The view is modest and wood-trimmed
Mattress soft, appliances luxuriously mass-produced
Bags remained packed - missing only small increments
Furnishings aside the unit smells of upscale transiency
It simultaneously meets a need yet leaves a void
Loosening footwear with trendy hounds tooth beneath
Gazing at hundreds of threads
Surely a fraction of billions in the same pattern
Click of a door reveals a 3-way standoff
Mosaic chamber awaits a weary pose
The flowing pour is the respite
However an untasted elixir is offered elsewhere
A cacophony of elements - some reviled, some unseen
Those of water calcium, cheap shampoos and residual travel size smells
A melange leftover from previous similar term tenants
It draws an unexpected sense.
He is home.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
An indiscriminate light
The winged, carbon fiber monolith banked right. The passengers sat in a malaise - many with their heads back and mouths agape, others collecting themselves as the craft gradually succumbed to the pull of the earth's crust below.
I admired the moon-like, endless depths of the Midwestern suburbs. A tiny flash reflected from an industrial gravel landscape below. Suddenly a second, a third - it continued. A persistent and tiny thread of sunlight protruded the dense cloud cover above and proceeded to seek out and illuminate every ribbon of groundwater.
Temporary or permanent, polluted or clean, drably or fashionably-surrounded. The light does not begrudge. Upscale abode or scrap-laden yard - any standing water sparkled. Each bright sheen is unique in it's individual shape and pattern. A pattern linear only unto the light itself.
The winged, carbon fiber monolith banked left. The moment, albeit brief, is encapsulated.
It will be carried.
I admired the moon-like, endless depths of the Midwestern suburbs. A tiny flash reflected from an industrial gravel landscape below. Suddenly a second, a third - it continued. A persistent and tiny thread of sunlight protruded the dense cloud cover above and proceeded to seek out and illuminate every ribbon of groundwater.
Temporary or permanent, polluted or clean, drably or fashionably-surrounded. The light does not begrudge. Upscale abode or scrap-laden yard - any standing water sparkled. Each bright sheen is unique in it's individual shape and pattern. A pattern linear only unto the light itself.
The winged, carbon fiber monolith banked left. The moment, albeit brief, is encapsulated.
It will be carried.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Late summer in public spaces
Unlikely swells spurred by motorized fiberglass crash on a shoreless lip
A peaceful Sunday afternoon in the dwindling balance of summer
Blanket cast on brown grass, head resting precariously
Breathe in the cool shade, observe the now sun-choked landscape
Unable to shake the occasional twinge of an ant on exposed extremity
Wife gazing into novel she is moderately enjoying
Intermittently exudes an understated chuckle
Muted grin gradually teases at her lips
Adorable as ever
Saturday, February 20, 2010
A trip to the vet
Sterile environment - literally and figuratively
I wonder how it feels to a feline
Trip to the dentist, general practitioner and specialist all in one
Palette of drab tones produces a beige and mauve glisten
Pupils dilate and recede
Howls, like oxidized, rusty bearings, proliferate throughout
Bouncing off of the cold steel of the exam decor
"Reformed" species roam the lobby
In search of a willing perch or corner
Slinking along the aged linoleum floor
Vinyl prisoner transport device sought
Often reviled, now represents a ticket home
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Hungarian Revelation
Sounds and voices on the radio were impassioned as the Boros family circled tightly around it. Marta’s parents listened intently to the news from Budapest on the student-led October revolution of 1956. They also tempered the premature excitement of their children – understanding that suffering was nearly certain in the wake of the lumbering, Soviet behemoth. After much deliberation, the parents decided to act in the best interest of the children and pack up the house and leave the country until further notice. The personal stakes were now too high to validate the civil stakes – especially with the hardship of World War II still fresh on their minds.
The wheels lifted off the runway and eventually the landing gear receded. Just then a surge of anxiety gradually overtook her. Marta had long dreamt of the bountiful pastures, snow-capped peaks and bustling city streets of the US, but had never expected to experience them first-hand. The American dream was at arm’s reach and, apart from family and close friends, she was only half-heartedly putting aside an oppressed existence. Her new husband drifting in and out of sleep beside her, she was departing from the only culture she’d ever known.
Carrying all of her personal effects, Marta sat with her sisters while her parents argued with customs officials amongst a throng of fleeing Hungarians at a train station just across the Austrian border. They waited to be collected by family – distant and only just acquainted. The scenery was familiarly mountainous and forested though the immediate change in culture and skyline was both unfamiliar and intriguing. While killing time reading while her siblings played and others prayed, Marta noticed the occasional odd look from strangers – amongst an occasional merciful smile and hum of familiar dialect about her. The new land was foreign, but offered a freedom. Not a negotiable liberty, a given one – a freedom from social tyranny.
