Appetite for...Learnin'

(Cross-posted via the SmallBox blog.)

I don't wanna be that guy, but I love learning. In my mind's eye, I'm constantly walking around in tweed, sucking thoughtfully on a pipe while carefully considering matters of academia. In real life, though–it's more of a melange. A stack of New Yorker magazines a foot high lies under my lamp, overfilling my brain with media criticism, international intrigue, and thoughtful profiles.

I've been known to keep the same book checked out from the library for over a year–usually for mastering a series of recipes. As a kid, I memorized baseball statistics for random regurgitation–a trait that recurs each time I check Baseball Reference to see how many triples Robin Yount hit for as Brewer.

(126 triples despite non-aerodynamic hair.)

This year, I felt like I learned a great deal–though I always feel like my appetite for learning makes me more cognizant of the exponential growth of things I don't know. Here's a quick run-down on five of 2012's life lessons:

• To bake seriously–get a bench knife immediately. And when the retail shop hasn't heard of a bench knife, call it by its other name, "pastry scraper." Not only is it minimally cool and stainless steel, but you'll feel like a bad-ass when you utilize it to shape a perfectly round boule.

(Clean off immediately after using unless you want yer dough to turn to concrete.)

• When flying internationally, allow for more than 3 hours layover time. Airlines will sell any combination of tickets to anyone, and customs agents will look at you like the poor (and getting ready to be way-more-poor) sap that you are. Also, flying through Heathrow is a fool's errand.

• Drumming is hard. Keeping 8 songs in your head at once is even harder. The only thing that makes it easier? Practicing all the time. Despite my ungainly, quasi-proficiency, I'm convinced that becoming a "good drummer" is about as likely as shape-shifting into a giraffe. But! That doesn't mean I can't develop my own flavor...

(This is what I drum like in my head.)

• Buying a bed is totally worth it. After waking up & feeling like hot trash for a number of months (and having said I'd buy a bed for multiple years)–we finally bit the bullet late this Fall on a low-platform & firm foam memory mattress. Now, each morning I feel outstanding, and every night, I exclaim loud enough for my neighbors to hear, "This bed is @#$%^&! awesome."

(Elli & Silva post-American breakfast.)

• Couchsurfing has been restorative to my sense of & belief in humanity. Though we tried & failed to utilize it overseas, we've hosted guests here in Indianapolis. Guests that have been intelligent, charming, and way closer to old friends than wandering strangers. Best of all, they're a great antidote to the constant stream of negative media, screaming neighbors (pre-move!), and the general feeling of dissatisfaction that can wedge into your life like an invisible splinter. I hope 2013 brings a flood of similar experiences.

(Part of SmallBox's ThinkKit project.)

Out There, In the Yard: ...Wooves

Wooves started out as a joke, a riff; and a completely different name (abbreviated "D's P"). Two old roommates, friends from High School, that I didn't befriend till after High School–riffing is what we do best. Either everyone's life is a well-written absurdist comedy, or we really are the funniest group of males since the Blues Brothers. Rapier wits, and all that. Anyhow.

(The first EP. Crucial real Polaroid.)
We all love music. I've played in a band for years, as had Andy. In the meantime, Tyler had listened to more music than the both of us combined. It seemed only natural that, more than four years after moving out, now living in separate cities–now was the ideal time to make a record together.

(Breaks are essential to refueling your creativity. And tacos.)

Perhaps originally inspired by the album-in-a-month challenge, and then later inspired by late nights that began with pints and ended with Jim Beam Rye, we decided that we should try our hand. We were literate, students of rock and roll, played rock and roll–but aside from Andy, had never really written before. And certainly never recorded/engineered anything beyond aborted attempts at tape collage. The year of 30 was beginning to stare us down, and we were creatively unfulfilled.

(Writing is hard. Especially in a dark, dank basement. With curtains leftover from the 60s.)

In November of 2011, we locked ourselves in my basement with a drumset, some rudimentary amps, and a 4-track. We emerged with 7 tracks, I slapped a few overdubs on top, and we released them as basement demos in February. Somewhere in there, we decided, "Hey, this isn't as bad as it should be. We should probably get a real name." We made a pact to record a full-length by Thanksgiving 2012–with the caveat of not writing anything aside from the spare weekends during which we'd bury ourselves in the makeshift basement studio for 8 hours.

