Put the car in drive, and bounce over the railroad tracks on the way to the elevated freeway that takes you home, and you have a choice: you can either slip the earpiece over your left ear and choose a name out of your phone's address book and speed-dial the corresponding number, or you can slide in the next in a never-ending parade of CDs and sing yourself home.
In the summers, the sun is my companion home; my time-shifted schedule means I am home and hours into my daily dose of home life before the sun ever thinks of greeting the horizon. In winter, though, they're cozy companions before I emerge from the windowless server room, and I am the latecomer to the party.
Solstice.
The shortening of day brings the lengthening chill of night. It's a chill that brings out the flannel blankets and causes the cats to huddle ever closer. I refer to truly cold nights as "two-cat nights," nights in which I know I'll awaken to Tenzing draped over my knees and Edmund snuggled lengthwise against my legs. My closet is not well-insulated. Stepping from the warmth of a two-cat night to the shivery chill that is part and parcel of picking work clothes is my least favorite part of the morning, and it makes my sleepy brain think longingly of summers past, and summers coming.
We mark our lifetimes by milestones: births, deaths, calendars. Part of me still remembers the ache of unfamiliarity the first time I got onto I-565; I looked around and thought, "For better or worse, this is my home" and wondered if it would ever become familiar. In the years since, it has; I can pass by that same stretch of road now and feel the same sort of rightness and orientation that a magnet must feel as it pulls toward north. In those years I've learned the rhythms of this area: the growth and harvest of cotton, the emergence and shedding of leaves, of days growing shorter and colder then gradually lengthening again.
It's a dance that will outlast me.
Tomorrow: Christmas Eve, and a time to reflect. Don't mind me. I'm starting early.
]]>(The city of Huntsville considers me a bastard hybrid; I work for a company that provides a public service and receives public funding but I and my co-workers do not receive access to things the official municipal employees receive, such as their pension plan. Still, I receive federal holidays.)
Veterans Day plus a United Way donation secured me a 4.5-day weekend. I had a week's worth of stocked-up conversations with a friend and a few jotted lines of potential shopping plans, but other than that I knew only my trip's duration. I don't often live life without a plan, but I had a budget and crashspace and I needed to just go.
]]>Tomorrow is Suicide Run, when the Jetta heads for Atlanta's Hartsfield Int'l Airport at 9:20 in the morning, in the hopes of getting there in time to pick up Chris after his flight arrives from Denver. Objective obtained, we'll head to points north for dinner with Jody and Kari. ("Perimeter Mall? Uh, sure, I can find that. Just send directions.")
After dinner, we'll pack up yet again and head northwest on I-75, tacking west at Chattanooga and picking up Hwy. 72 to take us westbound, home.
There are plenty of ways to get there from here, when 'there' and 'here' consist of Huntsville and Atlanta. The lack of a directly connecting freeway between the two cities means the average traveler has four choices, two indirect freeway routes (the southern route via Birmingham, or the northern route via Chattanooga) or two slightly-more-direct collections of back roads. Jeff and I have tried all of them, and we haven't found a clear winner. Back roads work best in daylight; freeways work best at night or with unfamiliar drivers.
Suicide runs are best done on freeways, where the curves are nonexistent, the speed limits are high, and there are plenty of gas stations to provide you with the caffeine you need to survive the trip home.
Chris has offered to help with some of the driving. In an uncharacteristic fit of reasonability, I plan to take him up on his offer.
* * * * *
I'd say, "There's nothing like a sudden change in houseguesting plans to make you go on a two-day cleaning tear," but I think that statement has more to do with my own personal neuroses than it does with the actions of most normal, rational human beings.
As a result of sudden houseguest plans, the kitchen is now loaded for bear (or, at the very least, a geekfest). I hauled in the last of the groceries just as Jeff pulled into the garage this evening; he asked what the bags were for and I replied: "Booze and the makings for salsa, cookies, and brownies."
(Local geeks: show up! Eat the food! Please! I beg of you! If you don't, we will!)
If we could live on just those, and orange juice, I don't think we'd be leaving until next Thursday at the earliest. For now, I'm hoping that my body can take a combination of alcohol, bagels, salsa, freshly-baked cookies, and conversation -- and compress them into a suitable replacement for the hours of sleep that I'm fully aware I'm not going to get over the next few days.
If you're lucky, we'll even remember to snap a photo of Chris, Jody, Kari, and me at the restaurant. Stranger things have happened.
