|
| Perceiving perceptions, perceptively.One of the things I do when I'm out and about is people watch. I may not interact much, even if I'm out at the club having a few drinks, but I am paying attention to what people are doing, albeit discreetly. You can learn a lot about someone from a distance, how they treat people, others around them, their values, their maturity level, et cetera.
This post was originally going to be about a fat kid I saw in the supermarket a while ago, his just-as-fat mother, and how she was enabling the fatness with his choice of food for his school lunch. Not to mention the sheer irony of him wearing a "Shrewsbury Athletics" t-shirt. I will neglect to mention that I am wearing a customer service t-shirt right now, and I am about as far from customer service as you can get, so pretend you didn't just read this sentence. Instead, this post will expand on my original idea plus take into account not only my recent trip to the supermarket, but also my subsequent visit to the mall.
This afternoon I decided to go to the store to get some lunch, then head over to the mall to see if anything there tempted me. As I pull into the parking lot of the supermarket, I pull into my (generally) usual parking spot, which is about five spaces in from the store; I'm relatively young, healthy, and can make the walk with ease. That, and those spaces are generally empty. I hate circling the lot looking for that one magic space close to the door.
As I pull into the parking lot, I see my 'usual' space is open next to the light post. Across from it is another car parked with the passenger door open with an obvious mom-of-the-year winner lounging in the car, smoking, no doubt, a menthol cigarette. When I pulled into the parking space we made eye contact. I somehow got the impression that life pretty much rolled over her. Regardless, I normally would have forgotten about her (other than my ire at her door taking up the next parking space so she could smoke (I smoke as well, but I keep the window open)). Why I remembered her is what follows.
The shopping for food was a nonevent. I got my stuff, and checked out fairly quickly. Other than having one of the larger shopping carts, which made me feel like I should be buying about four tons of food, the only issue was navigating to get outside again, nearly running over an elderly woman with my mammoth-sized carriage. It was the events that followed that caused me to remember the scenario that followed.
I get back to my truck, dump my groceries in the cargo area (I have an SUV), and get back in to start it back up and to drive off to my next destination. As I'm sitting there, the mom is lighting another cigarette after dropping the old one on the pavement, and who I am assuming to be her husband, or at the very least, the sperm donor for the small boy that was with him, was loading their groceries into the car. The whole time Dad was keeping up a running commentary of the groceries. "I hope you're happy. Tuna was f*ing expensive. The whole sh*t you wanted was too goddamn f*ing much money. I work all f*ing week, so you can blow it on sh*t at the grocery store. Do you know how f*ing expensive groceries are?"
Now, at first I was struck by the "whole sh*t" comment. It made me feel insecure that perhaps I didn't have the "whole sh*t". Maybe it was a manager's special. I opened my newly purchased packet of gum and sat there morosely chewing it while thinking on that comment, before noticing the very young boy with Dad. As I started up my truck, Mom was obviously giving some feedback to Dad. I couldn't help by feel bad for the boy that was with them. He's going to grow up thinking this is how people should be expressing themselves, and when he reaches the tender age of puberty, will no doubt treat his girlfriends and wives the same way his father treated his mother.
Other than being taken out by a 17 year old in what looked like a brand new Ford Excursion, not much else happened at the grocery store worth mention.
The drive to the mall was uneventful. The drive into the parking spot at the mall was equally uneventful. It was when I got into the mall (remember, I people watch) that things became interesting for me.
I park (again, my 'usual' spot) and go to walk in and have to pass a group of 14 year old boys outside the door smoking and talking trash. Of course, they could have been older, but to my 34 year old eyes, they could have passed for 14. They give me the hairy eyeball ("Hey, it's an old man!"), and I pass through their clouds of smoke into the mall. Once inside I had forgotten two important facts.
One, I'm not a teenager anymore. And the place was packed with teenagers. Two, I was at a mall. Malls attract teenagers of all stripes. Three, it's summer vacation. After a moment assimulating these facts I went about my business there.
Having braved the 14 year olds, I now had to move through the 16 year olds trying to impress their girlfriends. While most of them ignored me (face it, when I was their age I would have been invisible to someone like me as well), I was amazed at what I was observing.
When I was that age going to the mall to hang out was important to me and my friends. It was an important social event for us, acting cool, almost-but-not-quite-adults, free with Dad's car, our girlfriends, and a bit of spending money in our pockets. I'm sure we were the bane of those 20-plus years older than us.