(Jim doesn't judge. But he does make singing easier.)

"Wooves" (a Hoosier-esque mispronunciation of "wolves") won unanimous vote over Belgian drafts, frites, and a sausage plate at the Hopleaf. Though Andy tried to naysay the following day, it was sealed. Over the coming months, we had four or five sessions, including a two-day affair that challenged our creative wells, busted our equipment, constantly edited, revised, and revisited, increased my drumming skills, and, against all odds, resulted in a batch of songs that we were surprisingly...proud of creating. By ourselves.

I hope I'm not exaggerating when I describe it as illuminating.

No, they weren't anything glamorous or refined, just honest portrayals of the creation of something from naught–forming glass out of sand is impressive, no matter how crude your glass. Oh, and it was a lot of fucking fun. So much so, that we've already started planning for LP2, while firming up release plans for the first one, YAWN.

(Part of SmallBox's ThinkKit project.)

One Hundred Ninety-Nine

Last year, I ran. A lot. Running became a tonic, an escape, a medicine, an out; and eventually, a necessity to my mental well-being. At the end of it all, I stated a goal of 200 runs for 2012.

Thanks to a lot of anal record-keeping, unusually warm weather, and a gym membership; as of today, my total stands at 199 runs. They've come in all varieties.

• The breathless, weightless, wind-at-your-back feeling that propelled me to my first sub-35:00 five-miler.

• The July afternoon, heat index of 108, sweat rolling off my body in undulating sheets, the post-run stretch a constellation of droplets pouring onto my porch with the slightest motion of body.

• The busy weekend, accelerating to pass a waddling stroller-parent combo, or gel-pack sporting, headphone-wearing, all-weather clad chump; I love it when my breathing rate doesn't increase even when speeding up.

• The slow slog into a biting wind, wiping away tears from the cold, while still digesting a thick knot of honey ham and turkey breast...ah, the day-after-Thanksgiving run.

My favorite? The zen run where you lock into a pace, hold it, and feel like you're not even moving, like you're on an invisible conveyor stretching to some foreign horizon, feet slapping down on asphalt feels healing and restorative, like you're running on cotton balls or grass as plush as the ChemLawn-funk smelling yard down the block. One of these runs every two weeks is a blessing, a reminder why I run. And it's still an essential part of my mental well-being. The only things I spent more time doing in 2012? I'd wager on eating, cooking/planning meals, and sleeping.

(199 runs, 906.5 miles. For those keeping track at home...er, me.)

(Part of SmallBox's ThinkKit project.)

Trip: Two (German Breakfasts, Captain Beefheart, Green Sauce Addiction)

Despite our best-laid plans to rise early and grab each day of the trip by the tender bits, we slept. And slept. And kept sleeping. By the time we arose, Lydia had laid out a hotel-worthy spread on the small kitchen table. I felt like the rock star that I never was. This was also the beginning of our month-long love affair with German, and Continental breakfasts.

(Continental as in, the Continent of Europe. Not "Continental" as in rising from your faded mauve bedspread in an anonymous Interstate hotel that's more Soviet bloc than 'Merican, padding down the taupe staircase to a small room blaring ticker-tape talking-head news-babble, to hotplates filled with unripened melon, brown-and-serve mystery links, and waffle batter that is the consistency of a loogie. And to think I used to love staying in hotels.)

The base of the German breakfast is, of course, bread. But not an CO2-aerated loaf of fluff; no. In this case, small rolls known as "brötchen", literally, "little bread." Topped with sesame seeds, or pumpkin seeds, or thoroughly burnished pumpernickel, they are baked each morning and best fresh (although later they become delightfully crusty).

At approximately 11:30 in this photo; notice the spread of five spreads.
Homemade banana jam; Nutella (of course); a marzipan spread (my new drug); a second homemade jam; and peanut butter (I think). Yowza.

