This is Gonna Hurt

A sharp admonition from the Prophet has sent me here empty handed. There is something stirring in me and I can't quite put my finger on it. One of those psychic disturbances that often precede my mostly chaotic ramblings. Sometimes, however, it's like waiting for the kettle to boil.

"Everyone knows that the intellect, that clever jackanapes, can put it this way or any other way he pleases. It is a very different thing when the psyche, as an objective fact, hard as granite and heavy as lead, confronts a man as an inner experience and addresses him in an audible voice, saying, 'This is what will and must be.' "-C.G. Jung

I can say I'm not scared, but I'd be lying.

Not Even Close to a Thousand

A photograph's power arises from the idea of a moment trapped on paper. For the photographer, and Rob, you might be able to explain this better than I can, it is a culmination of the thought of taking a picture, the knowledge of how to set up the shot and the action of taking the picture. The photographer has seen something and wished it were in stasis, as an identifier that we were here, as a marker in time to reference later on. The subject has no idea what the outcome will be, but is focused on the lens staring at him, wondering if the outcome will be useful at all. The viewer is also frozen the first time she sees it by cataloging her impressions and her curiosity about the subject. Here we have a photograph. Here we are caught living when we all thought we were dying. I was here, maybe I'm still here.

In a way, an important way for me at least, a photograph is a beautiful lie. I'm something of a liar myself, retreating from fact and rushing into fantasy every time I sit at the keyboard, but the beauty is in the re-telling. The craft of the art, the suggestion, the leading is something that a photographer has to impart not with pages of words, descriptors and mental images, but in one instance of recognition. It suits me, I suppose, to spend hours working, re-working an idea to convey a message, and in truth, I seldom know how it all will end. A photographer, maybe with no better idea than me about the outcome, has a second to work with. In that second a memory is created for the picture taker, the subject and the viewer. Never mind that none of the three will ever reconcile their differences; it is a marriage of convenience tied to a moment of happenstance. Beautiful, isn't it.

The fabulous Bee took a shot of El Jefe, Claire and myself not too long ago and I look at it every time I look at the cork board my life is fastened to. As the days stretch out its meaning is being transcended by my memories of the day, my relationship to the others and by my insistence that in the subject you have everything you need to know about us all. This photograph moves within me and changes as the seasons change from a bold pose one afternoon to a stance of camaraderie to a symbol of connectivity to an essence we're all trying to put our finger on. Rob, I think, could appreciate the simplicity and the underwhelming chemistry of the composition. The paper is unimportant, the grain an unpleasant association and the symmetry a happy accident, but the image is the cement that has the four of us not trapped in time, but free of constraints while our image moves in and out of the consciousness of anyone who sees it.

Then again, maybe I've just had too much coffee. It really is a good picture, though.

Just Walking

The dog had to stop every six or seven feet, and always had a reserve to mark his spot. It was one of those perfect summer nights that turned into a game of hide-and-go-seek or just plain "hide and jump out and scare anyone who goes by" when I was a kid. I'm sure you had them, too. The field was probably lit by the faint cast of the light by the back door and the trees up ahead looked like a jagged, black extension of the ground against the lighter sky. Who was there, daring you to go first, to run as fast as you could across the uneven earth?

In somebody's view, right now, we haven't reached our potential. In my view it's because we set our sights on something and the pursuit of that thing becomes our life. Anyone who has sat on the edge of the cliff, at two in the morning, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, watching the northern lights radiate across the heavens, has had a moment worth the struggle, so far. Sometimes we just need to change our frame of reference to understand what is truly important in our lives. Someone recently reminded me of a Zen koan about a man who goes to the master and asks him about a gosling put into a bottle. The gosling is fed until he becomes fully grown, still in the bottle. Riko asked the master, Nansen, "How do we get the goose out of the bottle without breaking the gooses neck or breaking the bottle?" Nansen clapped his hands to bring Riko out of his reverie. Riko was startled and and said, "Yes Master?" Nansen said, "See Riko? The goose is out." How long can you struggle against your struggles?

