Pickle Smoocher

Well, dear readers, subscribers (all 13 of you), and SmileyNDE (I know you're out there), it's been a long time since my last blog post, this is true. When last you read, I was picking up dog poo at and Animal School in Warren, Rhode Island, and that was about it. Well, my professional career has improved. I now work for a Fortune 500 company as an administrative assistant in the rehabilitation departments of three different nursing homes, as well as for the district as a whole. It's a lot of work, but it pays the bills and provides me plenty of time for my personal life.

But all of that news is just an update. I realize it's boring.

My Sunday mornings as of late provide the real entertainment in my life. I have been meeting on Federal Hill in Providence, the "Little Italy" of the city, to play afternoon street hockey with some colorful characters. For the most part, I would describe them as hard-working, hard-drinking, blue collar, hockey superfans. Several of them wear Boston or Providence Bruins jerseys over their hooded flannel sweatshirts. One guy always plays in a thin black leather jacket; another guy, Mikey Nails, is missing all of his top teeth from bicuspid to bicuspid. They affix soccer shin guards to the outside of their grey sweatpants with electrical tape. The goalies play with second base gloves.

We congregate behind an elementary school, and play for 2 - 3 hours on a portion of a back parking lot. I was invited my first week by a friend on the Providence Rugby Club, Meaty, and have been going back ever since. I'm known as, "the guy in the pink hat," for the Goorin pink knitted hat I wear each week. Street hockey is not at all like field hockey, or ice hockey; it is a sport entirely unto itself, especially in this company. I'm constantly being rotated between forward and defense--it seems I haven't found a position where either the team or myself is entirely comfortable.

We play, usually, with a hard yellow plastic ball, which is always sailing over one of the fences and into the houses or cars on the opposite side of the street. After temporarily losing the yellow ball last week, someone threw in a pink ball, which was almost immediately thrown back in disgust. "We don't play wit' no pink balls out here," one guy in a running suit adamantly shouted back at the sidelines. "We don't got no pickle smoochers on this team!" A few of the guys looked at me and then up at my knitted hat.

"Pickle smoocher." What an inventive term, I was thinking. There was a sense in the air that I should reply. The game play had temporarily stopped and everyone seemed to be looking back at me, as if this was my moment to stand and defend myself, to come back with something that would affirm my place on this parking lot, my right to be there. The moment was becoming too long. I shifted my stance, pushed up the brim of my hat with my ice hockey glove, tapped the ground with the end of my stick twice and shouted back, ... "YEah!"

Filipino DemiGod in the Days of Friendster

There have been so many new social networking sites develop in the last few years that now many people have multiple accounts; I, myself, have one on Facebook and Myspace, although I rarely ever use the latter.

Does anyone remember Friendster? Does Friendster still exist, I don't know. The one thing I remember about Friendster--that's happened to me nowhere else--is that I was befriended by a large number of Filipinos, who I had never met, nor spoken with. I only have two Filipino friends, brothers, and neither of them knew any of the people who had befriended and were following me online. Their belief was that the name "Freeland" must be closely related, and therefore easily mistakable, to one of the demigods within the Filipino pantheon. I couldn't find a better explanation for it then, or since.

This phenomenon only happened on Friendster, failing to happen anywhere else. Maybe it was a system glitch. Maybe the world got too big and the amount of people online and logged in to social networking sites became too massive, too diluted with people. Maybe the world got worse, and demigods don't cut it anymore.

Dog Day Afternoons in Poo Corner

There is pee on the floor.

I'm sitting with three dogs underfoot: two labradoodles, and one blue heeler. There is a brown-spotted dalmatian, Balzac, who is walking around sniffing the floor, most likely waiting for one of the other dogs to crap. So he can eat it.

In the other pen, the Puppy Pen, most of the dogs are laying down for their afternoon nap.

Yes, my latest occupation: Pooper Scooper extraordinaire! I'm sitting for dogs at a daycare and animal school in Warren, Rhode Island. While I'm still aggressively searching for work, this job pays the bills and allows me time to read, write, and continue drinking copious amounts of coffee. I'm learned to almost ignore the smells.

