This world is big and wild and half insane
I'd like to reiterate: No matter the mood I'm in, a listen to the Kinks song "Animal Farm" always makes things okay. It's the Song of Happiness. The one thing I could imagine destroying my dogged spunk forever (if I may be so brazen as to claim I possess dogged spunk) would be for something truly bad to happen while "Animal Farm" was playing.
But, no. Only good things happen with Ray Davies.

This is one thing on the road from Atlanta to Beachtown.

But it’s really near the end in the multi-hour scheme of things.
The very first thing you do as you drive onto the first highway on-ramp onto the first road that’ll start to take you back northeast, is listen to the good songs on Foreign Affairs, the Tom Waits album. You do this and entertain your own melancholy. Consider the relative insanity of driving hours and hours just to spend your life away from all the people you care about most, who care about you, to return to a place about which your feelings are mixed and where you spend most of your time alone. Realizing that this is probably the five-dozenth time in life you’ve experienced this. Surprisingly, this makes it easier.

The rest of the drive. You listen to the Nina Nastasia record On Leaving, twice, even though you’re not the sort to normally listen to albums twice. You drive the speed limit. You briefly entertain horrible scenarios like what if you crashed into a person coming out of that car parked on the side of the highway, and what if, when you did so, one thing you noticed in the woozy-nightmare moments just after, is that the person’s car is just papered with bumper stickers you don’t agree with? This would surely make you feel even guiltier and more horrible about the whole thing, somehow, like you planned it.

You listen to On the Beach, that Neil Young record, and you don’t sing along at all; you just notice that you never noticed the moment when the hills turned to coastal flatness.

You’re almost home when you flick on the radio and there’s this amazing radio special of audiodocumentary stuff told by soldiers of past and present wars. It’s Memorial Day.

Nuestro propio animal.

Technology, it don't need me.
Apparently.
I came to Atlanta this weekend to visit with old friends. Then I realized, however, that I could also possibly nail down an interview with one person in a story that I’m working on. In two days’ notice, I asked for an interview and graciously, this guy accepted. We met at the coffeeshop where I used to work 'way back when, and I interviewed him for an hour.

Here’s the thing, though. There are dangers to relying on digital recorders while conducting interviews. One of those potential dangers is hitting “Stop” and there being a malfunction and you’ve lost your entire interview for no reason you can fathom. That’s one danger I was reminded of, today. Yessiree, shit.

Some writers, like Susan Orlean, rely completely on physical notetaking for their stories. I respect that; it’s inherently less intrusive. I have yet to grasp, however, how you sit there furiously taking notes while effectively carrying on a conversation. That, and how do you get down what the person has said, word for word? You can capture the tone of the conversation, sure, but how do you guarantee absolute accuracy? Which I’m a stickler for.
Anyhoo. If you are Susan Orlean or if you are anyone else, even, I am now accepting suggestions.

What I hear
...on any given public radio story:
"So, they've decided to hit those bad employers where it hurts.
[Pause for dramatic effect.]
In the wallet."

What I'd like to hear
"So, they've decided to hit those bad employers where it hurts.
[Pause.]
In the testicles. Hard."

The Camping.
I am: home. Under a ceiling fan. Sitting beside a loudly purring cat. Alone, alone, mercifully and finally alone. Sunburnt and happy. Did I mention the ceiling fan?

Back from the mentoring conference and subsequent jaunt from the beach on which I live, to another, more remote beach for a camping weekend with old and new friends, where I:

was gifted with and wore all weekend long, the world’s ugliest, $5 bejeweled flip-flops.

laughed harder and in merrier company than I had in a long, long time.

climbed giant sand dunes.

kept reenacting portions of The English Patient on said sand-dunes, till my one friend said, “Hm. This is just an English Patient kinda day for you, huh?” after which I stopped.

got passive-aggressively scolded by a lady in one of those beach convenience stores for bringing in an ice-cream cone from another beach-convenience store down the road.
“Oh,” she said. “I guess I can just stop selling my ice cream, here.” Followed by big smile. Weird.

ate the best campfire grilled fish, ever

read a novel in two sittings. (The Bird Artist by Howard Norman. I didn’t like it at first but then suddenly was halfway through it and then completely. And it’s still reverberating around my head. Let me know if you’ve read it. I want to talk with someone about this book.)

saw more stars than I’d remembered there were. No. Really.

made new friends/kept old.

This summer-vacation-from-school thing, I’m beginning to not hate.

In Which the Fish goes Inland for a Swim
There are periods in your life that feel more stagnated than others, and then there are periods in which so much is changing so rapidly that you don’t even have time to think about how to classify what’s going on.

