Author: docthink

no one of consequence

Peddle to the Meddle

People setting up their booth of trump campaign booty in front of a restaurant with the motto, I got my crabs at Dirty Dick's.

The fact that the sky was blackening with intermittent streaks of lightning did not dissuade them. The wind wasn’t picking up, so the roof would stay on the tent.

Anyway, this is a big day. The rentals turned over on Saturdays. People line the realty offices waiting for their keys to be delivered between 4-6 p.m. They pick their way to the house and dump the kids. The sisters or the bros pile back in the car for the Food Lion.

Everyone goes to the Food Lion when they get in. People need milk and that vanilla coffee creamer and their margarita mix. The chips were eaten in the car before the bridge, and you need salsa anyway. Not to mention chardonnay. And olives. You could get beer, too, if you missed the Brew Thru–yes, where you drive through an open garage and get handed a case of Bud.

You passed the next closest real grocery store 45 miles ago and you need charcoal, hotdogs, buns and mustard for tonight’s vacation grand opening. Grab that bag of pre-shredded coleslaw for me, will you? It’s got the slaw dressing in the bag, right?

So for the folks selling campaign bumper stickers, yard signs, hats and t-shirts, this is the day. They set up the tent right next to the entrance, where there’s a traffic light. People pause and look over the merchandise as they wait for the light to change. Some people give a thumbs up and sometimes a car horn blares an approval. They set up their store because they want America to be great again, and because they bought the shirts, signs and hats in bulk figuring there was some money to be made. People spend money on impulse buys all the time at the beach.

There’s plenty of foot traffic in the lot. The Food Lion sits in a strip mall with a dollar store and a yogurt place and a sandwich joint. Then there’s the restaurant which fronted the lawn space to set up the campaign shop. Dirty Dick’s Crab House. The folks at Dick’s are especially proud of the thousands of t-shirts they sell with their slogan, “I got my crabs from Dirty Dick’s.” Now customers can buy that shirt–or maybe even a onesie for the baby–at the restaurant and then pick out a yard sign that reads “Hillary for Prison.”

It’s all really quite something. The storm mostly held off. Who says America isn’t great?

 

 

 

Posted on by docthink 1

crab soup

crab

Well damn. Could that crab soup be any better?

It was creamy. But not floury. The worst is when you can easily identify the thickening agent. When you taste the flour, somebody failed. Worse would be a thickening and flavorless and thick cornstarch. But this soup did not make that mistake.

Flour needs to be a part of the fat, incorporated, with only thick and no interruption except to add feel. The fat could be butter. It could be olive oil. Or another oil. The flour needs to be heated, maybe taking on a color, and cooked. Flour tastes lousy. A mouthful of fatty thickness? Yes. That’s it. And cream. Yes, add cream.

The soup was sweet from the flesh of the crab, but you could taste the honey from the sherry. The sherry wasn’t just sweet, but nutty. And the butter wrapped around all of it–to fill your mouth.

That’s what I shoveled into my mouth. It was crazy. I didn’t need to eat it so fast. But it was just that good.

Posted on by docthink 0

Mourning In America

Detail from William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pietà, 1876, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Mary is so sad. She lost her son.

Women with loss. Loss of a child. A boy, a man, a son, a girl, a woman, a daughter.  A Gold Star mother saying these words, “I became a Gold Star mother,” into a microphone. To millions of people. And tucked deep inside her story of bravery at the unspeakable, she thinks, “Keep your star.” It’s an exclusive club. Nobody wants to join.

Wailing women. Weeping. Pounding their chests. Grabbing their heads. Pulling out clumps of hair. Faces wrenched. Clenching jaws and grinding teeth, trying desperately to hold back the bellows of grief. Of their worst moment. Of falling to the ground with horror. Of being unable to breathe. Of minds going blank, no thoughts, no feelings, nothing, because the alternative is that this is real.

Women of grace. Standing there. Alone. Together. Some with anger. Many with anger. Some struggling to find meaning. Others taking the mantle of meaning. Sharing their heartache, despair, agony and anguish. Pleading with us to see them. To acknowledge their children. To imagine their pain. To warn us. All searching for peace.

