A Little Late

I'm a bit late.

I think about Seth a lot, and his possible reincarnation.  It's selfish to think he'd be near me in whatever form he's in, if that kinda thing is even real.  But I do.  A spider I like at work.  A bird that seems extra friendly.  A fly that won't leave me alone.  I think they could be him, saying hello.  If there were a choice, I'd have him be near my dad instead.  I'd want his pain assuaged more than mine.

If you believe in that sort of thing, he could be someone's child right now.  Or an animal, doing what animals do.  Maybe a squirrel.  That seems to fit somehow.  He could have had hundreds of rebirths by now.  It's crazy to contemplate.

Or maybe he's everywhere, his energy spread throughout the Universe, dissipated like a spark in the atmosphere.  I don't even have a clear idea of what I believe anymore.  I'm buttressed by science, though.  Thermodynamic law holds that matter and energy are never created or destroyed, only changed.  Recycled.  Human beings are definitely matter and energy.

Another dream where he speaks to me would be nice.  I've only had the one.  Spiritual or sub-conscious it was wonderful.  Cathartic.  I couldn't make up a more cinematic and perfect dream.

I wish he could have met Jonas.  He'd be so good with him.  He'd probably be moving on a child of his by now.  He was always so friendly, so caring towards others.  Anytime I see a child with bottle cap glasses I think of him.  Once on vacation he got badly sunburned under his eyes; the thick lenses worked like magnifying glasses on the summer sun.  I have this image, probably from a photograph, of him laying exhausted on a pool chair with his little swimsuit on.  To me he will always be little; I never got to know him as an adult.

It may seem retarded, to use an example from popular culture, but I hope that one day I see him again with all my friends and loved ones like the finale of Lost.  What a misunderstood and beautiful piece of writing that was.  No one could hope for anything better.

 - David

Wordsmith

Biographer, columnist, essayist, ink slinger, journalist, playwright, reporter, scribbler, scribe, scripter, word slinger, work-for-hire, writer.  That'd be nice.

One day driving home from work I heard an advertisement for "A Night of Hope", a Christian event being held at the Scope Arena.  I was suddenly struck by the urge to attend this event and write about it, and sometime during the wee hours of the next morning a carefully worded e-mail with carefully selected examples from this blog was sent off to AltDaily.com asking if they'd be interested in having a non-militant atheist cover the event.  Later that morning I received a short reply saying, "Sure, give it a shot and we'll see what happens."  I'm barely paraphrasing there, but a week later I'm still damn excited about it.

Since then I have been consumed with the idea of becoming a freelance journalist or at least contributing writing of some kind, some where.  I bought a book on feature writing (and a new Moleskine notebook, because really, how could I not), picked up a used voice recorder, I even stayed up late recreating Patrick Bateman's business card with my contact information and website address on it.  But more than all of these trifles I've been thinking non-stop about interview questions and articles I'd like to create and actually trying to get put up somewhere.  I've been doing research, taking notes, you name it.  I guess five years of blogging and scribbling in dozens of notebooks has finally been enough practice for me to feel like I can start trying to get published.

I have three projects on the stove at present:  The Christian Thing, Smoking Ban, and Cycling Across America.  They came to me while I was either driving or getting Jonas to sleep and I'm really looking forward to interviewing people for each one.  It looks like Kasey is going to be my partner in crime and take pictures for me, too.  I even talked her into attending "A Night of Hope" with me; don't ask me how.

Even if no one wants the articles I'll still have fun and put them up anyway.  We'll just keep plugging along, having fun, and maybe one day I'll get picked up.  You never know.

So keep an eye out and if anyone wants to be interviewed just drop me a line.  It'll be great practice and you might even get a free drink out of it.

