Awkward Tension

Harold sat still on his bus on a rainy morning. He looked outside at the driplets of water weaving down the window opposite him, and with a start realized that a man was sitting there. Now on any normal occasion, it would not have been any special surprise that, of all places, another man found himself sitting on the public transportation system, but this particular man was watching Harold.

Harold thought to himself that there were really two ways you could watch someone, you could watch them in a discursive passing manner as if surveying a broad landscape, or you could watch them like a painting, absorbing their every detail. This second type of watching was the kind that bothered Harold, especially when it came from someone with no business to be doing so, like the stranger now seated directly across from him.

To make matters worse, the man was not sitting opposite to Harold in the since that they were both looking forwards, eyes averted, but rather facing each other directly across the lane occupying the bus's front; where passengers who joined the bus later in the route found themselves packing in like sardines. This was so irksome to Harold because the man squatted on the only directions in which he could gaze, so his entire field of view was effectively blocked by this interloper. It would of course be both embarrassing and rude of him to match the analytical gaze he now found himself being doused in.

So Harold looked down, and around, and up at the ceiling, really anywhere and everywhere but out of that window he had moments before perused. In doing so he began to assimilate small portions of the staring man's image in closer detail. His boots were made of a pointed black leather. Once they had obviously been quite crisp, in that audacious sort of way that can only be meant to inform everyone just how crisp one's boots are. Now however they bore the long thing white lines that leather seems to acquire after being trod on for years. At their toes were several very small, almost imperceptible holes, and up their length ran a few cracks from the leather slowing drying under stress.

His pant legs were, quite like his shoes, clearly influenced by the passage of time. A pair of once-smooth corduroys, they now had flowing loose threads atop each of their individual pleats. The holes that had slowly been worn into them over time by normal wear were patched up with a medley of brightly colored, striped, and polka dotted pieces of fabric, a gaudy trait that Harold was surprised for not having noticed up until the present.

Perhaps most interesting of all though, was the man's shirt. On its front was emblazoned a shadow image of some face that Harold could almost, but not quite place. It was postured with a slight slant to its left, and flowing hair almost obscured the top of its eyebrows, rolling down around its shoulders and disappearing off of the shirt's canvas.

By this time Harold had begun to take occasional glances at the man's face, and discovered that the watcher was now gazing at the ceiling, the floor, and anything that wasn't Harold.

Your scrumptious brain

I've been thinking about writing a lot lately, and only recently come to a defining revelation. The Facebook blog has starved out in the absence of contributions. Meanwhile however, I have fed the hobby well enough on snippets of fiction and a short journal here and there. Writing without an audience allows me to be pretty lax with form though, and so things like my savory love of turning food related adjectives into words describing things other than food, that, while tasty for me, may not be the best practice, slip their delicious way into anything and everything I write. An audience is helpful here. This is not my critical realization however, so much as a lead into a far more significant truth - that my writing heretofore has been largely deficient in zombies.

Having said that...

You're sitting in your house on an average weekday. You turn on the news, and apparently zombies are feasting on everyone. What is your plan of action? I know most discerning readers have already prepared for such complications with careful forthought, but I will nonetheless offer a brief primer on the background of zombies and zombie related issues for the few newbs who may be out there.

The zombie apocalypse will transpire when some infectious disease/curse/alien parasite comes to earth, spreads from one human to the next, and in weeks converts most of the planet's populus into brain-craving husks, hungry only for the pulsating blood of the living. Eventually, the canny, lucky, and quick will eek out a meager survival until all the zombies starve, and then the survivors will rebuild society. Also, you, the zombie newb, will be the first to go considering your lack of foresight concerning said apocalypse.

For reference, consider viewing one of these helpful videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-TZnNXXQrI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVnfyradCPY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gTkUcXGF_Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M5V-1lbtfc

Now that you have achieved a sufficiently zombie oriented mind-set, think with me for a moment, and in your mind utter a nice long, mbraaaaainnnnns.

Great, so how do you go about surviving the infestation?

…

A few common approaches involve fleeing from urban centers, barricading one's home, and finding somewhere crafty to hide. Personally I am not a huge fan of the flee Seattle approach – presumably everyone else also does so. All it would take is one undead induced car accident to make the freeway into a brain buffet. Barricading also seems to be a poor choice, as the zombies will always find a way inside. What remains is some combination of crafty hiding and a home fortress, or hiding on top of my roof. From exhaustive research, I came to the conclusion that zombies as portrayed by the American media, are substandard climbers, and so one could be relatively assured of safety camped out atop a roof. Honorable mention also goes to: hide in the space needle, steal a boat – and then be on it, motherfucker, and prepare a hermetic underground bunker stocked with snacks in preparation for zombies, hurricanes, nuclear war, and such.