There are no words. But I am so sorry for your loss.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Democracy Happens

Jigglypuff helping VP candidate Tim Kaine deliver his speech.

Tonite’s post-dinner dialog went like this.

The Spouse: Who’s speaking tonight?
Me: Uncle Joe is up. So maybe POTUS tomorrow?
Big Guy: (walking in the hallway toward the TV) It’s not on now. I just checked.
Me: PBS. It’s on PBS. My girl Gwen is on it. Other channels are in and out.
The Spouse: Yeah. I heard their coverage is great.
Me: Channel 20.

The Big Guy turned on the TV just as Tim Kaine was entering from stage left with his hands grasped over his head like a local prizefighter.

Big Guy: He’s walking in like this. (Clasped hands rocking over his head to the left and to the right.)

The Big Guy stood in line with me when I voted for city council, mayors, and presidents. He punched my ballot for me at least once. He’s put my ballot in the box. The poll workers were invariably older women. They always gave him an I Voted sticker, and he’d wear it to school the next day. One of the times he came voting with me, he pulled out his driver’s license, filled out the form and cast his first ballot. He’s done it more than once. Not the registering but the voting.

The Spouse brought him a peppermint tea. The Big Guy is illin’. This is his rare night off. And he got out of bed to watch our nation’s democracy do its thing.

The Big Guy, like many Millennials, cares.

Posted on by docthink 0

Composition

Did you know that this was a picture of trees with the sun breaking through before it was stylized into a b+w picture of trees with a source of light?

I’m taking a little break tonite. Not from thinking, but from composing the thinking.

My day was full of thoughts. Some were validating, but, and more interesting, some were apple cart tossing.

The challenging thoughts were mostly in my favor. That is, when I proved myself wrong, I was questioning myself when I was on my own side of the argument. Not that this did me well. Thinking, again, I guess it did. The tough thinking was aligned more with my values versus the logically correct bare logic. In my mind, pure logic needs to be evaluated against results. No matter what they are.

Like, earlier today The Spouse and I went back and forth about a judicial nominee. The nominee was exactly right in his logical application of the law that the tabloid was calling Mr. Potential Judge out on. And the Mr. Potential Judge was exactly wrong on the human impact. Logically, and intellectually, sound–but wrong.

Sometimes equal is not fair. And that was the issue with the judicial analysis.

I want to write about the dozen, or maybe only half-dozen, dilemmas I had today. But instead I will write about the unabashed joy of deliberation, of contemplation and of equivocation. Because sometimes we need to think more.

After all, I’m the Doctor of Thinkology.

Posted on by docthink 0

Hand Out

A pile of coins in somebodies hand.

Today I was thinking of the day that I quit my canvassing job. It was my summer job, and I couldn’t do it another day.

The day was sultry, like today. So hot that, when you walked, bugs would touch down on your skin for a salty drink of sweat. So dank that, even early in the evening, the sky flirted heavily with the on dark its wet edges. The breeze, if you could call it that, was more like the exhaling of a dragon. After it ate a bag of nacho cheese Doritos. It’s nothing except nasty.

But when you’re dropped off in tonight’s territory, you ignore that. It doesn’t make sense to be angry with the outside since you’ll be there for the next four or five hours. You have doors to knock on. You have a smile and a riff to give to the person on the other side of that door. Heat madness has no value.

I wasn’t a good canvasser. Not like those well-trained, almost Disney Channel canvassers I see on the streets of D.C.  No. I was an old school canvasser. It was so old school that the goal for a 21 year old woman walking in an unknown neighborhood alone was to get into the house of a stranger to make friends enough that they gave you money. I only got grabbed on my ass once. I was never bit by a dog.

I wasn’t a good canvasser and my wages proved that. You only got salary if you made quota. Quota was the amount of money you were tasked with raising. You needed to make quota all week to make salary. I never did that. I probably should have been fired with my low take. I made quota maybe 4 nights over the summer. But I got paid out a percentage of my take. That was enough to pay for my sublet, utilities, french fries and beer. It was summer.

