Make Better Choices

Alan and Marcy

Marcy, my son and daughter-in-law’s dog, barks at family members who move faster than a sedated sloth, yips at folks who reenter a room after a short absence, growls and barks at anyone who accidentally raises a voice while telling a joke, etc. Her anxious reactions to noise and movement make me wonder if she had been a contemplative nun in a former life, if she had spent the majority of her time silently praying alone in candlelit chapels.

Alan’s taken her to several trainers to help Marcy learn to bark solely at squirrels and realistic threats to her loved ones. One doggy behavioral expert advised Alan and his wife Amy to tell Marcy to “make better choices.” So, Alan followed that suggestion ironically. He laughingly said, “Now Marcy, make better choices,” when the dog growled at his mother, when she tore around the room madly sniffing out the trail of a long-gone visitor, when she barked at walkers passing by the living room window.

Judy and I began to use the phrase when we encountered difficult people on a trip from Durham to Orlando. When a driver cut across lanes causing motorists to swerve and brake violently, we told him to make better choices. Another driver crept along at 60 mph in the middle lane of I95. Traffic piled up in the fast and slow lanes creating a hazard that lasted for miles. We told Mr. Pokey to, “make better choices.” Cars streaked by us as we drove in narrow-laned construction zones. The worst offenders must have been speeding at 30 mph or more above the limit. I winced whenever they blasted past and pleaded, “make better choices.”

Once we returned home, I began to apply the phrase while watching television. I advised red-faced, shouting politicians to make better choices. Performers wearing garish, revealing costumes, earned the same recommendation. I looked at a PBS fundraising schedule that featured oldies music festivals, doctors selling diet plans, and self-help gurus shilling 5-step methods for finding happiness. I wondered whether the programmers thought that their audiences actually enjoyed dreck, or whether it was a matter of blackmail. “Either pay up, or we’ll force you to watch an eighty-year-old croon ‘Sixteen Candles’. Again!” In either case, I thought that the station manager should make better choices.

Preaching to the Plants

St. Francis Preaching to the Animals, Stanley Spencer

A monk name Bob watched St. Francis preach to the animals.  He grew jealous as a deer, a bird, and a squirrel bowed before the saint.  Bob wanted to glow with Francis’s divine spirit, to bring all creation into harmony with God. 

Bob practiced preaching to animals.  A grasshopper spit tobacco juice on his finger as soon as Bob quoted scripture.  A worm squirmed on his palm and remained inattentive.  A snake hissed and bit Bob just as he reached the climax of his sermon.

Bob decided to redirect his efforts.  He began to proclaim God’s word before the monastery’s kitchen garden.  He didn’t notice any effect at first but eventually saw that the green bean plants and carrot sprouts bowed slightly toward him if he raised a cross between two hands held in prayer.  Potato sprouts, kale, and radish plants finally began to join the circle of faith. The faithful bows grew more pronounced as Bob gained in spiritual power.  But one plant, self-satisfied in its convictions, refused to heed Bob’s exhortations.

One day, Bob decided to show his fellow monk’s his accomplishment.  But he worried that the one hold- out would diminish his glory.  In the end, after a sleepless night upon his knees before the crucifix in his cell, he became convinced that the freethinking vegetable would convert in the presence of his gathered brother monks.

The garden prayer service began with a performance of the top three hits on the Gregorian Chant Charts (anno domini 1222). Then Bob read two psalms and some intimidating passages from the Book of James. He called for a moment of quiet contemplation.  Bob’s fellow monks glanced amongst themselves in amusement as Bob took a deep breath and began to preach.  They assumed that Bob’s claims had been nothing more than egotistic boasting.

But then the carrots, radishes, potatoes, green beans, and kale bowed low after Bob grasped his cross between two hands held in prayer.  The monks gasped in astonishment.  Bob decided to go for broke.  He glared at the one hold-out in the patch and commanded, “Lettuce, pray!”

Dog Turd Walking Meditation

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: “Any daily activity can be used as an opportunity for meditation.”

Let two dogs out the back door. Note their movements in the bushes behind the shed. Listen to the wind blowing through the trees, to a distant dog barking, to sirens…Call in your dogs.