A Tribe Disbanded

The summer is over, and I have again parted company with those glorious individuals I have had the pleasure of living and working with these past few months. Camp has demobilized its summer force, sending them across the globe from which they came. Most have returned to college life, but some are beginning new lives, unemployed and focusing on that next horizon, whether that be an Australian one or an Iowan one.

And my tribe, my Hero's Journey tribe, which disbanded months ago, has settled into their new lives, as white-green as spring buds, in West Virginia, Washington state, Oregon, Colorado ... My fellow shepherds, all of us without a current flock, still standing with crooks in one hand and coffee mugs in the other, not wondering where our sheep have gone, but wondering instead where our next pasture lands will be.

For the next 9 months at least, my pasture lands will be close to Bristol, Rhode Island. I have interviews and meetings arranged for employment, but nothing definite yet. As for residence, I am waiting to hear whether or not I have been approved for a studio apartment two miles north of Roger Williams University. In the mean time, I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Pride and Prejudice in tandem, starting rugby practice with the Providence Rugby Club again, and taking free yoga classes, all in the hopes of trying to find a center again from which to work, from which, I hope, creativity and design will wellspring.

Gang Aft Agley

It's been long, too long, since I've published a post. Those both of you who are waiting for me to write again may even be disappointed with this post as well.

There is no such thing as "me time" when you are working at Camp. The best intentions I've had to publish something small over the last few weeks have, ultimately, gone awry.

I can tell you that there is a strong possibility that I have found a job, post-Camp, and that I will most likely be living in Bristol, RI, for the next 9 months. Once I've had a chance to settle in somewhere, the writing will be more frequent and, hopefully, more consistent.

If I hope to accomplish anything with this blog, it is to provide all both of my readers with a humorous thought or image to carry with them for a second, a minute, an hour, or the day. That image today is ...

I cut myself shaving last night. I was exhausted and not being careful, and when I brought the razor back up to my lip, I came across my upper lip, sideways, and sliced two, neat, inch-long cuts into my upper lip, on the left side of my mouth. Now, for the next few days, I anticipate all food and drink having to enter through the right side of my mouth before it can be masticated and swallowed.

Defining "Haussome"

Session 3 of the Hero's Journey program wrapped up two days ago, and tomorrow we will be heading into the woods for another Session. There are so many observations, reflections, and stories from the week--too many to post now. The one thing I will say is that we taught the participants the meaning of the word "hauss," and likewise what it means to embody "haussomeness." Some examples include:

-A girl who came into the program with both a fear of cooking and of insects, helping to make dinner for everyone on the second full day, as well as ridding her own space of the forest creatures that had managed to find themselves in there.

-A muscular, able, strong, 6'4'' lad raising his hand to ask for help.

-A stand-in-front leader, who was able to take a step back and lead from the side.

-A shy, quiet girl, who spoke up when things needed to get done immediately.

-Another girl, afraid to descend from a 30' tower, zipping into the rainy darkness, blindfolded.

There are stories about all of them, how they successfully met and triumphed repeatedly on their Road of Trials. I speak for the rest of my fellow counselors when I say, "We are all very proud of you."

Graduation Déjà Vu

It seems as if I graduated with my Bachelor's degree in English last year. After all, I did complete all of my graded assigned requirements, bought my cap and gown (skipped on the Honor's tassels--$14?!), participated in Commencement, received my empty diploma, smiled for pictures, had a party, etc. ... Oh, wait a minute, that's right, I never turned in my ungraded Writing Portfolio! The Writing Portfolio for Eastern Connecticut State University consists of a collection of an English major's writing over their time at ECSU, as well as a 300-word essay on what being an English major means to them. Well, I thought it was bullshit, so I never did it. Until March of this year.

I just got a letter from Eastern basically stating, "Congratulations! You've now passed all of our requirements for graduation." So now, instead of having a printing of a 2008 graduation date, my diploma will be printed with a 2009 graduation date. Big deal. I still graduated a year ago. Chalk another score under the "W" column for this guy.

