downsizing, evaluating, other stuff

As Some of You May or May Not Know,

traci and I recently quit our jobs. We’re trying to sell our house. We’d like to, in turn, buy some chickens and plant a garden near those chickens. Preferably some place in Southeastern Ohio. We’re downsizing, and taking a step away from academia for a while. We’re going to make more time for our art and our kids and our health, and put less energy into worrying over where our students want to put semicolons or what our colleagues think of our publication records. It’s all, I know, a noble pursuit. It simply overwhelmed us a touch. We found ourselves looking forward to retirement, rather than enjoying our lives.

So I know that raises a lot of questions: what’s your house look like?, is it close to a park, how much are you asking?, chickens?, I thought you already had chickens?, and will you find true happiness once you’ve left teaching?

In response to the first three questions: check out our realtor’s website here. Or if you just want to see our crib, which has not yet been featured on any reality shows. I know. I’m constantly shocked as well. In response what appears to be the fourth question, “chickens?” Well, that’s not really even a question. Or a sentence for that matter. But I’ll do my best to respond: a chicken is a medium-sized flightless . . . you know what just click here to find out. In response to question four, which is also, I see now, not a question, I must say, you can think it all you want, that’s not going to get us farm fresh eggs. And, finally, we’re not even sure what happiness is, but one thing that I’m only now beginning to understand is that happiness, like writing, is a process, not a product, and it is in the enacting of happiness that happiness exists.

I’ve been meditating, which is like weightlifting for one’s soul. That’s how come that last line there sounds so smart. Bet your ass.

Meditating has its limits.

Meanwhile, the above is all part and/or parcel of the reason I’ve written so little lately – I’ve found it hard to celebrate a life in limbo. But I also want you all to know what we’re up to, where we are going, where we have been, what’s on the horizon, what’s off to the left there, just around the bend, up ahead, yet to be, off to the north, up, and going on.

So keep the questions coming, or else I’m gonna have to keep making them up. Until then. Y’ens take care.

Hair Cut for the 21st Century

Though my head would almost certainly not fit into a red or blue plastic cup, I found myself looking very much like a beer pong ball recently. Well, to be honest, I still call them ping pong balls, but according to most of my students and that tupperware sitting next to the cash register at the BP station, they are now beer pong balls. And, rather than being swatted back and forth across a green plywood table in the garage, apparently the object of the game these days is to cover the ball in lint and dunk it in someone else’s drink. The more drinks you dunk it in, the better your chances for “staying on” to play the next folks.

All sort of beside the point, really. Recently, you all have been asking, “What, then, is the point, Jackson?” Which I’ve taken to mean, “Why are we here?” Or “Is there a meaning to all this?” Or “Tell me about the sea, Jackson?” The last of which, I feel I should mention, is not a question, despite the question mark. Maybe you already knew that. So, what is the point?

The point is: I got a haircut. Let me rephrase: I shaved my head. Not to the scalp exactly, but pretty short. In fact, this is what I used to look like:

This is what I look like now:

Well, a little what I look like.

The boys came home from rock climbing shortly after my “haircut.” Zac said, “Whoa, when your hair’s that short, your beard looks enormous.” Sam said, “You have a beard?”

I bumped into Naomi a short time later, and she asked, “Did you lose a bet or something?”

I asked Blaisey for her honest opinion (an honest question posed in the form of a statement (an honest question with a certain indication that a juice box might accompany the correct answer)): “My haircut looks good, right?”

Blaisey said, “Yes. Good. A little weird . . . but you look really cute in that shirt.”

She got the juice box. But, let’s face it, who wouldn’t look cute in this shirt! The one on the left.

Anyway, I've been busy for a spell, you know, whether other things, but I'm back now, or at least that's what I'd have you believe.

Also, in the off chance that it's not obvious, Desi says hi.

More Recent Evidence Reinforces My Belief That I Married up

Unfortunately, as you all know, I’ve slipped just a touch this past week in my standing as Most Successful Member of the Family. To wit: after many months of super-duper readings at great venues to vicious applause and unyielding lauding, traci’s book Recipes for Endangered Species has been panned. She was thrilled. “Look at this,” she said, “it says here, ‘I felt as if I had left a loving homestead filled with ancestral love and spiritual light to go get a job as a stripper in the city, had sold my child for drugs, and dumped my beloved cat in the trash, and walked away as it mewed. I wanted to go to sleep, but was afraid of my dreams.’”