Get your poop scooper from the front porch. Feel seed pods beneath your feet as you pass under the magnolia. Pick up seed pods and place them in the garbage can. Recognize the rise of frustration when you recall that seed pods have fallen for the last five months. Let the thought pass across your mind (like dandelion seeds floating on the wind) that spiny, ankle-turning seed pods may never stop falling.

Open the gate to the back yard and begin your search. Step slowly. Study the ground. Note that the small brown leaves from the rain trees often look like small dog turds. Step forward and scan again. Pick up a graying pile that you missed from a few days before. Drop the pile in the bushes along the back fence. Find a more recently deposited pile near the tree stump, and another among the penta flowers in the middle garden patch.

Turn your attention away from your sense of smell and focus on the sound of your neighbor talking on his cell phone. Does he sound angry? How angry is he? Note the rise and fall of his aggression as the call proceeds. Move away from the fence separating you from him.

Direct your attention toward a swarm of flies hovering over a patch of grass to your left. Notice how three small turds have fallen down between clumps of leaves. Root them out. Turn your attention away from your sense of smell. Feel your shoe skid as you take an unguarded step toward the beauty berry bush. Note the sinking feeling of dismay as you struggle to maintain balance. Smell the odor rising from your shoe. Throw down your scooper. Listen to the sound of cursing coming out of your throat. Does your throat feel raw after you’ve finished? Notice that cursing has not removed poop from your shoe. Watch your breath. Listen to it wheeze.

Pick up the remnants of the stepped in pile. Throw them into a bush. Listen to the dry grass crunch as you stomp to the front yard. Scan the ground for small branches and large twigs. Select a pointy stick. Remove shoe. Scrape dog droppings off your shoe. Listen to the sound of the stick scritch-scritching through the treads. Turn your attention away from your sense of smell.

Feel the joints in your ankle and knee complain as you hop on one foot to the hose. Listen to the water course over the bottom of your shoe. Note the glistening flow of liquid around channels of dog shit that may have permanently cemented themselves to the bottom of your shoe. Find another stick and scrape once again. Note the stubborn channels of dog turds still remaining in the shoe treads. Turn off the hose. Give up.

Watch the arc of the shoe as it flies across the yard toward the trash can. Listen to the dull clang of the shoe striking the can.

Feel the breeze ruffle your hair…Watch a flock of blackbirds pass before a white cumulus cloud scudding to the east…Breathe in…Breathe out…Hear your dogs barking at you from inside the house.

Baby Games

Ava eating in foot-action mode.

Ava will turn 1 in ten days. She likes to spend her waking hours walking around the house, touching knobs, seams and crevices on metal objects, teething on anything available (books, stuffed animals, baby spoons, the side of her crib, etc.), and giving long commentaries about life in random sounds delivered in speech rhythms. She sometimes says “hi”, “mama”, and “dah”. The latter may mean Dad.

She likes to be swooped around in her Dad’s arms, to be whooshed abruptly up and down, to be taken outside so that she can attempt to eat leaves and sticks, and to listen and dance to music. She especially loves it when Grandma sings her kiddy songs.

And she likes to make up and play games. One game is called “refold the laundry”. She takes a postmodernist approach to the job by deconstructing neat piles into randomized arrangements of clothing thus revealing the innate formlessness of fabric. A shirt might have seams and buttons to lend it superficial structure, but Ava seems intent on proving that “shirtness” is yet another arbitrary postulation supporting Western Culture’s hegemonic garment standards.

She takes a similar tack when faced with stacks of books and towers of toys. A ball resting on top of a plastic ring sitting on top of a block cannot withstand her decisive attack. The overwhelming domination of gravity is reasserted over and over again as Ava, Godzilla-like in her power, smashes all constructions having vertical pretensions.

She plays another game called, “Grandpa is my sucker”. She toddles up with a look of excitement and anticipation, and sweetly raises a hand. When I lean sideways and grasp, she takes off and pulls me from one end of the house to another. My purpose is to provide balance. The extra stability allows her to move at twice her normal speed as she runs to kitchen table, to back door, to refrigerator, to front door, to circumnavigate the coffee table, to a back hall strewn with dog bones, to find Mom and Dad as they attempt to work on their computers. The game continues until Grandpa is either out of breath or feels the need to unkink a tendon in his hip that normally gives him no trouble.