Stand Up and Rock the Boat

As fate would have it, it turns out that I'm going to be in an off Broadway production of Guys & Dolls tomorrow evening. My girlfriend, as some of you know, is a theater major at Roger Williams University. A mutual friend of ours, who was also a RW graduate, had some folks drop out of the show a week before, leaving him scrambling to fill their places. Now, the last time I graced the stage was over a decade ago, for our high school play ... Guys & Dolls. I know the music, some of the dance movements, and I have a pretty good idea of the blocking, which, apparently, makes me an ideal last minute candidate for the role of "Male Chorus Member."

Luck, be a lady these next two days?

On Belay!

For my position as a Wilderness Counselor this summer at Camp, I am spending two full days, along with a dozen other Camp folks, receiving Tower training for our adventure component of the Hero's Journey program. (To read about a good friend currently on a hero's journey, click here and make sure you read his post for April 22, 2009. *If you are Skip and reading this, three things: 1) Conserve your chi, (2) I love you, Brother, and (3) I'm proud of you.) I've been climbing since my year in AmeriCorps, when my roommate took me outside the dorm on our first night there to show me how to traverse bouldering routes on holds that were held fast to the side of the building. Climbing on the Tower at Camp however is a lot different, and I am improving my ken of the sport of climbing by learning about the ropes, knots, and tools of climbing, as well as how and when to use them. Yesterday, we went over identifying routes and belaying; today, we are going to learn more about repeling and rescue climbing.

After a day of climbing, the four other members of the HJ program and I walked down through our sites, and some areas of the Connecticut wilderness we hope to incorporate into the program this year. The sun was low in the sky, gildering the fallen pine needles on the forest floor. Brad, one of the staff, dug up some bulbs of a ramp, a wild scallion, and a few of us delighted in this garlicky treat. The Bigelow Creek was gurgling below us, and above us, the wind was strong enough to make thin pine trees dance. For me, it was a moment of spring bliss, and I look forward to calling these woods my home this summer.

The Manny Diaries

I know, I know, it's been weeks since my last post. In the past five weeks, I have managed to find a part time job as a "manny" (male nanny) for a five year old girl in Warren, Rhode Island, two days a week. Spring has come to New England, so we try to spend as much time outside as we can, coloring the pavement with chalk, identifying plants, trees, and insects, and running around the playgrounds of Bristol County. When the weather is not cooperative with these activities, we build forts and play with dolls. I have played "Barbies" more hours this month than I have in my entire life. ... That's not completely true.

When I'm not playing with Barbies, I've been working on the "Little Shop of Horrors" set at Roger Williams University. The set itself is like a life-sized dollhouse, so I had plenty of insight and recommendations on its construction. I attended my first show last night and the production is a theatrical, and technical, success.

Bolos for Breakfast, Before Pounding the Providence Pavement

Bolos are Portuguese versions of the English muffin and they are delicious. I slather them with butter every morning, and then watch Lifetime for the remainder of the day; this is luxury for the unemployed in East Providence, Rhode Island.

Today however, after my nap, I drove around Providence, getting to know my new city, while stopping in at various restaurants to fill out applications. There is a burger joint that looked kind of fun...

Yesterday, Casey and I spent part of the day volunteering at the Covenant Soup Kitchen in Willimantic, Connecticut, the town which hosts my alma mater, Eastern Connecticut State University. After lunch was over, I went over to the university and finally submitted my Writing Portfolio, which means that I can now be awarded my diploma, even though (not officially) I graduated last year. I guess I won't know which year I technically graduated in until I see that diploma. It feels weird to have nothing, officially, hanging over my head anymore.

Of the jobs that I have been applying for, one would be driving an ice cream and lemonade truck all over Providence, while another job I applied for would entail constructing 50' of Connecticut stone wall on private property. I am qualified for neither of these jobs, but they both sound like fun. I think now would be a good time in my life to hold down the three simultaneous part time jobs of my dreams: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker.

