Roads, Mills, Laps

Himalayan hullabaloo here.

Ah my three loyal readers: welcome to my humble abode.

I’m sorry for not writing as of late: I recently spent six days in the hospital.

I’m ok. I’m a little worse for the weather, but I’m alive. Thank you, hallelujah! I don’t need any comments saying “Get well!” and “Ah shucks, I hope you feel better gollydarndagummit!”

All is fine.

That being said: I will still leave you with some observations of mine made while stewing at the Chester County Hospital. If you want to read about your mortality and what’s in store for you when your hairs turn gray and your body says “no mas,” when all is dark clouds and bad news, then be my guest. Just don’t blame me for the misanthropy. One second sharing a room with “Joe’ was a sufficient infusion of that to last a lifetime.

Postscript: I am at 0 miles for 10,000 days. I am trying to think about a grand comeback–formulating all the dark-of-night runs, but I don’t see that happening. Not for a while. I aspire to return to some semblance of running after the holidays. Yes, you can say that I’ve gone over to the dark side–to the group of people who hope to run when the calendar year changes, but probably won’t, because there are a million reasons to stay inside, in bed, where everything is good smells, soft skin, and supreme laze.

———–
Joe’s mother is about 100 years old. She was wheeled into my room tonight to visit her son. Joe’s sister drove her here.

Joe’s pancreas is disintigrating.He hiccups constantly. “Heat cups,” he tells the nurse, “are fucking killing me.”

The nurse empties whatever he spits up into a basin that sits in the toilet. Sometimes, they forget to clean the basin and so I get the pleasure of discovery. Lately, I’ve opted to wheel my IV stand down to the only public restroom by the cardiac ward. It’s really clean in that one–spacious too.

Joe’s mother weighs in on things immediately.

“I’m smothered with this coat and I”m smothered with in this hot room. You need to get out of here Joe this place is not your home. Your home is Philadelphia.” I can hear her pounding on her armrest.

“Mom, the doctor is Italian,” Joe says. Joe is 60 years old, but he sounds like he’s a kid telling his mother it’s ok to play on the highway. Joe divides the world into foreigners and Italians–fuckin arabs and to-best trusted Italians from South Philly. South Philly is where the good guys hang out. Everyone else–all youse: stay da fuck back.

Joe greets his family. “Youse people are awful,” he says. Good times for Joe. That’s how he handles things with his kin.

“You need to be closer to your friends, Joe. I could be walking there with my little basket–my water and soda. You’re all closed in here. There’s no air here,” he mother says. She coughs a wet cough. I envision her spitting phlegm into a ceckered napkin.

Joe tells his mother to shut up.

Joe’s sister chimes in. “Joe you always do this; you let things go and then you make us come out to take care of you. Your dog can’t stay any longer with us and your car is illegally parked.”

“Shut up you,” Joe says. He then coughs and spits into a basin.

Joe’s sister turns to leave. “That’s it. I’m leaving. I need to pick up Mikey. Come on Anna.” She tugs at her daughter’s elbow as both leave the room.

Joe’s mom wheels herself using one foot over to the window. “Oh dear Jesus, dear sacred heart of Jesus, look at this rain. Dear God give us a break.”

“You are somethign else. You don’t realize nuthin’, you,” Joe says.

“And they give you nuts? When you are older they don’t give you no nuts.”

“Nuts get stuck in your system. Don’t matter if you are old or young. They just get stuck,” Joe says.

Joe starts to fumble with the television. He waivers on Fox News–his perennial favorite. A little animated .GIF American flag flaps in the corner of the screen: a symbol of fair and balanced objectivity.

“Turn it to channel 10,” his mother says. “Channel 10’s got the good news and the funny shows.” From my bed, from behind the curtain, I can only see her feet. She’s wearing snow-white tennis shoes that look like they came out of the box.

“Who’s the sick one here, mom?”

“I”m sick too Joe. Look at me I”m in a wheelchair. I’m old. I’m your mother.”

“I got heatcups for Chrissakes mom!” Joe coughs for effect.

“Oh this place is so hot. It’s hot and stuffy. Can you open up a window in here?”

“Can’t do that mom. Me and Duncan already tried it.”

“Who’s Duncan?”