]]>Current music: Great Big Sea, "Mari-Mac"
Rufus Wainwright, "April Fools"
The speed limit on the Cutoff was 40, but anyone with half a brain knew that the cops never policed that section of road, because there was no place for them to park, and even if there was, Bauxite didn't have cops anyway. The descent to the paved-over area where the railroad track used to be was one such that if you hit it at just the right speed, your car wouldn't go airborne, but you would.
Just for a moment, you would fly.
]]>The speed limit on the Cutoff was 40, but anyone with half a brain knew that the cops never policed that section of road, because there was no place for them to park, and even if there was, Bauxite didn't have cops anyway. The descent to the paved-over area where the railroad track used to be was one such that if you hit it at just the right speed, your car wouldn't go airborne, but you would.
Just for a moment, you would fly.
It would have been 1994, and it would have been one of those lucrative nights in which I'd baby-sat the son of my mother's co-worker while she and her husband went out for some social time with friends. Keenan was easy to tend to, even for someone like me who lacks the innate child-tending gene. A gentle reminder that it was time to get in bed was all it took; with in just a few minutes, his teeth would be brushed, his pajamas on, and he would be ready to have the night light turned out.
I would sit in the living room and read after he went to sleep. It was easy money.
Once his parents got back home, I would bid them goodnight, pack up what few thigns I'd brought, and head to my car. Once in the car, it was the same ritual, every time: on the floorboard of the passenger seat would be a caffeinated drink, a snack, and my little box of tapes.
More often than not, I made the half-hour drive home to the sounds of Steely Dan.
This was 1994, the year that Nirvana and Pearl Jam influenced half the kids in the country to pull out those previously-uncool plaid flannel shirts and wear them with pride. I listened to them, and liked them, but for some reason, my car always seemed to end up playing Steely Dan more often than not.
Unlike most fans, who had been been in on the joke since the Dan first sprang on the scene, I grew up in a world where there was already an oeuvre of Dan albums to listen to. As a newbie, I worked my way backwards, starting from Gaucho.
Given the right timing, I'd hit that perfect little airborne leap right during the chorus of 'Time Out Of Mind.' I'd sing, and I'd fly:
Tonight when I chase the dragon
The water will change to cherry wine
And the silver will turn to gold
Time out of mind
This music - this album, this band, these songs - were mine, in a way that I still can't explain. They held a fascination and appreciation that no one else I knew shared; for all I knew, I could be the only one in the world listening to this particular album, this particular song.
I would hit the top of that hill and fly for just a moment and think, "One of these years, when I'm old enough to do things like go to concerts on my own, I'm gonna see these guys." It was a pipe dream, said with the fervor and intensity of teenage years, thought about intensely while driving home and immediately left behind with the tape deck after I got in the house.
I grew up. Got older. Finally got a CD player, and started replacing the beat-up Steely Dan tapes with shiny CDs. Suddenly, I didn't have to wait through 'Gaucho' to get to 'Time Out Of Mind'; what luxury! I could listen to the songs in whatever order I wanted, without having to juggle my half-crazed tape player to make it rewind so I could hear that lovely chorus one more time.
...and Steely Dan stopped making albums.
I chalked it up to a lost cause, a dream unfulfilled. They toured a few times, but nowhere near me.
Then came the unexpected album 'Everything Must Go' - and, what was this? A tour? My stomach did the flying lurch again as the tour dates were announced. No one heard the squeal that came out of my mouth when I learned that an Atlanta tour date was scheduled, but I was there, and I can tell you it tasted like sixteen and babysitting and, just for a moment, like flying.
People sometimes ask me if I have dreams for the future, and the truth is, more often than not, I don't. I used to, when I was younger, and then I began to figure out that no matter how much you plot or plan, things never quite work out the way that you envisioned them.
So when I sat down in my $85, middle-of-the-road seat, I looked at my spouse to my left and admitted to myself that all those years ago, I never imagined actually sharing this show with someone else. In that fevered dream, my induction to the church of Steely Dan would be a solitary act, just as all the years of listening had been mostly a solitary act, but there he was, with me and smiling at my restraint when it must have been so amazingly obvious that I was just about to bubble over with laughter at any given point.
How was the show?
Oh, it was a show. I can sit here now and tell you that technically and sonically, the Damien Rice show from the night before was better. This was a golden-oldies revue, the show in which the jazzmen played their familiar tunes and the audience basked in the music as much as the memories the music invoked.