East of Providence

prov⋅i⋅dence

–noun

1.	(often initial capital letter) the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth.

2.	(initial capital letter) God, esp. when conceived as omnisciently directing the universe and the affairs of humankind with wise benevolence.

3.	a manifestation of divine care or direction.

---

Origin:
1300–50; ME < class="ital-inline">prōvidentia foresight, forethought. See provident, -ence

Prov⋅i⋅dence

  a seaport in and the capital of Rhode Island, in the NE part, at the head of Narragansett Bay. 156,804.

I packed my car and drove up to East Providence last Tuesday; knowingly, I was not feeling well; unknowingly, I had a fever of 100.9. By the time I arrived in Bristol, RI, it was all I could do to give Casey a big hug, before passing out in her bed for the next three days. She is a good nurse. After a trip to the doctor's and some strong antibiotics, she pushed fluids and rest on me till I was well enough to move into my own place. While I will still be on the medicine for a few days, both my appetite and strength are already returning to me.

I have not yet acquainted myself with my new city, nor has Providence seen my true face. From my vantage point over the bridge in East Providence, Providence seems like one of those cities set in a snow globe, only substitute rain for snow. There are few skyscrapers, and a lot of bricks--I like bricks.

Although I have only been here less than a week, I have seen two shows already and opted out of a third. Friday night, I attended a Millis, Massachusetts, community theater performance of Grease, unedited, with 14 year-olds delivering lines about "gangbangs" and teenage pregnancy. It was awkward. After that experience, I opted out of a Saturday night performance of The Bald Soprano at Roger Williams University, as an Absurdist play would have drained the little bit of strength that had returned to me. Last night however, I saw a very powerful perfomance of The Secret Rapture by the Trinity Repertory Company, and my faith in live theater has been restored, a little. I'm sure after tonight's show by members of the Second City troupe, I should be recommending live performances again.

Wax On, Wax Off, Wax Philosophic

Within the week, I am moving to East Providence, Rhode Island, where I will be renting a basement apartment from a Rabbi and his wife, who has purple hair. The apartment needs some work: the ceiling has exposed pipes and water-damaged tiles, the carpet could use either a good vacuuming or a good tossing (I'm not sure which yet), the single bed needs to be replaced with the wobbly futon which sits just outside, etc. My hope is to turn this apartment into a hookah den, with an Arabic motif. Hang a tapestry over the exposed pipes ... ... I really don't know much about Arabic interior decorating.

The reason I am moving to Rhode Island is to be closer to Casey. It's been hard being apart for all of this time, and the more we have to say "goodbye" to each other, the more difficult it becomes. We've become even closer since our travels through Europe; we now have the kind of intimacy where I can lay on my stomach chatting with her roommates while she waxes the patch of hair on the small of my back. True story.

So, once again I am making my preparations for another big move. In the midst of packing, a lot of things are getting donated to Good Will, items that have not been used or worn in years, and have only lasted this long for the scant sentimental value they hold. It's good for the soul to get rid of these things. Years ago, when my OCD was worse than it is now, I used to keep my finger and toe nail clippings. I did this for years, every one. There is an actual DSM-IV medical diagnoses for this condition, but it escapes me now, although I know that it is categorized under Compulsive Disorders. Yep, finger and toe nails. My urine, for a short time. A bag of feces outside under the deck--only one time.

I have a chronic condition in which my ears produce an excessive amount of wax. Every 4-6 months or so I have to flush them out, and every time, a black mass, a little smaller than a dime, washes out into the bowl under my ear; I used to keep these too. This week, I took a picture instead, threw the mass away, and thought about how healthy I've become. :)

Zen and The Art of Rolling Silverware

I'm realizing that in order to find peace with my current occupation, I must strive for perfection in everything I do; I realized this yesterday while rolling silverware into dinner napkins. Every day is a lesson in humility.

As I stand at the server's counter, waiting for customers, doing the daily crossword puzzle, and calculating my overtime to infinity, Bruce McCulloch's "That's America!" resounds over and over in my head. Each nice day that I spend inside serving eggplant parmesan and braciole to unappreciative customers, I think that maybe, when this caged freebird flies again, maybe I, too, will walk. The AT, from Maryland to Connecticut, looks pretty good right now.