I met a woman at dinner tonight who reminded me of this. I introduced myself and she said,
“Oh, we’ve met.”
When?
Five years ago, it turns out, back when I was a student at this same conference I’m mentoring at this week. This woman was a mentor at the time, and she remembered me. Flabbergasted I was, at this. I swear, I don’t even remember me, back then. So much has changed.

The conference is taking place in the town where I went to college. The funny thing is that I spent the days preceding this week just dreading it.
“I don’t work in media any more!” I thought. “How can I possibly mentor some young kid on how to do it??” So many of these completely illogical thoughts. (It’s been what, nine months since I was last “in media”?)

Once I arrived, I realized that these fears came as a result of a dip in courage that I’ve experienced only lately. During my months in Beachtown, I have felt, in large part, rather stagnated in many areas of life in which I want to grow. It’s true that I’ve been faced with the potentially self-esteem-annihilating challenge of being in a new geographic location, doing a completely new thing every day, surrounded by completely new people. But then you also have to take into account that (at the risk of offending those of you who are one of these, err, people), there’s the fact that most of these new people are younger, and lack the same brand of maturity/drive and self-confidence that characterized folks whom I surrounded myself with back in ‘Lanta. I’m not counting my very best friends in Beachtown. So chill, ya’ll.
However, the general climate in any creative writing program is gonna be more laissez-faire than that in an urban journalistic environment. Put that program on the freaking beach and boom: You have the possibility for extreme stagnation for goofuses like me, who rely an awful lot on my immediate environment to supply get-up-and-go. So the energy is lacking and you’ve neglected to find a way to refuel it and you start to lag, to be less than the Kicker-of-Ass you know you are. Then you start to blame yourself for your own lagging, and the next thing you know, you’re thinking all sorts of illogical things. Things like, “What if I don’t remember how to use that piece of equipment I used every day for four years?”

Cut to tonight. A night out, after a great day of mentoring and, well, general kicking of ass. To a healthily beer-enhanced dinner out with a few of the coordinators of this program, and a fiery discussion about the future of communication and news and media, what it should be and what our respective roles should be. Tra. And la. We got there around 6:30 and started right in on this talk and at some point shortly thereafter, I looked up from the table for a gulp of air and glanced at the clock. It was past nine. And I wondered: Where the hell had I been hiding myself all these months?

I haven’t jumped to the conclusion that I’ve made the wrong decision in leaving Small Publication for grad school. I just need to find a way to remind myself of the wider world that I love while I’m immersed in academia and the strange social milieu of Beachtown. To remind myself, that while I love the time I have available now, and the things I am learning; the wider world I prefer is still there and it’s still mine. I don’t have to completely unplug from one, to benefit from the other.

By the time I got back to my hotel, I was in this weird, rare state of complete ecstasy with every conceivable aspect of my surroundings. There were these lovely, intelligent, snappy people I’d just eaten with. And then there was the fact that I was driving through my college town, which is also my favorite place forever and ever amen in the land.

How I love it here. I drove back to the hotel from dinner with the windows open, turning down each street by instinct, amazed how well I still knew the way. Here’s the tree-lined street I used to bike to campus on a-million-and-a-half years ago, I thought, and look, there’s a pack of old hippies on bikes, now. Here’s that street right through the center of campus and look how nothing’s changed! I drive right by some girl crossing that street carrying a backpack and the thought floors me: she’s having her college experience right now. The thought is both heartening and lonely-making: I don’t own this place. It never was mine. Still I drive through it; I catch the air in my hand as I surf it out the window. I let it go again.

And the Girls All Trying to Look Pretty
I’m one of those people who calls you right when you sit down to dinner.
That’s how my dad always used to term people who did what I’m now doing to make money over the summer: “Those people who call right as you’re sitting down to dinner.” He used to like to, as he put it, “mess with” them on the phone, to tell them that the lady of the house? Oh. Why, she just died, tragically, a month ago. Etcetera.

I had my first person tell me his wife has just died on my very first shift, last Thursday. Only I don’t think he was pulling one over on me. He just said it really quickly and quietly: “She’s deceased, now.” And I said “Oh! I’m sorry.” And we both hung up at the same time.

I’m working at this phone bank at the medical center a county away, which half the time when I’m driving up, puts that Billy Joel song in my head, “He works at Mister Cacciatore’s down on Sullivan Street/Across from the Medical Center,” which is also a song about working pointless jobs just to make money, so it always feels apropos, which makes it stick in my head even longer. Because, you know. I’m trading in my Chevy for a Cadallac-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack.