People with more experience than me always loved the nights when your territory had curvy streets. That meant more income. But to me it was just doors opened by glassy-eyed housewives who would let me prattle on about energy costs, and then when I did my ask they’d say that their husbands weren’t home. And that they didn’t make decisions, not even a $10 or $25 donation, without him. I found myself humming Mother’s Little Helper as I dejectedly stepped off the porch and walked back down their long driveways. It took me a while to realize that their vacant interest was more vacant than interested.

The last week I canvassed we were in Dearborn. The second day of the week I, as usual, wasn’t doing great. People weren’t home, the ones that were weren’t interested, and, honestly, I wasn’t good enough to get their interest. I hated asking for money. This one house, though, had a pair of teachers behind the brick facade. They invited me in. It was the money shot, getting in the house. The idea was if you were in, they’d write a check.

The wife-teacher offered me lemonade. I joined her and the husband-teacher on their back patio, sitting at a crackled-glass topped table, underneath a sun shading umbrella. I spent thirty or forty-five minutes talking about energy, jobs, cars and education in metro-Detroit. The sun was just starting to sink as they offered me a beer. It was a cold Michelob on a dripping night. I was totally screwing up, I should have been to more houses. But instead I shared progressive political thoughts with my hosts. I was too friendly with them to ask for a check, but he wrote one for $15 anyway. That plus the other $15 I canvassed meant that I wasn’t making quota. Again.

The next night, a Wednesday, we were a little further west. Away from the city. I was doing poorly, as was my way. I was discouraged. I’m sure I was looking sultry. Without any sexy. The house in front of me wasn’t huge, but it looked pricier than yesterday’s neighborhood. There were four late-model cars in the driveway, including a shiny new red Cadillac. I rang the bell. I could see into the house through the screen door. No response. I looked to my right at the thousands and thousands of dollars worth of almost new cars in the driveway and rang the bell again. A woman spilled down from upstairs, her silky kimono-y robe streaming behind her as it was still wrapped around her. She had auburn hair that framed her face in a soft Liz Taylor kind of bouffant. She listened to my pitch with great interest and said, “I’m sorry I can’t help. I was just laid off.” And she looked at me blankly, and I realized that she had been blank the entire time.

Thursday night we were in Dearborn Heights. It was the end of the week because we didn’t knock on doors on Fridays. The streets were laid out in a strict grid. This was not a place for me to make up for my week’s failures. The houses were still brick, but were closer to the sidewalk. The heavy concrete porches were reached by climbing five steps and were fortified by brick and mortar. I half-heartedly knocked on doors and pressed doorbells for the first thirty minutes of my shift. It wasn’t unusual that most people weren’t home yet. I plodded on. The houses were mirrors of each other. One had the door on the right side of the porch, and the next on the left side. I met her at her house which had a right-sided porch.

She seemed like a grandma, the stooped woman who answered the door. She lived with her son who was at work. She had a slight accent, and I am going to say eastern European, but that could be because that was the accent of my own grandmother. But she was much younger than my grandma. Maybe not too much older than my mother, but she had lived hard. But well. And with pride.

I almost didn’t go through my spiel with her. I didn’t think I would get anywhere, but she asked me a set of engaging questions and I realized that I was unfairly dismissing her. Not as a donor, but as a person. She was interested in the energy issues and asked me to explain the regulatory process. I think that she was more curious than interested, and I know that she was more lonely than curious. We sat on the top stoop of her porch. Again, the sun started to set. I needed to move on and thanked her. She asked me why I was there. I told her that I was raising money in the neighborhood. She looked at me in the eyes and held up her finger so that I would wait. She disappeared into her house and returned in a few minutes. She had a pile of coins in her hand.

She took my hand into her small hand and passed the coins. “This was for the paper-boy, but I want you to take it.” I didn’t want to, but I wanted less to insult her, this woman who was so engaged with me, who was so kind, who was so generous. I thanked her with all of my heart and walked back to my rendezvous point. My pickup wasn’t for ninety minutes.

I sat down on the curb and lit a cigarette. I decided right then that I was done. I couldn’t take the paperboy money from the working poor anymore. And I couldn’t extract money from the Cadillac lady.

I saw in that week the generosity of those who have little. People who will share what they have. Because they know what it’s like to do a day’s work. They respect your work as they do their own. They give what they can.

