Frontier Wolf--Rosemary Sutcliff

This book is part of the Dolphin Ring Series, the same series that starts off with “The Eagle of the Ninth”, which the recently released movie, “The Eagle” was based on. I don't know if the movie is any good, as I have yet to see it. But I do know that Ms. Sutcliff's books have been flying off my library's shelves. I haven't been able to snag a single one. My boss, who enjoyed reading her books back when he was a pup, felt sorry for me and left me this book on my desk the other day with a post-it note saying, “Enjoy!” So with all of the hype for the movie, plus Ancient Rome being one of my favorite subjects, I was anxious to crack it open.

First of all, the research she did for this book, and I'm sure the others as well, was amazing. She really went above and beyond to get all of the details (scenery, names, food, clothes, etc...) just right, and I really appreciated that. She even has an author's note prefacing the text stating she was reluctant to publish this book because there had yet to be any evidence of Roman occupation found matching the area (environs of Edinburgh) and the date (343 AD). She had the same misgivings for the first book in the series, but published anyways, and 25 years later they were digging up remains of the Second Legion all over where it was set (Exeter).

And as for the plot, it really moved along. She could definitely spin a good yarn, and I could see this book being really popular with younger readers.

But there was one area where I thought she was lacking: character development. And for me, that's pretty much the most important aspect of a novel. You could write a book where all the main character does is sit on the couch and drink beer all day, but if I feel like I have been made privy to his innermost thoughts, desires, regrets, etc... I will come away feeling like the book was worthwhile.

Now, as this is categorized as a young adult book, I was hesitant to say anything negative about it. But then I remembered that the Harry Potter series, as well as Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, were geared towards a younger audience, and I couldn't get enough of those. And why? Fascinating characters who I will always remember.

The Poems of Exile - Ovid

Why was Ovid banished to Tomis? No one really knows for sure. Augustus’ daughter Julia had already been banished for her over-the-top promiscuous lifestyle, and we know that Ovid’s poetry definitely promoted that sort of thing. He was even asked by the emperor to clean it up. Of course, he refused. Was his refusal perceived as treason? Did Augustus ultimately blame him for his daughter’s behavior? Or did it come out that he had been one of her paramours? Who knows.

Some have said that banishment from Rome during its flowering age was worse than being executed. At least when you’re dead, all of your trials and hardships are dead with you. But they are only intensified when you ponder that all of your friends and family are still in the bosom of Rome, enjoying all it has to offer, and you’re stuck in some faraway hell hole. It would seem Ovid was of this mind.

Tomis, modern day Constanţa, Romania, on the Black Sea coast, is now a resort. Look it up. It’s gorgeous! Nice beach, great weather, what’s not to like? But did Ovid see it like that? No, he hated it. And he despised the yokels he was now forced to live amongst. To him, they were little more than animals.

But to them, he was a celebrity. They felt honored that he was now living with them, practically worshipped him, and wanted nothing more than to cater to his every whim. Yet he barely tolerated them and ran them down every chance he could in his letters. They weren’t aware of his true feelings about them until someone happened to read one of his outgoing letters to his wife, where, as usual, he is running them down. Word quickly gets around about how he really feels about them, and from then on they want nothing to do with him. He then finds out what it really means to be banished.

The stereotypical Roman was supposed to be stoical, practical, tough, etc.. These letters reveal Ovid to be anything but. Instead of accepting his fate, and trying to make the best of his situation, Ovid whines and complains to no end. He begs his wife, who remained in Rome, to plead with Augustus for forgiveness. Did she? I doubt it. She was probably glad to be rid of him.

Although I did enjoy reading it (the dude could write, you know), I sometimes found myself shouting at him to just shut up and stop whining already. Just accept your fate and deal with it! You call yourself a roman?! You’re worthless and weak! It’s a pity that someone who possessed such poetic talent was ultimately reduced to being a pathetic, miserable little man.

The Know-It-All by A. J. Jacobs

The Know-It-All is a wonderful book that charts the progress through the author's life one year of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica set. Aside from imparting some of the knowledge he is picking up from the books, he lets us into his life as well (a lot happens as he works his way through the alphabet.) His sense of humor is self-effacing and infectious. I haven't laughed so much in a while (I need to get out more, apparently.)