Absolutely thrilled. She said, “This reviewer hated my book, but this review won’t make people not want to read it.”

I on the other hand felt my married-up status slipping along with traci’s grammar: “ . . . won’t make people not . . .” – so you wonder: what kind of rhetorical Wal-Marts does traci construct while you’re all away? – “won’t make people not”: that kind.

(Should that be while “y’all’re away?”)

With my PhD. a mere language requirement away, and people talking smack about traci’s writing, I thought for sure I would have to start picking my nose while teaching or throwing snowballs at Pat and Olga’s kids and blaming it on the sky. And, hell, it’s not even likely to snow here again until we leave for Utah in December. I was at an impass.

Suddenly, on Tuesday Nickole Brown from White Pine Press called traci. Turns out traci’s manuscript of prose poems Shell-Shaped Pieces of Bone was a finalist for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series. A really awesome series from a really awesome press.

While we found out this past weekend that she did not win, I was consoled by the fact that I’m back, baby. There’s no way I’m going to accomplish as much as traci any time soon, so who is the most excited in the world that I married traci? Clearly, it's this guy:

But, in all fairness, Blaisey's a close second.

Post Script: National Novel Writing Month – good attempts all around at our house. The Epic Asskicking Adventures of Princess Badass topped 8,000 words during the first week, then quickly fell from favor. Instead, I started working on my Western (The Wickedest City) again, and that went well. traci clacked steadily away at her novel – she got closer to maybe 10-12,000 words. While still shy of the 50,000 words the National Novel Writing Month experts look for, she has laid some ground work for a novel that I’m sure you all will be interested in. I’m burying Princess Badass for the time being, but traci’s going to stick with hers. I hear December is National Plutonium Enrichment Month – which means the ancient Connor family mantra (Hold My Beer I Wanna Try Something) has never been more fitting.

Hazards Upon the Long Run

Much like the Neanderthal civilization, Greensboro, North Carolina has no sidewalks. As a result, I often end up crossing regrettable intersections at bad angles and testing the pavement of dubious crosswalks.

Much like other Neanderthal beings, I approach the outside world cautiously. Neanderthal joggers often peeked from side to side along the game trails, hoping to detect saber tooth tigers and Casteroides ohioensis. As for me, while I have been hit or almost hit by just about every kind of motorized vehicles from motorcycles to dump trucks, nothing chases me off the road so often as the mid-sized to enormous four-door road vehicles. By their nature, these “SUVs” are harmless gentle, creatures who will not engage a human, even when provoked. They have little interest in human beings whatsoever. Even if you sneak behind them and poke them with sticks or attempt to entice them with a conversation about Moby Dick or The Wrath of Kahn, they will hardly even acknowledge your existence.

However, beneath the surface, something terrifying lurks. (That’s not necessarily true, I just thought it would add some dramatic tension.)

However, seriously, during particular times of the day – e.g. morning, noonish, evening, afternoon – these beautiful creatures begin a frantic scurry, a meticulously choreographed ballet. During which times, it doesn’t matter what bright colors you’re wearing or how many babies you’re pushing in the stroller, these clamoring beasts will not be deterred. It is in their nature to neither change course, nor slow down, so don’t sprain an ankle in a crosswalk, and if you do, don’t bother begging for mercy. My only guess is that we humans are just too tiny for the great “SUV” to even recognize. For them to see us as sentient creatures would be much like a human being thinking that a dog or a turtle should have some kind of rights. Ridiculous.

While these frequent, if unexplained, mass migrations might be equally beautiful and dangerous, even our top scientists have failed to explain the significance of such events. When I asked Zac about it, he said, “I don’t know, Dad. Can I please finish my homework now?” Sam, similarly, responded, “You are so weird.”