As the plane descended, Marta leaned over her now-awake husband to catch a glimpse of America in full swing: New York City. The city smoldered with hope while the statue kept a distant watch over the rich and fragile civic rights from her perch in the harbor. After the plane arrived at its gate, she anxiously waited in queue – anticipating a draft of free and new air. Her brief taste while deplaning was unmemorable, but the spirited architecture of the airport provided momentary invigoration. While her husband inquired on their connecting flight with an attendant, Marta stood and gazed at the colorful décor and bustling families. It felt like a new start – an empty canvas with an expanded palette of colors.
The remainder of the excursion in 1956 had been uncomfortable and uninviting. Expressions of strangers grew increasingly cold – more so when they observed foreign dialect and customs. A brief and shrill greeting from family she hardly knew resulted in Marta and her sisters sleeping on a hardwood floor while sharing a bedroom with her parents and two sisters. The family found itself in a virtual purgatory with the fate of the country’s democratic future in the balance. As later, Marta found solace in literature and longed for Hungary. Her parents, regularly glued to the radio awaiting any glimmer of hope from Budapest, assured the girls that their future would be secured – if not by their countrymen then by God above. Then one afternoon while playing with her sisters outside, her parents called all of her family into their bedroom – the revolution had ended and they were going home. Unsure of how to respond, Marta’s eyes welled up with tears.
Now settled in the Midwestern US in January of 1966, Marta and her husband nestled into the Hungarian contingent of South Bend, Indiana. A bustling college town with a scenic campus and little more, she found herself struggling with undesirable social elements in the tight-knit community. The gossip, rivalry and new-found pursuit of material gain caused her to retreat from a culture she had longed to return to. Marta longed for expression and panorama in a conservative, manufacturing hub on the edge of the Great Plains and, it seemed, the world. She frequently found solace in the literature of her youth and longed for the days of her youth and fellowship with her family. Compounded with her broken English, Marta became encased in a loosely populated existence. The pair settled in a progressive, forested West Coast, but the lure of Hungary always present.
The years passed on and Marta’s life progressed mostly according to plan. Family remained a strong focus and her children were born and raised into a community of opportunity and the basic freedoms. No matter how accustomed she became to the US, she retained a connection to Hungary. Be it through the local Hungarian association, her writing and love of literature or her political status. Her frustrations with people and dysfunction transcended cultures, but her love for her true home burned ever brightly. It was true – she had left Hungary definitively and possibly permanently, but it would never leave her.
The wheels lifted off the runway and eventually the landing gear receded. Just then a surge of anxiety gradually overtook her. Marta had long dreamt of the bountiful pastures, snow-capped peaks and bustling city streets of the US, but had never expected to experience them first-hand. The American dream was at arm’s reach and, apart from family and close friends, she was only half-heartedly putting aside an oppressed existence. Her new husband drifting in and out of sleep beside her, she was departing from the only culture she’d ever known.
Carrying all of her personal effects, Marta sat with her sisters while her parents argued with customs officials amongst a throng of fleeing Hungarians at a train station just across the Austrian border. They waited to be collected by family – distant and only just acquainted. The scenery was familiarly mountainous and forested though the immediate change in culture and skyline was both unfamiliar and intriguing. While killing time reading while her siblings played and others prayed, Marta noticed the occasional odd look from strangers – amongst an occasional merciful smile and hum of familiar dialect about her. The new land was foreign, but offered a freedom. Not a negotiable liberty, a given one – a freedom from social tyranny.
As the plane descended, Marta leaned over her now-awake husband to catch a glimpse of America in full swing: New York City. The city smoldered with hope while the statue kept a distant watch over the rich and fragile civic rights from her perch in the harbor. After the plane arrived at its gate, she anxiously waited in queue – anticipating a draft of free and new air. Her brief taste while deplaning was unmemorable, but the spirited architecture of the airport provided momentary invigoration. While her husband inquired on their connecting flight with an attendant, Marta stood and gazed at the colorful décor and bustling families. It felt like a new start – an empty canvas with an expanded palette of colors.