I got another song stuck in my head last Thursday. We had just gotten through my first time leaving a voice message with someone.
“Thanks; have a good day,” I said and hit the “Release” button, and my trainer looked at me and said, “And that’s how we do it.” Right then, I totally heard “Taking Care of Business” kicking in, in the background of the Movie of Our Every-day Joe Drudgery that was being filmed right at that moment.
I hate that song. Well, no. When I was six, I thought it was the greatest. I just hate that now it’s a stand-in for any montage of “Is it Friday, yet?” culture. Not that this has destroyed its inherent anythingness. Just. Well. It’s just one of those songs.

We call people about medical studies at the center. Last Friday, I got a lady on the phone who right away was familiar with all the medical terminology I used. She ended my sentences for me, interrupting.

“Yes, yes. ‘—any liability.’ I know, I know! I’m a medical doctor. I deal with this stuff all day long. Listen. What I want to know is why you people are using Retinol in this study. Retinol’s a psychotropic. Why are you using a psychotropic drug in a study about acne??”
Uh, well, I didn’t actually think it’s a psychotropic, I muttered. But it was. She knew it was. Further, she wanted to know what we had against people with diabetes that we were testing a drug that had adverse effects on them and who was Betty and why was she calling day and night?
It took me a good three more minutes to get her off the phone. Round and round we went. She was making me angry even though I knew she was crazy and that this conversation had not one thing to do with me. Also a fact: This was the single most fascinating conversation I’ve had in my time so far at this job.


Any new job is the same as any new person you’re dating. Whether or not it’s even remotely something you’d want to pursue for the long term, it’s kind of compelling at the start, simply in its novelty. When that starts to wear is when you realize what you’re stuck with.


Today, across the way from me, another operator asked a man if he had a history of tumors. He didn’t understand her.
“Tumors!” she shouted. “Like, cancerous tumors!” Then she giggled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s just one of those words that starts to sound funny if you say it too much.”


The coffee at the center is bad. Everyone warns you of this. It’s like talking about whether or not it is indeed Friday yet. But it’s not watery-bad. It’s burnt-bad, which far surpasses the weird lemony-tinged stuff you pay two dollars for at the main coffeeshop back in Beachtown. I really kind of like it.


I drink too much coffee at the center, because sitting still for five hours is absolutely the most tiring thing.


No matter how well you leave impersonal phone messages, you’ll sound like a dork when you get to the “thanks”-part at the end. How can you give a meaningful, hearty “thanks” to someone who hasn’t just done something for which you feel genuine gratitude? Who, moreover, is not a human at all, but a machine belonging to a person you’ve never met in your life? In the weird tinny reverb world of the answering machine message, it’s easy to sound perfectly confident as you say, “I’m calling in regards to a hospital study blah-dee-blah-dee-blah,” but once you get to that ending, that “thanks” will never sound more than perfectly lame.


Today, other operators who got to the center first took all the good headsets. There are headsets that fit perfectly and make you feel kind of like some sort of kitchy, snappy operator from America Past. When your headset feels good, you feel good. The one I was stuck with today was too loose and kept slipping, the mic ending up too low, or more often, too high: in danger of sticking me in the eye or slipping right into my mouth. I didn’t feel remotely kitchy or cool. Instead, I felt like that scene at the dance in Sixteen Candles, where Joan Cusack is trying to drink from the water fountain around her headgear. All day long, this was me.


Today, when I had two hours to go in my endless shift, some man I’ve never met came in for the start of his shift. I don’t get a good look at him when he sat at the cube next to mine.
But then he starts talking on the phone, and I admire his voice. Over the next minute and a half, I decide it’s not just an attractive voice; it’s perhaps The attractive voice. Out of sheer boredom, I spend the next five minutes concocting a small romantic intrigue for me and The Voice. We will go out this very evening. We will have smashing conversation which ends with our both admitting we’re very attracted…to the way the other sounds while speaking. And then— Then I overhear him chatting to another of the operators. Turns out he came straight here today from his other job…at another call center. He works two jobs. Both of them are at call centers. Both.


Every day I bring this book of Susan Orlean essays I’m reading, or reading in theory. As in: there’s a bookmarker in it, so I must be reading it, huh? Really, what I’m leafing through when we’re in those spells of waiting for potential study patients to call us back, is In Touch. Also Star. These magazines are all over the tables at the center and I can’t figure out why they appeal to me. I read them and I’m filled with muttering annoyance at the notion that I should even begin to care about the fashion influence Posh Spice holds over Katie Holmes and my god, have you seen this woman’s cheekbones? She is simply terrifying. A good way to startle the hell out of me would be to have me looking at these pictures of her in Star, and then to tap me on the shoulder and I’d turn around and for you to be her. Seriously, I might have a stroke.