Just beyond the park we paused, trying to decide which way to go. In that second, that instant, all I ever needed was there. Even the dog knew it, as he lifted his leg and peed on a tree. It was a beautiful hide-and-go-seek night.

4:00 a.m. and I'm Not Dreaming

Carl Gustav sat down, winded. He was never in great shape. His eyes were wild and he looked at me, trying to speak, until I waved a hand at him and ordered him a glass of wine. Always the snob, he made a face when he took a sip, but drained the glass anyway.

For years he's made these unannounced visits to me, spouting a new theory and expecting me to follow his mostly incoherent thoughts down the twisted aisles of his reasoning to understanding, and I almost always get lost. I frustrate the poor man. Today, however, he is much more substantial than ever before as he sputters into the explanation for his visit.

"At the beginning of man's evolution he was a single cell, struggling to exist, reacting and reaching out to his environment for clues to survival. This information was absorbed and when this single cell developed into a more complex association he took with him the knowledge, mostly useless now, of how to cope. And he learned, again, how to survive, adding to this basic information skills that multiplied as fast as his physical manifestation. At every stage of development an awareness was present and then added to his memory."

I must have looked confused because he began to pound the table for emphasis with every sentence, thinking this would drive home the point he was trying to make.

"At every stage of development the cells of this body are aware of the conditions in which it exists. Even you, you begin as a single cell, coping in your environment, becoming more sophisticated with each step on your way to becoming the uncomprehending blob I'm looking at right now. You have the knowledge of what it's like to be an amoeba within the structure of your cells. You contain the information needed to survive as an invertebrate, a fish, a lizard simply because you have been all these things at some point in your in utero life."

At this point I became aware that he wasn't even talking to me anymore, but instead was formulating the sentences, stringing together the ideas as they came to him. Perhaps somehow consulting the very cells he was thinking about for verification.

"This means that as we become fully human we have already passed through the various stages of evolution and still posses the necessary information to be each of these incarnations. That would explain why we dream of the womb, why we 'know' things not taught to us and why we can communicate with images from within a primordial perspective."

And then he was gone. Having forgotten what he was trying to explain to me to careen through his own memories formulating as he went. His visits are always short and sweet, I have to add. He often leaves me with a headache, though. His words, he's left behind, and it may take me days to sort it all out. I'm not as quick as he is. Any way, I have things to do and my own environment to tame for now. Maybe I'll sit down later and try to make some sense of it all.

Obscene

Seven dead horses lay, taking psalms from passing children. They wondered at the sound but couldn't do anymore than wait. The morning sun warmed their flanks but none felt it. As the day broadened and light grew more intense they dreamed feverishly of home and in their need came Poseidon. Poseidon gathered the horses to his breast and turned forever from man, who had spurned his gift, in favor of Athena's olive tree.

In return, Epona takes our dead, fittingly, to their rest without malice. She suffers the indignities of man silently and rides Poseidon's grief into the sea.

Cicadas Wish it was Hot all the Time

A dream:

The Emperor of the World is walking ahead of me and all I can think about is how his cloak drags along in the dirt. It's hot and the cicadas are roaring there approval in my ears. I've got a rock in my pocket and I'm wondering how I can throw it at the Emperor and pretend it was someone else. I look around but we are alone. I give up the idea and decide to talk to him instead. I hustle up to him and, though he barely acknowledges me, I ask him, "Why don't you just drop it, here in the dirt? You'll feel better." No answer seems to be his answer so I skip off ahead wondering if the sycamores ahead will provide enough cover for me to hit him with my rock and go unobserved.

The interpretation:

No secret here. I've always harbored a resentment for people in authority who carry on with pageantry in the face of obvious resistance. My recourse is ridicule and a strict refusal to be led. Giggling is necessary, of course, when someone who is apparently in control tries with earnest and stern pressure to make me do what they think is right. Not very mature, maybe, but neither is the human race. We take offense so easily and with such regularity to the most inane happenings that it molds a pattern in the psyche too easily filled the next time.