The remainder of the excursion in 1956 had been uncomfortable and uninviting. Expressions of strangers grew increasingly cold – more so when they observed foreign dialect and customs. A brief and shrill greeting from family she hardly knew resulted in Marta and her sisters sleeping on a hardwood floor while sharing a bedroom with her parents and two sisters. The family found itself in a virtual purgatory with the fate of the country’s democratic future in the balance. As later, Marta found solace in literature and longed for Hungary. Her parents, regularly glued to the radio awaiting any glimmer of hope from Budapest, assured the girls that their future would be secured – if not by their countrymen then by God above. Then one afternoon while playing with her sisters outside, her parents called all of her family into their bedroom – the revolution had ended and they were going home. Unsure of how to respond, Marta’s eyes welled up with tears.
Now settled in the Midwestern US in January of 1966, Marta and her husband nestled into the Hungarian contingent of South Bend, Indiana. A bustling college town with a scenic campus and little more, she found herself struggling with undesirable social elements in the tight-knit community. The gossip, rivalry and new-found pursuit of material gain caused her to retreat from a culture she had longed to return to. Marta longed for expression and panorama in a conservative, manufacturing hub on the edge of the Great Plains and, it seemed, the world. She frequently found solace in the literature of her youth and longed for the days of her youth and fellowship with her family. Compounded with her broken English, Marta became encased in a loosely populated existence. The pair settled in a progressive, forested West Coast, but the lure of Hungary always present.
The years passed on and Marta’s life progressed mostly according to plan. Family remained a strong focus and her children were born and raised into a community of opportunity and the basic freedoms. No matter how accustomed she became to the US, she retained a connection to Hungary. Be it through the local Hungarian association, her writing and love of literature or her political status. Her frustrations with people and dysfunction transcended cultures, but her love for her true home burned ever brightly. It was true – she had left Hungary definitively and possibly permanently, but it would never leave her.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The day the television shook
Television was only just on its way out of being a novelty – a pricy, intriguing gadget of the wealthy–in the mid 1950s. The device was in the midst of a 10-year run in which its presence in US households rose from a paltry 9% in 1950 to 90% in 1960 – a staggering increase of 900% – when its innocence was swiftly lost at the mid-decade. Approximately fifty percent of families owned one by 1954 as the appliance continued a dazzling rise to the mainstream.
In the early 1950s United States, fear of an imminent communist upheaval hung thick in the air of the American public. Politicians eagerly and widely exploited this fear to garner influence and sway voters, but only one dared publicly try to attach purported communists to the institution – his name was Joseph McCarthy. A February 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia spurred a meteoric rise to fame for Senator McCarthy, who had won a Senate seat in 1946. It was during this speech that McCarthy claimed to have names of 205 federal employees who were members of the “fledgling” communist party. Although his numbers of “loyalty risk” caliber citizens fluctuated wildly over the course of the following month (to as low as 57 – his advisors seemingly censoring the list as inquiries flooded in), the surprising fame did its part in ensuring his re-election to the Senate in 1952.
Despite the creation of the Federal Communications Committee in 1934, television itself had limited censorship up until this point in time. From 1948-1952, the FCC had actually frozen granting of new channels as existing VHF channels (2-13) were deemed insufficient for television service and the tight grouping of the channels had resulted in widespread interference amongst existing and new communities. In short, the FCC had limited content in circulation to worry about censoring. When the freeze was put aside in 1952 thanks to the “Sixth Report & Order,” one must figure that the FCC was buried in requests for new channels and content which constrained resources to dedicate to the thorough evaluation of content. As McCarthy’s infamy gathered steam and the government (specifically the Army) responded in kind to his 1953 investigations, the FCC agreed to ABC’s request to televise the now famous “Army-McCarthy Hearings” from April-June of 1954 (36 days in total). It would be a decision the government would regret and a spectacle that left an indelible impact on the public’s perception of the inner workings of congress.
