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"A friend asked yesterday if this blog is addressed to anyone in particular? I said yes– it’s a love letter to someone I haven’t met yet."
CarrollBlog 08.31
Stepping onto the tram, I'm overwhelmed by the smell of fresh apple. Looking around, I can't see anyone eating an apple so the aroma becomes even more lovely and mysterious. So fresh, so out of place in this normally stuffy closed space. I'm almost hesitant to get off a few stops later, back to the street and its everyday stink. It reminds me of how wonderfully an orange suddenly perfumes a room when you split its peel with your thumbs to open it.
CarrollBlog 08.29
this in from a friend on their way to New Orleans to participate in the search and rescue effort after the hurricane there:
I’m in a cafeteria of a local elementary school awaiting the buses that will take our group to Louisiana. We have just been briefed about the job ahead of us.
A complete mandatory evacuation of New Orleans has been ordered, but with more than 15 percent of the population having no transportation (they rely on public trans) there are thousands of people who will be staying in the city. The football stadium is being opened as a “refuge of last resort” (along with nine other sites) for those who have no where else to go, and as always in a situation like this, there are those people who feel they can “ride out the storm.”
Those are the people who we are going to Louisiana to search for and rescue when the storm has passes, if it’s possible.
Sustained winds are expected to be at approximately 165 mph when the storms hits with gust to 190. It was explained to us that only 7 percent of the structures in New Orleans can withstand that wind velocity. The city, which sits below sea-level, is expected to be under upwards of 15 feet of water when all is said and done. The surge itself is estimated to be at greater than 20 feet. The levee system is expected to break down even before the eye passes over the city.
Any shift off the storm’s track won’t help either. If landfall is to the west of New Orleans, the winds may not be so high (but what’s the difference really between 140 and 160? They’re both going to cause catastrophic damage), but the rain and flooding will be worse, as the right upper quadrant of any storm carries the most water. If landfall is to the East, well, that’s a better scenario, but just minimally and the chances of that happening anyway are slim.
The people I’m with are very quiet right now. We’ve just been given the number of lives that emergency ops is expecting to lose in this storm. The press is saying that tens of thousands of lives could be lost, but we’ve been told to expect in the area of 3000 to 9000 dead or missing.
The risks to these rescue personnel are enormous; anytime you go into an unknown situation there are risks; when you go into something knowing what the risks are, it’s a little safer but still very scary. As I watched families of these brave people say their good-byes, they did it with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces that we know are just there for encouragement.
We will travel throughout the night and stage as close as we can to the city with emergency ops watching the storm reports from the National Hurricane Center and making the determination about how far we go and when we move in for real.
Our group is mostly paramedics and firefighters. These people were trained to save lives. The group going with us is strictly search and recovery. They were trained to hunt out and find the dead. Everyone here is praying (whether they believe or not) that our group is needed more.
CarrollBlog 08.28
from a friend:
One of the things that Nikko and I wanted to do when we were at the Grand Canyon was to watch the sun set into that enormous hole. Several tour companies and bus routes take massive numbers of people up to the “best” viewing areas every night, but that’s not how I wanted to see it. While in a gift shop on our second day in town, I asked the guy behind the cash register if he knew a quieter spot from which we could view nature's show. He was elderly, a nice guy, and a local and he told me that he knew the perfect place. He drew a little map, gave me some handwritten directions and sent me on my way.
Nikko and I were too tired that night to head out to the spot, so we waited until the next night to go in search of this place. I figured that when we found it there would be some people there, just not as many as the bus-loads at the other places. We walked and walked and walked and navigated the map. When we arrived at the spot I figured that we had to have messed something up because there wasn’t ANYBODY there. Oh well, I said, this may not be the spot, but it’s going to have to do since the sun is already moving downward. A few minutes later, the man from the gift shop joined us. He said that he had missed us last night, and I explained that we were tired. Then it dawned on me what he said. I asked him if he came last night thinking that we would be there, too. No. He said that he goes there every night after his shop closes. It is where he and his wife used to go, when she was alive, to watch the sun set and share with each other the ins and outs of their day. He said that no tourist had ever asked him for a quieter place to watch the sunset and that he had never told anyone else about this particular place, but that when he saw me he knew his wife wouldn’t mind the company. Nikko, that elderly man, and I sat down and watched the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen. We exchanged addresses on the way back to town, and I haven’t thought too much about him since then.