A couple of years ago, my wife talked me into giving away my set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I really hadn't touched them since high school, but did have an emotional attachment to them. My parents bought them for me when I was a kid, to help me out in school. That was when EB had door to door salesmen peddling them. I guess they represented my parents' support for me, their willingness to do whatever it took to help me out, because the set wasn't cheap. And we weren't rich.

I actually had the idea of reading the whole set at one time. I think I must've gotten the idea from the movie, Dr. No, when the character of Honey Rider, played by Ursula Andress, told Bond that she had started reading the encyclopedia from A-Z when she was 8. But of course, I never did. There aren't too many goals in my life that I have actually followed through on, so no surprise there. But reading this book makes me wish I had.

Seventy Steps

It takes me seventy steps to get from my office to the other end of the warehouse where the water fountain is. This is where I can get water to make coffee for myself in the morning. Seventy steps. At about three feet per step, the distance is around 210 feet. The warehouse is not heated.

I often imagine that I am stationed somewhere in Antarctica, and I am walking out of my hut, braving the icy wind and snow to get to another hut that contains the water I need. I don’t know why they would not think enough of me to not give me water in my hut. I don’t even know who “they” are, and furthermore, exactly what I am supposed to be doing in such a place. I am probably being punished for some offense I committed when I was stationed in a sunnier, warmer locale, where every hut has easy access to water. Apparently I was never informed as to what this offense was, so now I begin to think I am some character in a Kafka novel. Except that Kafka is now dead, and he never wrote such a book. But he could have.

My office, though supposedly “heated,” is never warm enough. So I will usually keep my leather jacket and wool watch cap on. Also, the hot coffee helps. The black wool watch cap used to belong to my father. It is my most cherished material possession. I’m not sure why. I don’t believe it meant all that much to him. But if I were to lose it, my world would fall apart.

The coffee maker is quirky. I have to tilt the glass canister just so when the coffee is brewing, otherwise it will not drip down into it, but stay in the part where the grounds are, and eventually overflow. I sometimes forget to do this, and will have quite a mess to clean up—and no coffee, to boot, which is even worse. Because then I have to trudge across the frozen tundra again to get water, and this is really a bad way to start the day.

I keep coffee beans in a cylindrical plastic container, that holds 1.8 L/61 Oz./1.9 Qt. It says so right on the bottom of the container. I am confused as to why someone would manufacture a container that holds this specific amount, just short of a whole number for either quarts or liters. It doesn’t seem logical. The ounce part doesn’t really bother me—it could be 61 oz., 62 oz., 63 oz., etc…, I wouldn’t mind (but one thing that does bother me is why the abbreviation for ounce is oz., when there isn’t even a “z” in ounce—that is irksome). If they had made the container a little bit bigger, increasing the volume by only 4 ounces to 65 ounces (see, I would rather take the extra time and write out “ounces” as opposed to “oz.,” because, as I said, it really doesn’t make sense) I could have had a container that held 2 qt.’s (I don’t mind writing “qt” because at least those letters are actually in the word). Given the choice between a container holding 1.9 quarts or one holding 2 quarts, I’m going to choose the 2 quart one every time (actually, I probably should just write the whole word out, because really, am I saving that much time by condensing a five letter word down to two letters?)

I do not like using pre-ground coffee. I prefer to grind the beans myself. That way I know that there is only coffee in my coffee. If it were already ground, someone could have put anything in there, and I would never know it (I once opened up a can of tuna, and found a piece of rubber in there—I don’t eat tuna anymore). I would probably notice it when I drank the coffee, but I might not. It could be some tasteless, slow acting agent, whose effects would not be noticed until years later. Then it would be too late. I always put five scoops of beans into the grinder.

I drink my coffee black, because I don’t like mixing liquids together. Someone once told me that a chemical reaction occurred when milk (or cream) was added to coffee, completely changing the molecular structure of the resulting beverage. This person always drank his coffee with cream, and seemed proud of the fact that this was taking place in his cup. I couldn’t understand why, since it sounded too much like something some mad scientist would go in for, like a Dr. Jekyl, and I knew I didn’t want to turn into a Mr. Hyde.

