Laughing with the sinners, crying with the saints.

And so the Earth completes its long journey around the sun...more or less.  We don't rectify the remainder until 2016.

All my life I've sort of flip-flopped between the concept of resolutions and marking the "end" of a particular moment in time while allowing for a "fresh start", and using a lot of "quotation marks" to imply that I have any relevant understanding of how society interprets New Year's Eve.  I suppose I have a different outlook each December 31st, depending on what happened in the preceding 364 days.  But the only lasting impression, each and every goddamn year, is that they are

Just.
Too.
Long.

Venus.  Life on Venus would knock down a calendar year to about 225 days.  That would be ideal, even if the atmospheric pressure would crush all of us.  But, even if we all end up looking like a Dali painting, wouldn't you rather finish off the year in mid-August?  If it was a fulfilling and rewarding year you'd limit the possibilities of life going down the shitter by four months.  If it was dull, or painful, or catastrophic then you'd be 160 days closer to closing the chapter.  I know that outlook is pretty damn pragmatic, which I suppose could be explained by my persistent sense of cautious optimism taking a long walk off of a short pier.  Don't solemnly shake your head at me, mister.  I can still laugh.

I'm wary of being reflective...because it's getting redundant.  The breadth of my year has included numerous nights of introspection and self-assessment, promises to myself that I am doing a so-so job at keeping, trying to navigate the turbulent internal waters just so I can, for a change, see what's underneath, and overusing metaphors.  I'd like to believe that we are always, or we SHOULD always, be leaping, high or low, and falling somewhere new each and every time, but my development must have needed a pretty big boot to the ass.

The point is that some shit happened.  Some of it was serendipitous and cultivated serenity when I could really use the peace, and some of it tore holes and left them exposed for the world (or the six people reading this) to see, and both were compulsory.  Not in the everything-happens-for-a-reason sense, but because each year is, I believe, training for the next.

I know I'm not a great writer, because so many other great writers can express my own thoughts better than me.

The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater. - Tolkien

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly. - Langston Hughes

But you ARE creative!" <puts hand on my heart> "...in HERE. - My daughter

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming. - Pablo Neruda

It is important to have questionable friends you can trust unconditionally.  - Chuck Klosterman

Take what
you might give
and be damned
to you.  I'm
going elsewhere. - William Carlos Williams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.  - Douglas Adams


Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. - John Milton

And on the 12,410th day, he typed someone else's poem.

Opal

- Dean Young

It's not that Monet cared that much about stacks of hay.

Your feelings will never change, you'll just stop paying so much
    attention.

A whole summer's songs go by, the whole house turns blue.

A friend will need some help carrying boxes to the curb.

So slowly you'll reach into the pond's reflection of your own face --
    as if reaching into your face! -- the tiny fishes will brush your
    fingers like nerves made of water.

Someone else will have to be young enough to climb the scaffolding
    around the town hall to derange all four of its clock faces.

The same laughter will have to work the rest of your life.

A friend takes your arm in the woods, it's darker turning black.

You point at an opal in a glass case and the person behind it is only
    too glad to let you see it against your skin but it's someone
    else's skin you want.

You didn't get everything but you got a lot.

24 Ridiculous/Adorable Overheard Words

Yes, it’s Christmas Eve!

Yes it is.  Aww, yes it is.

Do you want treats?

Does someone want treats?

Says my father, to cats. 

25 Bizarre Gifts From Your True Love

By my count:

33 men.

Pipers, drummers, lords.

Only 17 women?

Just over half identify as “dancers”.

Lots of awkward moments during the slow numbers. 

26 Rapid Eye Movements

Synapses misfire and impart an unconventional signal

To the limbs:

Flail!  Flee!

Sometimes other words that start with F.

A shoddy series finale,

Try again tomorrow.

27 Words That Were Part of Titles on Craigslist's "Casual Encounters" Ads In Los Angeles.

Hey there, ponytail.
Cougar needs a cub.
Satisfy this pregnant woman.
Let's play?
Funny and enjoyable!
After church.
Hungover and ready!
Searching for Brian.
Nobody is real.

28 las palabras que describen mejor el amor.

Does it have to really be falling in?
​Stumbled into.
Rose to the occasion of.
Realized, much to my surprise, that I was in.
Conquered.
Assembled.
Cultivated.
Enjoyed.