One thing I do remember is that we wanted to be there, and we didn't want to be kicked out, so we kept it fairly low-key. Now, granted, I am looking back 20 years, give or take a few years, but we'd hang out in the food court, hang out at the record store, hang out at the computer store (those were brand new to us), and just generally hang out. Perhaps time and age has changed my perceptions, but what I experienced was the complete opposite of what I remember.
The language, the volume of their voices, their sheer numbers, the fact they moved like they owned the place all startled me. I found myself having to go around them, and a couple made unfriendly eye contact with me. The entire time I was wondering to myself, "was I like that at that age?" And to a certain extent, I reckon I was.
While I know I experimented with coarse language at that age (actually, beginning when I was 12, when "hell" and "damn" were the swear words to use, at least amongst my peer group; it was generally confined to my friends and not openly bandied about publically.) And I know we exuded youthful sass towards adults and authority, but it was tempered by the fact that if we crossed the line we knew we would get into trouble.
Let's face it, we all look back at certain events in our youth with rose-tinted glasses. Some of my memories appear to be as shining golden memories, but a few I cross checked with adults I knew at the time has revealed that not all of them are the nirvana I remember. I don't remember being so crass as a teenager as what I witnessed today. Maybe I'm getting older, or maybe todays younger generation has degenerated, but it seems not too long ago that I could have fit in with them, albeit for a short period of time. Now it seems they're all aliens to me, and I generally find myself not wanting to have much to do with them.
Exactly what this reflects is open to debate. Maybe I've aged to the point that they're all whipper snappers to me. Maybe today's teenagers are less articulate than we were at that age. Maybe they're less educated. Maybe they have a bigger sense of entitlement (I could do a whole other post on one person in particular about that). Whatever it is, I am not being impressed with what I am seeing.
But, they are still just teenaged boys, and boys that age are not exactly known for their decision making skills. Perhaps they will grow out of it.
I know we did.
| | |
| We are all Chuck's childrenPrevious post said I'm bringing Xanga back. I have a picture declaring I'm bringing sexy back as well, but you won't see that posted any time soon. Xanga only came back because it emailed me. Otherwise, I could have happily gone the rest of my life with this being in a forgotten corner. But you know how it is.
My last 'real' post said I was learning guitar, and I listed a handful of chords I had learned; I've since learned a lot more chords, and I still play like an arthritic monkey; I don't have the manual dexterity any more for smooth chord changes. I tried for months and I can approach something towards acceptable, but it never sounded right or all that good to me.
Over time I put away the guitar and returned to it several times over the last 10+ years. And usually with the same result: A few months of hard work, not liking my progress, and I get disgusted and put it away. Recently, the itch returned, so I took it back out, tuned it (I should restring, but I'm superstitious about changing strings), and struck out once again to climb this particular mountain.
I did discover that, once again, I still know the majority of the chords I had learned earlier, and that a simple chord change was a stiff and frustrating experience still. But, I decided to do some reading into barre chords and accidently discovered open tunings.
I ran across open tunings a few years ago, but I didn't know anything about them. Nor did I think that much about it either. I remember glancing at an article in a magazine, thinking it was a neat concept, then went on to the next page which had a song I was (pitifully) trying to learn. Yahoo'ing around the internet recently (I'm old-school, I prefer Yahoo over Google, though both return about the same results, based on my limited experimentation) I can across open tunings again and fully realized that I can make a chord simply by barring all six strings at regular intervals. My interest piqued, I retuned to open D; I've since tried open C and open G, but I think I like open D the best.
While now I'm not pouring out the chords in an amazing fountain of guitar geyser ambiance when I do play, I am finding it easier to find the chords that I want, easier to play them, and I'm also finding that I'm able to easier express myself musically than I have been. It's also given me a sound that I have heard with my internal ear and now I'm able to play what I have been hearing in my head in a lot of ways. Is it 100% perfect? No. Will it stun the hearts and minds of the music community? No. But it does give me something to play, and something that I can sound halfway decent (at least to my ears) when I do play.
But with this new musical awakening, what else have I discovered? That I'll probably never be able to play a popular song and have it sound the way it does or how I want it to sound, but that's only a minor discovery. I could have told you that ages ago. What I did discover is that open D has put the notes on the guitar in a way that I can almost relate to (my knowledge of musical theory is virtually nil, and I'm surprisingly comfortable with that), and while I may not be playing the top 10 Beatles or Stones hits, I am playing stuff that I come up with and it sounds surprisingly good to me.
Perhaps, after all this time, all the money I spent on lessons and books and gear, I have found a voice with my guitar that I can communicate with. | | |
| I'm bringing Xanga back - drop a comment if you're with me! | | |
| Building the callousSo last night was my first guitar lesson. I had taught myself and had taken some lessons years ago, but never kept up with it. About a year ago I bought myself another guitar, but didn't do much with it for months. A few months ago I started picking at it more frequently and trying to teach myself. I brought myself about as far as I could and started looking for lessons.