“He’s the guy next to me,” Joe says. I can feel eyes from behind the curtain looking at me. Until the family visit, I was listening to MGMT at decible level 10.

“He knows what Duncan means, ma.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“Duncan is Scottish for brown warrior. He must be a Highlander fan or somethin.”

“Joey you need to come home. You can’t have this operation here. It’s too far from your family.”

“Ma. I’m gonna do whatever I want to do.”

“Turn it back to Channel 10. The news is on…yeah that one.”

Joe clicks the remote back to Channel 10. Someone got shot in the city. An action newscaster stands in front of yellow caution tape. He holds an umbrella with one hand and a microphone with the other. He turns his head and looks back at the crime scene. It’s the city’s 10,000 murder, we are told.

“Bah: another nigger shooting,” Joe says. [Theresa is Joe’s assistant nurse. She’s black. She literally changes Joe’s shitty pants; she dumps his heat cup deposits and changes his piss-stained sheets.]

“See. That’s why you should have your operation close to home,” Joe’s mom says.

The room grows quiet. Joe falls asleep. He starts to snore and fart and say things that make no sense…things like “Berp! and Whatcha mean garny?” I stand up and walk over to the bathroom. I see his mother. Her head is supported by her wrinkly arm that is propped up on the wheelchair’s armrest. She just sits there and blinks.

I open the bathroom door and see that Joe has painted the floor and ceiling with a 50-50 concoction of pancreas and barium–a real Jackson Pollock special.

I walk out of room 261 and stumble down the hall. I catch Theresa as she’s in the middle of trying to put a blanket over that open-mouthed lunatic in room 255 . [The guy who screams ‘LINNNNNNDA! LINDAAAAAAA!]

“Does Joe need something?” she asks.

I want to say, “Joe is a fucking racist.” I pause and search for the right words.

“Tell him I’m coming right away,” she says.

“It’s the bathroom,” I say.

“I’ll be right there,” she says.

“Take your time,” I say. “I’ll go use the other bathroom.”

When I come back to room 261, Joe and his mother are both asleep. My IV stand makes a clanging noise crossing the door’s threshold and it stirs Joe’s mother.

“You should come home, Joe,” she says.

I hope Joe listens to his mother.
—————
Earlier in time.

My hand is the size of a grapefruit; it’s red and swollen. A red line runs up my arm-giving the hospital ward a tour of the lymphatic system Go to 3:26 in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpCr6Ojozz8

to see what I’m talking about.

“It’s on its way to your heart,” Doctor Potts said. He picked up the phone and dialed the ER. “Cellulitis: left hand.” He hung up the phone and crunkled his brow. “Don’t waste any time.Go right there,” he told me.

So here I’ve sat–for two days,so far. “You’re in for many more,” I was told.

I share a hospital room with a creature named “Joe.” Joe’s from South Philly. Joe don’t like no foreigners. He tells me that arabs are all terrorists. Joe is 300 pounds and missing pieces of his pancreas. He talks to himself.

Right now, an old crazy man with a gaping mouth and skin the color of chalk dust is calling out into the hallway: “Help me. I’m dying!” he moans. He does this all night. He’s the kind of guy who pushes the nurse’s button and unhooks the ivs intentionally so that the world can share in his misery. Doctor Kevorkian should wander the hall with his little machine; we’d all at least get some peace and quiet.

Joe rolls over, farts, and says, “Shut your trap dumbfuck,” to no one. Well, I suppose, to me.

Joe tells me what kind of poop he lays–whether it’s a long log or a brown turtle. I get to hear it all.

Joe just said, “Allright, I”m fine,” to no one in particular. Whenever I have to walk over to his side of the airline aisle (because thats what it is–a large airline flight–straight to hell.)

Joe pushes the nurse call button and just blurts out: “I need somethin’.”

I spent 5 seconds getting to know him. Here’s what I gleaned.

1. He can’t seem to answer any Daily Doubles.

2. He says he doesn’t like foreigners or arabs. He says this while a Chinese-American nurse with a big grin is filling him up with happy juice.

3. He told the nurse last night that he is into Korean movies and gets “the cassettes” in some guy’s house that this guy has converted into a Korean video rental store; I put my noise cancelling headset on my head at that moment, because the conversation was heading down a scary path–down somewhere where a gimp with ballgag has been shackled to the insides of a Harry Houdini box.