A sycamore grove is great refuge. Tightly wound and full of deep colours, it looks like imagination come alive and snapping. You can't see more than three feet in any direction so every few steps contain a new vista, wallpapered in another world, just a few trees away. Bursting from the ground cover at a dead run, you can spin around and view it all in one glance and know how inclusive it is and why it feels safe for rabbits and small children. And understand that claustrophobia is a memory of the womb. Nice for a short while but 'let me out of here', in the end.

This emperor keeps walking, head up, his bearing transitioning from proud to self conscious to ridiculous in a few short strides. Maybe I'll trip him by pretending I'm sliding into third and then apologize with my best look of contrition. Or I'll point at the sky and then punch him in the stomach when he looks up. Hey look!

I've been accused of being irresponsible but I look at it his way; if you're too tight assed and worried about good impressions and with pretending you're all grown up, I have nothing but pity for you. I am a child and there's too much to do before the sun goes down.

Now and When

Every morning as you crawl out of bed, one eye focused on the past and the other staring at the future, you appear wall-eyed and you have bad breath.

The difficulty in turning your back on yesterday's blunders and tomorrow's successes is that you are free to do what ever it is you want. This doesn't sound difficult until you factor in the 'whatever you want' part. Feel like spending the day strolling up and down the street naked? Calling in 'just fine' to work? Eating left-over pizza with fried eggs on it? Do it! But you won't because of the constraints of the future. Your anticipation of probable results will keep your pants on in the supermarket. Your boss will fire you for the impromptu 'You Suck' dance you keep doing everytime he walks by. You won't pull the 'stop' cord on the bus every ten seconds because you'll have to walk downtown.

If you had one day to do as you wished, entirely free of responsibility, what kind of day would it be? Sit back and imagine it for a second. I'll wait for you.


Modern quantum physics tells us that, mathematically at least, there is no clear distinction between traveling backwards or forwards in space/time. Some postulate that the only reason we can't move backwards in time is because of the momentum of the Big Bang and that sooner or later we will. Others believe that we do. Ever zone out while you're on the Queensway and miss your exit because you were thinking about that time you grabbed Jenny Wasserman's ass and she thought it was Doug? Sounds like time travel to me. We all know that one person who just can't get over it. We say, "He's living in the past." The answer is ,"Wake up and smell the coffee." or "Get your head out of your ass." Someone's always calling you back.

I've got some things to do today and none of them are in this time. If you see me drive by and I don't notice you it's because I'm looking around 1927, or I'm checking in on my grandchildren, so shut it. The temptation to do a little wandering is hard to resist. The danger, of course, is that you'll end up in Medicine Hat if you decide you're not coming back. I for one try not to time travel when I drive. I tend to do it when I'm getting lectured for the 'You Suck' dance or when the clerk at the police station is asking me my name and trying to make me put my pants back on.

You should try it yourself. It's fun and relaxing. No kidding.

A Lesson from the Past

The history of bowling is a long one. Evidence of a game played by children was unearthed in Egypt and suggests that bowling has been around for close to 5200 years. Since that time the sport of bowling has been associated with a lot of unsavory folk. The 'sport of the people' was played with many variations all over Europe and outlawed in some places because people would rather bowl than work. There is a story that when Capt. John Smith returned to Jamestown in 1611 after a two year recuperative stay at home he found the inhabitants of the fort under siege from the Algonquin, starving and playing nine-pin. It was outlawed shortly after. In fact, Smith never did return to Jamestown but you get the point; bowling is addictive.

Around the same time the Egyptians were bowling the Sumerians were making beer. In the Gilgamesh epic, Enkidu, a barbarian, was preparing to fight the fabled ruler. Gilgamesh, thinking he needed some inside information to learn Enkidu's weaknesses, sent him a prostitute who introduced beer to the savage wildman. After seven cups of beer Enkidu, apparently, became a civilized man and the fight was off. Now, I know about as much about the history of beer as I do about Sumerian history, which is not a lot, but this story sounds a little suspect. I myself have had the opportunity to drink seven cups of beer from time to time and never once did I become a civilized man. It does go nice with bowling, though.

