space available

The large sign on the brick building said, "Space Available" with a phone number listed beneath it.

Is Space Available:

• in my mind
• in my heart
• in my pants
• in the closet
• in the neighborhood
• on the margins
• in the wallet
• under the couch
• in the trunk
• under my memory
• under the mattress
• between the buttons
• at the corner of Straight and Narrow
• below the truth
• under the fear
• within faith
• within disbelief
• throughout a doubt
• down the blouse
• up the ante
• between the lines
• without a hope
• in the blink of an eye
• after all is said and done
• in my soul
• in their certainty
• beyond the pale
• during despair
• after the deluge
• against the grain
• among the crowd
• under the sheets
• across the lie
• in your heart
• in their hearts
• in our hearts
• beyond time
• beyond space

a thousand nothings deep, or fifteen questions

• To not be or to be? (that's where every naked vernixed baby starts)
• Can you be tied up in nots?
• Have you been a little noughty boy or girl or other?
• How many noughty problems are you trying to solve?
• Is it all for nought?
• Exactly how do you not do something?
• Will she even know about the myriad midnight moments you texted her but did not press Send, the relentless repetition of uncertainties, declarations of love posing as a litany, the anvil of No in your chest radiating its metallic pulse out to the tired sheets?
• Have you learned any lessons from that course you took on set theory, the difference between a null set and an empty set?
• How does one measure nullity-zero-none? 
• If you're trying so hard to not do something, aren't you doing more than if you were doing nothing? (we're talking again about her cited above)
• Why is it harder for you to say No than Yes (except when Yes would clearly be better than No, or vice versa)?
• Have you noticed that to forgo the habit of Yes you have to acquire the vernix-covered habit of No, which requires more discipline, resolve, will, and anonymity, because after all who pays attention to your silent No, Not This Time, the No that is mined in the night or in the day when you are mumbling with your earbuds in?
• When is enough enough, more accurately, when is not enough finally enough?
• Are they always lying, at the least fibbing, when they assert, No, it's nothing, nothing at all, that is not what I meant at all?
• How do you (yes, you; no, not you) spell No?

Iceland terrain

Already the terrain of Iceland is craggy, windswept, cold, barren, and biting. And I have not even set foot there yet, so that is a biased viewpoint. It is not a depiction of the terrain of Iceland. Not really. Not in actuality. As I said, I have yet to journey there. No, it is a description of the concept of my taking a journey to "Iceland" as a concept, a notion. There those who are aghast at my proposal to do so. How dare I? How dare I spend the money or take the time, me the frugal one, living on two meals a day, abstemious and sober, thrifty yet supposedly incapable of certain monetary "equalities," shall we say? The nerve. The boldness. Who will take care of Mom, 99? Who will do this or that? How can such roles be abdicated so cavalierly? These are the craggy, windswept, cold, barren, and biting questions. Iceland, what say you now?

blind person area

Yesterday while driving I saw a sign consisting of black letters declaring BLIND PERSON AREA set on a yellow background, in the village of Baldwinsville, New York. (Those of you inclined to be persnickety, like me, are urged to not get your knickers in a knot over the missing hyphen between the first and second of the three words. Nor should you be concerned with the legit split infinitive in the preceding sentence.) I am not blind. I have known some blind people in my life. For three summers out of college, I worked with blind college students who were orienting to college life in the summer before their freshman year. My point in citing those bona fides, if you will, is to forthrightly state (split infinitive again) that this post is neither disrespectful of blind people nor insenstive to that aspect of their lives. 

Seeing the sign triggered some silent questions to clank around in my discursive head, or wherever thoughts neurologically reside:

1. Upon seeing a sign like that have you as a driver ever encountered a blind person in the designated area? I have not, to my recollection. I'm not questioning the veracity or sincerity of the municipal sign posters; I'm just sharing my limited experience.
2. Where does the area begin and end? In other words, what are the borders of the BLIND PERSON AREA?
3. Granted, the sign is urging drivers to be more vigilant or cautious, but in the absence of such a sign do drivers have license to proceed with an iota of comparatively less vigilance or caution?
4. Since the sign was not also in braille (well, maybe it was, but I do not think so) and assuming blind people are unaware of the sign (and I could be wrong on this aspect, too), is it possible that some blind persons actually take offense at the sign, owing to their independence and mobility, in many instances?