4. He pronounces “you guys”as “youse.” I don’t like how youse sounds. Its similar to Palin’s downhometowngollygeewasilla-speak..snowmobile n’ deer eatin’ banter. When I hear “youse” I expect someone like Joe to come around the corner and ask youse to help him pick up a box full of Chinese-made Pocono deer targets. I expect Walmart sprees and farts.
——————–
To be cont. Falling asleep now…on ambien and percocet.

very close to chanelling Hunter S. Thompson

Here

The answer is obvious.

ist hier.

I really like this song.

———-
What I’ve been up to all this time: a top-10 list

1. On a Leonard Nemoy In Search Of-esque hunt for a photogenic homeless person during the holiday season. No such luck! Most of them didn’t want their picture taken or didn’t have a full set of teeth or their skin was too red and their cuticles too gnawed-on-chicken bone-looking from all that addiction n’ desperation. Alas! The hunt continues…

2. Observing a man inside a parking garage blow out leaves using a gas-powered leaf blower–one leaf at a time. Good times for both of us!

3. Watching two races pass by my house on two subsequent days. Both times I was reclining at table with a bagel in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

4. Running every day–slow. But running every day!

5. Passing an old lady that was driving a Rascal along High Street in West Chester. She hogged the whole lane and was smoking a cigar. I don’t think she really cared about most things.

6. Contemplating a 5K plan that will get me into sub-17 shape in a few months. Aint it nice having a goal? Aint it nice having a distance and an unbiased clock? Oh wait: I just remembered genetics. Damn my introspection!

7. Painting pictures of old men. Flowers, syrupy pancakes, and butterflies are too damn boring.

8. Writing short stories that are made of rubber. Writing profligate checks for short story contests that are used to fund the kitty for the winner: the erudite Stanford professor emeritus of Literature who writes stories with titles like: Summer Sun: A Walk Along the Rue du Bac or Grandfather Zetyl’s Precarious Predicament Placing Conch Shells in the Thyroid.

9. Writing to hundreds of people, organizations, and institutions that don’t write me back.

10. ReadingRead Capote’s In Cold Blood

10 miles last night. Out and back in Orlando–same as this post.

The only funny thing is that since I’ve been gone, “they” discovered unexploded ordinance from World War 2 out by the middle school’s track (and you thought banging out 8 forgotten laps as a zit-faced teenager was a bombshell; ha!) Turns out, in the rush to plow over the fields and form flat, dry land–to build righteous gated communities with 4000-square feet McMansions with plastic baby Jesus’ perfectly centered in the fake Chemlawns–”they” missed the fact that P-38s and B-24s used to drop massive amounts of ordinance on this sacred land–big bombs, bombs that blew up Nazi railways; bombs that knocked over Rommel’s staff car; bombs that stemmed the Japanese tide, the banzai charge, at Okinawa. This was the place were these things were tested–lots of tests; lots of bombs; lots of calculations made by patriotic men with slide rules and crisp, khaki pants.

Many of them didn’t explode. “They” needed to tweak something, obviously.

Then the big bomb (tested 3000 miles west of here) blew up 200,000 people in a day and so no more tests happened on the ground.

Then the 50s came and farmers grew something.

The 60s: same thing.

Then the 70s: Carter’s malaise–cows probably shitting on 454 kg bombs; probably cows laying on 559mm Mk 13-2 torpedoes. One or two may have gone off in the middle of the night, but nobody really cares about the lives of cows.

Ach! The 80s: Miami Vice happened south of here. People make coke money; lots of coke is snorted. Coke mixed with nasal drip flows out of a lot of noses; boobies make lots of appearances; ladies dance wildly; big boats ply Miami’s waters. Land starts to get expensive, I guess. Cows are herded and shipped off somewhere west–like Eastern Colorado, perhaps?

And the 90s: land sells. Development companies start forming by Florida State and Clemson grads, men who like to watch football and talk REALLY LOUD, REALLY CONFIDENT; men who drink and shake hands and sign papers; men who plan to buy low and sell high. Grass grows tall on the bomb-strewn land, but no fear: Things are on the move.