I think about being embraced by that woman on that muggy day and in that oppressive week. I think about her giving from her heart. I think about the woman running down the stairs in her billowy robe.  I remember who I am, and who I wish to be. And I remember to put my hand out, to help when I can.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Man Spa

A stylized view of a stylized bag from a stylized store.

The plate glass storefront window was striped by mahogany colored shelves filled with fancy rectangular boxes and even fancier bottles. I’m think that the boxes were empty. I bet they ensconced the bottles before they were divorced, and the bottles teased them by their independence on meticulous display.

The boxes, and their coordinating labels on the bottles, were serious colors. Navy blue. Maroon. Pine green. And a parchment white. It wasn’t a pure white, but a white with enough yellow so you knew it wasn’t new. The lettering was either silver or gold, depending on how they performed. The navy had silver and the parchment had gold.

There were a lot of shelves, so many that they obscured whatever was happening behind the glass. If the window was ten feet tall, and it easily was, there may have been twelve or fifteen shelves, each fitted with rows and rows and rows of beautiful packaging. What was it?

The store was new. It was next door to the corner organic sandwich shop that makes their to-go sandwiches fresh daily and give any leftovers to people who are hungry. That shop had just undergone a major remodel and expansion. It took over the space around the corner. I don’t remember exactly what they took over. Maybe it was a remnant from the cupcake craze. Regardless, it was now assimilated into the feel-good shoppe with a french moniker.

The new store, with the impressive window display, more than piqued my interest. It was so interesting that I put my overheating phone that was tracking my game into my purse. I pulled hard and opened the heavy door that was mostly glass but with an impressive mahogany frame. And I felt like I walked into somebody’s bathroom.

The store was teeny tiny on the inside. Maybe this was where they were selling, but definitely not baking, cupcakes.

Opening the door begot a madhatter experience. There was an impressive desk to the left. It was wooden and had an intricately inlaid top that supported a too-large mac monitor, a keyboard, a VOIP telephone and, facing me, a credit card swiping machine. Behind the desk was a very friendly woman with a loosely curly mane of blonde locks that would have been strawberry blonde if there was just a little more red. She had big lips lined with a pinky-brick color and filled with a brown-pink shine that was not glittery but more wet.

Her eyes were lined, too, with a brown pencil. She was smart to avoid black which would have been abrupt on her creamy skin and light rosy cheeks. Her eyes were definitely lined, though. Just not too much.

I think that she was tall, just by how she sat behind the formal desk with all of the electronics on display. Her head definitely topped the large computer screen. She sat tall like she was comfortable with her height. I’m thinking 5’11” or maybe even six. Her smile was toothy in just the right amount. The edges of her lips curved up like a real smile, and her eyes were happy, too. But, unbelievably, I didn’t see her–or her desk–at first. They were a bit behind me.

When I walked in, I pulled up because on my left, ahead of me, were two sinks. This was very impressive because the back of the store was maybe eleven feet ahead. The sinks were very white, in contrast to the manly wood and the serious wallpaper with a paisley stripe, each spaced eight inches from the next. Before I could take anything more in, a sprite stood in front of me.

I named him William in my head. I imagine that his mother and his sisters called him Billy, and his last three partners called him Will. The partners before that called him either Billy or Bill.

He had a plaid bow tie at the neck of his crisp white shirt. The shirt was hugged by a vest. The vest was not the same fabric as the tie–that would be too much–but a perfectly subtle accompaniment in both color and print. He had a pencil thin mustache and a cap that covered most of his short, tight steel colored curls. They were charcoal steel and stainless steel. He stepped toward me from the far sink, but because the space was so small it was a short step.

His greeting had a studied warmth. I felt like he was wondering why I was there. We had that in common. I offered that I thought that the window was so enticing, so that I was compelled to see what was next. I left out the part about my surprise at the tight quarters. Frankly, I was expecting to walk through aisles of toiletries. Instead, I just verbally blundered on about how the display intrigued me.

It was almost comical that after looking at rows and rows and rows of bottles, the product line was on two twenty-four inch shelves. It wasn’t a shop. Well, it was a barber shop. But the entirety of the wares was on my immediate right.