Today, with the interior knowledge that I'd be composing this post, I happened to see a sign (at a different locale) that read DEAF CHILD AREA. So, I ask you: 

1. Do the same questions as listed above apply?
2. Or do radically different questions apply?
3. What if both of these signs coexist in the same not-precisely-designated area?
4. What questions arise?
5. And what answers?

no direction (away from) home

In the early 1990s, at an unmoored time between marriages, I was asked where I lived as I attempted to cross the border into Canada, in the Thousand Islands. I had asked to leave work early that Friday, rented a car, and headed north, for parts unknown. I had to get away (yes, with the realization that wherever I escaped to, I'd have myself still there along for the ride). The Canadian border guard might have uttered merely two words, "your home?", in an interrogative mode. Or he might have simply asked, "Where do you live?" His question stumped me. He said, "Tough question" sarcastically after I gave him a blank look for an eternal twenty or thirty seconds, possibly more. (Obviously, in these days that would be enough to have me hauled in for severe questioning.) During that blank-stare and silent duration, my mind was jiggering and figuring all kinds of personal calculus. Where do I live? I don't feel at home where I get my mail, eat meals, and sleep. I don't feel at home where I used to, with my wife and children. Maybe I can answer with the name of the city where I was born, but I really don't live there. This is hard. Where am I at home in the world? I eventually blurted out, "Syracuse," and mumbled something about needing a vacation.

I confess to similar feelings now, decades later. In some ways, the feelings are stronger, as are the risks and opportunities. This time, I almost feel as if the world is my oyster, so to speak, and I am free to go anywhere, live anywhere. True, financial circumstances pose challenges to that, but other circumstances open the doors. 

Where do you live? Where is home? You would think these are easy questions, and in some ways they are. "Grow where you are planted," the saying goes. That is true; I get that. But it's not just "no direction home" that makes one a rolling stone. It's also what direction away from home, maybe more so.

hunger games, the questions

• What do I hunger for?
• Why?
• What appetites drive my hunger?
• What satisfies my hunger?
• Do I know what makes me so hungry?
• Am I more hungry tha others are? Or less? Or about the same?
• Why are you, dear reader, reading these 'hunger games' questions?
• And how would you answer them?
• Are they not challenging queries?
• And, like me, does a taste of 'speaker's remorse' tempt you to erase all these questions, to dodge them, dislodge them, evade them, eviscerate them, escape them, divert the conversation away from them, and on and on?

fearful symmetry

I experienced a "fearful symmetry," a phrase from William Blake, upon watching the movie "The Railway Man" a day or so after the Senate released a report five years in the making (which I have not read) on "enhanced interrogation techniques," which is a euphemism for torture.

Yes, war (though the "war on terror" was a misnomer from the start, but that's another topic for another day) involves unspeakable, unbearable, obscene acts of treachery and degradation under the guise of honor, cause, duty, or patriotism. And it also elicits acts of heroism, bravery, selflessness, valor, sacrifice, under the same banners.

But don't people (don't I, don't you) have both a right and an obligation to ask:

What are we? What do we espouse? What do we stand for? What defines us?

I do not pretend these are simple questions evoking simple answers. Nor do I pretend to speak with authority, as I type this in a comfortable chair in a public cafe in a free society. (Allow a digression: are you "free" if you are cajoled, motivated, nudged, coerced every day by forces you do not recognize or acknowledge? I'm not talking conspiracy or paranoiac whisperings. I am referring to the relentless onslaught of consumerist stimulation that tickles our fancies and enslaves our wallets.)

At any rate, I propose the asking (and the potential answering) of these and like-minded difficult but profound questions as part of our civic discourse  -- beyond pieties, cliches, jingoism, chauvinism, and bromides.