2001: Muslim extremists fly planes into two American buildings in Manhattan and into the epicenter of American military planning. People get scared–really scared. Land sells. Blueprints are printed. Gates are ordered; gate makers shake hands with land developers. The bogeyman is summoned. Nobody is to be trusted. Hoarding happens; big box stores thrive and stay open past midnight. Happiness equals working in a cubicle all day and shopping at night for lots o’ things to justify the toil, the folly of profligacy (The president tells people that shopping plays a vital role in the war against the terrorists.)

2002-30 minutes until now: McMansions are built. Wagons are circled; Tikoloshe is warded off; savages are kept out. And then these old WW2 bombs are discovered one day by a shot putter who throws his shot too far at the middle school. Land suddenly drops in value; houses are put on the market; foreclosures spout like mold on a rotting pumpkin in the woods.

Tonight: Runners–me–pass by and write about it all.
————-
Postscript: after running 10 miles again tnite, I realized that the green grass around here doesn’t come from Chemlawns. Rather, it comes from running sprinklers 24/7. I passed through sprinklers the whole time. There’s lots of water around these parts and so the water has to be run through PVC pipes that feeds the grass that looks good to the people zooming by at 60 mph.

I picked the title for this posting randomly from my vast collection of David Bowie tunes–tunes like this one. (Can you find it?) Everything’s Bowie again for me. I get the most out of Bowie. I especially like his androgynous period. He goes well with borderline lunatics–with long-distance runners. Just put on Bowie at the Beeb, the two-disc set, load that sucker on your ipod and you are good to go. Run. Run. Run. When you do that, when you’ve listened to it through a few 15-milers in horse farm country (out where Hitchcock’s Marnie was filmed), you’ll start to enjoy the BBC announcer’s voice-overs as much as you’ll enjoy the music itself–all the pauses, all the British formality. Listen! Ain’t it great?

You see, I was on the way to my date with death when I put on Bowie; I put on this song.

I was on my way to take part in my semi-monthly 11-mile slog up escarpments that used to be hillocks. Everything’s a damn mountain these days. Everything takes more time. What was once the equivalent of a British officer, swagger stick in hand, walking seemingly through the hailstorm of lactic acid bullets, is now just one big mess, one fattened, slow-slapping toiling blight of humanity–one chalk-white, long-haired man with an inch of fat encasing his mid-section, keeping him warm, making his cordorouy pants harder to button.

I have no more patience.

But I do enjoy my ride in my car. I slip and slide around the roads–rubbing elbows with street blimps and trucks; with nosehair-picking bald men on bluetooth headsets; with soccer moms and landscape trucks filled to the brim with Mexicans.

Hot damn, do I love the roads around here! I love my public transportation options; I love streetblimps; I love 20 miles of angry steel.

My car is BAD ASS. Convinced that I was the ultimate hypocrite and seeking to fit into some semblance of a liberal stereotype, I rid myself of my truck (a truck, imagine that!). For a pittance, I bought a 1992 Volvo 240 with, get this, 240,000 miles. Since I have nothing to write about running besides noting how all the trails are buried in 6 inch piles of leaves that make for treacherous running on weak, injury-prone ankles, I’ll tell you about it.

1. It’s horn sounds like a rubber duckie; it’s as loud as a rubber duckie. I honked it today; nobody heard me out there in angryland.

2. The passenger door handle (made of plastic) came off in my hands the other day.

3. My heater fan sounds like a turkey; it gobbles. It’s so bad, it’s so loud, my daughter has named the fowl Bob. When I drive her to school, she has me turn on the fan so that she can say hi to Bob. If I turn the fan on at various speeds, I can mimic a conversation between us and the turkey; it’s kind of like a puppet show.

4. I bought a new stereo that plays mp3s (like Bowie and the Beeb). The catch: it won’t work if the lights are off.

5. At Pep Boyz, they had an antenna that supposedly fits my car. It didn’t. When I asked about the antenna at the Volvo dealership, the guy said no one has 1992 cars around here (remember, it’s horse farm country). But he said he could sell me one for $75. I know NPR (bing-bong liberal stereotype alert!) is good, but is it worth $75?

6. The driver’s side door, when opened drops down. So to close it, you have to lift it up. The guy who inspected my car (”You got lucky this year,” he said.) told me that my door will fall off–sometime soon. The other day a guy drove up alongside me and made a panic-looking face. “YOU’RE DOOR IS OPEN!” he mouthed. I mouthed back: “I KNOW!” and then took out my wallet and opened it, showing him that there’s nothing in there other than a cafeteria punchcard for free coffees.