There's a local continuing education place a couple of towns over, so I signed up when I saw they had a class coming up. Since I spend most of Wednesdays at home by myself doing what I haven't done during the rest of the week I figured I could treat myself to a Wednesday night to something I might enjoy, so I signed up.
I was a bit surprised at the number of people that showed up, about two dozen in all, of various skills, ranging from people who never played a note on the guitar until that night to people that had been playing for years. About half of us fell into my range of experience, some skills, but not very much.
After an overview we got down to business. We started off with chords I was already familiar with, Em, G, A, C, D. We strummed those for a bit, then the instructor passed out some songs to play using some simple chord progressions and we worked on that for the rest of the night. I'm not real good at changing chords, so it's obviously a matter of practice, practice, practice.
When I got home I decided that I should change out my strings since they were looking a bit suspect and obviously needed to be changed. I won't say they're my original strings from when I bought the guitar, but I will say that perhaps they are within a couple of generations of them. So I set about changing out the strings when things got interesting.
Low E seemed a good place to start, so that's where I started. Unfortunately, the damn bridge pin seemed wedged in tight. I tried everything I could to get it out, but could. What I should have done is remove a couple more strings and try to push it out from the outside, but instead I reached for some pliers and padded them with a fold of paper towel and went to work trying to pull it out.
I pulled out out a fraction of an inch and figured that was good. Then the damn pin broke off, leaving the majority of it stuck in the hole. After a bit of cussing, I managed to push it through into the guitar and fished it out later. Now irate at myself, I continued on, stealing the pin from the A string to put in the low E. I figured I could go on through that way all the way to the high E and get pins in the morning. Which is what I did until I was trying to tune the D string, or at least bring it to where about where it should be. Obviously not paying much attention to my tuner, I over tightened and popped the string. I gave up at that point and put it all away for the night and went to bed.
In the early afternoon, I finally rolled out of bed, showered, had my tea, and headed out to get pins. When I get to Daddy's (the local music shop) the boy behind the counter, who's badge said he was an assistant manage, looked barely old enough to shave, nevermind holding down a job. I got two new packs of strings, new bridge pins (they don't match the originals, but will be fine for now) and ran a few other errands.
Once home, I changed all the strings again (as I hate having mis-matched strings; the set from the night before was a different brand than what I bought today), put in the new bridge pin, and spent the day practicing the songs and the chords. Strum, strum, strum. I'd take a rest on occasion and wander off to the computer, or to eat, or whatever else distracted me, but kept at it for a while.
It will be interesting to see how I will be able to fit in practice with work. I work a 10 hour shift and I spend about two and a half hours commuting two and from work each day. So, that's about 13 or so hours gone from my day, leaving me only a couple of hours when I get home to eat, take care of whatever needs to be done around the house, and to practice. Oh, well. I've overcome worse. And despite being just one night at the class I seem to be enjoying it. So long as I keep on enjoying it I don't think it'll be much of a problem keeping myself interested in practicing. - Rough Justice | | |
| Just for you, alwaysLike no other you continue to amaze me. I'm not sure on how or why I love you like I do, but I do know that I love you like no other.
In your presence I feel very humbled, feeling small compared to your intelligence and humour. Those qualities challenge me to go beyond who and what I have defined myself to be. To whatever gods that might be, to them I thank for your presence, your companionship, and your love.
I am thankful for coming home to you after work, and waiting for you to return from class, for falling asleep next to you each night, holding you in my arms, and for waking in the morning and having you there with me. I am thankful for the time we spend together, even for the small things like grocery shopping or eating dinner with each other.
In our time together I have found myself drawn to you in ways and dimensions I didn't think possible, and my love for you grows daily. I have found myself wanting to become a better person, and towards that end I am continuously trying to improve myself. I fall far short of perfect, my love, but for you I will strive to attain that.
You are the one I love, the one I think about when I'm alone, and the one I rejoice in when I'm in your company. You have given me so much, more than I can ever express. You make me laugh when I'm depressed, feel valued when I'm feeling out, and make me feel loved by your touch and your smile.
As I have said to you before, you are my everything. And you have given me everything that I could have possible wanted from a lover and so much more. I feel complete and whole because of you. My love for you remains true and unwavering, my only desire is to fulfill you as much as you have fulfilled me.
And to you I dedicate my entire heart and my life, towards fulfilling yours.
| | |
|