As G.K. Chesteron said, " 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' "

innocence and victimhood

The person to my right at the coffee shop has on her left a book titled Innocence and Victimhood. On the spine I see the words "critical human rights." It looks like a textbook. Innocence. Victimhood. I can't claim to have written the definitive text on either, though the latter would seem my specialty more than the former. That self-judgment may be a tad harsh. Does it victimize me? And my personal innocence was lost a long time ago, and I seem to recall it most in my grandson's eyes, though that is a naive and sentimental view, is it not? What is innocence? What is victimhood? Are they merely personal traits (attributes, states, concepts) or more broadly incarnate (corporate, national, global)? I know not. Which is more appealing? (That is a facile question; or maybe not, on closer scrutiny.) And beyond words as words, and notions as notions (as our Buddhist friends like to note), what are these matters, after all?

taking my digital temperature

I tend to be obsessed with taking my digital temperature. I often take it many times a day. And I can't seem to stop myself. No amount of willpower can prevent it once I yield to that fixation. It's not what you think. It's not a solipsistic medical obsession. It goes deeper than that. Taking my digital temp goes right to my soul. You think I am afraid of fever or variations in body temperature? No, that's not it at all. I told you, it's deeper than that. This solipsistic obsession is very modern, au courant. I go to CreateSpace, the self-publishing arm of Amazon, and check daily sales figures of my four self-published books. I allow myself to feel glum if nothing shows up or to feel cheerful, even elated, if I find a few hits, a few sales. I check similar data at KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing. I check sales of these same books in electronic versions, from around the globe. If I told you the highs and lows of these daily, even hourly numbers, you might find yourself rolling on the floor laughing. Or crying. (Don't we have Internet acronyms for these emotional outbursts?) But what of my own emotional outbursts, no, inbursts? What possesses me? What is this hunger? It cannot possibly be about money. The amount are laughably or cryably or pitiably minuscule. Is it approval or validation? What is this craving? What drives it? What emptiness am I trying to fill? What would constitute enough? And why would I want more after that? U2 sang, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I have to ponder the question before the question: why am I even looking? 

the gates, the questions, the monologue

Yesterday, driving on the stretch of 92 from Fayetteville to Manlius, I saw a wooden sign advertising for homes or apartments. GATED COMMUNITY, it said. Since this portion of the county houses our landed aristocracy, I entertained questions popping into my head like comics' speech-dialogue balloons: what are the gates for? to block you in? or block you out? to give you security? what is security? security from whom? Trayvon Martin? George Zimmerman? the approaching tanks? the marching menace? are the gates there to protect you from -- wait for it -- THE CITY, and its alleged rampaging crime and welfare and urban terror and guns the NRA says we need to have but They must not possess and everything else the paranoiac fear-mongers outside its borders sell? will the gates be designed to protect you from the Liberal Agenda? or from FoxNews's evangelism of negativity? in short (actually, not so short), will these gates be so designed as to give you peace and quiet, safe from Them and It and That, the peace you have earned and deserve and have a right and entitlement to? those gates?

That's a lot of pompous questions on a Monday afternoon, on a day we call Labor Day but do not labor and instead celebrate as a holiday, thanks to the labor movement (a holiday, unless you are one who must work today: nurses, doctors, police, firefighters, fast-food workers, gas station clerks, mall workers, military, musicians at the fair, fair workers, EMTs, prison guards, caregivers, clergy, and many others).

Speaking of prisons and prisoners, I know a fellow just released from prison. He did his time, paid his debt to society, as the saying goes; a little over two years. What's he going to put on his resume, "Employed at a gated community"?

alienation of affection

It's a rather poetic term, isn't it?

Alienation of affection?

Did you know it dates to at least the 1800s and is a legal term associated with tort cases involving adultery?

I didn't know that, did you?

Who is doing the alienating?

Who the affecting?

Who is alienated from whom?

From whose affection?

What would "alienation of affectation" mean?

Does alienation of affection therefore result in bonding of disaffection?

Who doesn't feel alienated from affection now and then?

Know what I mean?

How would one insource such outsourcing of affection?

Do you think this is all just fun and games, merely wordplay?

How do you measure alienation?

How do you assess affection?

When do you know you've reached the state of "alienation of affection"?

What's the cure for alienation of affection?

What is this, twenty questions or something?

Are we done here?

risk-free questions! now! join the millions who...

"Try Smarmy absolutely risk-free."

"And now FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY you too can try Smarmy at no risk."

