Of the White Owl, Chimps and Nightly Anxiety Attacks

Twisting and turning in bed at night, my mind races and my thoughts turn random images, thoughts and memories. Usually they blend together as the clock ticks into the wee hours of the morning. Without fail, these innocent flailings of an unquiet mind turn into feelings of regret and humiliation. I never conjure up recollections that boost my ego and allow me to drift off to sleep with a positive self-image. If I work at it, I can think of things of which I'm proud. Whilst cleaning out some boxes the other day, I discovered a paper I wrote at UMass Boston about chimpanzee behaviour. It really kicked ass. And I'm also happy with myself for digging Impy and Fluffy and two other kittens out from under my neighbor's back stoop. There may even be a couple of other things. Over 34 years, you're bound to do something right on occassion...even by accident.

But every night, after my late night phone call, some reading, and perhaps a little World of Warcraft, the curtain goes up on a stage production that has been around longer than, "Cats." It's basically a series of seemingly disconnected vignettes. But there is a coherent theme that runs through the whole show. Every stupid, mean, embarrassing and/or bizarre thing I've ever done is tossed up for my extended, heartfelt consideration. And you never know what exactly is up next, you just know that it will be bad. There will be knots in the stomach, light-headedness, chest tightness and shallow breathing; a nice anxiety attack.

Back in the late '70's, my family would vacation at a place called, "The White Owl" in New Hampshire. I have many fond memories of spending some summer nights in a cabin with my brother, mother, father, and sister. But instead of focusing on that, I replay the time that I shit in the White Owl swimming pool. Granted, I was five, but the guilt and humiliation is still there. Some old woman pointed her boney, white finger at me and yelled, "He just did it, he crapped in the pool!" I got out and ran my fat little ass off, my sister was running behind, trying to catch up. But I was five years old! Granted, if I shit in a swimming pool when I was 30, that would be something to feel guilty about.

Then there was the time I was speaking at the Hotel Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Back in 1992, I was the Chair of the Socialist Party's Health Care Commission. I got pegged the night before the convention to speak about health care issues. "Great," I thought, "I know this stuff every which way." Without hesitation, strangely enough, I agreed. The next day, whilst I was speaking, someone took issue with one of my facts. Instead of letting it go, I argued with him. You don't do that, man!

And so many other things, many of which are too dark and personal to write on the enormous bathroom wall that is the Internet. Two suicide attempts, for example, caused terrific pain for those who made the mistake of loving and caring about me. I don't mean to whine. I'm accutely aware of how lucky I am. Most of my problems, if not all of them, are of my own creation. The source being my mephitic mind. Are you able to regulate the self-loathing ideation that seems designed to keep one in a state of anxious social catatonia? To a slight degree, I can redirect my brainwaves to a place where I can turn my angst into anger. If I start thinking about politics and capitalism, my acrimony refocuses outward. The other night, I had a dream about Anne Coulter. I was yelling at her, and she was making an ass out of herself by simply relating her opinions. It was a nice break from the kind of nightmare where I wake up and feel awful about myself. And when I'm not dreaming, I'm in a state of almost constant consternation and vexation at what the United States is doing in the world and at home. The only person I hate more than myself is that douchebag, motherfucking cunt George Bush (and friends).

So on that level, I can take my mind's eye off of myself and have it gaze at other outrageous nonsense that inspires righteous anger instead of mewling snivels. After all, invading a country for no reason is far worse than shitting in a pool, at any age.

Historic Plant Event!

I got the following email from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden:

Dear Mr. Lyle,
Amorphophallus Titanium at
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
1000 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Historic Plant Event
Come Visit!

This plant has only bloomed eight times in the USA. The only other time in NYC was around 1936. It's due to bloom at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (in the conservatory) sometime in next ten days (August 7-14 but not known exactly when).

Check out our home page for details, hours to visit, bloom status, photos, etc.

