leaves on this plant are bug-eaten, the flowers just as tiny, and they still do not look quite like the photo of spurred butterfly pea in the Audubon. But seeing this plant gives me hope that I might see more of this plant, and that it might not be so insignificant, although when I look for the other plants by the “chokeberries” I don’t see them today. Walking along the creek, I again trip over the same root I did the other day – I think it’s a root, at least it looks more like a root to me than a vine, although I can’t tell what it’s a root to.
State of the Creek: I had forgotten how much it rained late Saturday night into Sunday morning, and I’m delighted and surprised to see the pools higher and water sitting among the rocks all along the creek, even faintly trickling here and there. The vinyl siding is entirely submerged. There’s even water winding its way through the wide rocky creek bed at the car tire.
The Fetch: Up at the clearing, I stand in the middle and toss the stick gently into the higher goldenrod, aiming it so it will land cushioned by the weeds and maybe not break into two today. After each fetch, I wait anxiously to see if Mway brings it back still in one piece, and I rejoin the cracked part to keep it from sagging too much. Mway fetches it more times that I care to count; she treats the stick no more gingerly than she would any other time, growling at it and shaking it while it’s in her mouth, sometimes stepping on it as she’s spinning around and I’m trying to pick it up, and I’m amazed that, at least for today, the stick still stays together.
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The work that Jazz is referring to here is my day job.
At least I hope that’s what she was referring to.
I’ve said that by night I’m a musician, but I haven’t yet revealed in this blog what it is I do by day. That Jazz said she isn’t quite sure what it is I do speaks perhaps a little to the job’s “meaninglessness.” But meaning is measured by context – by a certain frame of reference. Amazingly someone is willing to pay me for this job I do. A job, therefore, no matter how “meaningless” as measured by one frame of reference, can be meaningful in that it provides one with money to obtain the necessaries of life to keep one alive. If it puts food on the table, or in a dish on the floor, any job can be meaningful. Again I’m not directing this comment to anyone in particular.
Following is an abstract of a recurring event of most of 2010, which I refer to on January 22 but did not have or take the time to mention much in my journal. I include the abstract here, as a framing device, because the event has some sort of relation to the journal’s central action.
Court of Common Pleas
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Sisyphus A. Gregor
Conditions of Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition Program
Condition #8 “The defendant will report regularly to his Probation Officer, as directed. Your reporting date is the [22nd of the month].
Each month you will phone the CALL-TRACK number. When you call the automated system, you will be asked to enter your social security number, then state your name. The questions are answered by pressing the appropriate key to respond “yes” or “no.” If your answer requires clarification, you will be prompted to respond.
1. “Has your home address changed in the last 30 days? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
2. “Has your phone number changed in the last 30 days? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
3. “Has your employment status changed in the last 30 days? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
4. “Have you had any contact or been arrested by any law enforcement agency since your last call? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
5. “Have you made your required payment toward fines, costs of restitution since your last call? If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “no,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
6. “Are you in compliance with your recommended counseling? If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “no,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 2.]
“You have answered “no” to this question. At the tone, please state your current status within the program.” [“I have not been able to schedule a class, a DUI driving class, with the person who takes care of this, due to conflicts with my work, but I will schedule a class as soon as possible.]
7. “Please be advised that any information provided by you which is found to be false will be considered a violation of your Conditions of Supervision and may result in your return to this Court for this violation. Do you understand this requirement? If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “no,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
Since my last post on this blog on December 24, 2011, I have, as the reader or re-reader will already have noticed, been going back through it and, despite or because of what happens near the end, been making, without the pressure of daily deadlines, what I call retro-comments, effectively going beyond my original intention of merely marking the silence and ending up making some noise. Too much noise, I now realize. A couple days ago, as the reader will find out in a comment I insert at a later post, I decided to stop doing this – not only because of the racket I was making, but also because it was deafening, rolling ever overwhelmingly toward the future. At some point the “I” and all the things I drag along with it down onto (if we can still use the term) the page has to come to rest there and lie still and quiet. But as soon as I made that decision I realized that there might be one more thing I should say, and in re-reading my blog today (what else have I got to do?) I’ve come to the place where it might be said. Later on in this blog I describe, for better or worse, a little of my work as a musician. Maybe I should say a little bit about my day job here? Although Jazz, as far as I know, has not been reading any of this blog (and who can blame her? – it’s certainly not as interesting as Hunter Thompson, Chuck Palahniuk, David Sedaris, Sapphire, or whoever else she might be reading these days), maybe someday she will, and she might like to know what it is I do. Plus it might be of interest to other readers or re-readers. It’s certainly relevant to the central action of this blog, and saying something about it would make more meaningful such frequent phrases as “have to work this afternoon” and “work this afternoon and come home about 3” and would explain why I don’t take Mway for a walk every time I turn around, raising the more traditional question of narrative “why is there this thing rather than another thing?” instead of the more unconventional “why is there something rather than nothing?”