The coffee cup I use is black on the outside and green on the inside. It has two pictures of Albert Einstein holding yet another coffee cup that says “I ♥ coffee. On the white handle (my coffee cup, not his, you really can’t see if there is any writing on the handle of his coffee cup—it’s much too small) it says, ♥ coffee makes me smart ♥. It is my favorite coffee cup. I’m not really sure why. There are way too many pictures of hearts (four in all) on it. And I think it would have been better if the coffee cup he was holding was the same as my coffee cup, which would mean that the coffee cup depicted on his coffee cup would be the same one he and I was holding, and so on, thus implying infinite regression. Then I could contemplate infinity while drinking my coffee.

The bathrooms are located where the water fountain is. There is a men's room and a ladies' room, even though there are no women working here. I sometimes have to wait a long time to use the bathroom, while the ladies' room is unoccupied. I cannot make myself use it, even though they are identical except for the sign. I am assuming they are identical, because I have never actually looked inside the ladies’ room. For all I know there could be a chaise lounge and house plants in there. Other workers do not have the same high standards as I do, since I have seen them come out of there when the men’s room is occupied. I have never asked them what was in there, because I prefer not to talk to a man who would have the audacity to use the ladies’ room.

Someone has put a metal chair in the men’s room. I’m not really sure why, unless they had the notion they needed to rest, and not necessarily use the bathroom. But they could’ve just as easily sat on the toilet and rested. If they are in there just taking a rest, that would be very inconsiderate to me, since I am standing outside, trying not to pee in my pants, and they really could have rested anywhere, not necessarily in the bathroom, which should be reserved for the specific purpose of relieving oneself.

The ideal place for the chair should really be outside the bathroom, so I could sit down while I’m waiting. There are times when I do not feel like standing outside the bathroom in the cold, shivering while trying not to pee in my pants, waiting for it to become available, and so will walk the 210 feet back to my office, where I will usually drink more coffee, and exacerbate my already uncomfortable condition. Then I will make the arduous trek back to the bathroom, just in time to see someone exiting it, and another going in ahead of me.

I am writing all of this with a bare pencil. In my last meeting, I scraped off all of the yellow coating with my thumbnail. I don’t like the coating on pencils, or any writing, such as who made it, or what number it is. I believe all pencils should be a No. 2 (here we go again, there is no “o” in number), and leave it at that. Besides, pencils should be doing the writing, no one should be writing “on” the pencils. I am wondering if pencils can be bought with no coating or writing. And if so, would I have to pay more for such a pencil? This would not be fair, if that were the case, because it should be cheaper to manufacture such a pencil. It took me the whole meeting to scrape it off.

I never speak during meetings, unless I have to. While I do have a fear of public speaking, that is not why I do not speak. I try to look as if I am very busy during the meeting, too busy to even talk. This is not easy, especially when I am only busy trying to scrape off the coating on my pencil. If my boss perceives that I am too busy to even contribute anything in the meeting, he will not give me extra work. In reality, I am not busy at all in my job. I used to be, but over the years, I have managed to figure out how to do my job in a very short amount of time. If he were to know this, and give me extra duties, I would not have time to do the really important things, like scraping off the coatings on my pencils, or writing about it.

As I think on it some more, it could be that they put the coating on the pencils to keep you from getting a splinter in your finger. I really hadn’t thought of that before. Now I’m beginning to get concerned that I might hurt myself. I had better procure some sandpaper, and make extra certain this will not happen.

When I was a child, I used to watch Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood every day. It was my favorite show. On one episode, he got a splinter in his finger, and so he took the opportunity to show everyone what you were supposed to do when this happened. First, he got a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass and carefully extracted the splinter. Then he washed the damaged finger with soap and water. Then it was necessary to treat it with iodine, to make sure it didn’t get infected. He finished by putting on some antibiotic salve, before carefully applying a bandage to it. I stopped watching Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood after that, because I surmised from all of this that he was a wimp. The only thing I did when getting a splinter was pull it out with my teeth, and then go about my business.

Now that I’m as old as he was when he made that episode, I understand the wisdom and efficacy of his instructions. I wish I could write to him to apologize for being so callous in thinking ill of him and not watching his show anymore. But he never knew me or knew I stopped watching his show. Plus, he’s dead.