Mealtimes give her opportunities to play a wordless form of “Simon Says”. She sometimes leans sideway until head nearly touches tray. She gives me an expectant look while waiting for me to tip sideways too. Sometimes she raises her arms above her head and “raises the roof” like an extremely underaged party dancer. She grins happily when I join in. She sometimes holds up a hand and raises her pointer finger like a solemn prophet about to reveal the word of God. I raise hand and finger to join her mute profession of faith. She also amuses herself by adding a wrinkle to her Simon Says routine: she waits for me to lift a spoon or fork to my mouth before going into action. I quickly put down my utensil to copy her move. I sometimes go hungry while getting a flab-busting arm workout.

Ava looking for an opportunity to “raise the roof” during my attempts to take a bite to eat.

Mealtimes also give her a chance to experiment with alternate eating procedures. She sometimes places her foot between tray and chest and wedges little hunks of food between her toes. Cheese tastes better when flavored by essence of foot. She also likes to reach toward Grandma. If Judy draws near and offers a hand, Ava turns it palm up, places food inside, and daintily eats. Dining becomes a refined affair when a servant provides a “finger bowl”.

The Egg Had It in for Me

Near the beginning of the pandemic, baking ingredients, such as eggs, yeast and flour, disappeared from shelves at the Winter Park Publix.  This happened a week after toilet paper and hand sanitizer had vanished.  Anxious customers were more concerned, at first, about issues of outflow than issues of input.  I hadn’t been concerned about either and had to scrounge for supplies. 

Eggs began to reappear a few weeks after the first spasm of general panic had ebbed.  I bought a carton of 18 just to be sure and noticed the considerably lower price per egg.  My usual dozen began to look like a boutique buy.  I’ve purchased the larger carton ever since.

I usually fry an egg for breakfast. I lay it onto a piece of bread coated with melted cheese.  An egg-and-cheese has become part of my morning ritual, and I can make it with my eyes closed.  But I woke up more groggy than usual today and bumped into the kitchen counter on the way to the stove.  The cold, white light inside the fridge stabbed my eyes.  When I attempted to open the egg carton, the lid stuck.

I wedged my hand inside to pry out an egg.  In an eighteen-count carton, the eggs press tightly together.  They sometimes resist.  I tugged on one egg, met its stubborn refusal to budge, and tried another.  When my fingers got a good grip on the second egg, it crumbled inward.

“Shit!” I calmly remarked as yolk and white slimed my digits.  Not content to stay inside its original compartment, the crushed egg seeped sideways and beneath another egg.  I took the carton to the sink counter.  I tried to scoop out the yolk into a frying pan but suspected further treachery.  The yellow gunk tried to slide through my fingers onto the floor, but I managed to catch it with my other hand.  Some attendant white escaped to drip onto the linoleum.  (“Shit!” I calmly remarked again.)

Most of the white, however, remained behind and threatened to ooze throughout the carton.  I imagined picking up sticky, foul smelling eggs for the rest of the week.  I lifted the egg nearest to the flood and found a puddle beneath.  I tried to place the intact egg on a sink divider, but it intended to shatter itself on the sink bottom.  I decided that today was a two-egg day, cracked it into the skillet, and burned the side of my hand.  (“Shit!” I calmly remarked yet again.)

The eggs sizzled in the pan, but a puddle persisted in the carton.  I decided to tip the remnant ooze onto its frying compatriots.  I carefully place my hand over the remaining eggs and tilted the carton.  I fully expected one of the eggs to slip by and shatter on the stovetop but managed to avoid further difficulties.  I used a paper towel to finish cleaning the carton and to scrub the floor near the stove. I used soapy water to wipe down the counter, edge of the stovetop and the faucet.  I had managed to slime them all up.

A few minutes later, I bit savagely into my sandwich.  “Revenge is mine,” I thought.  Then something delicate and chalky crunched between my teeth.  Eggshell.  (“Shit!”)

A Star Ascends

Ava and Judy

I brought out pictures of Ava, our granddaughter, taken when she was a few months old. The older women at church nodded, smiled, and passed the photos around. I said, “I think that she’s really intelligent, so aware. She looks around intently as if she’s taking it all in.”