7. The plastic cool things–the map holder, the compartments, the nooks and crannies for gloves and assorted circa ‘92 rich man possessions–are sun faded and crumbling. So when I get out of my car, kicking the door open while exiting, I kick out pieces of plastic (jagged shards) that fall to the ground.

8. On Volvo sticks, you have to pull up on the gearshift to go in reverse. Not so my little red cool car: you just pop that sucker into reverse (which happens to be very close to first gear). So a lot of times this happens: I’m at a stoplight. I pop it into reverse, thinking it’s first and then all the good times happen! “DAD STOP! STOP!” my daughter screams. I do this at her school when I drop her off. The soccer PTO moms now give me about 40 feet of room when they see the coolcar headed their way.

Everybody loves a beater! If you’ve never owned a beater, it’s time you got one. You trade car payments for embarassing situations, children’s theater, and near-death experiences. I highly recommend one.

…is now posted.

The world changes when it gets dark. You may not notice it when you zip around in your little car. But when you run in the city at night, you get a little show. It’s as if a curtain falls and I get to stumble around behind the stage.

I happened to run through the poor parts of town last night–past the ramshackle apartment complexes where the grass grows high and the kids play–unsupervised–on the busy street.

Some guy was at the bus stop–you see, there’s a convenient bus stop next to the shitty apartment complex that I’m writing about. I always get to see the good times going on at that bus stop. Know who rides the bus in my little town?

Guess.

The aint white–unless you count the retarded mop handler who works (and smiles) in the back room of Dunkin Donuts across the street; unless you count the drooling old man–the crazed, red-faced guy who’s missing pieces of his leather jacket. (What happened to it and where the hell is this guy perpetually “going”?)

Last night a lone person sat at that bus stop. I ran past him. He had taken off one of his shoes and was banging it incessantly on the ground. He banged it in time with the flashing caution light overhead. I don’t know what was going on. I just ran quickly across the street–dodging SUVs going infinity miles an hour enroute to go buy something

Maybe this shoe slapper, this lone bus passenger was mad at the world?

Maybe he didn’t like the local politicians planting their red, white, and blue eyesores-for-signs in front of his shit-for-an apartment complex?

Maybe he didn’t want to ride the bus? Who likes to wait for a bus? Who rides the bus in this town? Who has the patience to wait to go somewhere IN THIS TOWN?

A few miles later, in the dark, along the sides of the road (in the proverbial gutter) I passed a family of Mexicans. I don’t know where they were walking. A women was pushing a baby carriage; ahead of her, two men with sweatshirt hoods pulled over thier heads, their hands wedged in their baggy pockets rattled off 100mph Español .

The Salvation Army clothing deposit bins are on my route too; it’s always all good times over there too. Watching people scrounge for clothes at 11pm is a jolly experience. What happens is that these people, these shadows, hang out there and sift through clothes. From experience, I know that they wait for cars to drive in, bringing fresh things. They wait patiently while you dump the clothes into the bin and then when your back is turned, when you’re getting into your car to drive back to your little Spanish-style/Arts and Crafts movement-inspired home, your slice of American bohemia where you fret about organic milk and free range chicken, they pounce–tossing their scabbed and bruised tykes through the basketball hoop-sized hole in the bin as if they were organ grinder monkeys.

The organ grinder monkeys have flashlights in their hands. Their mission (handed down from the moms) is to find the best things in that dark void–the name brand items; the Gapkidz sweaters and the LittleRichKidStore trousers; last year’s fashions plucked from glimmering gold-plated racks by ueber competitive soccer moms in the superterrificglamor mall out yonder in King O’ Prussia–stuff no longer worth wearing.

As I near the end of my run, I get to run though a gauntlet of drunken college students in the middle of West Chester. Girls all decked to the nines, stumbling and laughing–dropping their cell phones, accidentially kicking them down the cobblestoned sidewalk. No more text messaging–berp-be-derp-be-do, ha, ha, flibbedy-flew!