Stand Up Eight

There is a Japanese koan which states, "Fall down seven times; stand up eight." I've applied this principle to my life so many times that I must be standing up close to nine times by now.

I have a conditional training today as a server in a small Italian restaurant in town. I have no former experience as a server, but the senora said she would try me out anyway. I have a decent memory, steady hands, and oodles of charm. Offsetting this however, I was reminded, is my impatience for stupid people and the mouth that has gotten me into trouble all of my life. If I learned anything from my time with Skip, maybe I'll be able to keep that mouth in check long enough to save up enough money to get back up into New England.

I was told to wear all black when I report at 10:15; I am wearing at least four different shades.

Also, I decided to start my daily tasks over, again. Too many continual days of interruptions went by and I was thrown off course. Today I'm asked to throw something away that I like. Maybe it will be my attitude ... but probably not.

Betwixt the Diver and the Astronaut

I figured as long as I am doubling up on my daily tasks this week, I might as well double up on my posts as well. It's not like I have a job on which to attend instead.

Day 20 is a Poetry Day, and the prescribed task is to compose a line in iambic pentameter and submit it to Benrik, the authors, on their website, to enter into a collective of metered lines, in the hopes of creating a mass poem. The first line of the poem is, "Mercy, cried the popinjay to the pope." My line is the title of this blog, and it was composed using Day 26 (yesterday) as its muse; Day 26 reads, "Today choose what you'd prefer to be reincarnated as," and then provides a page of silhouettes for one to circle. There are animals, mud-flap type trucker girls, inanimate objects, etc. The silhouette that stood out for me was the astronaut.

Think about astronauts, and the fact that maybe 2% (I made that percentage up, but it's still low) actually get a chance to see outer space. The ones that do have an entirely different perspective on our world. Most of us only get to see one plane of this planet.

Then there are divers. The divers that plunge down, or crawl into the planet, and look back up see Earth from another entirely different perspective. They get to see the world from the inside out, while the astronauts are looking from the outside in. The astronauts that also dive get to see it all, I guess.

There are astronauts, and astronomers, and architects, and ornithologists, who all spend their lives looking up, and then there are geologists, and grave diggers, and deep sea marine biologists, and vulcanologists who spend their lives looking down. It made me think about how I see the world. As a writer, I think my perceptions of the world derive from introspection and extrospection, and the continual interplay of these two; it's like breathing, only I breathe out in words.

Without pondering too deeply the nature of reality, ask yourself: How do I see the world?

...

How do you see it?

"Though pompous, he was an entertaining person."

Although these words could aptly be said of me (or a friend of mine) in a eulogy, this was actually the first question on an assessment form I needed to fill out in order to be considered for part-time employment at the local Blockbuster. Phrased in this way, "_____ pompous, he was an entertaining person," I next had to fill in the blank with one of these four choices: Before, Never, Though, and Despite. I never expected grammar to be so highly valued by Blockbuster, especially when considering the employees with whom I have been in contact. See, there it is again, that darn pomposity of mine.

I Hate A Hiatus (And I Bet You Do Too)

It's been about a week since I did my last daily task for This Book Will Change Your Life and I'm thinking that this next week will be pretty interesting as I try to double-up on tasks in order for me to be back on schedule.

Saturday was the Polar Bear Plunge, an event sponsored by the Maryland State Police, my old friends, to benefit the Maryland Special Olympics. The final tally isn't in, but it was announced at 3pm on Saturday that they had raised approximately 11 million dollars. Not a bad chunk of change.

When I rode the bus into Sandy Point State Park there was ice slush accumulating on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Earlier that morning, snow flurries had been blowing in from the side. The water was somewhere in the thirties, the mid to low thirties by the feel of it. I met up with my rugby mates, and for the next two hours there was hilarity in the parking lot as we built courage for The Plunge.

