Author: fifteenkey (Page 15 of 96)

Chronology is useful and simple to follow like a bullet list, but Paris is about stories and light, and bullets too. Over the next few posts I won’t maintain order, but instead try my best to recall some of Joyce and my stories. Here’s the first.

Paris Part 1
No human relationships are perfect. On this (yesterday’s) Mother’s Day, mothers and daughters or sons are living strained relationships, even though those are the ones considered unconditional. Blood-free relationships are not necessarily absolute, so navigating and respecting each other’s conditions and limitations is a key to maintaining them. Oh, and love. Everybody needs love.

I’ve wanted to take this trip to Paris for such a long time to see if it was truly the “most romantic city in the world,” or just another city.

The loud, deep, echoing clang of the bells of Saint Sulpice woke us from their home Sunday morning. The second largest church in Paris has been waking the neighbors since 1732 and was mere feet from our hotel window. At some point while maneuvering around the typically small European boutique hotel room, a word took a wicked bad hop and I retreated to spend the day in a walled city of my own making to pout and mentally review my list of relationship grievances. Of course my brooding was silent, only broken by simple, declarative responses to questions posed over the wall.

Art is, or was, high on my list for the trip, but the French museum schedule maker decided long ago that all Paris museums shall be closed on May 1, so I was already feeling some pressure that we wouldn’t see much of them. Given our schedule to hit the French countryside Tuesday through Thursday and a Saturday departure, my little walled city now had windows of opportunity quickly closing on setting foot in the Louvre.

“We could be over there,” I suggested to the ringing and the singing, now wafting out of the thick, Saint Sulpice walls. We spent the minimum on clothing preparation and walked over. The church is massive, and as I sat in the rear-center, the open expanse in front of me provided ample room to think. Suddenly, the giant organ filled the vastness and my mind went dark again. As she walked the old cathedral, Joyce was moved by its beauty, the soaring music, but mostly by the power of human faith she shares with millions of others. Outside she asked what I thought. “They put on a good show,” was my unfeeling response. Jerk. Not a great example of navigating and respecting…

“Me, oiu,” the flea market. I’ll admit, I was up for it. It sounded fun and had great reviews on tripadvisor.com and elsewhere, and seemed cooler than the usual fare, but that was before the bad hop and me turning into a trou du cul. I fought it, and was less so at points during the day, like when I coaxed Joyce into a pic with a Steve McQueen mannequin, but my negative thinking just took me down a dark, spiraling funnel, and reduced me to kneading negative one liners in my head like, “I didn’t see the Louvre, but I did go to a flea market.” As we walked under miles of architectural beauty and over diamond shaped cobblestones (they’re square, but look like diamonds from a certain perspective) through the streets of Paris, it seemed there were flower shops on every corner. Part of me wanted to dash in and make it all better with a bouquet, but my dark side had cornered the market on indifference. Jerk.

By the time we made it to dinner our one word responses had been reduced by one. We sat in an unremarkable café for a “quiet” dinner. My brooding was peaking. My “edge,” as Joyce describes it, was glistening sharp. What transpired from there, over roasted chicken, Quiche Lorraine, et les vins, blancs et rouges, is best described as a Seinfeldian “airing of grievances,” mostly de moi. We spent about an hour navigating and respecting each other’s conditions and limitations. We didn’t solve the world’s problems or our own, but we moved closer to them and to each other. Hand in hand, like they do in Paris, we walked slowly down a dimly lit rue de Guynemer along the Jardins de Luxemborg, finally reaching Place Saint Sulpice. This picture only begins to capture the warmth of the place at that moment.

That was our worst day in Paris. The other six lacked even a hint of its negativity. Still, aside from the walls and grievances, Sunday in Paris was full of awe, discovery and the cocque madam. As for the whole “most romantic city” thing? Well, that’s wherever I am with her.

Her sad little downtrodden face led a three foot frame toward me in the kitchen. Maddy faced her mother’s blue eyes up to me, surrounded by a mess of blonde angel hair, along with a small fist clutching a dandelion hours beyond code blue. “Papa, the flower I picked for Mumma died. Will you go outside and pick another one I can give to Mumma?” This little child, so full of love, was desperate to share it with her mother in a flower. It was a simple request, and not really unusual from a little girl, but what followed filled my heart.

“Papa, pick one that won’t die.”

“I’ll try, baby. I’ll try.”