If you are like me and you live in a place where such beautiful animals roam the grand paths through our cities, but you would nonetheless like to take a long run once-or-so a week, consider Sunday mornings. I have found it is much easier to get in ten, twelve miles with little chance of being run over by an “SUV” from around 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. It is at this rare time of the week that the “SUV”s gather in a sort of ritual silence in front of enormous barnlike structures. While none of the creatures ever enter the structure, they sit outside quietly, one might say reverently, as I run by.

Why do these magnificent beast choose this moment to gather and remain silent? What draws them to these enormous domiciles? Will there ever be a day when humans and “SUV”s live in harmony? Are modern “SUV”s truly the descendent of some ancient coupling of a station wagon and a military vehicle? Or did they spring forth into their suburban resting grounds fully formed sometime in the mid-90s? I asked some of our family’s top anthropologists. Naomi said, “Seriously, Dad? Get a life.” Blaisey sat thoughtfully for a spell and said, “Can I have some ice cream?” Who’s right? I don’t know. It is unlikely that any of us will know for quite some time. For now, it is enough for me that at least once a week, the great beasts and I call a truce and coexist peacefully, in no hurry, paying homage to the world in our own ways.

Note to runners: Please be cautioned if you take this running tip. If you run past noon on these “days of 4WD rest” as I like to call them, all proverbial bets are off. When those bells ring twelve, all hell breaks loose.

Meanwhile, I leave you all with these two thoughts:

1. “Would any tree be safe with a beaver as big as a Buick?”

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/video/prehistoric-castoroides-the-giant-beaver/



And 2. "Smells like a steak and seats thirty-five."

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4QgWRycd7I

Fancy Drink

As national Jackson Appreciation Weekend winds down, traci asked me if she could get me anything from the kitchen. I asked her if she could get me a beer in one of our fancy glasses.

I don't know -- they just sometimes taste better this way.

On Nature v. Nurture

Given the relatively obvious design of shirts, maybe you’d think that I’d be able to put them on frontwards at least 50% of the time. I’m here to tell you today, you’re wrong. In fact, I can easily go two, three weeks without putting a t-shirt on right the first time. “Well, at least you get it right the second time,” you might be thinking. Nope, just like flipping a quarter, my odds don’t change from one application to the next. Why am I like this? What’s wrong with me? Is it nature or nurture?

I can only base my own guesses on what other people have told me. As an undergrad, a woman in my dorm said, for example, she would never date me because I did not have a hairy chest, and she would only date men with hairy chests. I hadn’t asked or intended to ask her out, but you can imagine at this point, I desperately wanted to. The only thing I could think to do was grow my bangs very long and hope that would be close enough. With my locks shimmering tucked into the neckband, I asked Gina if she'd like to get a pizza with me. She said, “No. That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” Until then, I guess I just assumed that everybody likes pizza.

What’s wrong with me? Other possibilities? I blame Pappap. For instance: the first time I came home from college with a beard, Pappap raised his eyebrows and told me about the first time he came home from the Navy with a beard. He said, “I walked in the front door, and my old man was taking a nap on the couch. He opened one eye and said, ‘What the hell is that?’ So I said, ‘It’s a goattee.’ The old man said, ‘Yeah, I tried to grow a beard once. It looked like shit, too.’”

This, of course, was my first sophomore year of college. Meanwhile, I told Angelo that I really liked his beard and wished that I could grow a beard like his. He said, “Why don’t you grow one?”

I said, “I can’t grow a beard.”

He said, “Well, not with that attitude. You’ve gotta really want it.”

As you can imagine, time went by. I did some other things: dropped out of college, learned to snowboard, had a really nice cup of coffee at a Country Fair of all places. Clearly, it has been an eventful decade and a half. The good news is: I finally have a hairy chest. The really good news is: it’s because my beard is officially that long. (How about that pizza now, Gina?)

In fact, when traci and I went back-to-school shopping, she picked teaching shirts based on how well they showed off my beard. I'm in vogue, to be sure, but such clothing has resulted in my many awkward questions such as, “Does this V-back make my shoulders look narrow?”

Well? What do you think?