The “Army-McCarthy hearings” began as a proving ground upon which Joseph McCarthy would substantiate his claims of communist activity in the US Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth (the subject of McCarthy’s 1953 investigations). They ended with the Senator’s reputation destroyed and his Senate seat hanging by a thread. With a staggering 80 million total viewers over the course of the series, most of whom this was their first observation of US Congress, Joseph McCarthy was unable to substantiate any of his claims and was thrust on the defensive for disputed preferential treatment of a servicemen during the investigation. As the hearings drew to a close in early June, McCarthy was backed deeply into a corner – he was challenged by the Army’s counsel, Joseph N. Welch, to reveal his infamous list “before the sun goes down.” McCarthy, grasping at straws, proceeded to slander a young recruit of Welch’s firm. Tired, emotionally drained and eyes full of tears, Welch punctuated his response with the now legendary words: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
The destruction of a vindictive, reckless and power-hungry man determined to crush – once and for all – a dissenting opinion to whole-hearted capitalism was all but complete. Those with social and civil concerns rejoiced; those with industrial interests celebrated the resounding success of what would become reality television; those with political interests, machinations and revelations wrung their hands…and the TV, for the first time in its brief history, noticeably shook.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Recap of Social Media Fast '10 (January 2-9)
So my wife and I spawned the idea of SMF 2010 (sounds like a film festival acronym, right?) when discussing new year's resolutions on New Year's Day. As per the New York Times back in August, Facebook attracted nearly 88m unique visitors in July and this was a symptom of a forthcoming "exodus". With those figures in mind along with the suggested mass "exodus" (an embellishment considering Facebook had 102m unique visitors in 11/09), the two of us had been feeling that the e-transition of our relationships (think green here) was gradually contributing to the erosion of our social skills. So we decided to partake in the fast in tandem for the week of 1/2-1/9.
The rules were simple - no personally-affiliated social media. No Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. Given my unemployed state, LinkedIn was an exception. It felt right and, well, somewhat sacrificial. Not like lent or anything, but kind of old-fashioned (like late 90's old fashioned). Telephone calls, voicemail, email and human interaction. Off we went.
The first couple of days were pretty simple - I had a ton of reading and financial research that had been held up by social media OVERuse. I dug deep into a book, read financial statements, actually responded to emails, answered my phone and began nervously exercising my "conventional" communication skills. It was a little nerve wracking to start, but it quickly felt good. Normal even. I felt like I had an actual NEED to speak to people - versus checking their catalog of status updates or their profile pictures. As the week progressed and my to-do list with it, I gradually forgot about social media.
Before I knew it and felt fully reconnected to my friends, the week was over. I took a peek at Twitter, but with no need to immediately visit Facebook - I actually made it an 8th day without it. My re-exposure to it was so very anticlimactic. I realized I didn't need it - I didn't actually even like it that much. With all the bells and whistles, it is a veritable socially-oriented coloring book for adults. With that in mind, I discovered how to configure Twitter (which I'd previously mocked as a one-dimensional company angling for a buyout) to manage my Facebook updates and think I've visited the site 4-5 times since.
In summary - the distance between Facebook and I now feels appropriate. I still struggle with the occasional inclination not to answer my phone or emails, but unfortunately, this existed prior to my sojourn into social media. Unfortunately, being given and exercising the ability to check a page and see EXACTLY what they're doing, where they are, what their personal status, where they're working and what their personal interests currently are sort of makes the phone call redundant sometimes, doesn't it? I'll be using that as my rationale when I don't answer the phone (much less frequently) in the future.
Nate
The rules were simple - no personally-affiliated social media. No Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. Given my unemployed state, LinkedIn was an exception. It felt right and, well, somewhat sacrificial. Not like lent or anything, but kind of old-fashioned (like late 90's old fashioned). Telephone calls, voicemail, email and human interaction. Off we went.
The first couple of days were pretty simple - I had a ton of reading and financial research that had been held up by social media OVERuse. I dug deep into a book, read financial statements, actually responded to emails, answered my phone and began nervously exercising my "conventional" communication skills. It was a little nerve wracking to start, but it quickly felt good. Normal even. I felt like I had an actual NEED to speak to people - versus checking their catalog of status updates or their profile pictures. As the week progressed and my to-do list with it, I gradually forgot about social media.
Before I knew it and felt fully reconnected to my friends, the week was over. I took a peek at Twitter, but with no need to immediately visit Facebook - I actually made it an 8th day without it. My re-exposure to it was so very anticlimactic. I realized I didn't need it - I didn't actually even like it that much. With all the bells and whistles, it is a veritable socially-oriented coloring book for adults. With that in mind, I discovered how to configure Twitter (which I'd previously mocked as a one-dimensional company angling for a buyout) to manage my Facebook updates and think I've visited the site 4-5 times since.
In summary - the distance between Facebook and I now feels appropriate. I still struggle with the occasional inclination not to answer my phone or emails, but unfortunately, this existed prior to my sojourn into social media. Unfortunately, being given and exercising the ability to check a page and see EXACTLY what they're doing, where they are, what their personal status, where they're working and what their personal interests currently are sort of makes the phone call redundant sometimes, doesn't it? I'll be using that as my rationale when I don't answer the phone (much less frequently) in the future.
Nate
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