29 Words That Sum Up a Day With My Daughter

Leap
 Stomach
  Cajole
   Coffee
    Pancakes
     Mess
Bathe
 Spat
  Embrace
Drive
 Dance
  Laugh
Drive
 Dance
  Dip
Drive
 Dance
  Dance
   Dance
    Draw
     Dessert
Dawdle
 Brush
  Contend
   Pajamas
   Implore
    Hug
     Read
Doze

30 Words That Might Describe What Remembering To Live Feels Like

Oxalis and white clover mashed under
the duress of steam-powered transit.
Rattling rails hurls rust into the firmament.
Porch lights burst to life. An octogenarian
instinctively checks his watch.
Late.

31 Last Words That I Didn't Write, or Why Do So Many Songs End With a Question Mark?

Why can’t you forget?

Do you miss my all-time lows?

Would you calm me down?

Won’t you please run over me?

What was it you were going to say?

I hate you.  Fucker.

32 First Lines I Didn't Write

Stepped out the front door like a ghost.

You’re dead, I’m a skeleton.

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake,

jumping up and down the floor.

Make up your mind.

A heart.

33 Words On a Gracious Wingwoman

Sweaters converge on the stumbling sister.

Exploitation trumps assistance.

Her crutch pushes a glass my way, smiling.

Drink this, so she won’t.

You know how a forest smells after a storm?

Cleansing.  Blighted.

34 Poorly Chosen Words

You would be my best man.
Is that strange?
But I might consider a trade
If I had ever seen you
In a veil.

Back to the playground.
Swing, release, brace for impact.

I have been floated.

As far as Saturdays go, it was lacking in entertainment.  I slept sporadically the night before, and felt the tinge of some sort of bug invading my sinuses and lungs, prepared to engage in warfare against whatever T cells are standing guard on the night shift.  Sluggish.  Stagnant.

This did not bode well for the general weekend task of keeping my daughter's mind occupied.  She jumped on my gut around 8:15 asking for a Muscle Milk.  This is a demographic the protein shake community may have forgotten: adolescent girls with an affinity for vanilla-flavored pseudo-dairy products.  After double-fisting caffeine into my system and waiting for my eyes to stay open and focus simultaneously, I did what I tend to do when I am not quite ready for life to happen: I flipped on Nickelodeon.

I know that today will be unremarkable among the annals of my daughter's life.  I may beat myself up over that certainty now, but I'm also aware that days like today make trips to farm festivals or ice skating or driving to the beach have more of an impact.  If every day is an A+ then that dilutes the grading system.  It's the first thought, the "well, I sure gave her a day to forget", that led me to offer her an invitation to a low-key slumber party in my room tonight.

We ate homemade buns leftover from dinner.  We watched an anthropomorphic snail race around a track on the television.  We drew silly animals on the whiteboard.  We took goofy pictures of our goofy faces, and then after a chapter of Judy Blume ("The Pain and the Great One"), I set up the space heater by the futon and gave her my thickest blanket and she fell asleep mid-sentence.  "I'm thirsty...can I...grab...a..."

She still coos in her sleep, and it somehow sounds exactly the same as it did 7 years ago.  Being brand new to fatherhood (back then, that is) I was not aware that I would spend most of my waking moments concerned that my daughter was constantly in some sort of impending danger.  Her crib might collapse.  A tidal wave might transpire and flood her bedroom.  If the apartment was silent, then trouble was brewing.  Bedtime was the most frustrating, because you read one goddamn article on SIDS and you feel like you need to stay up all goddamn night and hold a mirror to her nostrils to make sure she's breathing.  But her little slumbering murmurs were tiny beacons, like an everything's-okay-alarm.  I'm unscathed and I'm content and I'm fine, and your job is safe, for now.

My daughter is half of a symbiotic relationship, and she doesn't even know it.  That's a lie.  She does.  She is one of the few people on this earth that has the uncanny ability to interpret my distress signals and try to do something about it, although she does not have a large arsenal of solutions.  Usually it's "come here and cuddle me" (the "dammit" at the end of that command is implied) or "let me draw you a picture."  Pictures make everything better.

I have a friend that does the same (although her methods are different than demanding cuddles or offering up crude drawings).  "Friend" is too fucking catch-all of a word.  Collaborator...compatriot...supporter.  If we were jumping through time, a la Lost, she would be my constant.  I'm probably much less subtle with her in my everything-is-dissolving moments than I am with my daughter, but being naturally reticent still leaves everyone with a lot of interpretation, and she excels at cutting through the bullshit.

Today required a bullshit knife, for sure.  I've spent the past two weeks slowly blurring the line between introspection and chaos...or maybe I just wasn't aware that there was such a line.  In the rare moments where I would assess the situation I've cultivated, I'd have to ask myself are you being unpredictable just for the sake of unpredictability?  And my only answer was a shrug of the shoulders.  But these people heeded the call...the low, nearly hidden beneath the noise and bright lights call.  And, because of them, I can go to sleep...maybe not smiling, but certainly not frowning.

I am grateful to have these people in my life.  My lighthouses.  My blinking lights.  My black boxes.  My mirrors.  My comforting pats on the shoulder.  My humans.

First Floor, Outerwear and Philantropy

I once gave a total stranger $20.  And then, I did it again.  Different guy, I think.

Their stories, at least in my obviously-failing-the-critical-thinking-test mind, was less relevant than the fact that they had a story.  It might seem like a strange and kind of shallow way for me to mentally differentiate the "people that genuinely need help" from the "people that genuinely want to get drunk or do crack and also probably need help", but I needed some kind of barometer, or I would likely just open up my wallet and dump out bills as if I was leaving a trail of crumbs.  I'm not puffing out my chest as I type this.  This is stupid.  I'm aware of how stupid this is.

The first guy was already in mid-conversation with some other passerby when I got out of my car.  I didn't get the details, but he did thank the potential donor profusely.  I thought he had left but, surprise, he was waiting for me near the trunk of my car.  His story, to the best of my recollection, was that he was trapped in the neighborhood, along with his family, and he was asking for either a ride back to his part of town or some money for bus fare.  The former seemed like the start of a B-movie featuring hitchhiking sociopaths, so I went with the latter.  I did not anticipate giving him $20, but that's all I had in my wallet, and somehow it would be stranger to say something like "let me go make some change first".

The second one flagged me down on the sidewalk on Liberty Ave.  I was wearing headphones and had no aural perception of the world around me.  And when I say "flagged me down", I am not being figurative.  He ran in front of me, stopped, turned on his heel, and waved in my face.  Jesus.  Must be important.

"I'm just trying to get some food for me and my kids."  Kids?  Where did you leave them?  That's the weird thing about panhandlers (and for reasons unknown, that term makes my liberal soul itch)...they can say anything.  No tale is off-limits.  And still, that sentence was enough.  If you're willing to bring kids, imaginary or otherwise, into the equation, then I will be roped in.  Again, I reached in my wallet, and all I had were twenty dollar bills.  Once the wallet has been exposed, there's no going back.  Again, I gave him $20.  I don't even know if he thanked me; I had already pressed play on my iPod.

I realize that these anecdotes are implying that a) I am simply rolling in petty cash, and b) I am maybe undermining your sensibilities when it comes to the "normal" way to handle transients and others in that same phylum.  I do not have a disposable income.  The $40 handed out on a whim wasn't imperative to keep my head above water for the next week, but it's closer to that than the converse.  And I'm not trying to encourage this behavior in anyone.  Any self-inflating feelings of putting a tiny band-aid on one's life is heavily contradicted by the immediate notion of "I just got swindled."

So.  Anyway.

These two examples may provide some background on why I'm making a more conscientious choice to try to provide some instant gratification through more controlled means.  Last year I tagged along for a very, very direct version of a coat drive.  "Direct" because the foundation had actually sent a group of children to us, via school bus, and we were each assigned a kid to guide around Macy's and purchase a coat, hat, gloves, etc.  It was fantastic.  My kid picked the shiniest purple coat I've ever seen, and equally flamboyant accessories, and strutted around the place like she was the queen of the outerwear section...and she was.  She OWNED that fucking place.  And I got a hug out of it.  A long, squeeze-tastic hug, for spending someone else's money on a stranger.

Charity is not selfless.  Just thought I should throw that out there.  You're doing something for someone that does not have the means to do it themselves, and in doing that thing you feel like you made a difference.  You're proud of yourself.  Don't beat yourself up for that self-admiration, but don't beat up others for not grasping that same sense of fulfillment.  But, either way, donating is as selfish as buying a new TV or having a one-night stand.  You're doing this for you...it just happens to be that someone else benefits as well (which, I suppose, is also true in the one-night stand scenario).

