Night Whistle

Down by the river, a train burdens itself with the melancholy wishes of insomniacs. Empty of coal, heading back toward the mountains, it moves along the rails, its horn calling the night thoughts of the city to tumble into its hollow cars.

Along the dark passageway of the tracks, farther west where the trees are bigger, the grit-crust shakes loose from the coal cars and leaves a black trail. By morning, it has blown back to the city.

Previous Nerd

J- was so cool, I couldn't believe she and I were walking down the street together. But there we went, small college town in Kansas, summer of 1990, the tall, slim, kinky-haired, scholarship-studded junior and me, a dork.

We were both living around campus for the month and had walked into town for something. She had her camera with her because she wanted to take a photo of a car on a used car lot. She said it was funny.

On the way back, we stopped by the lot, just a quarter-acre of grass and asphalt stalled next to the sidewalk with fading Hondas and Fords in short rows. As J- looked for the right car, we passed a white sedan, and a man in rolled-up shirtsleeves stood up from a crouch on the far side of the car. He had a bottle of White-Out in one hand, the little brush in the other, and a hangdog expression on his face.

J- imperiously ignored him and headed for the vehicle she had in mind. Across its windshield, in that soapy white paint that announces the merits of, or glosses the flaws of, used cars was written: PREVIOUS LADY OWNED CAR $4500

I laughed at the lack of a hyphen until I realized she was laughing at the sexism. Then I laughed at both and wondered when I would be as cool as J-.

Potential and Kinetic

The peonies are opening. Every winter, I forget exactly how they look, retaining only a general impression of innocent frowziness in my mind. Then every spring, they bloom, outrageous, excessive, irregular, and so delicately pink that I remember why I anticipate their opening.

A few days before the peony buds began showing pink at the top, praying mantises hatched. I saw one on the lid of our trashcan and helped it hop over to the faded ivy on our front wall, where another wandered.

Over the past 3 or 4 years, we have for various reasons gotten rid of their old nesting grounds: the persistent privet at the corner, the unfortunate bamboo, the wistful honeysuckle, all dug up. I worried that the mantises would leave. But as we're in no danger of becoming tidy-yard people, it seems there are plenty of good egg case spots left on the morning sun side of the house.

A katydid... now there's an insect I haven't seen for years. I remember watching one on our front door screen as a child on a summer evening. It was so otherworldly: silent and angular and still. Insects other than moths don't usually bother me, but I felt uneasy looking at the katydid.

Off-springing

I finished reading "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" to 1 tonight. She asked if there was a sequel. I said, "No, dammit, this was written before the concept of the money-making sequel existed." Which isn't true... I didn't say dammit, and sequels have been around as long as novels have, pretty much.

"It's so... so open-ended!" she sighed. I almost made another smart-ass remark, then she gripped the book and said, "This is the BEST book ever!!"

I love to hear 1 say that. She's not much of a reader. I used to qualify that statement to others with "yet." I'm not sure she ever will be. It's very uncomfortable, not liking a characteristic of one's own child.

My disappointment is deep, but of course my love for her is deeper, so I'm left with the perplexing realization that she is her own person, not, as I so wished for her first 5 or so years, a little me. Awe has built within me in the years since at her self-ness, even as it seems to turn out that she doesn't especially like the practice of reading.

Gallery, Part 2

"Hoc Corpusculum quo Induti Sumus"
Signed "McDevitt" on back, with an alien cartoon
Paint on wood, 2003 or 04


We bought this from the artist after M- saw his stuff at the too-cool-for-school street market. The one M- liked best was sold by the time we called, so we went to Michael's apartment to see more. We picked this one, though I dislike the rigid lines there on the right.

Michael says he was a biology major before he switched to art; thus the dendrites, etc. that are partially visible in this awful photo. I doubt he was a Latin major, but then, neither was I.

Michael was about to leaved for the summer to be first mate on a barge up the Hudson or something like that. I guess that's why he only charged us $50. M- brought him a beer, too, but not because he thought $50 was too low.

The Pussycat Stays Home

No, I didn't see The Queen Mum and that other guy. There was never any hope of my getting into the pool for a spot even remotely close, and I didn't care about the air she breathed, so I didn't bother.

Still, it's a great souvenier... the time someone thought I might have been a real reporter.

Gallery, Part 1

Here begins a catalog of the permanent collection of A- and M-, art collectors since 2005 or so. Each work's provenance will be elaborated beside its image, photographed by A-, a notably lousy photographer.



Untitled
Stamped on back: "Guan Wen Wu," with a Brooklyn address


M- bought this print about five years ago at some outdoor art festival in Baltimore during a visit to a former deep crush and her husband. He displays it above the family computer, where, he says, it is meant to inspire his stock-trading philosophies.


This photo doesn't show how the lines are drawn with a good-humored touch.





"At the tic-tac-toe-tal look salon" 5/12 lino print (I think)
James P. Nikkel, 1993 or 94
Signed and numbered by the artist

James is the best cartoonist I've ever known. I wish he were still making pictures, but I don't think he is. I bought this after his senior exhibition and it ended up in my parents' storage for over 10 years--I thought I had lost it in my travels. When it turned up last year, I wanted it to be a sign that James was okay.

I'm tickled

Smoke-filled rooms are bad for the editorial vision

Last month, The Washington Post Magazine ran a story about superstar violinist Joshua Bell's gig in a Metro station. In brief: Would morning commuters be stopped in their tracks by the music of Bach et al. played by the nation's most prominent violinist? No.

The article by Gene Weingarten is interesting, though written in an overblown glossy-mag style:
The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.

So, what do you think happened?

HANG ON, WE'LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP.

He touches on the nature and purpose of beauty (always an interesting question for me, though I rarely, if ever, consider what Leibniz or Kant have to say about it; Weingarten managed to work them--and Plato and Hume--into the piece) and reports on several later conversations with communters who agreed to be interviewed for the article.

But the paragraph that stopped me in my own tracks was this:

In preparing for this event, editors at The Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous "what-if" scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up;....

(I left off the end of the final sentence, as it was clearly meant to be hyperbole.)

...In other words, these editors saw the city as populated by people pretty much just like themselves. They had no idea who really walked through that Metro station. No conception of a world outside their own spheres of awareness.

I feel like a shaft of light has singed part of my brain--a little dramatic, maybe, but think about the implications. If the people who largely control the content for major media outlets define what's significant by what they see as significant, how does that affect the way in which stories are told, and what stories get told? How does that affect who gets interviewed for stories, who gets to provide answers to reporters' questions, what the questions are?

I consider myself a healthily skeptical person, yet I used to think that by and large, editors and journalists honestly tried to approach things objectively--I suppose I still think that they do try. But this is such a revealing glimpse inside the editor's office.

But wait... yes, it's true: I am an editor. That's the other reason I can't let go of this paragraph. I know I'm guilty of this same solipsistic error. I justify it by thinking, "Well, I don't really know who the readers are, so I might as well make papers that I'd want to read." Or: "With 50,000 readers, there are bound to be a few who appreciate my editorial decisions." Or: "Writing is best when the author writes to a specific reader." (I sort of believe this, but not necessarily for journalism, even though once I did hear this point made in a workshop for journalists.)

But those are excuses for laziness. I always need to be asking myself: how is the world bigger than I realize?