Binary from Beyond

She died on a Thursday in January. January 27, 2005, to be exact. Almost 6 years now. Funny, it doesn’t seem that long ago. I still miss her terribly. They say you never really get over the death of a loved one, you just learn to live with it. My dad has been dead for about 15 years, but it seems like a lifetime ago, the memory of him is so distant. I guess it’s because we were never really that close. But my mom and I were very close. I always confided in her, and felt I could tell her anything. So her absence still hurts.

After my dad died, and my mom was living alone, she came up with a way to let me know she was alright, since she had a bad heart. She would send me a page each morning. She started out paging the last four digits of her phone number. But she soon changed that to just a “1.” “I’m just letting you know I woke up,” she said, “I don’t want you to think you have to call me.” Of course I always would. I would get the page around the time I got to work, so before doing anything else, I would give her a call. I would call her in the evening, too, to see how her day had been.

Over the years, the “1” code had evolved into a random series of 1’s and 0’s. I’m not sure why she had added the zeroes. When you look at a telephone, there is a good deal of numerical real estate between the zero and the one. And it’s not like my mom was conversant in binary code.

She had told me earlier that week, Tuesday, I think it was, that she had recently gotten a “visitation” from dad. It was the middle of the night, and she heard footsteps. She got up to investigate, and saw my dad sitting at the dining table, where he had always sat, reading the newspaper. “It must’ve been a dream, of course,” she admitted. “But it seemed so real.” When I asked if he had said anything, she said no. But I sensed she was holding something back from me.

When my father-in-law found her, she was slumped over the dining table, in the spot where she had seen my dad. She had been going through her mail, and the standalone burner she used to boil water for coffee was still on and had melted the teapot.

Since her death, I’ve thought a lot about her dream, visitation, whatever it was. It’s the one little space in my mind that keeps me from being 100% certain there is nothing beyond this life. My one little ray of hope.

After I had finally gotten back to work, I realized I still had the last two pages she had sent me. For weeks I would look at those pages every morning, knowing I would never get them again. They were somehow a comfort to me, a tether to my dead mother.

Finally, one day the worst happened. My pager went dead. The pages from her were gone. It was almost like losing her again. I know it seems silly, but that was what it felt like.

The title of this blog is not completely accurate, of course. She was still alive when she sent me those pages. There are still some days when I will look at my pager, hoping to see those 1’s and 0’s. Of course, I know it’s not going to happen. So here’s some to you, Mom and Dad: 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

Stuck in the doldrums

Doldrums:

1. area near the equator, lacking in any wind, where sailing vessels can be stuck for weeks
2. state of boredom, malaise, apathy or lack of interest; despondent, in a slump

Since I'm land-locked, obviously I am suffering from the second definition. It's been going on for some time now. I thought that maybe writing about it might help. It is something I feel I need to work through myself. Years ago, when I was going through a difficult time, I went to see a psychologist. I didn't get the feeling she gave a rat's ass about anything I was spilling my guts about, especially since she spent the whole time checking the clock. As soon as my 30 minutes was up, the only "help" she gave me was to refer me to a psychiatrist friend of hers, so he could prescribe me anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds. I left her office feeling more fucked up than when I went in. So no more therapists for me.

But, to be honest with myself, I suppose I am experiencing some form of depression. Nothing so serious that I can't get out of bed, or feeling the need of blowing my brains out. But it has been difficult getting interested in anything of late.

I suppose I could ascribe it to a whole host of things. Our cash-flow issues, feeling sorry that my folks are no longer here, or maybe just good old existential angst. Actually, that last one has been weighing on my mind quite a bit.

Since I lost my faith, it's been hard trying to understand my place on this earth, and what the hell is going to happen after I'm gone. I just can't accept total non-existence. There just has to be something beyond! I would choose an eternity in hell to not existing at all.

Well, that's all I feel like writing about now. Maybe more later.

Weekend in the country

We left early Saturday morning to spend the weekend at our place in the country. We were greeted upon our arrival by the caretakers of our humble little cottage.


Wolf Spider!


Garden Spider!

Once pleasantries were exchanged, it was time to get to work, and cut some grass. I had cleverly hidden my riding mower in the woods, so the fucking thieves who have already stolen my air compressor and chainsaw would never find it. Unfortunately something else found it.

This was one of a pair of buzzards who were using my mower as a base of operations. Which means, of course, they shit all over it.

Nothing like the pungent aroma of buzzard guano. At least I had it covered.