Guys with their Phillies gear; their hats on backwards; their F-bombs; their machismo, their hubris. They’re in tow; going presumably to the same place. It’s the early twenties for these budding silverbacks and so it’s time to do stupid things and pretend that the world is one big oyster to deposit bodily fluids (seiminal fluid preferred!) into.

At the end of the run, after all is said and done, I find myself walking into Sam’s Pizza Island.

“‘One six pack of Corona,” I say with my finger in the air.

Two dirty men sit at a little plastic table and push cards back and forth. The Eagelz are on the television.

“Looks like they’re going to score,” I am told.

What do I SAY? Life these days is getting more and more difficult as I drift from one group of men to another–forever lost in the conversation, forever indifferent to balls flying in the air, to scoreboards, to cheerleaders, to hot dog vendors, fattened men–onetime sports heroes–behind tiny desks pontificating on WHATEVER.

Do you want to know something?

Do you know that a school in these parts had a public elementary school teacher that had a test and that this particular test happend to have a bonus question. Do you know what the bonus question was?

I don’t know what exactly the question was, all I know is it went supposedly something like this: “For 5 extra points, name the Phillies starting lineup.”

Of course this question was hard for the ESL kid–for the German kid too, who’s dad just brought her over here. (She can’t even find the bathroom let alone name big red’s center fielder.) And the Russian kid who’s parents can name all the Russian ice skaters going back to Katrina Kantorvich and Vasilly Smedlovinika. The Moroccan too–her father was once an elite runner and, despite his master’s status, STILL runs like 14-minute 5Ks as if he was out for walk in the Atlas mountains instead of spanking the fat asses of the underarmour-wearing, 24-minute-slogging yokels (the charlatans who are out doing striders in front of the starting lines of the Barney Fife memorial 5Ks). That little Moroccan girl: I’ll BET SHE knows who finished second in NYC yesterday.

For 5 points, name [fill in whatever the hell you happen to know]. How about that?

For 5 points, find the breach of separation of francise sporz team and state. [I am also told that the Phillies are congratulated during the morning annoucements; that the school lunches have Phillies cookies; that the green mascot thingamabobber pays visits. I hear that the buses fly world series pennants. I’ve seen pictures of the faculty: In order to show Philamaniac solidarity, they all wear jerseys with different numbers. The art teacher gets to be the famous slugger, Jobie Smeltins; the 2nd Grade special ed teacher is the catcher, Hank Graydnor. And the principle is the coach, Jerry “Bo” Budnitz. This is all true; this is what I get for my “tax” dollars.]

And you fret about God creeping into public schools: Ha!

Speaking of the almighty, now that the Phillies have found God and have touched Him gently on the face–have walked with Him and have received his bountiful blessings, it’s now time for the Eaglez to get R’ done.

It’s time to fly Eaglez fly.

On Eaglez wings–onward to victoree!
————
Robocalls for Christ

Since I live in a “swing state” that really isn’t, because there is a major ass kicking about ready to happen, I get all these Robocalls.

The jolly old Camp McCain has phoned me five times in one day. Since I have caller id, it’s obvious when it comes in that it’s going to be one of those “DID YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA HANGS OUT WITH TERRORISTS?” dealios.

“DID YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA PARTIED WITH HOLLYWOOD WHEN MCCAIN RUSHED TO WASHINGTON TO DEAL WITH THE ECONOMIC CRISIS?”

“DID YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA IS..[insert BAD thing]…BAD, BAD, BAD.

I even got a thing in the mail that shows a black and white picture of Obama in a dark room, supposedly hangin’ with BAD GUYS. You know when someone’s in black and white on this things that he’s the “BAD GUY”. And BAD GUYS make me SCARED–they hang out with BAD TERRORISTS, so when I limp into the polling station with my cane dragging, smelling like a mixture of piss and an entire pharmacy’s worth of designer drugs, I’ll put two and two together: the BAD GUY on the postcard is BAD for America. (Pssst: he also doesn’t look like you, too.) And so I won’t vote for him. I won’t even vote for his running mate, even though he’s a hardscrabble, scrib-scrabbler from Scranton. No. I will vote for the guy who looks like me–the American hero; the guy who wears a Navy hat and fights for freedom wherever there’s trouble; the man who has SERVED this great nation of ours, my friend.

My friend…

And so, since it’s that time of year, it’s time for this little gem: