American Fez

Water Cure

For clearly deluded reasons, I have always thought water from my kitchen faucet is drinkable whereas water from my bathroom faucet is not.

These waters arrive at my house from the same source, run through pretty much the same pipes, flow from the same brand of spout, yet I consider a glassful from the sink where I wash dirty dishes to be somehow cleaner than a glassful from the sink where I wash my sweaty armpits.

Even mud-clad headhunters who still worship carved wooden phallus totems would consider such an obvious delusion to be rather silly, laughing at my primitive beliefs while preparing to shrink my underdeveloped skull.

But at least I have indoor plumbing. 

Ultimately, I suppose it's because I identify the kitchen with imbibing liquids and the bathroom with expelling them; as if water from the bathroom faucet is guilty by association, tainted by an undesirable proximity to waste products and soap scum. My kitchen, on the other hand, is the domain of soothing teas, imported coffees, wine, beer, and everything aqua vitae. 

So being a person who is never keen to confront his fears or analyze his own irrationality, I outflank this mental aberration by only drinking imported bottled water. 

And for some clearly deluded reason I have always thought bottled water imported from an Icelandic glacier is too expensive, whereas bottled water imported from a French mountain stream is not.

A Trip Down Memory Lane Before Memory Lane Gets Paved Over

The clock in my great-grandmother's house always seemed to tick-tock louder than clocks elsewhere.

A neo-classical construction of marble and glass with more whirring cogs and wheels than a Steampunk time machine, my great-grandmother's clock not only dominated the conversation, it also dominated her mantelpiece like an especially fat owl balancing on a tiny twig.

The horrible thing was better suited to a lawyer's office than an ancient widower's living room. God knows where it came from. Only the most Trollopian of interior decorators would consider such a formidable timepiece appropriate for a domestic setting. 

Perhaps its remarkable tick-tock volume was simply the consequence of the lack of rival ambient noise from daytime television. Or merely caused by a tick-tock echo bouncing off her high ceiling and heavy furniture. Or perhaps it was just a much larger clock than most other people own. Whatever the reason, I found the noise rather disconcerting whenever my family visited her for an otherwise pleasant afternoon of tea, cakes, and a brief recital of my minor accomplishments at school. 

As I regaled the assembled company with tales of how, for instance, I hadn't actually failed biology, the clock's insistent ticking and tocking was a constant heckler of my every word, as if it were profoundly bored and mechanically booing me off-stage. 

Occasionally, I tried to compete with the clock's earsplitting tick tocks by slurping my tea in a particularly disgusting manner or kicking the back of my heels against a chair leg. But such tactics only earned me severe admonishments and threats of all cake being withdrawn from my orbit. You can't beat the clock, as they say. 

When my great-grandmother died, as the family looted her house for tokens of remembrance, my crazy aunt Eunice decided she wanted the clock. Alas, it proved too cumbrous to be easily removed from its mantelpiece perch, so she left it there and took a much lighter crystal vase instead. No doubt the clock is currently deafening an antique store somewhere in darkest Connecticut. 

As for me, I was lucky enough to receive an expensive new watch for my recently celebrated fiftieth birthday. However, I can't help noticing the second hand is much noisier than the second hands on my previous watches. 

Tick tock. Tick tock. Time marches onwards and its footsteps are getting louder.

Light Years Away From Acceptable

I might possibly read a science fiction novel or two if its visual trapping weren't so embarrassingly awful. 

Vintage science fiction book covers, for example, bring to mind Salvador Dali with a headache illustrating Alfred E. Neuman's masturbatory fantasies. Women either wear goatskin bikinis or skin-tight lycra. Men are either Flash Gordon clones or just brains in jars attached to electrodes. Sometimes there are lizard people and aliens with dome-shaped skulls.

H. R. Giger changed all that, but not necessarily for the better. His influence merely meant all colors faded from the book covers except black, cobalt, steel-gray, and gray-green. 

Modern science fiction book covers, however, appear to have opted for minimalism in a bid to be taken seriously: a black expanse of starless space punctuated by a small red planet which is illuminated by a cosmic light refraction emanating from nowhere in particular. Is this a new Zak Eldritch novel or a reprint of Carl Sagan's memoirs? You need to check the tiny lettering on the spine to be sure.

Call me conceited, but I could never bring such humiliating paperback specimens to a bookstore cashier without also purchasing a birthday card, thereby insinuating that my garishly bound choices are actually a gift for somebody else. Nothing to do with me. 

That's a trick I always pulled when clandestinely buying 'How-To' books about practical matters a man of my age should have mastered long ago. It worked every time. At least, I hope it did.

Nowadays, of course, I can anonymously order those types of book on the Internet.

"Delivered in two days via Amazon Prime!" Which is another type of science fiction, since it usually seems to take three.

The Library And Its Discontents

Visit your local library's newly-designed website and you could be forgiven for thinking they don't have any, you know, actual books.

It's all children's DVDs and digital tools for the learning impaired, inconvenient volunteer opportunities at do-gooding community events, and those God-awful talks by egotistical bores on tedious subjects that only the loneliest of lonely souls could possibly be interested in attending.

Visit the library building itself and you still might conclude there are no books available. The rusting, cobwebbed shelves of neglected literature are usually hidden down some forgotten basement corridor, requiring passage through double-locked doors, behind the bathrooms or opposite the boiler and gas pipes.

It's almost as if you must borrow a how-to book about exploring in order to locate a how-to book about exploring. Only the most determined adventurer can hack his way through the dense jungle of Yoga For The Aged class timetables and bake sale leaflets to find the History section. 

The other visitors will be firmly entrenched at the free Internet access workstations the library provides. These grimy terminals occupy most of the floor space, their huddled users the sorts of people who loiter in cafeterias nursing a single coffee for hours on end when the library is closed. After all, free wi-fi is more valuable than erudition these days.

Wandering around with your hard-found book, vainly seeking a librarian familiar with the ancient technology for checking it out, it is now you who looks like the weirdo, the social outcast, the ragged troglodyte with his malodorous bundle of contemptible pages.

Personally, I owe my local library $5.75 in past-due fines. Considering how Internet-centric the institution has become you'd assume I could settle-up anonymously on their newly-designed website, right? But your assumption would be incorrect. I have to go to the library in person and announce myself publicly with my wallet and cash.

God knows the only activity more shameful than borrowing old-fashioned books is having to pay money to return the embarrassing things. But I suppose someone has to cough up to keep the freeloading web-surfers connected.

No Hands

Retrieved from their backpack storage pocket, I discover that yet again my iPod headphone wires have woven themselves into such a ball of spirographic confusion it would give M. C. Escher pause for thought. Detangling this mess, however, always proves to be a far more enjoyable experience than actually listening to the music they transport to my ears. 

Pop music is too insipid for a long journey on foot, classical music too much of a mental chore, and jazz just makes you walk funny. A good headphone wire puzzle, however, will keep any hiker entertained for hours, provided he doesn't stumble into a tree or step off a cliff.

I have walked the entire Appalachian trail deconstructing a complex bird's nest of intertwined headphone wires, perfectly content to savour the chirps of nature's own symphony while solving my knotty problem. Eat your heart out Aaron Copland.

This is why I dread the coming ubiquity of the Bluetooth headphone connection and the rest of a completely wireless, voice-activated world. What am I going to do with my hands?

The Fruit Route

Three days behind schedule, my quince paste was ordered Online from a reputable dealer of gourmet fruit pastes, so I'm surprised it hasn't arrived by now. Alas, the preserves and miscellaneous relishes cupboard remains bare. 

I rarely buy products from the Internet, as so much extra work seems to be involved: tracking the product shipment because it's delayed in Albuquerque; numerous emails requesting I review the box and packaging in which the product was sent; inconvenient follow-up phone surveys asking whether or not the product is meeting my expectations; and, of course, sending the product back to its distributor because I've been sent the wrong size or flavor. It's a rather intensive ordeal just for the convenience of purchasing quince paste from the comfort of your home computer. 

Meanwhile, these chunks of manchego cheese, bereft of their gelatinous partner, bear the responsibility for exciting my palate alone ...Someday our quince will come!

Taken Out Of Cortex

Many years ago, I experienced an auditory hallucination. A disembodied voice muttered a few sounds about six inches from where my off-duty brain was slumbering in bed.

I might have thought it was a ghost, commanding me to avenge some ancient wrong, except the voice mimicked Eccles from the Goon Show, so I knew it was merely a figment of my imagination.

And besides, in my slumbering state, I couldn't understand what the voice was saying, so if it had been a restless spirit it wasn't being avenged anytime soon. Well, not by dozy me at any rate.