Shortly after beer making technology made it to Egypt, Hammurabi created a law which rationed beer based on social standing. The plain old working stiff got 2 liters a day while the civil servant got 3, and the high priests got 5. To this day government jobs are desirable. There is no mention of what bowlers got but I'm sure it was significant otherwise the game would have died out. It also explains why you still see the clergy lacing up for a frame or two everywhere you go.

What does all of this have to do with anything? I'll tell you. A bowling alley that does not serve beer is like a hen that won't lay, a dog that won't hunt, a plumber with no crack. It just ain't right. Five thousand year old habits are hard to break and who wants to break them anyway. We are a species that consistently makes the same mistakes, so let's get together and learn something from history. Let's go bowling and if they don't serve beer I'll meet you at the truck in between frames.

The Laziest Blog Ever

When I sit down to write something I often have a few ideas in my head and begin to weave them together. I trust in the process that I think starts with my unconscious mind and finishes with me sitting at the computer unraveling the details of what I'm trying to say, albeit in an intuitive format. I see something that interests me and I learn something I didn't know, my curiosity about something prompts a bit of research and I go to bed, more to let my unconscious mind do the work of stitching it together than anything else. This morning however I am missing the connection between the images that floated up into my conscious mind and I'm going to enlist you to help me make some sense of this. Here are the component pieces.

Attila the Hun became leader of his nomadic tribe when he murdered his own brother, the proper heir to the throne of his people. Under Attila, the Huns became a serious threat to the Roman Empire, after a number of invasions which nearly brought down Rome. His organization, his knowledge of tactics, especially his abilities with mounted troops and his disregard for Christianity made him a force to be reckoned with all across the European landscape. Here's what stuck out. He, apparently, suffered from the first recorded case of the Sweet Death, that is dying in bed in the middle of having intercourse.

The second element comes from my love of etymology, that is the origin of words and, for me more specifically, the origin of phrases. Today's is "Kiss-my-arse-latitudes", which apparently comes from the British Merchant Navy and indicates that sailors, coming into their home port, start to disregard orders and duties because they know there nearly done with the voyage.

Element three is my own exhausted state of mind, which tends to result in detachment from the world, after a weekend out of town, late nights and a lot of driving.

There it is, three pieces from the shadowy part of my mind which seem to need addressing. I'm under orders to string them together into a coherent idea and I'm shirking my responsibility. I'm leaving it up to you to figure out the relevance and to tell me what's going on. Think of it as an exercise, sort of like homework, although any one who responds gets an automatic 'A' just for participation.

To re-cap:

1. The Sweet Death
2. Kiss-my-arse-latitudes
3. Detachment through sleep deprivation

Go!

Rockin' in the Free World

I'm packing the car this morning with suits, shoes, a few dresses and the musicians that will wear them. This version is road trip 2005 and quite a few things have changed over the last few years.