William offered me some sticks of paper on which I could smell the colognes. I demurred. I preferred to grab a bottle, remove the stopper and wave it from side to side underneath my nose. I knew better than to take a deep breath, so I just inhaled and exhaled naturally to catch the scent. Last thing I wanted was to burn my nostrils with patchouli.

It was a clean scent, but way to citrusy for my likes. William asked me what types of scents that The Spouse liked.

I looked at him askance, my eyebrow that I can’t control asking what the hell was he thinking?

“I don’t care what The Spouse likes. It matters what I like.”

William broke. He snorted a little, but quickly recovered. He was at the barber to the Kings of England, and whatnot. He couldn’t go to his Billy self, even if it was funny.

I asked him what he liked, and the woman who was seated four feet from me chimed in. (This was the first time I saw her, despite the intimacy of the space.) She offered what was most popular, and William answered my question on what he liked. Neither of which appealed to me. Too fruity. I asked if there was a sharper scent. William offered the mahogany box.

My nose was insulted from the first scent. The second I sprayed on the paper but missed and got my thumb. I couldn’t smell the paper as much as the crap I sprayed on my hand. I committed to spraying this next scent on the paper and almost succeeded. It was more woody and a bit sharper. I could see smelling this on the neck of The Spouse.

William offered me the services price list. Haircuts, hot lather shaves, facials, beard trims, neck shaves and manicures. William seemed good, I’d recommend him for a neckshave, as if I have any idea what that is.

The woman behind the mahogany desk reached behind her, to the rows and rows and rows that instigated my attention, and took a seriously orange box from a shelf. William pointed out the additional shaving gear–blades and brushes and soaps–in case I wanted to be even more generous. But let me tell you, when I signed the credit card slip I realized that I was being quite generous already.

The box was wrapped in the store’s signature tissue wrap and then placed in the seriously navy blue bag. I left pleased with myself for my purchase of a surprise gift, but mostly pleased at falling into the rabbit hole and being led through the madness by William, the MadHatter.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Room Temperatures

A very hot dog takes advantage of the box fan.

The house is unnaturally cool. Blankets get pulled up around chins. The hot coffee feels good going down. There is always a hoodie nearby for the overzealous chill. You could even imagine baking–if that was what you did. If it was a blueberry pie, that would be good.

Opening the door on a 97°F day isn’t a shock. Walking through the threshold, the wet heavy air forms a drape, a drape that is transparent to the eye but has the heft of thick velvet curtains. You need to almost push the air away, except it doesn’t resist.

The humidity is supra-tropical and the air is moving around. For skin cooled by the AC, it really isn’t as bad as expected. Stepping off of the shady porch and into the sunlight is a bigger contrast. The sun squinches eyes, even those behind sunglasses. It doesn’t caress the cool skin as much as press on it. But it doesn’t press hard.

The heat is forgotten for the first five blocks, until the the last of the chill, that last chill left on your forearms, gets dispersed into the air. The cool becomes hot, too.

The heat begins to press harder on skin. It closes up your nostrils, making it harder to breathe. It squeezes out beads of water along the hairline, at the waistband. Water begins to drip from under arms and beneath chins from throat to chest.

The heat seems to make gravity more grave. It pushes down on thighs as they work to bring the feet up to propel to the next block. It would be easy to slow down, but that would mean staying in the heat. No slowing down, but no speeding up, either. Additional exertion would be too punishing.

The last turn to the final block is a mental relief but a physical trial. Cheeks are flushed and radiate fire. The dull throbbing from your head that started two blocks earlier becomes all consuming.

The key turns in the lock. The door opens and the arctic blast starts your revival. The moisture on all skin surfaces begins to evaporate in the dark, cool house. The pounding in your head gets worse as you slump onto the couch. You stand up to switch the fan to “high” and flop back on the couch, facing the fan with your eyes closed, wiping your face with your shirt.

Your head hurts, but as you watch the swelling of your feet subside and feel the ring twirl around freely where it had been stuck on your sausage finger a few minutes ago, you lay your still pulsing head on the pillow, and reach for that hoodie.

Posted on by docthink 0

A Week In Rosé

A bottle of rosé wine. Prone.