Today I got a letter from him (in the REAL mail). He just wanted me to know that he enjoyed himself that night and how great it felt to share something that had meant so much to him with someone else. He said that the night we spent up there was the first time since his wife died that going to their place didn’t feel lonely or sad.
CarrollBlog 08.26
The old woman in the wheelchair looked in very bad shape. Hunched, wearing far too many layers of clothes and covered with a lap rug on a warm August day, a clear plastic tube ran from the back of the wheelchair up over her shoulder and into her nose. Emphysema? Heart condition? Who knows? I saw the grim look on both her face and that of the woman who was pushing her down the sidewalk. Then I happened to glance at her shoes: bright gold patent leather. They looked brand spanking new. Seeing this made me instantly happy and I smiled. She ain't done yet if she's still choosing to wear brand new shiny gold shoes.
CarrollBlog 08.25
"It was actually a basement flat, as the ground floor of the building had been hollowed out of the rocky hillside. This hill was our next door neighbor, a heavy, introverted, silent neighbor, an old, sad hill with the regular habits of a bachelor, a drowsy, wintry hill, that never scraped the furniture or entertained guests, never made a noise or disturbed us, but through the shared walls there seeped constantly towards us, like a faint yet persistent musty smell, the cold, dark silence and dampness of this melancholy neighbor of ours.
"Consequently right through the summer there was always a hint of winter in our house."
Amos Oz, A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS
CarrollBlog 08.23
But being is making: not only large things, a family, a book, a business:
but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between friends, a meal."
Frank Bidart
CarrollBlog 08.22
My father had a real knack for buying bad cars. Whenever he would pull into the driveway in something new, whether it was a brand new car or used, beautiful or utilitarian, it didn't matter. You could be sure that this was another lousy car and would die soon.
This culminated in my college years when he returned from spending half a year in Rome with my mother where he was writing a script for a film that was never made. One of the many souvenirs they brought back from their la dolce vita in Roma was a gunmetal gray Alfa Romeo convertible. I forget what model it was but the thing was long and sexy and of course, an Italian time bomb. He had it in America about two months before it started breaking down bit by expensive bit.
My parents lived in New York at the time but for some reason my father insisted on having the car serviced and repaired by a mechanic in our old hometown, an hour from the city. Either my brother or I would be dispatched to bring the car there or pick it up when it needed fixing. This time it was my turn. I hated the car. It was hard to drive, hard to steer, unwieldy. Although I have always loved cars, I did not like this one and avoided driving it whenever I could. That day I took the train from the city to the town, walked from the station to the garage and paid the (as usual) whopping repair bill. Back to the city.
When we were growing up, the sexiest girl in high school was Janine Delmerico. Every boy who has ever attended high school has their own Janine Delmerico. The stunning upperclassman who drifts through the halls on pink clouds and envious stares. Every boy wanted her, every girl hated her. Her boyfriend was the captain of the baseball team. It was rumored that they "did it" although that of course couldn't be verified. We had moved away from the town perhaps five years before so I hadn't seen Janine for a long time. That day I stopped at a red light in the middle of town in my father's car. While waiting for it to change, I looked around and saw a very good looking woman staring at me. Or was she looking at the sexy car I was driving? Who knows? She was cute, I was driving, that was enough. Suddenly I realized it was her-- Janine Delmerico was staring at me with what looked like "come hither" eyes. Janine Delmerico was giving me the eye. It had been a long time since I'd dreamed about her, but now that I knew who she was, I was in the midst of one of those life moments you remember.