Atop the bread, use one of the above spreads, or cold cuts and cheese. Or spreadable cheese—a magical substance tough to find on this side of the pond, plain or flavored with herbs or seasoning. Later in our journey I would discover quark, a soft, spreadable-yet-agreeably-sour cheese whose closest relative would be cream/neufchatel. Except quark is clearly the wealthy, sexy relative in this family tree.

Eggs are soft-boiled, and served in a little egg-holder. Amelia immediately found these adorable—though I don't think any have turned up in our house yet. The Germans we were around cracked off the top piece (okay, they scalped their egg), seasoning as they ate the egg out of the shell-as-vessel. Handy, and a hell of a lot easier & less messy than peeling. And Lydia had fresh fruit. And yogurt. And clementines. And juice. And coffee. How did we make it out of the house again?

After post-breakfast lazing, we finally coffee-d up enough to hop a quick train back to Frankfurt, where the day & sky became increasingly gray. We headed for the Museum für Kunsthandwerk (Museum for Handicrafts...basically), which had some large historical book-art exhibits. Lydia (studying rare books) hadn't made it yet, and as I'd recently left the library, and Amelia knows some bookbinding, we had to go. Housed in a modern, white-and-large-windowed building with slowly sloping lamps and open display rooms, we picked through a large room full of small-run books you could handle. A personal highlight was a book of Beefheart poems & lyrics alongside his paintings.

("The dust blows forward 'n dust blows back /
And the wind blows black thru the sky /
And the smokestack blows up in suns eye")
Captain Beefheart, "The Dust Blows Forward And The Dust Blows Back" from Trout Mask Replica

(Amelia & Lydia in front of yellow Forsythia. The Main River runs through the background. I think we'd just eaten, hunched over on a blustery riverside bench, an amazing couscous salad, and beet salad, and marzipan roll, all from a convenience store in the train station. Beats snapping into a Slim Jim.)

After snagging some quick looks at some amazing graphic Japanese advertising, and funky furniture from the 60s and 70s, we headed out just before closing, walking along the Main till we crossed on the Altë Brucke, which was covered in clumps of cheaply-inscribed padlocks bearing pithy love claims. We continued walking and sight-gazing all around the reconstructed Altstadt (rebuilt after the war to look "old", as very few buildings survived).

(Frankfurt am Main. I told you it was gray. I also failed to read my phone's instructions, and thus took VGA-quality pictures for the entirety of the trip. I have no excuse for my pathetic lack of preparation.)

Of course we peeked in the wonderful red sandstone Frankfurt Dom, saw some cool modern architecture in a block full of townhouses, had our minds blown by the seemingly endless parade of pedestrian-friendly/only zones, saw a mall with a hole through the roof (take that, Circle Center), viewed the skyline from a 6th floor rooftop pedestal full of French teens...and then, finally were starving enough to seek out a meat-filled German dinner.

(On the way up to the viewing pedestal, we scooted via escalator past various women's clothing joints who featured, in various states of weathering, faded coloration, and creatively cut; shirts/vests/swimsuits/pants made out of or containing the American flag. Odd. This wouldn't be the last time I was confused by German fashion choices.)

Just off a main shopping artery, we curled down a staircase to Apfelwein Klaus, a Frankfurt traditional German restaurant featuring the regional specialty...Apfelwein. The dimly-chandeliered, rustic-cellar of a room had long wooden tables with benches on either side, and coat hooks lining the stone walls. I was into the idea before we even sat down to peruse the meat-heavy menu. Since the ladies were set on varieties of Schnitzel, I had to be the odd-one-out and ordered Tafelspitz, which turned out to be an enormous, simmered hunk of tri-tip beef. It was drowning in another regional specialty, which I would soon worship at the altar of: Grüne Soße. A beautiful, light-but-creamy medley of hardboiled-egg, vinegar, oil, and seven heavenly herbs, I believe I threatened (and not idly) to bathe in the stuff.

(The worst picture of a meal. Ever. I didn't want to give myself away as a tourist by using a flash. Even though I dumbly looked up when the waitress asked me a simple question. Two schnitzels in the background, Tafelspitz in the foreground, sidled by a bowl of Grüne Soße that I gamely tried to finish by dipping any leftover meat scraps in. And possibly eating with a spoon. Freak.)