It’s the end of the week. I am tired. It may have something to do with that rosé.

This week, before the rosé, was the shopping and chopping and sautéing and grilling of those beautiful scallops, the saffron and tomato brothed cod cheeks and tonite’s panzenella. The Spouse cooked the other nights. Except that night I had a hot dog. It wasn’t an effort, but it was good.

Before the rosé was a week’s worth of work and three month’s worth of politics in that one week.

Before the rosé was a week full of coding data, or analyzing data and wishing there was better data. There was also a missed opportunity and a home run. This work stuff is hitting all emotions if not firing on all cylinders. You know how the engine goes, “POP!”? Maybe you don’t. Lots of people don’t.

Before the rosé was a beautiful craft cocktail on a different night. The drink had a very stupid name, but the measuring and stirring of the cocktail was nothing short of epic. As were the concentrated home-brewed at the bar cherries. They were for the Manhattans but we begged the mixologist for one and she obliged.

Before the rosé I stepped many steps in the heavy heat. I took walks almost every noon-break and passed the close by stop to the station further away. I was steamed and dripped a little on some days. But there were some moments of breeziness that made me happy to be blown around outside.

Before the rosé I leveled up to 16 and caught 53 different monsters. I got stronger tools, better skills and settled on a strategy. The only downside was the irrelevance of this effort. I think I’ll be fully over it in about a week.

Before the rosé was a bunch of television that I didn’t see live and some that I simply time shifted. The time shifted was a dystopian fantasy, the live was a dystopian reality.

Before the rosé I totally had a moment with The First Lady as she purportedly drove around the circle inside the gates of the White House sitting shotgun and singing karaoke in a car. I had the moment with her because she isn’t a great vocalist but can really bust a move. I do that.

Today was my father’s birthday, and even before the rosé, I missed him. Eight years later, and way before the rosé, I still miss him. But mostly, more than missing him, I think about him every day. I think that this past week may have bred an argument, if he were still alive. I hope that I wouldn’t have hung up on him. I hope he would’ve helped me think things through. Actually, he did. He’s always with me.

Before the rosé I spent many hours contemplating what happens next. There is an imminent trip to the beach that needs some plotting and a future set of unknowns that needed some thinking. Resolutions still pending.

And then there was the rosé, split with The Spouse over dinner. The rosé that made me too tired to finish the other post that I started. The rosé that finished me off. It was cool and minerally and tasting of cherries and steel. The rosé that was the bookend to this week.

Posted on by docthink 0

Reboot

an eye. staring at you.

She flipped her hands through her blond bob and flicked the ends of her hair away from her head in a practiced way. No. It wasn’t practiced. It was a little bit of a tic, the unfurling of the hair, but she flipped her wrist so her hair would fall comfortably toward her chin. She wasn’t flipping out.

She was done with that flipping out.

Her dress was the best turquoise that she could wear. This was significant because turquoise, aqua and many blues all suited her. Her silver and light stone necklace had three tiers but was somehow a light accessory despite all the layers. There was a silver “coin” that drew down that last tier without being heavy. The baubles were luminous, not hefty.

Actually, everything about her was light. Even the lines around her eyes, which were etched by years of quick smiles, were hairlines. Not the crevices that dragged her eyes into her cheeks that dropped into her chin last year. She had no surgery, but her face was lifted.

But there were the twinkles. The ones that reflected from the mirror at the back of the bar and flickered from her eyes. The light that bounced off the shiny, polished wooden bar–it must be from a spotlight shining from the tall ceiling–hit the side of her coupe glass and shone from her ready smile. The smile wasn’t a refresh. It’s always been fast and friendly. But it’s funny how her internal glow made her teeth brighter. And the lines on her face disappear.

She floated just a little bit above her barstool. More like a hover than a transcendental experience. It was part of her lightness.

She realized that people liked her, appreciated her, found her compelling, and maybe, some of them, found her sexy. She was amazed, and then felt righteous, that others felt her value. She had no conceit. She just did. And what she did was good.

She left the dark behind her.  She pulled her anchor out from the cold sea and set sail toward the infinite horizon, following the infinite dawn. She was wrapped in the light.

Posted on by docthink 0