I sat in the audience, pretending not to notice the occasional slanting, laughing glances my spouse sent my way, simply amazed by the fact that for probably the first time in my life, I was not the only Steely Dan fan in the room.
They played "Time Out Of Mind," and I leaned over to Jeff and whispered, "I always wished I could hear this song live." I didn't explain why, but from the expressions on the faces of the people around us, I had a feeling that I might just be among the kind of people who would understand.
For a moment, I flew, and that was enough.
]]>Two hours into the drive home. Silence. After so few hours in the car, have we managed to say everything there is to say?
Three dragon*con staff meetings down, none to go. Last night, everyone marveled that dragon*con was already upon us, a sentiment made even more absurd by the frequent follow-up: "It's been so long since I've seen you!"
The battle lines at 'con are always so simple at the third and penultimate meeting. Us against them. 'They' are the attendees, other staffers, and guests - anyone who doesn't know who we are, what we do, or manages to keep us from doing what needs doing at that particular moment.
]]>Two hours into the drive home. Silence. After so few hours in the car, have we managed to say everything there is to say?
Three dragon*con staff meetings down, none to go. Last night, everyone marveled that dragon*con was already upon us, a sentiment made even more absurd by the frequent follow-up: "It's been so long since I've seen you!"
The battle lines at 'con are always so simple at the third and penultimate meeting. Us against them. 'They' are the attendees, other staffers, and guests - anyone who doesn't know who we are, what we do, or manages to keep us from doing what needs doing at that particular moment.
I've come to realize that I will probably always have a feeling of inferiority about my job at 'con. I am part of tech staff, but I am not a stage rat, an a/v girl, a connector of wires, Centennial muscle, or even a gofer.
I am domesticat, feeder of straggling souls bereft of blood sugar.
In tech staff culture, technical competency is king. Even the worst of personality quirks are tolerated in someone who knows how to do a certain job better than anyone else. All too often, it's easy to allow that mentality to wash over me, to think that someone like me, whose job grows no geekier than nutrition, hydration, and the general care & feeding of geeks, is just as necessary.
Miles to Paint Rock, Alabama: 16.
Miles to Huntsville, Alabama: 37.
I am scrawling in my little green notebook, where my lists and plans go, and only just now have I realized that I'm not obsessing over my lists of names and notes anymore. Perhaps it's because I'm not churning out food for a vast group of faceless strangers. It's Grant, at the main soundboard, who needs the sunflower seeds; Sarah, runner and daytime soundboarder, needing plain bagels, Prego, and goldfish crackers. Or the daily hunt for Thomas, to push regular non-sugary feedings on him to keep his blood sugar from crashing.
This year will be more of a challenge. This year's roster includes three diabetics, several hypoglycemics, one chemo patient, and about forty other people who just continually forget to eat. My weapons will be one tiny microwave, one tiny fridge (total size: three cubic feet), someone's Sam's Club card, several hundred paper and plastic bags, and not-quite-daily food runs.
Maybe I realized I was on to something when I was introduced to an unknown staffer as "Amy, our guardian angel." Oh, did my ego ever preen itself mightily at that. True necessity may be the mother of most inventions—as well as a few raging cases of egoism.
Yesterday, at the meeting, I remembered why I like the job I've been given. I don't get the raw geeky glory of stage-ratting Centennial, but my job at 'con is to wander from person to person, straightening here, fixing there. Lunch. Gatorade. Back and scalp massages in between.
On the radio: John Mayer's "83."
Stephen: "What year of school would he have been in then? He would've been six."
Jeff: "Depends on how six you are."
We've heard rumors that GWAR may be one of the headliner bands this year. Everyone else talks about GWAR goo. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to feed all the stagehands that night.
Stephen is driving again. I am luxuriating in the economical simplicity of nonprescription sunglasses from the back seat. My legs are two days off from a shave and my knitting is untouched. The sunlight streaming down on the back of my neck (recently manipulated as part of a lovely in-meeting massage by Andrew-the-blond) is insiduously whispering to me that I should consider executing a back flip into a catnap.
As you cross the Paint Rock River, one of the last remaining hills before Huntsville appears before you. You slip around on its right, past the Paint Rock locals having a Sunday brunch under the shade of their patio furniture. I find myself wondering if my eyes can be seen behind my sunglasses.
Not that it matters. Behind the lenses, my eyes have closed, and my pen, for now, is still.
(cue sunshine.)]]>
(cue backflip.)
(catnap.)