Stories

"Greg," said Nathan, "I've figured out how you tell stories."

I looked at him quizzically.

"Four sentences, seemingly unrelated, simple conclusion."

This assessment came in reaction to this story:

"I got hit by a car crossing Front Street. I pulled out from behind the Fed Ex truck, so the BMW didn't see me coming. I got thrown from the bike. I'm fine."

"They're like haiku," Nate said, "They rely on the listener to fill in the gaps."

Fi'ty Cent

The other day at the store, I was straightening up books on the carts. The carts sit outside the doors. They feature our clearance books. Just outside the door is a bus stop on the third street line, so there's often a crowd out by the carts, browsing and reading. The books are $0.50 for paperback and $1.00 for hardcover, so management (that is, Eric Papenfuse, owner of the store) is not that upset if some of them end up on the third street bus without us having seen any money. But Eric still likes us to keep the carts looking presentable, so I was out there when I heard a bike roll up behind me.

"Fi'ty cent, fi'ty cent, book for my girlfrien', fi'ty cent."

The guy on the bike laid down that little vocal line in a tone of voice that was so soft as to be menacing. I knew he was asking for money, and I knew I wasn't going to give him any. He hadn't directly addressed me, so I kept straightening, my back to him. His song trailed off into muttering, and then he said, "'scuse me sir, you got fifty cents?"

"Sorry," I said, "I'm working, and I don't have any cash."

The first part was true. The second part was not.

"Oh, you work here," he said, "Cool."

He biked on by. I see him out by the carts and biking up and down third street a lot now. I'm glad I didn't give him cash. I feel like if I had given him fifty cents then, I'd be unable to look him in the eye and have a conversation now. Sometimes he comes into the store to buy a soda, and I give him the nod that is standard parlance for "hello" around here. I still have his surprisingly catchy little ditty stuck in my head.

"Fi'ty cent, fi'ty cent /  book for my girlfrien' / fi'ty cent."

(Call Me?) Ishmael

Even in these post-shoulder-length-hair days of mine, haircuts are not a common occurrence. But yesterday, I walked around the corner to Thomson's Barber Shop (no website or Googlemaps listing; it's at Penn and Kelker streets, if you're curious). I pass by Thomson's often: it is at the corner where I turn right to go to work, or left to go to Alvaro's for cheap pizza and delicious homemade bread.

Thomson's features a beautiful little stoop and, on the glass doors, the legend "No Hanging Out."

Yet every time I walk or bike past Thomson's, there are folks hanging out on the stoop. This encouraged me -- people sticking it to the man in the smallest and most meaningful of ways: by co-opting His space for personal connections. So it surprised me to learn that one of the regulars on Thomson's stoop is Terry Thomson himself.

It was my first time in, so I didn't ask about his paradoxical signage. I mostly just sat, listening to him banter with the other barber in the shop. He took a small, thin trimmer to the edges of my hairline, giving me a "lineup." As he moved down to lineup my sideburns, he said "You wanna keep that Ishmael?"

I wasn't sure what he meant. And had he said "You wanna keep that Ishmael?" or "You wanna keep that, Ishmael?"

Then I realized he was talking about my beard, and I told him that yes, I would be keeping it. But the mystery remains: was Ishmael a colloquialism for "beard," or had he given me an impromptu nickname?

Needless to say, I would be pleased and honored to be nicknamed after Melville's enigmatic, unreliable narrator, but I would also be pleased to refer to my beard as an ishmael. 

Copy-Editing The Culture

Grammar nerds, unite.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/10/14/copy-editing-the-culture-the-rise-and-fall-of-woody-allen-as-experienced-through-his-punctuation.aspx

P.S. 

Thanks to Jeff Weaver for sharing this link:


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/10/barefoot_professor_preaches_sh.html?hpid=sec-education

Awwww, Shit

Yesterday morning, I woke up tired. Todd, Rachel, Nathan, and our neighbor Devin (flatmate of Jon and Sylvia) and I had spent the evening at a free concert. The sun woke me at 7:30, as it usually does on sunny days, and I thought, as I think every morning, "I don't want to go to that farm today."

Of course, pretty much every morning, I wake up and go to that farm, and so it was this morning, in part because it was beautiful and sunny, and in part because it was manure spreading day.

"I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it if I took today off," I said to Kirsten and Jonathan when I arrived at the farm.
"Right. I'm gonna go inside and do some odds and ends," said Kirsten. "Have fun!"

Jonathan and I took pitchforks and wheelbarrows to the ton and a half of manure that was slowly draining its liquid components onto the upper field. I'll spare you to gritty details, except to say that we spent the two and half hours of spreading work doing two things: 1) a discussion of anti-consumerism and sustainability and 2) shit puns:

"Shit happens."
"That buckwheat [the cover crop giving its life for the field] is in some deep shit now."
"It's a shit job, but somebody's gotta do it."
"Now we're gettin' shit done."
"Bullshit." [it was mostly from cows]
"That's a load of shit."
"It's like shitting a brick." [on extracting a half brick from the manure]
"You're shitting me."

Josh joined us part way through, and since it was sunny, and (as Jonathan put it) we were "working so old-fashioned," we took our shirts off and pitched the shit. Despite the smell, and because of the puns and the company, it was one of the more fun things I've done at the farm.


P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I came within a few inches of stabbing Josh in the chest with a fecal pitchfork. It didn't really fit in the rest of the post, but it happened, and I suspect that I will not hear the end of it, so I just want to own up to it now.