The first time I climbed aboard the band bus I was told we were carrying too much weight and I got off, dropped my shame, my humility and my sense of responsibility, was re-weighed and found to be light enough. My mother, God bless her, waved me off into the wide world with five other spandex wearing, hair mousse packing rockers and we pointed the bus north. Inside was everything we needed for a six week tour. A cooler, a bag of weed and a ghetto blaster. There were four fine bright orange sway back chairs, given to us by the singer's dad for us to sit, sleep, eat and fuck in, given the right circumstances. They smelled a little , so we opened the window for the first thousand kilometers but it didn't seem to help.
The partition that separated us from the lighting gear and the p.a. creaked everytime Andy put the brakes on but I was told it hadn't broken in weeks, despite the soft spots in the wooden wall. On our way up to V'al D'or we stopped along the way to play some small clubs, getting fired only once ("Too damn loud!), chased by the cops a couple of times (for outstanding motel bills and wrecking a room), arrested once (wrong time, wrong place) and getting fleeced by a bar owner who decided not to pay us and had his bouncers show us back to the bus.
It was worth it though, for those few hours on stage, me wearing a selection of fur coats, cowboy hats and boas, the others in skin tight lycra and mesh wife beaters and leopard print jackets, playing rock anthems to empty seats and trying to get the drunk old whores and their equally drunk daddies onto the dance floor.
The smell on the bus just got worse and, although I didn't see it, it was probably from the time the sound guy pissed himself in his sleep, although he would deny it for months. It was hard to get comfortable in the chairs for the long drives across the province mostly because of the bug bites all over my back from the time I forgot my sleeping bag in the bus and actually crawled into one of the beds offered us by the bar owner in the condemned rooms above the club. I lost my shower shoes along the way and would wear socks just for that added level of confidence when ever I used the bathrooms provided. When the guitarist got the crabs from a pro in Deep River we had to fumigate the chairs because he would routinely 'forget' to put his pants on.
As a rolling revue of pestilence in the modern age, we rolled into our final destination and set up in the bar, the bikers already half snapped at two in the afternoon. The soundcheck set the tone when somebody yelled, "Play the whole fucking song, you assholes." I remember trying to calculate how many years I was going to be 'paying my dues' and decided it was just too long.
We headed home with only the drummer having been beaten, but then he was the only one of us who ever got beaten and it was usually by a woman who didn't like his lines. He maintains that statistically it makes good sense to just tell them what you want as 1 in 10 will say o.k.

This afternoon I'll get dressed in the green room, getting some help with my tie, and hit the stage with all the energy I can muster. I didn't sleep too well last night and my back really hurts. I hope the sets aren't too long because I won't make it through forty five minutes without having to pee. I hope the stage is big enough so that Coombe doesn't whack me with his guitar, and I hope that I'm not on the edge because my balanced isn't too good anymore.

I hope I'm almost done paying my dues. It's been a long time and I don't know how much more my body can take. On the upside I haven't been to Kempville in a while. Jesus, help me.

Thursday

The death this week of a friend has set me back a bit. Her name was Julie and she and Beth became friends while they were doing chemotherapy together. I'm sad because of the inexplicable death of someone so young and beautiful and more than a little angry that someone who was as young as she had to suffer through something so wasting and terrible. It, once more, brings home our helplessness in the face of lung cancer. Once a disease that took older people and heavy smokers, it is now claiming a younger generation who are healthy and people who should not, as far as we can tell, be susceptible to this.

I'm sad for the family she left behind, her husband and her son, and for the friends she made so easily. I'm sad that these young women, and there are many more, are losing there lives and no one can explain why. I'm sad because we are losing our wives and friends and family at an age when they should be starting families of their own, worrying about car payments, groceries and what to do with their finances.

Think about this. When Beth was diagnosed she was 25. Julie, I believe, was 28. They were the youngest people in this area to have contracted lung cancer. Not any more. The doctors at the cancer clinic tell me that the number of young women with lung cancer has jumped. The youngest is 22. Healthy, non-smoking, active and physically fit people getting lung cancer at 22 is inconceivable.

Life, for most of us, involves choice. You choose who you are, what you want and when things don't go well it's good to remember that we have a choice to fix it or not. We are all living, breathing examples of our freedom to live as we choose. Now imagine having that freedom stripped from you and imagine being told you'll die. You have a fatal disease that you shouldn't have and no one knows why. No choice, except to put one foot in front of the other for as long as you can.

Julie did make choices, however, and they were to fight as long as she could, be as good a person as she could and to be as happy as she could until the cancer finally won. She, and Beth before her, showed us that we can choose to be whatever we want, even in the face of death, and I think that we all have an obligation, in remembering them, to make the same choices right now.