Brooklyn GreenBridge
Brooklyn Botanic Garden

I've never heard of an, "historic plant event" and I was excited to learn that there is such a thing. Images of late 19th Century gentleman-scientists of a "Jules Verne" sort spring to mind. Those Victorian era empiricists that went out into the natural world to bravely catalogue and record every creeping, crawling, fucking thing out there. These were the sort of people who could shoe a horse, built a boat, create a vaccine, design a rocket, speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and swim the English Channel. And that was on a bad day. They called these fellows, "Renaissance men." Think Indiana Jones with a smoking jacket and a parlour.

For some strange reason, that's what I thought of when I read about Amorphophallus Titanium. Botanical gardens and conservatories make me want to be the kind of person who, in a very civilized way, cultivates fungi and orchids in his spare time. Instead, I'm busy looking at Internet shennanigans or watching, "Key Largo" for the 20th time on TCM.

Naturally, I went to the web site for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I like plants. And is there anything more interesting than watching a plant via a webcam? They argue that it's better than actually being there, because this thing fills the air with the smell of shit and rotten meat when it blooms. But that makes me really want to be there. A room full of people watching a plant fart. Not to be sarcastic, I'm into seeing this thing open up. Maybe it needs to feed every ninth time it blooms. People may think that they've seen it all these days, but there hasn't been a man-eating plant around since...well, it's been awhile. Roger Corman made a movie about the phenomenon years ago. Or maybe it will open and deliver an incredibly eloquent oration about the need to avoid foreign entanglements. Jimmy Hoffa could roll out. I doubt it. Most likely, it will be no more aesthetically appealing than a dandelion. What makes it interesting is that it happens so rarely. Sort of like when I exercise. That's only happened 8 times on American soil, too.

Anyway, I have to go. Someone just sent me a .jpg of a chimp picking his nose. But knowing me, I'll check into the webcam every 20 minutes when I'm on the Internet. You should, too. You don't have anything better to do. This is a farting plant for Christ's sake! If only the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had billed it like that, they would have had a lot more interest. Get that all important 18-35 demographic.

Why Are The Bagels Attacking?

The conflict in the Middle East is profoundly disturbing for those of us who don't enjoy a psychpath's inability to empathize with other living things. Particularly when they're on the business end of devices specifically designed by very capable people to blow other people to smithereens. It's not easy to have a front seat to that via CNN...or Fox. Fox...yeah...funny stuff on there.

Anyway, if you're looking for something that is Jewish and violent, but also FUN, check out this game posted by Hillel at George Mason University. There's no collateral damage here! Except for the lox...oy, the lox!

Just click on "Bagel Invaders," of course.

The Grand Burlesque

At the request of a young lady friend, I went out into the world yesterday and pissed away some money on a webcam for my computer. It's an amazing device, but it wasn't invented for the likes of me. A video camera in an attractive woman's boudoire is a gateway into a realm of secret delights. The inner sanctum. Is there any feeling of sheer joy that can equal the experience of walking into a woman's bedroom for the first time? The sights and smells, and possibly a stuffed animal on the bed from her youth. You're both so aroused that you're practically throbbing. Hell, you feel as if you're floating around the room. Then you make a move and the stuffed animal goes flying.

With the webcam, though, there is only arousal. At the end of the night there is only my hand. The camera loves her body, her smile, her eyes and...everything else. I may be her boyfriend, and invited into her secret garden where she dances and prances in a celebration of erotic delectation, but I sometimes feel like I'm getting away with something sneaky and voyeuristic. Well, if not sneaky I'm definitely a voyeur. No shame in admitting that, not in this age of Internet pornography and "reality" television.