The Renovator

I’ve been away from the blog this week, as I have been busy pretending to work on the house and grade my students’ papers while secretly reading The Great Book of Amber. Yesterday, in fact, when I was supposed to respond to student quizzes, I asked them all if they’d got the all the right answers. Some said, “Yes.” For those who said, “No,” I said, “Would you get all the right answers now if I gave you the same quiz?” They said, “Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes.” So I marked them all down for A’s and drove to the hardware store parking lot to pretend to shop while I secretly read a fantasy novel.

Before we begin, I have a morality tale from earlier in the week:

Have you ever been stung by a wasp whilst spraying for mosquitoes?
Me too, which begs the question: who is the real monster here?
It’s the wasps. Trust me, that’s the moral.


Anyway, what’s wrong with me? Well, it probably all has to do with my plumbing. Plumbing is a delicate art that, if I understand correctly, was invented 8,000 years ago in Egypt, perfected 2,600 years ago in Rome, and introduced to Western Pennsylvania in the late 1970’s.

A lot of one’s personality can be determined by answers to fundamental questions about plumbing. For instance:

When there’s a problem with the plumbing, do you:
A: Call a professional?
B: Call for Sam to bring you a pair of socks and a roll of duct tape?

One’s answer, I believe, speaks volumes.

So yesterday, when the problems arose, Sam showed up with the duct tape and said, “I couldn’t find any socks. What about the one you have on.” That’s my boy. Problem solved.

Sometimes the kids ask me, “How did you learn so much about building stuff?”

Well, just from paying attention mostly. Also, I spent some time doing various forms of construction when I was supposed to be studying for my Intro to Biology final exam. But at the heart of everything I know about stuff getting built is Pappap. For instance, I remember his vivid instructions about plumbing. When I was very young, he told me, “There are three things you need to know about plumbing. Hot water goes on the left. Cold on the right. And shit don’t run uphill.”

Clearly I was destined for renovating.

Some people like to call it “home improvement,” but, really, would anybody call this improvement?

I think not. Renovating, rather, from the root word “novate,” meaning: screw up real bad. I think. I hope not to be redundant here in quoting the great plumber and writer Ray Carver, who said, “We all do better in the future.”


Meanwhile, Blaisey borrowed Zac’s guitar this morning and wrote three songs. Song 1: “All the Penguins Go to School.” Song 2: “All the Other Animals Go to School, But Not the Penguins.” Song 3: “The Animals Don’t Go to School, But Sissy and Blaisey Go to School.” Each of the songs has similar motifs and rhythms, a lot of humming in the middle of the lines, and several words that I’m not familiar with. Each song also contains the lyrics, “But you and me will never die, hmmm hmm hmmm hmm I like pie.” Needless to say, if Isaac Brock gets a hold of this talent, Blaisey certainly be a Glacial Pace artist any day now.

For the record, did anybody hear me ask for cpvc rubber cement in my coffee this morning? No. You didn’t. Which again, is sort of beside the point as it leaves me wondering: if the cpvc rubber cement applicator is in my coffee mug, what’s holding all the plumbing together? The answer, I believe, is clear: we’ll never know.

the author (antlered)

My Uncle Dewey asked me one time, "What do you think you'd look like if you had antlers?"

I said, "I dunno. Maybe like this:"

He said, "Yeah, that's what I'd a thought, too."

dr. stick

Every day since we've met, without fail, traci turns to me and says, "What's wrong with you?" Sometimes, it's because I'm running around Lowes with PVC hanging out of my pants. Sometimes, it's because I'm making monkey noises and picking bugs out of other spectators' hair at my kids' band recital. Sometimes, it's because I'm arguing with Sam for the third straight hour about Sudoku strategies. So after six-and-a-half years of "What's wrong with you?" I've decided to take stock, to evaluate, to try to get at the roots of what's wrong with me. I am, therefore, making a list of potential "issues" I might have.

What's wrong with me?

Well, for instance, this is my chiropractor:

This is a picture of me and him standing in the parking lot in front of his office, waiting for my appointment. The caption for the photo:

Jackson: "I don't know, Dr. Stick, I'd a guessed you'd need more brains to become a doctor."

Dr. Stick: "That's where you're wrong. Good doctoring comes from in here."

Jackson: "Inside your t-shirt?"

Dr. Stick: "Yes. Inside your t-shirt."