It's taken me a long time to reach this point and right now I worry for Julie's family. This is what they've dreaded since the beginning and nothing will make any of this better. No choice. Think of them, and with everything you are, strive to be what you know you can. That's the only good that come of this.

Wan's Sacrifice

The great Chinese emperor Ch'in-Shih-Huang-Ti, upon being advised that his Great Wall would not be finished until 10,000 more men were buried in it, found a man whose surname was Wan, meaning 10,000, and buried him in it. Or so the story goes. Even tyrants can have a sense of humor.

I spent my afternoon looking for whirligig beetles. If you can catch one you'll find a dollar in it. I waded out into the river with a plastic bag to put the beetles in. The bottom was mucky and there were some weeds but the fortune I was going to make more than made up for my discomfort. I squatted in the water and submerged myself up to my nose, thinking that if I was smaller the beetles wouldn't be frightened by me and would careen across the water to do their crazy dance literally under my nose. The minutes passed like hours and not a single whirligig came anywhere near me. In fact I wasn't even sure if I had ever seen one here before. I can remember thinking that I had great patience to sit like that for what might have been ten minutes, but also thinking that great patience would be rewarded with great riches. To tell you the truth nothing much has changed since then.

I used to imagine that patience and faith were two very beautiful girls. Imagine. Now I believe that patience and faith are two very old women who travel from town to town looking for redemption for a life ill-spent. In the arms of a man to whom life has been cruel, they seek solace and grace, distant cousins I'm sure. He who receives there embrace is sure to be rewarded and can die a happy man, leaving the sisters (for they go hand in hand) alone and back out on the highway, thumbing across the prairies.

I didn't make a single dollar that day. Maybe it was too hot for the beetles to be out on the water. Maybe they knew I was only looking for the dollars they withheld, trying to teach me a lesson. I pulled myself out of the water only to discover that my legs and feet were covered with leeches. Hysterical and certain the blood I was losing to the leeches was gone forever, I ran screaming to the cottage. The salt skin I wore saved my life.

That night when we were headed home we passed them, Patience and Faith, but we didn't slow down. I don't think my father even saw them, although I like to imagine that years later, driving down that same road he stopped and picked them up. They would have been good to him, although I'm not certain he deserved it. As for me, I haven't seen them since that day I tried to outsmart the whirligigs.

Diamond Shaped Head

What's green, has a diamond shaped head and ten legs? I'd really like to know because one strutted out of my shoe this morning. A stowaway I brought home with me, I guess. Doesn't matter, anyway, he died far from home, alone and in a strange land.

They came, culled from all over the valley, to the farm house by the river. Their cars overstuffed with tents, provisions, sleeping bags and beer. We spread out over the fields and then congregated by the fire, after the band had finished and after everyone had been fed. I sat and laughed with Sandra and Tracy as we picked sentence fragments out of the air and tried to make a story. Then I listened to Claire and Brady sing, and even the Prophet joined in. The Fabulous Bee spent the night in the centre of one conflagration after another, weaving in and out of the ring around the fire. I went looking for some relief and found fifty reasons to feel better, and after the fire died and everyone fell asleep, the Fabulous Bee and I wandered through the tents just looking for something funny.

At home, tired and drained, I slept and dreamt of pure chaos as the images and fragments tried to file themselves away. Patterson and El Jefe sat on the hill laughing while all you pretty girls turned to face the river in unison. The Birthday Boy, naked but for a banner which read "Grain Fed Chicken", spread eagle on the dock, talked in a whisper about the stars that fell, one by one out of the sky and sent up sheets of water when they hit the surface. I paddled back and forth in front of the scene until I realized my boat was a dog and he was swimming for the opposite shore and wasn't going to turn around. I had to walk back in, the water almost at my nostrils until I fell exhausted on the beach, surrounded by my dead. They poked at me and I wished I was closer to the fire.

I suppose both versions of my weekend away are true, in some sense, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend any amount of time trying to figure it out. I do feel bad about the bug, though.

