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love and squalor

for esme - with love and squalorhttp://new.vindy.com/news/2007/nov/28/man-70-rescued-from-squalor/

squalor:
n. A filthy and wretched condition or quality.

i’ve been meaning to post on this for a little while now.. but i saw this story a while ago and the first line struck me. i couldn’t help but wonder a little.. do people come to the rescue for those in a state of mental squalor? and when? if it takes three months like the man in the story, sounds like i’m due for some heroics.

and i couldn’t pass the chance to mention a salinger story i love, for esmé – with love and squalor. there was a girl in college who loved tea and walks on brisk nights.. ashley (her name was almost lost in the cobwebs). she gave me her copy of nine stories with the red ink under the parts she loved.. parts like:

i stood in the rain and read all the names

..i remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced wristwatch she was wearing – perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist.

and, most importantly and applicably to my current state of being..

you take a really sleepy man, esmé, and he al-ways stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac– with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact.

and her pointed emails that i could never return.. “i can tell you’re interested but you hesitate”.

perhaps she’d be the one to burst in with a fireman’s helmet on, ax in hand, and smash these doubts to pieces while having me watch dead poet’s society or listening to the details she loved in coldplay’s god put a smile on your face (honey honey).

perhaps another night and it’d be different.. and i’d get something other than “boring” earl grey..

happenings, thoughts

my dash 7..

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today i found out that, as of january 1, i’ll no longer be a fmsm employee.

fear not: i didn’t lose my job.. fmsm was just bought out– or wait, merged– err.. i don’t know. anyway, we’ll be stantec employees (or more on cnn)as of the new year. new year, new names.

my dash 7from wilco’s dash 7 –

Because I’ve found the way those engines sound,
Will make you kiss the ground
I found the way those engines sound,
Will make you kiss the ground,
When you touch down

it’s funny.. i’ve known something was up for some time now. the closed doors around the office are always a dead giveaway. this time, though, it went on for longer than usual and no one was letting up. usually you can get a hint here or there from someone.. but this time lips were sealed and direct questions were directly avoided. as speculation increased, so did stress levels. i figured, though, that having the news would ease concerns and lower the blood pressure. sadly, not so..

now that this bird has landed and i’m kissing the ground, i’m finding that i’m just as anxious as before.. maybe even more so. about what.. i’m not exactly sure. i doubt there will really be any major changes, at least initially. i guess i’m mostly just stressed now because i see the people around me are worked up about their futures and the uncertainty of tomorrow. personally, i’m in a decent position: no debts or dependents, no home to payoff or family to support.. but my co-workers have a lot more riding on this, family, kids, homes, careers, retirement.. dogs 😉 .. and there’s no doubt that the uncertainty is disorienting at best.

it was a strange scene: the entire office gathered in a room that’s still under construction and the office manager made the main announcements while the president followed up with his thoughts and feelings and a few of the details and reasons why. i didn’t really watch them, though, and instead watched the faces around the room. i don’t think people really grasped what was going on for the first thirty minutes, their faces locked into as straight a face as they could manage. it wasn’t until later that the anxiety would well up and, if it weren’t for their determination to remain as solid state as possible, would wash their illusions of the future out of their eyes.

hysteriawhat if anxiety acts as its own self-sustaining emotion? i see the anxious faces and hear the anxious speculation around me and it, in turn, makes me anxious. and i can hear it in their voices when they talk together.. one person starts speculating and the edge in their voice gets sharper.. and the people listening get edgier themselves.. and like a flood behind their eyes, you can watch their anxiety rise and they’ll pass it on to the next group they talk to. soon enough the epidemic grips the entire office.

i’m not here to say let’s turn that frown upside-down and everything will be just honky-dory.. i just have to wonder aloud if we can’t calm ourselves down in a group scenario like this. you can almost watch the hysteria spread from one group to the next, faster than news of cookies in the break room.

another part of this that nags at me a bit is that i feel so very small in this process. i have nothing to say about what happens, have little control over my eventual situation, and, now being one of over seven thousand stantec employees, well, i feel that my voice could be lost in a hall of echoes. the obvious analogy that gets drawn is one of pawns in a big chess game, small, largely expendable, and easily forgotten.

now, none of that is to say that i believe in that.. i think there’s a difference between feeling one way and honestly believing in that feeling. i do think this change will open up a lot of opportunities and that good things will come of this all. and more than all that, i know that these are only circumstances.. and one can never be a victim of circumstance without also being a willing participant: i’ll always have choice and so long as i have choice, i have the choice of being alright with this, with seeing the positives.. or, if i see too many things that i’m decidedly unhappy with, then i’ll always have the choice of walking out that open door.. i have that infinite freedom (“man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” and “freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” –jean-paul sartre).. then again, if they play the game right and for long enough, even pawns can become royalty.

..i know this is hardly a linear post. and it’s mostly a smattering of incomplete thought.. but that’s all i can offer for now.

time may tell all.

happenings

friendly paths

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now entering the bert t combs mountain parkwayperhaps the best way to preface a synopsis of last week would be to quote herman hesse in demian.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

somehow, years after we’d all graduated, we traveled more than 2,200 miles to meet in the middle of kentucky. and somehow it felt like home.. for a time.