I didn't really pick HEARTH out of a hat.  It was arranged by co-workers who have assisted them in the past and were rounding up folks at the office for donations and other ways to help.  I won't dive into what HEARTH does, except to say that they basically provide low-to-no income temporary housing to women and their kids.  And what we were being asked to do was to drum up money to purchase Christmas gifts for these families.  A few weeks ago the organizer sent out one last e-mail, saying they were just $35 short of being able to support another family, and impulsively I replied and offered to donate.

I was given the Christmas list of a 6 year old girl that was into animation, animals, and fashion.  That's, more or less, what my own daughter is into (if we really, really stretch the definition of "fashion" to include rings and bracelets made out of pipe cleaners).  Her wish list included a new LeapPad game, books, a hat and gloves, clothes, a toy box and a doll.  Piece of cake.

Or...the opposite of that.  Piece of liver and onions?  Piece of turnip?

Buying gifts for my daughter is insanely easy.  She is as sporadic as any other girl that age, where her preferences rely either on what TV commercial she just saw or what her friends want to get as presents.  But I have the distinct advantage being her father, which gives me carte blanche to decide what *I* think she *should* get.  I can selectively ignore her impulsive requests (although I rarely don't) and decide that she needs this book or this board game, usually because I had that book or that board game when I was a kid and look how goddamn amazing I turned out to be (this is where I roll my eyes).

But buying gifts for a stranger, even supplied with a list, is akin to being both blind and deaf (apologies to Helen Keller).  What kind of doll does she want?  WHAT KIND OF DOLL?  Target has approximately 954 unique doll selections.  And then I pick out the black one and think, simultaneously do you think a black girl would rather have a black doll and why am I presuming that she's black just because she has a unique first name?  So, now I feel like a racist bigot.  I bought the black doll.

Does she read as well as a typical six-year-old, or better?  Or worse?  Does her apparent love of animation mean I should look at books that feature cartoon characters?  There's one on sharks...but maybe little girls aren't fascinated by sharks.  The one on meerkats appears to be below the reading level I designated for her with absolutely no information. Would she rather have a LeapPad game featuring My Little Pony or Phineas and Ferb?  Has she seen either of those cartoons?  Is she interested in math, or does she prefer science?  Is it slightly demeaning to buy a girl a game about cooking?  I got the My Little Pony game, which the box explained to me is focused on science, somehow.

It was surprisingly easy to buy clothes.  Pink and purple hoodie.  Pink pants.  Pink and purple gloves and hat.  Done.  Perfect.  Those are the kinds of gifts that parents will just shrug their shoulders and return if the kid isn't interested, anyway.  The toy chest was actually pretty neat.  It's collapsible canvas, like those storage boxes that Ikea seems to be foisting on all of us, but it's sturdy enough to sit on (can seat up to 125 pounds, according to the packaging).  And it's pink, naturally.

I spent almost two hours in that goddamn store, to buy nine items, and apparently to pick up and put down hundreds of other items in my routine of frustrating indecision.

I got to the checkout and everything totaled up to $100.51.  I was given $100 to spend.  I spared the change.  The cashier didn't even have to make up a story about hungry kids.

The Intricate Web

You ever have one of those dreams where someone you loved was missing?  And the dream version of your friends and family are all extremely apathetic about it?  "She'll turn up somewhere."  "I'm sure nothing bad happened."  You curse them out, scream at them, and then run away (in slow motion, of course...my dream legs are always made out of tar and lethargy and pudding).  I tend to wake up when something totally outlandish occurs...a snow leopard leaps out of nowhere, everybody starts melting, cliffs sprout up out of nowhere for me to leap off of, Kyle MacLachlan appears and says "damn good coffee".  You get the picture.

I don't contend that my dreams have any significant meaning, nor do I believe that they foreshadow the future.  I think they just say say, Tim, you haven't been worried in a while...let's remind ourselves of what that feels like.  It's effective.  I bolted right out of bed, and shivered my way downstairs to make sure my daughter was still breathing and in her bed and not out wondering the streets of what must have been Aspen or Telluride during the turn of the century (except with leopards).  And she's there.  She's always where I left her.  And if she wasn't, I'm certain everyone would be panicked and upset.

My daughter is not someone I take for granted.  That's something I'm supposed to say, because she's my daughter, and I love her to death, and I feel like every moment with her is like a learning experience for both of us.  It's something the socially-agreed-upon definition of a "good" father should say, and his actions should reflect that designation.  And I believe they do.  I believe they do enough that an outsider's perception is irrelevant to me.