 - David

Eulogy

This made me smile. By Charles Bukowski.

with old cars, especially when you buy them second-
hand and drive them for many years
a love affair is inevitable:
you even learn to
accept their little
eccentricities:
the leaking water pump
the failing plugs
the rusted throttle arm
the reluctant carburetor
the oily engine
the dead clock
the frozen speedometer and
other sundry
defects.
you also learn all the tricks to
keep the love affair alive:
how to slam the glove compartment so that
it will stay closed,
how to slap the headlight with an open palm
in order to have
light,
how many times to pump the gas pedal
and how long to wait before
touching the starter,
and you overlook each burn hole in the
upholstery
and each spring
poking through the fabric.
your car has been in and out of
police impounds,
has been ticketed for various malfunctions:
broken wipers,
no turn signals, missing
brake light, broken tail lights, bad
brakes, excessive
exhaust and so forth
but in spite of everything
you knew you were in good hands,
there was never an accident, the
old car moved you from one place to
another,
faithfully
-the poor man's miracle.
so when that last breakdown did occur,
when the valves quit,
when the tired pistons
cracked, or the
crankshaft failed and
you sold it for
junk
-you then had to watch it carted
away
hanging there
from the back of the tow truck
wheeled off
as if it had no
soul,
the bald rear tires
the cracked back window and
the twisted license plate
were the last things you
saw, and it hurt
as if some woman you loved very
much
and lived with
year after year
had died
and now you
would never
again know
her music
her magic
her unbelievable
fidelity.

Okay, One Last Test

Either no one really cares or you guys are super patient, because I haven't heard one word about all the crap I've been blogging/tweeting/Facebooking. I'm trying to link up my Blogger with my Tumblr and it's been an interesting process.

So here is one last test, just to see how long it takes Tumblr to pull posts from DavidCake.com. So far it's something like four hours, which is ridonkulous.

Sleep tight, have a pleasant day.

- David

Unpublished Drafts Mash-Up

I'm testing some things out, and I thought it'd be fun to take drafts from unpublished posts and mash them together.  Looking back I can see why they're unpublished.  I haven't edited these, they're unfinished thoughts.

Write write write write write. I'm trying to think of a clever, subtle, humorous way to express my pain. How do you show and not tell this kind of thing? I think I "tell" too much. "Showing" is better. I have no examples or anecdotes to illustrate what's going on inside. I think about cutting off my pinky a lot.

Having a kid is awesome. It allows you to take a week off of work, then work four days, then take another five days off. Of course during your time off work you're dealing with a baby, but if you're lucky like I am you either don't mind the crying or can ignore it if something good is on TV.

Even if you didn't have the kid directly, you can still take some time off as long as you're in the vicinity. Which is exactly what my parents did earlier this week.

Originally it was just going to be my dad, but as we lay in wait at the airport to surprise him...

My maternal grandfather is a hard man. What I do know of his upbringing sounds like something out of a novel: He grew up in the badlands of Montana and raised his siblings by himself, fending for food and fighting off rattle snakes and other animals. I'm not entirely sure if he completed high school or not but he's had a handful of successful businesses and is probably one of the smartest men I know. There's nothing he can't do or teach himself. In the freezing snow of Idaho's mountains waiting for game or the sun baked man-made body of water that is Lake Powell I've never heard him complain about even the smallest things. His intelligence is of the most practical kind, ground out of real life by hand. He is a mountain man. I admire him a great deal.

Kasey is much the same person. She has an amazing sense of humor and has enough street smarts for us both. She laughs every time I tell her, but she's my hero. I've never had that in a significant other before.

As the lovely Kasey has said, "The beginning of [our] last free weekend."

Jon-asses' due date is Monday, if he doesn't show up a week after that he's getting chemically evicted.

One of the many reasons to love this neighborhood is the ferry. The river ferry is literally two minutes away and takes people back and forth from Norfolk all day for $3.00 or less. Before my schedule change I would take the ferry Downtown and ride to work, no car required. And it was lovely. Even after two years here the ferry and the river in general is still pretty magical for me and is a big part of the love I have for this place. Sadly I have to start work an hour before the first ferry run so I either drive in (like I have the past two months, *cry*) or just drive across the river, park, and ride the rest of the way. Currently there isn't a non-motorized way to get from Portsmouth to Norfolk that's not crazy out of the way and/or dangerous, which I think is ridiculous, but whatever. One day I'll be able to take my beloved ferry to work again.