The Thousand Dollar Painting

Nathan, as of recently, is a member at the Harrisburg Art Association. He knows some people there, so the other day (the same day as the previous post, in fact) we went down to their gallery so he could show them some of what he's been working on.

We arrived; Todd and Rachel and I went wandering around the gallery, and when we returned, Nathan was filling out a display card and a price tag.

"3rd and Verbeke. Nathan Van Patter. $1000.00"

"I thought you didn't want to sell your work," I said.
"One thousand dollars? I don't think that'll sell," said Todd.
"Exactly," said Nathan, addressing both of our concerns.
"And if you do sell it..." said Rachel.
"Then I'll have one THOUSAND dollars!"
"Seems like a win-win to me," said Todd.
"Actually," said Brian, the curator on duty, "in the New York scene, that would be pretty reasonable."
"See?" said Nathan, "I'm reasonable."

Jon's Solution

Todd and his fiancée (and my friend and former co-worker) Rachel have been visiting, and, not to place blame, but when we left the apartment to jump Nathan's dead battery at Starbucks, one of them locked the door to the apartment.

This seems to be a reasonable and hospitable thing to do when you're staying at someone's place, but I had forgotten to warn them that neither I nor Nathan had been given keys to that door. We secure our apartment with the deadbolt, and leave the knob unlocked.

Until today, when we returned from Starbucks to find the apartment locked. Us being summer camp folks, our first instinct was to find a way to climb in, probably from our second floor neighbors' porch.

"Sylvia?" said Nathan, "Can we come in."
"I'm in the shower," she said, "Gimme a few minutes."

We started out, then, with lock jimmying -- credit card into the door frame, bobby pins into the lock -- but none of us had much experience with that kind of thing. I called the landlord, who said she or her husband could be there in an hour and a half.

"Well," I said, "We could get dinner."

Sylvia opened the door, and we scouted her porches, front and back. Too high for a boost, too much overhang for a climb, unsafe slate on the front roof; the porches were out. We adjourned to the landing in front of the door.

"We could pull the hinges," I said. We started on that one, too. The pins came out fine, but the door was too well-made to shift in its setting, and so we couldn't take it off. Jon, Sylvia's boyfriend came home.

"What's up guys?" he said.
"We're locked out," I said.
"Well, you know what I would do in this situation?"
We were interested. Jon has had a lot of interesting life experience, and probably knew more about forced entry than we did.
"What?" I said.
"I'd probably have a beer."

So we went back in to Jon and Sylvia's place and had some beers, and soon, the landlord's husband arrived, and we were back inside.

A Few Links Again

Fall (Thanks Joel).

Pirates.

Coffee (not my place of employment; my place of rest).

Music (Thanks Heather).

Narrative Truth

It was Nathan's birthday on Saturday, and yesterday his family came to visit. Todd, Nathan's older brother, gave him a can opener.

"I've been telling people that you guys have a working turntable but no can opener as a way to describe your lives."
"I like that," I said. "I'm gonna use that one from now on."
"But now you can't," said Nathan. "We have a can opener."
"No," I said, "I'm gonna say it anyway."
"But it's not true," said Todd.
"It's not categorically true."
"Categorically?" said Todd, "You can't just put words in to make it sound like you're not lying."
"Well," I said, "It's narratively true. It tells a true story about our life here."



Life Update:
We have a working turntable but no can opener.

Let The Great Summer Go

I. So We Can Have Work To Do

I know I've already talked Levi's "Go Forth" ad campaign into the ground, but it's just so good. This video, the kickoff for Levi's series on Braddock, PA, includes some inspiring lines, this one in particular:

"Maybe the world breaks on purpose, so we can have work to do."

This has inspired some theological musings about humanity, purpose, work, brokenness, etc. Please feel free to spin your own webs of meaning in the comments section, as my thoughts are incomplete. Read some Wendell Berry on the nature of good work if you need some reading.

II. Herbsttag

Speaking of reading, I'd like to share this poem. It is my favorite fall poem, and as I've been spending my time "reading, writing long letters, and wandering restlessly in the alleys while the leaves dance," it rings particularly true this fall. Here is the German text and a number of well-known translations. Here is a site that uses the poem as an exercise in translating poetry and ends up with some interesting translations in the process (don't worry--the lesson still makes sense if you don't know German). 

P.S. the wonderful Levi's Walt Whitman commercial seems to have disappeared from most of the places it was posted on youtube, but I found this one, for your re-viewing pleasure.

Erasmo

Erasmo came into the store carrying a bag of "Spicy Beef Stick Bits & Ends" and wearing army-style dog tags.

"Hey," he said, "can you guys help me out?"
"We can try," said Liz, "Whattya need?"
"I need someone who speaks French. Or Arabic."

We looked around the store. It was Saturday night, so it was fairly crowded. None of my friends there spoke French or Arabic. Nathan was also sitting at the counter.

"Why do you need that?" he said.
"Well..." Erasmo took a deep breath and ate another beef stick, "There's this pretty Moroccan chick who moved in next door to me."

"Ahhhh," we all said.
"Yeah," he said, "And playing charades hasn't been working out so well. I mean, how do you say 'you're pretty' in charades?"
"Point at something pretty?" said Liz.
"Then I'd point at myself," he said.
"And that would just confuse her," said Nathan.

We shrugged. Erasmo offered us some bits & ends (only Nathan took him up on that), and left the store for his cross-linguistic rendezvous.