The Apfelwein was much drier than any American version would be---almost like a sour-edged, punchy cider. We emerged from the meat-booze cellar into the freshly-minted night air, and strode around to clear heads and eyes. We found our way into a train station just opposite the opera house, and rode back to Mainz. I bought a bottle of beer at the station to accompany our walk back to the apartment. Lydia's roommates Till, Nanette, and Johannes were all hanging out at the kitchen table, and lured by Johannes's very kind offer of more beer, we/I stayed up until the wee hours talking politics, jobs, gas prices, the word "fuck", hitchhiking, airports, and more.

(Frankfurt's opera house at night. I believe kids were skateboarding on its steps during the late afternoon, while around the side of the building, rich folk walked down a red carpet to a fancy bistro. These two things seem to co-exist peacefully, another attribute of the ability to live with people that seemed so prevalent throughout our jaunt. As Americans, it seems like we're always trying to get away, to not hear our neighbors, to erect a fence or buy land out in the boonies...)

Drought

Mostly written while running today. Internally.
I am proud of this poem's longest line.

Drought

At 6:30 pm, I don a red tank,
polyester, stiff with sweat-salt.
A 1992 Kokomo Relays white-mesh
baseball cap.

It is 95-degrees.
75-percent humidity.

Stepping outside is like squeezing
into a teenage girl's khakis.
Nuts pressed into your leg
tighter than a bad tattoo.

It's hotter than a rattlesnake's asshole.

Midway through the jog,
It begins to rain.
At first, scarce drops,
are hotter than my body.

"Fuck you," I say to the sky.
The sky is smarmy,
ignores my complaint,
slaps hot, stinging beads of water
down on me at random.

I wonder if, in the stratosphere,
birds are pissing on me.

Do birds piss?

When the rain hits the pavement,
yards in-front of a charging city bus,
it sizzles in petroleum puddles,
I can smell its foul steam.

Like barbecue smoked in gasoline.

Trip: Preface

TODAY

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All
the stuff they've always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

Frank O'Hara, 1950

For the duration of our trip, a time period approaching 35 days in reality; though at times it felt infinite like 10 p.m. sunsets in beautiful Rheinland, and painfully short while sitting in the molded-plastic airport terminal chairs that fail to conform to any part of the human body; for the duration, one thought kept returning to my head, a thought that I last felt strongly when I traveled out West in August of 2011.

"Oh wow...we are all alive in this one place...this is most fantastic." I am in this place, at a specific pin-prick in time, a feeling that should not go unnoticed, yet one that spirals away down the drain of passing weeks, no matter how hard you pull at the slippery tendrils of thought. And yet, it was a good feeling each time, a warm wash of wonderment at the vastness of humanity; the transport systems that whirled us to-and-fro like seedlings; the kindness, generosity, and understanding of new & old friends.

It's possible that this powerful notion is one that is only borne of wanderlust, only chemically occurs in my insides when I am plucked from the asphalt & dusty squares of grass I usually inhabit, and via wheel and rail and wing, replanted somewhere new, somewhere my neurons can freshly process, full of new sounds (the screeeeee of tram brakes), new words (Dom, nadrazi, pannenkoeken), new smells (pungent, urine-inflected Underground stations, tidy Doner shops, hedge-lined pastures). It is possible I have trained myself to feel this way only upon escaping a self-imposed sense of normalcy; and yet, I simultaneously hope that it is & isn't, that I don't lose the sense of wonder at the world; and that I don't have to leave a place in order to feel a strange sense of life, to find, shape, and develop meaning out of the absurd chaos of humanity, to not lose anything in returning. To be changed, and to propagate further change.

"They do have meaning. They're strong as rocks."

In front of a windmill, Apr. 1, Mainz.

january'd

Woody Allen's Alice

2010 Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove

Daniel Kalder's absurd Russian travelogue, Strange Telescopes.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar, compendium of food+wartime writing.

"Lo Boob Oscillator" off of Stereolab's compilation, Switched On, Vol. 2.

"Seneca" off of Tortoise's LP, Standards.