Kicked in the Arse By Old Ladies
I hadn’t done a lick of yoga since leaving Atlanta and today when I woke up, something demanded it. I crawled out of bed and walked down to the coffeeshop, and outside, the air was all cool and gusty. It smelled like spring and like invigoration. I remembered suddenly that when I was little I used to lean into really strong winds like this, half thinking that maybe they would buoy me up and hold me. Today felt just as full of potential, somehow. I had all this, this entire Sunday, with which to do whatever I pleased.

I went back and wrote and then I looked at the website of the yoga studio I know about here in Beachtown. Which, today, held only Level 51: Extra Pretzelly Yoga. I’m more of a Level One or Two. I’m not interested in Heat Yoga, or Yoga on Motor Scooters, or Yoga While Hefting 5,000-Lb Weights. I like mine regular and unleaded and without retsin.

So I found another place with a class at 2:00. The studio was in a strip mall that was weirdly white and gleaming, like a movie set of a strip mall. All the stores were marked by colorful signs that looked like they were all made on the same day by the same enthusiastic, amateur Photoshop designer. They probably were. They had names like “Yarn, Too!” and “The Frog Spot”. They were all closed, and my car was alone in the parking lot until a couple minutes before 2:00, when a giant, white SUV pulled up.

Now, I actually have a little theory about Beachtown being the homeland of all white SUVs, since every other vehicle on the road here, is one. This white SUV had a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on it. Not a yoga person, I thought. But, lo and behold, the woman in her mid-50s who stepped out went around back to her trunk, pulled out a mat and went inside the studio. Then, right in a row, three more SUVs pulled up and I swear, progressively older women emerged from each. I finally got out of my own car, but not without heaving something of a sigh. Not that I was ageist. Except. Well. That I totally was. This was going to be one of those lame, old-lady yoga classes, I thought. Or maybe it wasn’t so much their age that freaked me out, period; it was just that the last yoga class I attended that was populated by folks aged babyboomer and older was … somewhat … lacking. Then again, those were hippies. A social descriptor that clearly didn’t apply to these women, today.

But, I reminded myself, it’s not like I needed some mega challenge; I was never the Flexibility Queen in any yoga class anyway. And besides, yoga’s about the opposite of that sort of competitive biznullshit. Besides, it had been nearly a year since I’d done any kind of yoga. I was going to be rusty; this class would probably be just my speed. At no point did any part of my brain say anything remotely like, “Since you’re so young, you’ll look like a yoga superstar in front of all these older women.” Not one time. Really. When I got to the door, I held it open for the next woman coming in. You know, just to be polite. Respect your weaker elders thing.

The instructor was really nice and started us out doing some seated stretchy things, and I remember thinking to myself that you know, you really get something out of every experience, no matter how far below your best abilities.
Then came the first lunge. Face-down on the mat in push-up pose, then lifting the right arm and left leg out straight. Here’s the thing about the yoga: the simpler the pose is to describe, the more it hurts. Always.

Boat pose came soon after: You are lying on your back. Nice, huh? Now, lift your head and torso up, and also your legs, so that, yes, you resemble one of those paper origami boats. Hold it. And hold it. Till your legs shake.
We did Tree and we did lots of legs-up-in-the-air things and it was good. I was into it, into the breathing and the sinking deeper into the poses and the nowness and the instructor’s voice and even the new-age-synth relax-o version of The Church’s “Under the Milky Way Tonight” on the CD player.

Every now and then though, I’d catch glimpses of the woman sitting to my right. She had a white poof of Mrs. Claus hair. She looked like one of my grandma’s neighbors who might come over and sit awhile on the porch. And she was going way deeper into every single pose than I was capable of. Her Tree did not fall, did not waver. Her shoulder-stand was ramrod straight. She was simply amazing. To my left, was a woman with salt-and-pepper hair who looked to be in her mid-60s. When we bent over our toes, she wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged herself.

So, yeah. I was so wrong with my book-by-its-cover-y-ness. Or I’d just stumbled into the yoga class for ex-ballerinas. Really nice ones, though: after the class ended, Mrs. Claus turned to me, and in a thick, syrupy accent, made a joke about getting some banana cream pie for supper—not in an “Oh my god, that would make me so fat” way, just a joke about how she was craving banana cream pie at that very moment and how nothing was going to stand between her and that pie. At that moment, she really was exactly like one of my relatives. She made me laugh out loud, while thinking: The other customer at Harris Teeter angling for that last pie had just better not mess.

Eat Mo Shad.
The Dangercat demands it.