Now that I have a camera, our romantic interludes and happy conversations are no longer visually one-sided. It didn't seem fair, to her or to me, that we couldn't see each other. The only problem is that the camera doesn't love me like it does her. In fact, I think it hates me. It doesn't help that I'm fat and ugly. By setting up a camera on my monitor, I've invited the world into my inner sanctum. And that's a depressing, gloomy little place with a bad painting of a naked woman on the wall. It's very clean, except for a few papers and books spread around. But the presence of a nihilistic, lugubrious fat-fuck (me) floats around in front of the camera like a giant Woody Woodpecker balloon in front of a 5th Avenue window on Thanksgiving Day. You'll have to excuse me, I borrowed that analogy from Finnegan's Wake. Maybe not. I can only hope that my beloved will continue to see my inner beauty even as my outer homely is propped-up nightly in front of that fucking webcam. It's not like she hadn't seen me before, in various settings and such, but too much of my ghastly simulacrum may compell her to send me packing. Oh, well. In the immortal words of that great philospher, Popeye, "I am what I am."

Perhaps she'll find my attempts at titillation to be somehow charming, or even sexy. They are certainly at least amusing. Last night, I tried to get into a provokative pose and I almost broke the chair. I had a hell of a time. Then my nightshirt got snagged on my stereo and I displayed perhaps a bit more than I had intended. After awhile we settled into conversation, and I dropped my guard. I took some of my prescription medications, but to her eyes, it looked like I was shoveling pills in my mouth. I do take a lot of meds, yes. And I need to work on smiling more often...several people have noted that I don't smile.

The camera sits in the "off" position right now, and that's how it will be most of the time. Every so often, however, I'll invite a trusted friend or lover into my bedroom. Those special few will be treated to the grand burlesque.

So Long, Someday Cafe

Some of you are familiar with Someday Cafe in Davis Square, Somerville. For years, it's been a great place to have a cup of coffee with a friend while seated on a comfortable old chair or couch. Nothing spectacular ever happened to me in there. I didn't meet the love of my life or write a prize-winning novel while sipping on their delicious coffee. So it may be hard to understand why I got choked up when I read that Someday Cafe will close on August 12 to make way for a crepe restaurant.

I read the article about the closing like it was an obituary. The place had such character, and it was about a lot more than the old furniture and fantastic coffee, tea and pastries. It attracted people from all walks of life, and represented the diversity of Somerville better than most elected bodies represent their constituencies. There were intellectuals, students, artists, workers, hoi polloi, plebeians and screwballs of every sort. Whenever I was in Davis Square, I would duck into Someday and have coffee just to do some thinking and people-watching. If I ever had a chance at attaining enlightenment via meditation, it would have been in there.

There was a fellow with a white beard who was there quite a bit. He was always working on an elaborate, fantasy-theme drawing. Sometimes I would see a plain but attractive black woman who had mesmerizing eyes. If I didn't think I was such a loser, I would have approached her. And on the weekends, one frequently had to pass through a phalanx of dogs and their owners who were just outside, enjoying their caffeine treat. And there were always interesting conversations that floated through the air like the aroma of the Fair Trade coffee they served. It felt more like you were dropping in on a friend for a cup than going to a cafe.

When Clare and Melanie would come into town, we invariably met there. Sometimes, we couldn't get a seat, which is the only complaint I could have of the place; it was crowded in the evenings. I used to meet Adam there, just to talk. And Mary. And Eve. And Linda. And that's why I got emotional when I read of the imminent close. Every time I went in there, or just walked or drove by, I fondly thought of the past. As one gets older, there are fewer living connections between now and then. It makes me think of a "cairn." In Gaelic, a cairn is a pile of stones or a single large stone that marks a path or sits as a memorial. It would be nice if I could have a cairn or two to mark the places that mean so much to me. To remind me of a time when I would actually leave my flat and meet a young lady for coffee and conversation.

Am I being melodramatic? Perhaps, but as I said, this does bother me more than it should. An effort is being made to relocate Someday Cafe, and I hope that they do. And I'll do my best to remember the little cafe that meant so much to me. However, I know from ECT and psychiatric medication use that my memory is a fragile thing. Maybe that's why I'm so sad about losing the living reminder. Without the cairns to guide me, the world may become less familiar with each passing day.