Readers? Yes, despite what I sometimes think, I apparently do have readers, other than myself, my few mysterious followers, occasionally maybe Moi, and at one time Mway. Or maybe I can’t call them readers – to be most accurate, I can only call them page viewers. I do have some page viewers, as I’ve learned from the stats my generous publisher, blogger, provides me. These stats tell me the exact number of page views I’ve had and can even locate what country they came from. Recently I’ve been having a lot of page views from Russia – I’m not even going to speculate why. Although I’ve had dreams about Russia (back when it was still the Soviet Union I think -- luscious images of a richly colorful St. Basil’s Cathedral), I’ve never been there, though oddly enough, the Boy, one summer when he was still in college, made a visit there and brought back some ass-kicking absinthe and a Vladimir Putin doll – Wade, Barb, and Dennis were all staying here, refugees from whatever flood it was, and the absinthe helped them through. Yes, Russia – from 2012 Apr 21 11:00 – 2012 Apr 28 10:00 I’ve had 68 page views from Russia, 27 from the United States, and 1 from Germany, and the audience map shows sprawling Russia colored in the darkest. But overall I’ve had the most page views from the United States. This is how the page views tabulate from 2009 May (why that date?) thru 2012 April. United States – 2,083; Russia – 480; Germany – 71; Canada – 36; United Kingdom – 35; Denmark – 23; Ukraine – 22; India – 19; Singapore – 16; Brazil – 10. Of course, I fully understand the implications of these statistics (now that I’m studying them more closely). I have a total of 365 posts. This means that those people in Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Ukraine, India, Singapore, and Brazil have all taken a quick look at this blog and decided it’s of no interest to them. At best there could be 1 person from Russia who, to this date, has read the whole thing. And in the United States, the figure 2,083 includes a tracking of page views made from my own computer. I could turn off this tracking, but blogger would have to add a blocking cookie to my browser, and I don’t know how to do that. But let’s say I’ve viewed each post at least twice, that’s 730 page views to subtract from 2,083, leaving 1,353. Mway, I estimate, has made at least 320 page views, reducing the number down to 1,033. That means that in the United States, other than myself, at best 2.8301369 people could have read this whole blog. Any further implications I leave to the reader.
Well, here are some of those implications. If 3.8301369 people other than myself so far have read this whole blog (M. having only read part of it), that’s very good. I’ve had gigs where there were less people in the audience. Or I’ve attended such gigs – I’m thinking in particular of one very good nightclub performance of Sun Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra in NYC in the 70’s. How long did it take before more than 1 or 2 people started reading the now famous note to his wife that William Carlos Williams pinned to his refrigerator door. How many people read the story of Gregor Samsa turning into a giant bug during Kafka’s lifetime? Are there really more than 3 or 4 people who have actually read every word of Finnegans Wake? (I seriously doubt M. has.) Of course, the most significant implication is that my figure is overly optimistic and most likely wrong. Is there a way to test this? Someone who has read this whole blog, you’d think, would have sent me an email about it. I haven’t found any. Also, blogger allows me to check some of my traffic sources. This morning I already had 7 page views when I opened up my blog. Blogger listed the names of two referring URLs or sites: www4.best-aruchecker.com and www3.personal-scanera.com. Neither of these names suggests someone who’d be interested in the story of a man walking his wife’s dog.
Am I going to describe my day job here? Despite more work than I’d like in March and April, I haven’t had any more come in since last Monday. Out of sight, out of mind.
But since I have no work today, it would be a good day to describe it.
But what do you know. No sooner do I say I have no work than I check my email and I’ve had work come in. So for today at least I’ll be doing, not describing, it.