This post is brought to you by New England Coffee Colombian Supremo.

Recently I received a blog matter request via Facebook from my friend Christine:

“I would like Leo to write a blog on “decaf” being essentially just a reduction in caffeine, but yet not close to caffeine free — can’t anything be straight forward and not just marketing to make you think you are doing something right…”

My initial instinct was to research the outrage of “de-caf” actually containing caffeine, but that’s been pretty much covered here. Yes, the average “decaf” contains about 10% of the caffeine in full-on Joe. By the way, New England Coffee’s decaf selections are 97% caffeine-free via a “direct solvent” process. Their website states, “The green bean is softened by steam and then flushed with methylene chloride to remove 97% of the caffeine.” Wow. I can just see the commercial… A beautiful woman looks seductively at the camera as she sips with perfect painted lips from a steaming cup. Her gaze heats from the pleasure as she pierces your soul and says, “Mmmmm… methylene chloride.”

Personally, I don’t get the decaf thing. As I sit here pre-dawn, sipping my first cup and feeling more and more “ALIIIIVEEEE,” I’m thinking, “What’s the point?” OK, so Joe and NoJo aside, Christine’s bigger question is, “can’t anything be straight forward and not just marketing?” We’ll answer that, right after this.

We’re back, jacked up on Joe, and sadly, the answer is largely “no,” not in the world we live in. I contend our capitalist system requires sustained economic growth and one of the most effective competitive tools to control the masses in the battle for ever higher revenues and profits is marketing, and its ancillary practice, advertising. So, as long as there is a profit to motivate them, entities will continue to bombard us with their multi-media messages to persuade us to not vote for the other guy, ask your doctor if [insert pharmaceutical here] is right for you, sue someone who’s potentially done you wrong, or buy their (not so) decaffeinated coffee.

There are some things still outside that giant silo of spin, and most occur in nature, although that’s not to say those things aren’t exploited. I think about this scene from last week. It was stunningly beautiful and didn’t need any commercial to promote it. That is until I took a picture of it and plastered it on Facebook as a reflection of me. “See? I took that. Doesn’t that make me good? Cool? Worthy?” I just wanted to share it, but there’s a subconscious need for us to stand out from the crowd, to compete for attention, to advertise. Maybe it’s just me.

Oh, and Christine, you’re doing quite a bit right. Now it’s time for another damn fine cup of coffee.

A couple decades ago, my wife gave me an engraved doorknocker for my birthday just like the one pictured here. It bummed me out and I wasn’t very good at hiding my feelings. I’m still not. It was a feeble swing and a miss at life that day. I didn’t get it. I do now.

I know I could be wrong; we likely don’t remember out childhood literally as it happened. As we look back, we probably get some of the foundation right, but many of the details blur as they hurtle down our creaky neural pathways. Still, in conversations I’ve had with my brothers, none of us can recall hearing “I love you” from our parents. I don’t need to get into the “why’s” of their silence, but I don’t judge them. Through the years I’ve pieced together much context of their lives and understand from where they came. Suffice to say, neither of my parents heard “I love you” much, if ever, during their childhood. I don’t know if they ever spoke it to each other. I do think some of it was a generational thing, especially for emotionally repressed 1950’s dad.

In spite of the emotional vacuum from which my youngest breath was drawn, I don’t recall ever having trouble saying it to women. Not that I spewed it like Cupid’s fountain, but when I felt it I could say it, so when we had children they heard that affirmation constantly, and still do. That was easy, unconditional love. An interesting phenomena I’ve witnessed over the years has been the crumbling of those old walls built to protect the heart and keep pain locked away. When Megan was about 3, or Maddy’s age now, she’d bop her little blonde pigtails toward her Nana and let fly with a carefree, “I love you, Nana.” Early on, my mother would choke up, unable to speak. She’d hug the tiny child, snap off something jokingly sarcastic, and sniff herself back to composure. Today none of us ever end a phone call or visit without telling each other, “I love you.” Even my dad says it now. Every call. Every visit. We still do “man hugs” though. Let’s not get carried away.