 - David

Hong Kong

There's a Chinese food restaurant in Suffolk that we've been going to for years. Jonas was being fussy and refusing to sleep so we decided to take a drive and stopped in on a whim.

Kasey introduced me to Hong Kong (just "Hong Kong", not "Hong Kong Garden" or "Hong Kong #1") during one of my early pre-relocation visits. We ordered a bunch of the delicious food and took it back to the hotel room, eating on the wide bed and watching cable TV or a movie on my laptop. Even before we went broke and the food took on the extra flavor of decadent luxury Hong Kong has the best Chinese food we've ever tasted. It's located far enough out in Suffolk that the drive itself is a relaxing treat but not so far away as to become a pain.

Hong Kong resides in a small, sprawling shopping center consisting of a grocery store and perhaps eight other businesses. All around is green and trees, and this year I note a field of corn across the street. The cross-street is a simple two-lane road without street lights that winds into small neighborhoods and fields. The restaurant itself can house about forty people, I'd say, but I've never seen anyone eat there. It seems everyone gets their food to go. I've never even been asked if my order was dine in or carry out. The lack of sit-down customers doesn't translate into slow business though, as the cooks are always busy. People regularly come and go, collecting heavy bags of stiff brown paper full of warm food, the tops folded over and stapled neatly. It smells good in there, always.

The industrial strength carpet has remnants of blue in the mix but has taken on the dark gray of immeasurable foot traffic. Long thin rectangles of missing thread run at diagonal angles towards the front counter. Hong Kong is old and worn but clean, with well established character much like the family members who run it. The back-lit pictures of menu items above the counter seem impossibly old; faded and seemingly ageless I can imagine they've existed forever. There's a humongous photograph mural, also back-lit but not as faded, of forested cliffs and mountains from some far off Asian country, the surface of the plastic still smooth and glossy. Other ornamentation include scrolls and calendars, business licenses, the obligatory lucky waving cat, and "no smoking" signs, most of which are slightly yellowed with time.

Always behind the counter is a young Asian girl, although she's now probably in her mid-twenties. Everyone who works here is part of the same family and Kasey went to high school with the children, whom I'm told are the only ones who speak English. She looks exactly the same as she always has, her advancing age only sensed as something coming through from behind her skin. She has perfect English and works the simple cash register with remarkable speed and accuracy, like she's been doing it for a lifetime. Her skill has the air of extreme boredom, as does the tone even I can detect as she turns to relay my order to her older family members in their native language.

After she translates my order (vegetable lo mien) she sits behind the counter. There's never any small talk or conversation beyond the borders of order placement. At first it seems like she's looking at me, her eyes moving just above it's surface, but a second later I realize there must be a computer screen crammed behind the counter. I gather she's checking Facebook or watching videos online, which would explain the slight smile in her eyes. It's the only time I've seen any change in her expression.

Sitting at one of the identical Formica tables I realize I don't have my pen on me for the first time in lord knows how long. I tell the girl I'll be right back and head out to the car to see what I can find. I pull a green notebook from between the driver seat and center console and ask Kasey for the pen she always keeps in her wallet, but apparently Jonas has misplaced it. The urge to write get stronger with every obstacle. I know if I had a notebook and pen on me I wouldn't want to write as badly. I find a carpenter's pencil among the crap in the console and head back inside. The huge graphite notes I scribble while discreetly taking in the details of my surroundings feel like a scratch over a very needy itch, the kind that gives so much relief it's worth having the itch there in the first place.

Soon my own brown paper bag is ready and I cradle it warm against my chest as I walk out, nodding my thank yous and finishing a sentence in two-line-tall letters. I can't wait to get home and dig in to both of these.

- David