1. Risk, to whom? You? Or me?
2. What kind of risk? Medical? Financial? Moral?
3. What is "risk"?
4. Why should I believe your "risk-free" claim?
5. Doesn't everything have some risk potential, including reading THIS?
6. Isn't all time "limited"?
7. What is the limit of your time?
8. What is the limit of your space?
9. Is poetry risk-free?
10. Would you mind if I dehyphenate risk free?
11. If you concede risk is not "absolutely free," then what is its cost?
12. What is the best currency to use when paying for the cost of risk?
13. Do you get irritated and sore with me when I drivel on like this?
14. Do my interrogatives put you at the risk of losing your composure?
15. Are you one of the millions, or one of the few, the proud?
16. Am I the only one whose ears prick upward, like a dog's, at the sound of "risk-free"?
17. Are any of our politicians risk-free?
18. Is that what got us into this pickle, expecting our so-called leaders to guide through so-called risk-free times?
19. Who is doing the calling when something is "so-called"?
20. Who is doing the answering to these twenty questions?
    

no question about it, or is there?

The Planet* gave me some space for words and musings, mostly questions.

Thanks, period.

* as in Planet Valenti

twenty interrogastories

1. How would you like to die?
2. What is it like to be alive?
3. Where would you want to sing?
4. Why do you want to know?
5. Whom will you embrace as the sky is rent?
6. Has the burnt sienna cooled yet?
7. Do the words echo in your veins?
8. Have you questioned having?
9. Am I blue (a muted cobalt just south of Antwerp)?
10. Would you if you could without getting caught or punished?
11. With whom will you dive, sail, skim, [note serial comma] or float?
12. Against what odds or flesh will you melt?
13. Who remembers that nameless electric thrill?
14. If not here and now, where and when?
15. Should there be a law, any law?
16. That being said, what is silence?
17. Could the waves just stop?
18. Which inaugural color will you wear, and what language will ban it?
19. Is keeping score against the rules?
20. In the end, can you call it a day or something else, i.e., some unit of time or space or imagination or pendulum-swinging suggestion or somnambulism?
    

twenty urban questions

what is a city

why

how does it renew itself

who renews it

what is the attraction of cities

how do you reinvent a city

why not move main street

why not call it something else

are not suburbs based on fear

at least in part

what do those in the suburbs fear

how do we convince them their fears are tribal myths

how do we celebrate community

how do we fear less

how do we become fearless

what is the fabric of the city

what is the texture of the city

what is the palette of sight and smell

this city

that city and this city

twenty questions

1. why delay
2. if not now when
3. if not here where
4. why no question marks
5. will you ever
6. what if this but not that
7. is it impossible
8. how could it not
9. how could it
10. who whispered
11. what did the shout mean
12. where is it hidden
13. where is it found
14. what is the difference
15. when will we
16. at what cost
17. under whose influence
18. assuming what conditions
19. wearing which skin
20. hearing whose silence tapping under the fingerpads just as they land on this key and now this one

Don't Ask, Pray Tell

This just in from Beijing:

The 'eight don't asks' of the Olympics

Posted by Tim Johnson

Tue Jul 22, 5:46 AM ET

Posters are appearing around Beijing guiding locals about how to interact with the (few) foreigners coming for the Summer Games.

The posters instruct residents on the “eight don’t asks” when chatting with foreign guests. Here’s a rough translation, courtesy of the Peaceful Rise blog:

Don’t ask about income or expenses, don’t ask about age, don’t ask about love life or marriage, don’t ask about health, don’t ask about someone’s home or address, don’t ask about personal experience, don’t ask about religious beliefs or political views, don’t ask what someone does.

So what is one to ask? Maybe the relative merits of fencing versus marathon swimming?

Now, for the foreigners out there, here’s the No. 1 dud question to ask a Chinese person. It’s a question that will draw a blank, non-comprehending stare:

“Hey, pal, tell me about your president. Is he doing a good job?”

Hey, everything these days says MADE IN CHINA. Maybe that's what should be stamped on a little card with these questions and hand the card to visitors to the Olympics.

As for asking that question about the president: ask it in the U.S.A. and who knows, you might find your travel plans are hindered, or when you go to vote your registraton is all of a sudden invalid.

Carry on. Laugh. Or...

Else.