One of the ladies hesitated then said, “Now, everyone thinks that their grandchildren are exceptional.” She gave me a knowing look as if she’d concluded that I had already begun to delude myself. I thought, “Well, you’ve never met Ava.”

Ava and Annie have been staying with us for the last week while Bryant, Ava’s Dad, is off on a trip. Judy and I have helped take care of Ava. Having had an opportunity to observe her at close hand for an extended period of time, I must say that my original estimate of Ava’s intelligence was wrong. She’s actually a lot smarter than I originally assumed. Not to mention irrepressibly cute, athletic and inquisitive.

Now I know that some of you are smirking. You think that I’m just besotted by her exceptional good looks. But Ava’s more than a pretty face. She’s got substance and style. When she smears baby food on her person, she considers first then acts with bold panache. The rapid swipe of the back of her hand across the underside of her nose speaks of decisiveness and passion.

She’s become quite a linguist. We’re not sure how many languages she speaks, or how many she can use within one word or sentence, but she declaims for minutes at a time while adding dramatic gestures. Sometimes she throws in imitations of animal calls to accent points deserving special attention.

Ava shows signs that she’s developing a scientific mind set. She experiments with gravity, dropping objects and repeatedly standing up and sitting down. She tests the tensile strength of spoons, stuffed animals and plastic toys by inserting them into her mouth for thorough gnawing. Pretty much anything within her reach becomes part of her exhaustive studies.

She’s also a people person. When she enters a room, she engages the first person she encounters with an appraising stare followed by a smile. Before new members of her entourage understand what’s happened, they find themselves holding Ava, playing with her, letting her guide them around the room as she grasps their fingers. She’s already a charismatic leader.

As a budding genius and socialite, she does occasionally show signs of a high-strung temperament. She cries easily when unintentionally losing her balance and requires reassuring words to restore her calm. She demands immediate comfort when tired while not taking into account the collective fatigue of her attendants. She calls out for attention if left in a play pen without proximate companionship.

Some might call her high-maintenance, a diva. But I say that stars can’t be judged by the same standards as the rest of us mere mortals.

Walk Through An Art Show

I saw my show, “Happy Paintings for Well-Adjusted People”, for the first time last Thursday.  My wife and daughter came to the opening that night, and I mostly interacted with faculty, a man named Tony, and two high school art teachers who happened to be on campus at the time.  I gave a lecture about my work to the folks listed above and a class forced to attend.  But the somewhat listless students listened and didn’t lapse into smart phone drifts of attention too often.  I got a few questions at the end that helped me to explain things a bit further.

Judy helped me to refine my speech, and we agreed that the underlying theme in a lot of my work is humor.  So I opened and closed my presentation with jokes.  One featured hump back whales, and the other told a story about swimming lessons involving trips to the middle of Lake Erie, a tough father, and being tied up in a bag.

My work was treated with respect, and the reception felt warm and friendly.  I recommend Daytona State College and the curator, Viktoryia McGrath, to any artist interested in exhibiting their work in a college setting.

 

My daughter, Annie, spent the weekend with us and brought along Shakespeare and Sedgewick, her two dogs. She left early Easter Sunday afternoon, and Judy and I both felt a bit sad now that the flurry of activity had ended and the house was a lot quieter. We decided that we will be moving next door to a child once they settle down in a permanent location.

Now I’m looking forward to making new paintings under less stressful conditions, finishing out my semester, and starting summer projects.

Napping Out of Control

Ed woke up from a nap, yawned and stretched, sat up straight on the sofa.  He asked me, “What time is it?”  I said, “Three,” and he replied, “That late?!  I’ve been napping out of control!”

Judy described Pine, Colorado, the little town near her brother’s house in the Rocky Mountain foothills.  She said, “There’s the Bucksnort Tavern, and there’s a drive by library.”  My eyes widened, and then we laughed.  I pantomimed a murderous librarian idling along a curb while slinging hard backs at cringing pedestrians.  Judy went on to explain that the library was a box on the side of a building.  Books could be borrowed or returned according to whim.

When my daughter Annie was a toddler she suffered from food allergies, and we had to carefully monitor her diet.  One thing she could have was granola.  When snack time came midafternoon, we sometimes said, “You can have half a granola bar.”  When we asked her one day what she wanted (peaches were another option), she called out, “Half!”