Waterlogged

Thomas Macaulay once said, of the Hippopotamus, "I have seen the Hippo, both asleep and awake, and I can assure you, asleep or awake, he is the ugliest of the works of God." I choose to believe that Macaulay said this with a warmth in his voice and a smile on his lips, letting everyone know that he was also expressing affection for the beast.

And what's not to like? By day Hippos lounge in whatever water they can find, trying to beat the heat, and by night they march out of their mud holes, in single file, sometimes wearing a five foot trench in the loose earth, to graze all night on grasses under the moonlight. Without a worry to appearance, they do exactly what they must to get by, and given a little down time, will frolic and roll around with each other, sometimes getting pissy with someone but mostly just enjoying life, such as it is.

Macaulay, never once a pageant winner himself, and who went on to become a lawyer, a member of the Supreme Council of India, a key player in the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, Post Master General and a best selling author for his History of England, lived to be 59 years old. The average Hippo will live about half that time.

Given the choice I'd rather be a Hippo.

I Don't Want To Go

There are better ways to help me quit smoking than to steal my lighter. I'm resourceful and know how to work the toaster. You know who you are.

I stood in the centre of the room, and devoid of furniture it looked bigger than it is. My shirt was soaked through with sweat and I wondered at my decision to re-arrange the room today. This is how I measure the passage of time and divide my life into segments; easy to digest and remember. "That was around the time the television was underneath the window." Otherwise the senses that help me measure the passing days would stall, stuttering to a standstill, blending the summer into one long afternoon. Re-arranging the furniture allows for the perception of change and I'm not above tricking myself into believing it.

The level at which my self perception resides is deep and resists change, but like so many have told me, change is inevitable. I've been resisting it. I've been trying to tell myself that change is good, but I can't help but think that I'm leaving her behind.

Black and white. Things are always black and white for me. You're either good or bad, happy or sad, healthy or crippled by the senseless meanderings of events that rise up and alter you for ever, manipulating and bludgeoning you with truths too hard to face.

It's time I learned that nothing is absolute. I'll aim for the middle ground. Blend the old with the new and cross my fingers so that nothing can hurt me. I'm going to help things along and move the couch under the window and line the wall with books. It's a small change but maybe it will alter my outlook, create a new vista and motivate me a little. Change may be inevitable and I know it can be resisted but I'm getting tired of the struggle. Sometimes I hold on too hard, too long.

"This is Karl"

Ah, summer in the city. After the usual early summer rush to kick some ass to the curb, things are settling down. The singles are still single and the couples have made it over the hump of another season, and can reflect on the near misses, privately and to themselves, of course. And then there are the 'new' couples to tend with.

Born out of the enthusiasm of a kid, two days before the end of the school year, the urge to over look the obvious pitfalls of beginning a new relationship trumps you and right there at the table is the new boyfriend. Suddenly everything said needs to be explained, but the eagerness of the new arrival to cement his connection works in opposition to understanding. I am the worst person to introduce your new boyfriend/girlfriend to. Admittedly, I'm too protective and suspicious to allow a good first impression to sway me. I also have a deadly conservative approach to etiquette and manners when it comes to diluting the gene pool my friends and I inhabit. Here's my top ten list of things to do and not to do when you meet your new girlfriend's friends:

1. Don't call anybody "Hoss"
2. If you have to grab somebody's ass make it your own.
3. She's told us everything, so don't try to make inside jokes.
4. Don't say things like, "Let's drop these losers."
5. Try not to tell jokes if you can't remember the punch line.
6. Don't out anybody. Maybe it's a secret.
7. Check the cave for bats every time you use the washroom.
8. Bring your own cigarettes.
9. Just buy one round of shots; you're not trying to get us drunk.
10. Keep in mind we all sat here a month ago, the last time we had to meet her 'new' boyfriend.


That's about it. Follow these rules and the evening should go over pretty well. Just remember that we all love her, and want her to be happy.

Ah, summer in the city.