I still do not find this issue to be cleanly resolved – what if there are enough zombies to make a corpse staircase up to the roof? You fine creative individuals perhaps can do better.

I also need your brain for feedback on writing, give it to me. Mrbbbghhhhhhg.

Some things would smash nicely

I borrowed a lock of my father's to chain up a bike. It turned out the lock was rusty, wouldn't open, and could not be turned by its key. I left my bike unlocked at Garfield and hoped. Luck was friendly that day - my bicycle received no jacking. However, between school and home, the key disappeared.

For the next few weeks questions regarding keys and loaned locks were dodged. This evening my dad confronted me about it.

I told him that I was sorry, explaining that the Masterlock was broken, and hoped for a mild response.

Instead he spirited away my weights, citing their constant underfootedness.

Now I know very well that I handled losing something entrusted to me wrongly. That aside, taking away a personal possession hit a special nerve. We've gotten along all year, I'm getting ready to leave permanently, and no longer expect my parents to be a policing element.

Buying a new lock would have been no problem, which only served to add to the sting.

Then some random exchange set the whole lot off. It's not really important what was said. What matters is that it was the last of too many annoyances, and it got to me like few things ever have.

I was angry.

Angry like a freshly woken nest of hornets. Angry like an avalanche waiting to bury some Bavarian village. Angry like the hulk.

You know that sensation of grief when something of great personal consequence is lost? I mean that cringing tug that goes from your forehead to your toes, and makes it feel as if there is no comforting cranny in existence that could remain hidden from the ache. I had that inescapable feeling but in shades of red.

I wanted to smash something that would make a releasing crunch, but decided against that course of action. A shouting match at home didn't seem so splendid either.

To get away, I picked up Pygmalion, put on my shoes, and started walking. I strolled until the microwave no longer seemed like it would have a nice arc to its fall. Then I sat down on the curb and started reading.

Two hours later a return trip gave time for reflection. I found nothing astounding in the experience, but once home, I wasn't mad anymore. Neither was my dad.

-Tim Wilder

My poor old grandmother

My poor old grandma is 91. Her legs can barely hold her precarious weight. Her arms can barely lift the walker that supports a hobbled frame. Her memory can barely recover the names of young family members. Her name is Betty, and she lives a life of hardlies and maybes.

It must be a sad day, when your life reaches an age of inevitability - when there's no doubt that the worse will come soon, and that the abilities to enjoy the meanwhile have long since sauntered off - a certain defeat must come.

I see the once commanding mother of four resigned to a hunched form in a rocking chair. Casual speech is unintelligible, and her highest form of participation is one-and-a-half-sided conversation at best.

When no one visits her cabin by the beech, human contact comes almost solely from regular caretaker visits. Alex Trebek takes a close second. She knows this well and you can see it etched into her eyes when the laughter of conversation and company leave for Seattle.

I wondered how she got by until just a few days ago.

It was morning and the group was preparing mothers' day breakfast. Insisting on work, Betty fiddled away at the previous night's dishes. I grabbed my camera in some down time to snap a few frames.

"Oh stop you grandson" half laughed and half pleaded the washer. "My curlers are all in and I don't want to be seen not pretty". And there it was, the coping mechanism.

To keep sanity, my grandmother was hanging onto little points of pride. I realized that the scope went far beyond a few silly pink curlers. The table cloths perfectly pressed flat for company, the flowers that would solicit showers of rants if not planted every year, the orchard that had to be trimmed; all of these things were pieces of a greater thing.

An aging woman's dignity they formed.

In a way it seemed, that so many things were beyond her control. The few items that fell into personal jurisdiction then were magnified in importance. Let go of their beauty and tending and there really would be nothing. A pretty image and a lush garden meant that my grandmother still could hang on to some part of her life. They gave her something to keep walking for.

In noticing this, I learned two simple things.

Be kind to old people and pay attention to their minute interests. They don't have a whole lot else to live off.

Get your living out of the way now. At some point you will care very much about very little and wish you had done much more in the past.

Tim Wilder

Woops

Woops

It was a blustry day said he
that man lone on the shore
when gained he did that old dear peg
from some foul titan’s roar

The beast she came in froth all white
to tear and scratch and howl
oh at men’s backs the tug the bite
groped some into its scowl

And all the old one had to say
was to his luck and sake
that to the deep he did not stray
but pay merely a leg

Tim Wilder

Garfield attendance policies, your experience

Remember long lunches? Recall a time before tardiness based Saturday school and suspensions? I'd love to hear your story.

This week I will be writing an article on the changes to attendance policy Garfield goers have endured for the last few years.

Anecdotes and the like would be great. Anything attached to tardiness, unexcused absences, planned trips, Saturday school, suspension, etc... is perfect.

Also, if you remember roughly when a specific policy change took place, please do share. I'm trying to put together a timeline and don't want to leave anything out.

Thanks, Tim W