One day I sat writing bills, grumbling as I balanced the check book.  My water bill was high.  The city of Casselberry had taken over our service a two decades before, and still charged our neighborhood an exorbitant rate.  Annie (now a twenty year old) asked me what I was doing.  I said, “Just writing a check for the Castle of Shitzelberry.”

I recently read a feature about how airline attendants punish surly flights of passengers.  Changes in altitude apparently cause an intestinal upwelling of gas, and our friends in the sky walk up and down the aisle near the end of a flight to “dust the crops”.

Jack worked in the kitchen at a pizza restaurant with me, and when he wanted to go home early he would begin to sing loudly enough for the diners to hear.  He chose Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” one night, but substituted his own version of the lyrics.  The song became, “Another one bites the crust, another one bites the crust.  Hey, it’s gonna get to you!  Another one bites the crust!”  That got Zukavecki the night manager to come running.  Zukavecki told Jack to keep it down and that he had to finish his shift.  Jack waited until the manager left the kitchen, and then belted out another Queen song:  “Bohemian Rhapsody”.   He focused on the “let me go” section singing, “Zukavecki let me go, Let me go, Zukavecki let me go, He will not let me go,  Let me go go gooooo.  Bee–ell–zuh–bub’s got a devil for a son in me, in ME.”  Zukavecki let him go.

Sometimes when I’ve completed a job I announce, “It is Swedished.”  My kids know better than to ask me what I mean by that.  If they do I say, “Why should the Finns get all the credit?”

A Sense of Humor Helps

There are many ways to judge whether a relationship might work. Sharing or at least tolerating each other’s sense of humor is one. When my wife and I dated I sometimes cooked a meal for us, and one night Judy held up her plate with a pathetic orphan look on her face and said, “Please, sir, may I have more?” My eyes popped wide as I recognized a speech from Oliver Twist. My previous girlfriend had thought that Steven King novels were the height of literature, and Judy quoted Dickens. My heart leapt with joy.

I had first studied biology in college, and Judy was in the process of earning her Ph.D. in plant physiology when we met and married. On our honeymoon in Maine we climbed to the top of a mountain in Acadia National Forest. A cold breeze blew as we stood on a rocky plateau at the top, and a thick fog surrounded us on all sides. She pulled a sweatshirt out of her backpack, and her head got stuck inside as she attempted to push her arms through the sleeves. She stood with her arms waving over what appeared to be a headless torso and I said, “My wife, the hydra.” She started laughing, and it took her a bit longer to emerge.

When Judy got pregnant with our first child we went to an OB/GYN group in State College. We saw four doctors on a round robin basis, and some could be gruff and rude. Judy appreciated it when I nicknamed a sixty year old man, a former army doctor, who kept advising Judy to watch her weight. His name was Wengrovitz, but we privately referred to him as Vinegar Tits. Dr. Mebbane gave us stern lectures at odd moments, and we hoped that he wouldn’t be on call when it came time for the delivery. We held up our arms in crosses as if warding off a vampire when we discussed him and called out, “Med Bane” in hopes of repelling him.

I rewrite lyrics to pop songs, and sometimes sing my version of Joe Cocker’s, “You Are So Beautiful, To Me” in the morning while making breakfast.  Original version:  “You are so beautiful, to me.  You’re everything I’ve ever hoped for.  You’re everything I need.  You are so beautiful, to me.”  My version: “You look available, to me. You are everything I’d ever settle for. You’re the only woman I see. You look available…to me.” Judy doesn’t take offense but comments on how romantic I’ve become over our years together.

We got new flip phones a few months ago. Sometimes my phone emits rapid bursts of beeps when I walk with it in a pants pocket, and it woke me up one night with a beep and flash of light as it rested on my bureau. Judy took it from me when it sounded off during a meal and searched through the menu. I asked her to look for a “random bullshit” button that she could turn off. She went through a bunch of applications, but didn’t find anything that might help. She handed it back and drily said, “Sorry, they don’t list ‘random bullshit’ anywhere.”

 

He Didn’t See It Coming

Acrylic on canvas, 16×20″

Another narrative painting that I started early this year and finished today.  Sometimes I like to take a lot of time and effort to tell a bad joke based on puns.