On Sunday, someone I love received his 90 day “chip” to mark a milestone of sobriety. He’s confronting emotions soberly for the first time in over 30 years and it’s both painful and exhilarating to observe. He gets choked up easily these days, but he’s allowing himself to feel; to experience this life across its entire emotional spectrum. He’s no longer hiding in a safe corner, anesthetizing himself to emotional deadness with drug or drink. As we said goodbye after Sunday’s call, I encouraged him to just focus on the success of day 90 and the hope of day 91. Then I said, “I love you.” I know his recovery will never be complete, and he will have moments of no light. When those moments come, I want him to know he is loved. There was a painful pause, and then a tear choked, “Yeah… I love you, too.”

Daley
Love Is Spoken Here

Tonight the family gathered round the glowing plasma for some teevee time. “The Empire Strikes Back” kept us entertained, although we were moreso by all jokes we were making about it. During one of the every ten minutes, twenty minute commercial break, a burger ad came on excitedly touting the value proposition of the “BK Stacker” family, consisting of anywhere from one to four 2 ounce beef patties, bacon, cheese and some dressing:

• 650 calories
• 43g fat
• 18g sat. fat
• 1g trans fat
• 145mg cholesterol
• 38g protein
• 29g carbs
• 7g sugar
• 1020mg sodium

I’ll give the BK Marketing folks some credit. They describe the “BK Triple” as a “mountainous monument of meat.” That’s poetry. Anyway, when meat mountain scaled the screen, the following conversation ensued:

Megan: “Oh, that’s gross!” Dad: “Megan, there are people grabbing their car keys right now.” (Laughter)

I always look for reasons to quote great lyrics, and today’s title is from the Drive By Truckers, “The Righteous Path.”

Since the holidays I’ve been pinching pennies a bit, saving for Paris in the Springtime. Exactly ten days ago I did a quick(en) review of my short-term finances and it looked like I had an extra $800 or so in checking that could be moved to “le fonds France.” After dark, I walked out along the short front walk to check the mailbox, its long slender pole-neck finally out of the snow sweater it had been wearing for a couple months. I pulled out a Victoria Secrets catalog, about 14 credit card solicitations for Megan and… ugh… my heating oil bill for $673.05. I’m not complaining. I can pay it and don’t need to re-fi my house to do it. I wonder how other families less fortunate than mine are coping with the rising costs of heating oil and gasoline.

There are far too many families that can’t pay and can’t save because offshoring and the Wall Street theft of 2008 have swelled unemployment and depressed wages. A Culpepper salary survey pegged US salary increases for 2009-11:

2009 1.66%
2010 2.38%
2011 2.91% (projected)

In stark contrast to Wall Street bonuses:

2009 $20.3B
2010 $20.8B (Average bonus $128,530)

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore isn’t afraid to state a point of view. Recently he was in Wisconsin to support the union workers there. He said:

“America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages and settle for the life your great grandparents had. America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it is not in your hands.”

“It has been transferred in the greatest heist in American history from the workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber-rich. Right now this afternoon just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined… most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 now have more cash, stock, and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.

“I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path.” Amen.

Leaving my office I began to think about this post. A little button in my head was pushed. It is round with tapered and slightly shaded edges and a right facing triangle. Immediately precisely arranged zeroes and ones streamed out splices of a Bob Seger song. First words were “On the road again,” but then the song jumped across a couple deep, black grooves to “There I go… Turn the page.”

Odd. I know the song popped into my head because I was thinking of a post title, and it really doesn’t take much to push that button anyway. Anyway, this post isn’t about turning the page in the sense Seger sang about, but a page turner by Cormac McCarthy, “The Road.”

The book was recommended a few months ago by (Work)Joyce, so I downloaded bits of a sample to my Kindle and read it while climbing stairs yesterday. Joyce suggested I could relate to the story of father and son survivors touring the charred corpse of earth, courtesy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Kindle samples vary. Some are long and rich. Others barely get you to chapter 1. This stretch of “The Road” stomped stairclimbing me in less than 20 pages. Here are three that kicked me hard:

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

Son: “What would you do if I died?”
Father: “If you died I would want to die too.”
Son: “So you could be with me?”
Father: “Yes. So I could be with you.”
Son “Okay.”

“You forget some things, don’t you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

It’s bleak but right now irresistible. Gotta go turn the page.

Before my face was kissed by the cold, fresh air, I could see through the tall cafeteria windows that a sunset was happening. It wasn’t a “10” on the awe scale, just some pleasant refraction sketching an outline around low, puffy clouds of gray-blue. Many of us are fortunate to see so many sunsets in our lives that few stick in our memories, and most of the time we remember more about the place and who we were with than the exact colors and style of nature’s curtain call.