No work again today. Again it would be a good day to describe it. But again – out of sight, out of mind. I don’t think it’s likely I’m going to describe my day job in this blog, and I guess I’ll just have to explain to Jazz what I do sometime in person. As for my Russian and other readers, they can consult Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, arguably the most definitive statement about employment in America, and they’ll get some idea from that what I do (actually, best to read about Miller’s experiences as a proofreader in Paris – I think that might be in the other Tropic). The problem is that I did intend to describe my job here, and with that intention in my head, went off to work the other day, only to find my thinking about writing about it interfered with the work itself, which happens to be, unlike the job of playing music, a highly conscious, front-brain activity. Instead of doing what I was suppose to do (and getting the job over with as quickly as possible) I would just stand there over my papers with a pen in hand, thinking “well, I could say this about this,” ignoring what I was suppose to be doing, and prolonging what could have been done in 2 hours to 4. Then all stressed out by these cross purposes I came home and wrote something cramped full with the most stilted language: “Subcontracted today for title search at usual $100 fee for property in the name of Gregory T. Burjess and Beverley A. Conrab, husband and wife, deed of record in Record Book 867 at page 401, dated September 1, 1992, recorded September 2, 1992, from Edward F. Burjess, widower, ALL that certain tract of land situate in Pilfer Township, Shikellamy County, Pennsylvania, more particularly bounded and described as follows: BEGINNING at an iron pin at the intersection of land now of Gregory T. Burchess and the northern right-of-way line of a 50-foot right-of-way accessing the land of Gregory T. Burchess to L.R. 49013, thence North 5 degrees 0 minutes 22 seconds East 129.9 feet to an iron pin along land of Gregory T. Burchess; thence along the same North 85 degrees 24 minutes 19 seconds West 525.4 feet to an iron pin at land now or formerly of George W. Autberger; thence along land now or formerly of George W. Autberger North 10 degrees 46 minutes 25 seconds East 337.53 feet to an iron pin; thence along Tract No. 2 in the below mentioned survey North 85 degrees 44 minutes 12 seconds East 497.97 feet to an iron pin; thence
along land now or formerly of Martin Arthur Boojum South 5 degrees 0 minutes 22 seconds West 362.26 feet to an iron pin; thence along the same South 84 degrees 59 minutes 38 seconds East 50 feet to an iron pin; thence along the same South 5 degrees 0 minutes 22 seconds West 184.1 feet to an iron pin along the northern boundary of the 50-foot right-of-way aforementioned, thence along the northern boundary of the 50-foot right-of-way North 80 degrees 11 minutes 48 seconds West 50.18 feet to an iron pin, the place of Beginning. Containing 4.5 Acres of land, as per survey of Mark P. Dixon, Jr, of Midd-Pilfer Engineering Corp., dated February 1988 and recorded at Shikellamy County Map File 2103 and being Tract 1 as shown on said plan BEING the same premises which Martin Arthur Boojum, by his deed dated June 21, 1988, recorded June 21 1988, in the Office of the Recorder of Deeds of Shikellamy County at Middtown, Pennsylvania, in Record Book 347 at page 225, granted and conveyed to Edward F. Burjess and Frances M. Burjess, husband and wife, Frances M. Burjess having died on August 28, 1989, title to the premises vested solely in…” etc., etc. (yes, there was more of this, believe me, a lot more)…and then I went on to state that the referents to all these words, “Gregory T. Burjess,” aka apparently “Gregory T. Burchess,” “Beverley A. Conrab,” “ALL that certain tract of land,” and so on were as insignificant to me for the purpose of my job as surely I was to them, that my concern was solely with the names and descriptions as they appeared in the land records of the aforesaid county and with my ability to discern and trace these names and descriptions in the proper indices and among the various instruments recorded there and distinguish them accurately from a mass of other names and descriptions or associate them correctly with some other names and descriptions recorded there, that I didn’t care who this joker Gregory T. Burjess or Burchess was or what he did, whether he walked a dog on his stupid land or not, and that basically a literate dog could do this job I do, and might like it better, since it is called a search, especially a dog who could appreciate the “disconnectedness of language from reality,” and that sometimes in the late morning, as I’m getting ready to go to work, and Mway is milling around all nervous about it, Moi will joke “It’s take-your-dog-to-work-day today,” and believe me, if the authorities allowed it, I would take her to work and have her do my job -- she wouldn’t last a day and would appreciate the job she already has a lot better.
Lie down today with Tropic of Cancer, searching for the spot where Miller keeps eyes peeled for misplaced commas while headlines blaze World Coming to End. Is it in Black Spring instead? Miller walks the rues and places, meeting the Cronstadts, “old people, idiots, cripples, epileptics,” Raoul Duffy’s drawings, the gargoyles of Notre Dame, Joan Miro’s philosophy, Germaine and Claude, and I feel bad I don’t have a whole bunch of people likewise to meet on these walks of mine. Must nod off – wake up to lawn tractors buzzing like flies the size of buzzards at my windows. After the Great Upload (see my comments for September 1, 2011; also the Smithsonian’s recent “futurism” edition), the Immortals, unable to access old records because of obsolete technologies, consider their John Deeres, Searses, Toros, Lawnboys, Fords, and Toyotas to be their ancestors (also check out Amazing Stories: 60 Years of the Best, The Revolt of the Pedestrians by David H. Keller, M.D.). Other night dreamt about an old futurist discussing his surprise that it was the year 2012; he feels mired in the zeitgeist of the 60’s and 70’s; the years 2001, 2002, etc. are years that should still lie ahead of him. (Wade has expressed similar feelings). Moi interrupts my thoughts to tell me she’s recently been dreaming about elephants. She’s looked in Zolar: elephants mean “family.” After I wake up I have the feeling maybe monkey vines are time portals instead. Began journal in 1987, skip ahead a year every walk-thru. Doesn’t ring true though. Even more definitive than Miller on employment in America is the Twain duology, Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Also, one must read Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.”
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