(for a slideshow or to download the pictures, go here)

thursday: i picked kathrine up outside morehead in the morning. by morning, i mean 3am. we drove for an hour and made plans to get an early start on the day. four hours later we were up and off to cracker barrel to down eggs and toast. given that it was snowing when we woke, we weren’t too anxious to get the earlier of starts on the day.

despite the fact that the temperature couldn’t have topped the low forties and that we hardly saw the sun all day, we stayed relatively warm. solar collector worked out alright for the first half of the day and we got in two climbs while there: super pinch and green horn. johnny jumped on black gold.. actually he got on it three times with about ten minutes or so in between goes. pretty damn good, especially since he was a move or two away from bagging it on his third run. as a note, we’d have pictures of all this but kathrine’s camera didn’t have a memory card.. who takes the memory card out of the camera and doesn’t put it back?

colder than could be expectedso, with the sun drifting behind the cliff and nothing left that we really wanted to jump on, kathrine and i headed to roadside and jumped on crazyfingers and awol before the end of the day. we walked out in the dark. johnny had run off to get some wine in campton.

when we got to miguel’s, the sun was gone and everyone was settled in for dinner. it’s pretty fair to say that kathrine was psyched about the setup: miguel’s was decked out in candles and pine and everything felt warm and homey. dinner didn’t disappoint either: a full plate of mashed sweet potatoes, turkey breast, cranberry sauce, garlic toast (..i’m forgetting something else) and a slice of either sweet potato pie or apple pie for five bucks. we grabbed our place and went to the basement, stuffed our faces, drank our wine, and generally enjoyed the climbers’ family dinner.

around 9:30pm, we headed off to the cabin and, after some finangling, we got the fireplace going. with three bottles of wine gone between three of us, the warmth of the fire, and the four hours of sleep the night before, i promptly passed out on the floor.

friday: we actually did get up early but again took it slow since the air didn’t break forty until around noon. we hung out at the shell for a while with johnny until we’d avoided the weather for long enough and headed to phantasia and he headed home to oxford. that it was snowing was not lost on us.

before we even touched the rock we started with the hand warmers. they would help some but, in the end, the rock was just too cold in the shade and numbness took hold by the afternoon. by then, though, we’d already done creature feature, creep show, count floyd show, and pogue ethics, the last by far being the coldest.

bert t combsbeing as hardcore as we are, though, we thumbed our noses to the 4:30pm sun and headed to eastern sky bridge ridge to get on super dario. on the way to the trailhead, the two guys who were leaving looked at us quizickly and asked, “you headed up?”

“of course! it’s not over yet,” i said. later we’d both confess that, at the point, we were both seriously considering turning around and jumping back in the warm car and melting back into the heated seats. we didn’t, though, and super dario, as always, was more than worth it.. despite the snow that started up again 😉

we grabbed a pizza from miguel’s, stuffed our faces again, and topped it off with some more pie. yasi was there, too, and we sat around slightly comatose before we hobbled out to johnny’s place. when we got there, we couldn’t help but be creeped out: here was a white house in the middle of nowhere with no heat or running water, half finished carpentry, freshly painted walls, and the lingered stench and mess of alcohol and climbing bums. before we could really settle in, though, we wanted to check out the climbers’ hostel and try to get the story on this place. we walked down the hill to true north and talked a bit with dana. as pleasant as that was, we were fading fast so the three of us, kathrine, yasi, and myself, packed into johnny’s room to try to trap as much heat as we could.

kathrine on whip stockingsaturday: we were all excited for what was supposed to be the warmest day yet. as the rest of the week had worked out, though, we were in for disappointment. clouds kept the sun away almost all day, so the normally warm drive-by crag was chilly at best so we busted out two sets of hand-warmers. before we headed off to a new crag, we’d finished up whip stocking, make a wish, and breakfast burrito.

johnny on kaleidescopewhitney showed up later and john did, too, but without any gear since it was locked away in my car. if you look closely at some of the pictures, you’ll see he’s wearing my shoes and harness, marked by the unpredictable and almost unmanageable “hippie” chalkbag. those two jumped on kaleidescope while we watched and froze slightly.

we head to sore heel from there and i finally got to put kathrine on something a little more technical. unfortunately, there was a good reason for having avoided it the other days: her ankle was still recovering from pretty serious strain. in fact, it was eight weeks later and i could still see the swelling. each day it seemed to get harder and harder for her and, by the end of kentucky flu, she was ready to call it a trip. the vertical stuff was just a little too much for the ankle to bear. still, though, i was happy she was able to check it out. the other routes will have to wait for next year and a stronger ankle.

by now it was nightfall and we rounded up the troops to head to tomo for sushi and mellow mushroom for a pitcher. with kathrine’s ride heading out at 7am, we had to wrap it up a little early and we all crashed out pretty hard.

sunday: not much to be said, really, other than kathrine and i got a good chance to talk for a while until her ride showed up at 8am. yasi took off for home, scared away by the cold, and whitney and i debated climbing or not until about noon when we headed back to drive-by where it was surprisingly warm. i don’t think kathrine got home until 10pm or so.. another 14 hours in the car. i’m not jealous 😉

there are gaps.. mostly because i have a terrible memory.. so please fill them as best you can. to all, it was great and much needed. plan on next year, same time, same place, same home.

thoughts

the quiet american – graham greene

the quiet americanthe quiet america – graham greene
a good one so far but it’s much more involved and a little less applicable to my current life. i’ll get to it, though, since i need to and it’s relatively short. favorite quote so far:

“God save us always,” I said, “from the innocent and the good.”

also, my first graham greene novel but i’m already a fan of the writing style. it’s interesting, though, as it’s been a while since i’ve read a novel in the narrative style. i’m usually a bigger fan of third person but he’s doing pretty well with the limited perspective. again.. it’s been off and on with this one so it could be a while before i wrap it up.

books

the moon is down – john steinbeck

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the moon is downthe moon is down – john steinbeck
ok.. haven’t been too good about staying with this one. i’m picking away at it in pieces. it’s pretty good, though, so far. i’ve always liked steinbeck’s writing and, surprising, he’s doing a pretty good job of portraying the value of individualism.

apparently, it was widely distributed during wwii, often in secret. i’m curious to see what steinbeck had to say about democracy and the west, especially after a few of his other strongly suggested communism at one point or another.