We went down to the beach when it was our hour to plunge. A guy in a red cod piece ran in front of the crowd, a la Braveheart, psyching everyone up. The count down began and after we yelled "ONE!" everyone was making a mad dash for the frigid water. As soon as my delicates hit I achieved something I didn't think was biologically possible--I was reduced to two raisins and a second belly button. There might have even been the beginning of a nub of a tail.

If was chaos, and it had been far too long since I had participated in some good chaos. Some celebrated The Plunge with bourbon and cheap brandy; I chose to celebrate with a good cigar and my love by my side. To misquote Kafka, it's what I needed to break up the frozen lake inside of me.

Overtime at the Olfactory

"Day 17: Eat nothing but asparagus all day long to ascertain just how noxious your pee can get" (Benrik).

With no one in the house today but me and the mutts, I was able to get a lot of work done on the house. My biggest accomplishment was painting the runners on the stairs, which took about 6 hours after two coats of paint. Between the sauteed asparagus, me stewing in my overalls all day, and the odors from the john after having eaten aforementioned asparagus, the house was pretty ripe. Even the mutts, who are almost always underfoot, decided to leave me alone most of the day.

The asparagus was tasty. My recordings of the smell? Well, let's just say I'm still working at finding the right words to convey the actual smell which emanated from the porcelain all day. From a personal maxim I borrowed from poet Kim Addonizio, "Always be a student of something," I'm sure something more creative than a blog post will develop from today's events.

Smoke Letter

"Day 13: Send a letter to a mass murderer" (Benrik).

After getting past Day 5, this is where I normally stop. However, I found a way around this yesterday and I am now successfully on Day 14, which is a lot easier (pay someone a compliment). Although the book provides a list of nine mass murderers, complete with their addresses, it does not specifically state that I have to mail the letters. So, I decided to write a letter, and then burn it, hoping the smoke would send a form of ethereal message to the intended. The Native American Indians used to signal each other with smoke--granted, they weren't burning a letter they had written first--why couldn't I?

If you had been standing in my backyard, or on the highway ... If you had been the neighbor, resting on the adjoining fence of our properties, taking a moment to remove your knitted hat to let your head breathe, steam rising from your wet black hair, leaning on the fence for a brief reprieve from picking up sticks in your back yard, and you looked over to the neighbors, you saw Cassie's full grown son, almost 30, standing above a flaming pan on the ground, maybe 6 feet from the house. Maybe you saw the black smoke first, and you wondered what a fire was doing so close to the house? And then you see him, standing above it, an odd look on his face. You ask yourself, what is he burning? And why? Out of all of the possible conclusions you would have run through your mind--No. In fact, I was burning a letter written to a not-so-nice person.

This Blog Will Change Your Life

Well, OK, that might be a bit of an overstatement. ... But it might!

To keep myself occupied and to generate some new ideas for writing, I have been following the daily guidelines set upon me by the book This Book Will Change Your Life (Benrik). It is 365 instructions for little things you can do--little odd things, such as "eat nothing but asparagus today to see how noxious your urine can become"--that, in the end, will result in a life-changing experience. As if I needed another one of those.

Bee gave me this book years ago and I have stopped and started it many times, sometimes without any reason at all, and other times with very good reason, such as the time Day 5 got me arrested. Day 9's mandate? "Do something before breakfast." Well, Dear Readers, this blog is it. At the very least, I hoped this blog changes your day.

Castle, Nursery, Prison

I've been back in Grace a little over a week now and what once was my nursery is now becoming my prison as I roam from room to room of my childhood home, sensing my coffee getting colder, sensing my unemployment stretching out.

I did have an interview yesterday, and I will have a second interview with the same company on Friday, but it's a job for the money and no other reason. I've come home to two neurotic dogs, a missing box of books (containing my Austen novels), and a small mountain of mail I've neglected to open in months. Somewhere in there are past due college loan bills.

I need a hobby. I need friends that don't work during the day. I need inspiration, a muse ... preferably naked. If your hobby is being a naked muse for freelancers that need inspiration, call me.