Untl the light changed and the car behind honked for me to go and quit staring at the woman. Trying to be as cool as I could be I gave the car gas-- and it died. I turned the ignition key but nothing came out. Not a throaty Italian engine vroom, not a click, nothing. It died. When I peeked over at Janine, I saw that she'd started to grin and it was not a nice one. I tried the key again but nothing nothing nothing. The car weighed a lot, but as I got out to push it over to the curb, I think it decided to weigh a thousand pounds more just to spite me. The last time I saw Janine she was walking away, smirking.
CarrollBlog 08.20
As often happens, when I saw her today I failed to recognize her for a few moments. We've passed each other endless times over the years but I would guess that one out of every four times I don't recognize her because she has done something new to herself. Whenever I see her now I think "There goes the Work in Progress." This time her hair was white blond in a ponytail down her back. The last time it was dark and short and she was wearing huge dark glasses on a rainy day. She is heavy and big and in the cold weather tends to wear the same outfit-- army jacket, jeans, big macho cowboy boots that make lots of noise when she walks by. She is often carrying peculiar things. Once it was a bow and a bunch of arrows. Another time what looked like a thick blackthorn walking stick. She's young and doesn't need one but that day she was carrying an Irish walking stick in the middle of the city. A few years ago she began getting her thick arms tattooed. Sometimes in the summer when it's hot and she wears a t-shirt, I see the slow progress up her arms of the many intricate tattoos. She has a very plain face but more often than not she's smiling a little and will turn that smile on you if she sees you're looking her way. I never know what to make of this woman. She seems to be working so hard to transform her large, unwieldly self into...what? A tough guy? A diesel dyke? A tattooed one of the gang? But other than her same uniform, she has changed her look so many times and in certain ways permanently (the tattoos) that I sometimes imagine her standing big and naked in front of her home mirror saying "Where do you want to go today?"
CarrollBlog 08.18
Vienna is not a town where you hear much English spoken. If you do it's usually down in the First District where most of the tourists roam looking at places like St. Stephen's Church or the great art museums. I've been here a long time but I still can't figure out if I like hearing my native tongue spoken or not. Because what you hear is too often either boring or dumb. Lots of "How much is that in dollars?" or "Craig said we really don't need to see the royal apartments," sort of thing. But the other day while walking to a meeting with someone in the First District, I heard in English, "From behind he looked like dessert." Besides the strangeness of the sentence, what made it even stranger was that it was impossible to tell if the voice was male or female. My ears perked up but nothing else came-- not another word, not another indication of who had said it. When I turned around, all I saw were loads of people walking by, any one of them the source of that enigmatic line.
CarrollBlog 08.16
An Oriental man walks into the cafe. People notice him because he is elegantly dressed all in black and carries a beautiful black leather briefcase that you just know cost as much as a small car. He is not only handsome, but has his long hair held back in a ponytail. A long wisp of beard off his chin adds a vaguely religious or ascetic element to his appearance. Combined, all of it makes him look like a Buddhist monk dressed in Comme des Garcons. The waitress hurries over to his table although the place is full. He obviously radiates something that people pick up on fast. He orders and she walks away. Pulling the briefcase onto the table, he opens it. I am eager to see what sort of things he keeps in there. He takes out a huge yellow telephone book. Putting the briefcase down on the chair next to him, from that moment on until I leave a few minutes later, all the guy does is read the telephone book.
CarrollBlog 08.14
How about a Sado-Masochist porno film called "Citizen Caned"
or
A rap dj called "Carpe DM" a natural successor to RUN DMC
CarrollBlog 08.13
A nice looking twenty-something man was standing in the middle of the sidewalk this morning holding a bouquet of long stemmed red/orange roses. As women passed, he took individual flowers out of the bouquet and offered it to them. Not one woman accepted. I saw this from far away and so had a while to watch the process several times. Not a single woman took a flower. They either passed hurriedly, consciously not making eye contact. Or they looked at him and you could see them trying to decide whether to take it or not and what would be the consequences if they did. Old young large small-- he offered a rose to any female who passed but was always rejected.
CarrollBlog 08.12
"How young we all begin, it seemed. How brave and full of certainty. How terrible it would be to know: not only what we must become, but who we really are."