It’s only been 12 hours or so and the hues exact position in the Crayola 133 is fading. A quick lookup suggests last night’s horizon wasn’t colored with any of the “standard 12.” Yeah, sure, they were palette mixed from the 3 primary shades, but from rapidly dimming recall, I’m guessing it was Atomic Tangerine or Bittersweet. Yeah, that’s the one.

My childhood memories evoke the long, bright days of endless summer. I’m sure some of the shortening days of increasing cold and darkness are buried in there, but the days I hold onto were warm and filled with light. As I looked at the glow seeping out of the sky last night, I wondered how many more I’d see, where I’d see them and with who. It wasn’t a bleak, morbid assessment. On the way home I chatted with my dad. He’s 77, in decent health and with fully functioning cognition. I told him how lucky he was. I realized the same about myself. At this point in life, it still seems about two minutes brighter every day.

When my own children were young, I did my best to make sure they experienced some of the fun things in kid life like ice shows. We saw some good ones like “Little Mermaid on Ice” and “Wizard of Oz on Ice.” Still, I remember peering from our affordable seats down to the icy edge and wonder, “Who are those people? How can they afford those?”

I know it doesn’t really matter. Through the dry ice fog of years, I think I can still remember July 27, 1967 when my Uncle Mitchell’s girlfriend (hot Italian brunette… I definitely remember that) took me to see the Monkees at the Boston Garden. We were about mid-arena in the balcony, and all I really recall is a blue bathed stage with human forms and girls screaming. I think I recognized a few chords of “I’m a Believer,” but not much else musically. It doesn’t matter. That is a permanently etched and beautiful memory. Hell, Kyle still talks about “Wizard” on ice.

My life has changed so much since those years of wanting. Monday is my daughter Megan’s 22nd birthday. I’m mesmerized watching what she’s become as a mother, as a professional with a dogged work ethic, but mostly as a person. Of course I think she’s smart and funny and breathtakingly beautiful, but it’s her huge, helping heart that stops me in amazement. She’s happy. Every parent’s wish come true.

Today she told me she’d like to take her Madison to “Toy Story 3 on Ice” for her birthday. I guess she remembers those shows warmly. After looking at Craigslist and seeing nothing on Stubhub, it occurred to me there might still be tickets on Ticketshyster. I went with “Best Available” for Sunday at noon.

LOGE12, row A…

That’s in the center of the rink in the first row.

I’m very lucky to not have to wish anymore. I have everyone I want.

Some 30 years ago I survived a road trip from Boston to Fort Lauderdale with my dad’s mom, Lillian “Lil the thrill” Daley. One memory that lingers, perhaps because the event itself did, is sitting in an orange roofed restaurant having breakfast for 3 freakin’ hours! I was waiting tables at the time (no, not at that moment), so I empathized with the poor waitress who wouldn’t be able to serve another 3-4 parties that morning because Lil wanted to drink 12 cups of tea from the same teabag, write postcards and affix ten cent stamps. Before she pushed her sub five foot firecracker frame out of the booth, Nana dropped about sixty cents onto the table while almost simultaneously emptying the sugar boat of all the white and pink paper packets. Out the door, I pulled the “Oh, I forgot blah, blah, blah” and dropped some paper of my own on the table.

I don’t think I challenged the saccharine stealing. I may have dismissed it as depression era hoarding behavior, but I’ll never forget it.

Recently our office Keurig coffee makers were all replaced by Flavia brand brewers. Word on the street is that employees were helping themselves to the little cone shaped coffees for use in their home machines. Oh, and they also were copping condiments (now available in white, pink, blue and yellow like Monopoly money) and the quarts of half and half! Man… If we can’t police ourselves to not break bad for home coffee breaks, aren’t we headed to some ugly, caffeinated sugar high anarchy?

I’ve had little luck getting anyone in this apparently widespread criminal conglomerate “lo zucchero famiglia” to speak out. They cite some crap about a “cane code of silence.” I did get one person to speak, but only anonymously. This particular individual’s rationale is that they “don’t drink coffee at the office,” and therefore “only take my share” as if they did. I asked what they’d do if they caught someone they managed “taking their share.” “Well, how many did they take?” Hmmmm… Sounds like some serious rationalization going on to me.

So, where do you stand on sweetener swiping? Theft or workplace benefit to be enjoyed at a home coffee establishment of your choice?