The brain is a strange blob in the skull: part super-computer, part whoopee cushion. It's alarming to ponder how misfiring neurons could entirely change your perception of the world and the objects it contains if indeed the mind can 'ponder' in an alarmed condition.

Were it not for the tell-tale Greenslade intonation, I might have become an adherent of the Ouija board, or made attempts to traverse the cosmic plane of interplanetary consciousness. As it is, I merely borrowed Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind from the library.

No further auditory hallucinations have disturbed me since that first intelligible utterance, which is a shame as their messages might be important if properly heard. Memo to brain: perhaps the voice should adopt the booming elocution of Neddy Seagoon next time it wants to get in touch.

The Seminar of Udolpho

Against my better judgment, like a stranded wayfarer forced to seek shelter in a ruined Transylvanian castle, I stagger into a plenary and meet 'n' greet in the fourth-floor conference room, where I'm ushered to the table by a delegate from HR in the role of creepily silent butler welcoming me to his mysterious master's house of horror, then seated amongst other, equally bewildered guests.

As we twitch nervously, staring uneasily at the bullet-pointed documents placed in front of us, disembodied voices begin crackling forth from the corner of the room: it's a corporate video featuring gleaming-toothed, unctuous actors getting overly excited about "awesome" customer service. Apparently, we all must learn to grovel before our clients like especially obsequious Devil worshippers celebrating Satan's arrival during a particularly depraved black mass.

Our attention is then directed back to the bullet-pointed documents: on a scale from zero to five, how do we rate our own interactions with customers based on the video we just watched, zero being not very positively and five being very positively? I don't recall a horror story in which victims are reduced to infantile behavior, but this morning's activities would surely provide excellent material for such a book.

Everyday Adventurer

Monday morning: the decompression chamber we must negotiate before stepping out into the murky, submarine world of the working week; the airlock through which we must pass before embarking on the weekend's spacewalk.

I do hope you're wearing your brass helmet and lead boots or zero-gravity spacesuit; that you're equipped with your spare oxygen tank and spear gun or laser pistol. God knows there are many ugly cephalopods and aliens out there.

Book of the Damp

In his short poem, Water, Philip Larkin says he would use water as the basis for his new religion.

Alas, he doesn't mention whether sparkling water would be holier than still, or if elaborate fountains would provide greater blessings than simple fonts, but I tend to agree with him all the same. Although I might add a little citrus flavoring to my articles of faith:

"Oh Lord of the bubbling bath, I beseech three to irrigate my soul and dilute my sorrows with thy lemon and lime zested H20, etc"

I took this photograph at a local watering hole to illustrate the sort of aqua- tinged ceremony I'm imagining at the moment of transcendence.

Ancient man was also a great believer in the sanctity of water. He made offerings to rivers, streams, and presumably ponds. Personally, I'm not sure I would sacrifice my best sword or most elaborate brooch to a pond, despite whatever King Arthur decided at his death. I'd definitely favor running water like the Hindoos do. 

In fact, I might lob a few pennies into a nearby brook this very afternoon.

Nature Notes

Does the duck-billed platypus believe that ducks should really be called platypus-billed ducks?

I don't know which evolved first into the creature we know today, but I'd wager platypodes stalked the Earth before ducks did, and should claim bill-naming rights. Alas, zoologists, in their infinite wisdom, decided otherwise.

One can only hope that in its - admittedly small - mind, the platypus thinks of us as "baboon-assed humans." 

Justice would surely be served in that case.

Please Clap

This past weekend, after ambling along the disappointing Parson's Way in Kennebunkport, I reached Walker's Point, site of an architecturally nondescript vacation home belonging to the Bush family.

If this site might briefly be a mini Trip Advisor, the cliff walk at nearly Ogunquit is a vastly superior scenic jaunt, in my opinion, despite the lack of a so-called Presidential compound at its termination. 

Honestly, the Bush home was so uninspiring I almost couldn't be bothered to even take a photograph, and the vista afforded from Parson's Way was only enlivened by the appearance of a ship of seafaring snoopers broadsiding the structure for a close-up view.

Silhouetted against the sky, the ship appeared to be sporting black sails: a bad sign as every father knows. I, at any rate, wondered if the Bushes are reminded of Aegeus' mistake every time they spy such a sight from their ocean fronting windows.