Still, there's moments where I do.  And before I get booed off of the stage...

She comes with certainties.  Ones that we've created together, because it implies structure, and routine, and boundaries, and all the good things that children are taught as soon as they learn to walk.  Being a jaded thirtysomething I believe that these values are embedded at such an early age so they will easily settle into a 9-to-5 job.  I'm kidding.  Sort of.  I don't believe that corporations have sponsored child-rearing, at least.

But there are large swaths of my day where I know exactly where she is and what she's doing, even if she's not necessarily visible from where I'm sitting (I'm always sitting).  And, of course, most of these moments are times where she is at school, or at her mother's house, or in theater or karate class.  Ironically (I'm pretending that I'm using this adverb appropriately), these are also the moments where she is most likely to break those routines, whether on purpose or through some accident...or worse.

Such a situation has never happened, thankfully, because I would be a total helicopter parent.  I would be worse than my parents, who I believe hired a cadre of private eyes to watch my every move when I was not in the house (pro bono, probably...my folks didn't have a lot of disposable income).  I don't knock my parents for being protective, especially not now, because even when I am absolutely certain of my daughter's whereabouts my brain conjures up a dozen terrifying scenarios of what could happen to her.  I'm sure this is just part of being a father, or a mother, and it explains why my hair started going grey before I made it through three decades on this planet.

------------

I like surprises.  

I'm sure this is earth-shattering.  And such a oversimplified statement that I could have just as easily said things are neat! or I have ideas.

Sitting in my bedroom/office/studio/killing floor I can envision dozens of potentials.  A tornado could localize over my roof.  A limo could blow a tire on the street and out steps <insert famous name here> and he/she wants to <insert thing they are famous for here> on my porch for a bit while waiting for AAA.  My bedroom door opens and there is <insert person I would want in my bedroom here> with a bottle of <insert beverage here>.  Piles of gold doubloons (a currency we should resuscitate) could suddenly pour out of the air ducts.  My tax return finally shows up, hand delivered by an IRS agent along with a written apology from <insert whoever is in charge of the IRS here>.

Opulent possibilities, for sure, but somehow my brain has concluded that their likelihood is greater than zero (and no, I don't play the lottery)...and most of those situations are ones where my involvement is negligible.  I don't have to be doing anything for any of those to happen.  That's all fine and good, and also kind of stupid, because luck is stupid.  Harvey Dent and a bunch of football coaches agree.

I am, for all intents, a moderately stable human being, because I have created certainties, too.  Some of them for my own benefit, some for my daughter's, and some for reasons unknown.  It's that third one that needs work, because stability for stability's sake is boring.  me.  to.  tears.

It's boring YOU to tears, too, dearest readers.  Or, it should be.  I am not a purveyor of fringe knowledge or unique experience.  Not on here.  I don't have any you-have-got-to-hear-about-this stories.  I haven't done anything that you haven't done, whether exactly or some permutation that is close enough to the real McCoy.

I crave some aberration.  And not in the familial sense (which I suppose is what the first part of this nonsense was about), but in something else.  In anything else.  Why?  Why does that seem so imperative now?

Because it would make me feel in control.  I could, with confidence, say something different is happening, and it's because of me, and not circumstance or an exception that proves the rule or the white noise in the scatter plot.

My father is like clockwork.  I can sum up his day in a paragraph, with a few sentences dedicated to "sometimes he'll play bridge with Mom" and "he might have a doctor's appointment, though".  When he was younger, he drove a motorcycle across the country.  And back again, through Canada.  He built a dune buggy.  HE BUILT A DUNE BUGGY.  And drove it around the salt flats in Death Valley.  He opened a restaurant (and ran it into the ground).  He drove a semi.  And about a dozen other things that would make you do a double-take.  And these are all stories that he told, to me, to my friends, really, to anyone that would listen.  And hidden behind his incredibly tedious and long-winded tales was pride.  You could barely sense it, but it was there.

I am like my dad in a lot of ways.  We're both desperately left-brained.   We're both patient when it comes to educating.  We both seem to attract the attention of the little kids in the family.  We both enjoy silence in long spurts.  We're both incredibly defensive of our respective tastes in the arts.  But, at least right now, Dad lived.  He lived way more than I have.  And I think that helps him justify a somewhat quiet life now.

I don't know if he was trying to educate me, when he would retell the anecdotes of his younger days that makes him more interesting than that Dos Equis guy.  But he has.

Be.  Different.