Karen Fisher
CarrollBlog 08.10
"Our body is not good at memory, at keeping.
It is the spirit that holds onto our treasure."
Jack Gilbert
"The heart lies to itself because it must."
Jack Gilbert
CarrollBlog 08.09
A few years ago at a flea market I bought a pair of binoculars. When I'm bored or avoiding work, I stand at the window in my study and look through them at the scenery far away, swallows diving around the sky at sunset searching for food, or people passing on the street below. What's interesting is occasionally someone will coincidentally look up and see me watching them through binoculars. Invariably, I'd say 99% of the time, they get angry and it shows. They'll either point up at me or literally shake their fist as if I have no right to be looking at them like that without their permission. Almost as if I've spied on them doing something embarrassing or naughty, when all they were doing was walking down the street alone.
CarrollBlog 08.08
Just in from a friend:
an unusual love story:
my mother recently told me this story about a distant cousin of mine who always was a bit of loner and just died. she would disappear for years and then pop up in belgium...promise to keep in touch and then disappear again. she ended up living in the southern california teaching in high school, having lost custody of her child in hawaii. anyhow, she starts getting ill with nobody to look after her. one day, she approaches a complete stranger living in a neighboring street and asks him to become her friend. she explains that she's been observing him for a while and concluded that he was a nice person and that she would like to get to know him. at first he think she's a complete nut case, but her earnestness convinces him and he gets to know her...and they become friends. when she begins to become more ill, he looks after her, brings her to his home, drives her to hospital, and falls in love with her. as she does with him. she dies within about two months of them getting to know each other. until then he had been a 65-year-old bachelor living alone and nobody had ever told him that they loved him (romantically). he contacted the family to tell them what happened, and my mom just went down to LA to meet him.
CarrollBlog 08.07
I pass a large empty lot where a building was recently torn down and now there is only rubble left. Looking up at the surrounding buildings, I realize that for the first time in years, perhaps the first time ever, direct sunlight is pouring into windows that never knew sunlight, direct or otherwise, because it was always blocked by the now-destroyed building. What must it be like for the people living in those apartments who suddenly have new light washing the floors of their homes where there was never any light before? And new views out windows where previously there was only a depressing gray wall to see? What will it be like when a new building is inevitably built here and their view goes back to a gray wall four feet away?
CarrollBlog 08.06
Three women are standing together in the middle of the sidewalk laughing. At their feet are their three dogs, all puppies, playing at full speed with each other. All of the dogs are on long leashes. They are winding themselves in and out and all around the legs of the women, like three spiders spinning webs around caught victims. The women are trying to extricate themselves from this intricate ever growing, three pronged web. But the dogs are playing so crazily and energetically that the more the women move and try to get free, the more tied up they get.
CarrollBlog 08.05
At the tattoo parlor up the street I often see people standing outside smoking cigarettes while taking a break from being tattooed. Frequently the unfinished work is visible on their upper arms, neck, or lower back where their shirts have been rolled up. Interestingly, no matter how cool they try to appear, if they are young there is almost always a look of nervousness in their eyes; that look people get when they're about to bolt or try to run away.
On the same subject, there is a cruelly funny website-- www.hanzismatter.com-- that chronicles people who have chosen to be tattooed with letters or words from the Japanese or Chinese alphabets ("Hanzi" or "Kanji"). But they haven't done their homework and as a result they have had the wrong words, spellings, or entire phrases tattooed onto their bodies in various places. If you enjoy your daily dose of schadenfreude, the site is worth a look.
CarrollBlog 08.03
The other day someone came to mind I haven't thought about for a long time. Wondering what had become of them, I did what we all do now when we want the lowdown on someone old or new-- I GOOGLE'd them. Nothing. Not one thing came up about this person after I typed in their name and pressed ENTER. There's so much information available today on the Internet that it's genuinely disconcerting when a search there turns up nothing. Not deterred, I tried a Yahoo search, then a Microsoft search, and as a last resort, the new search engine from Amazon.com "A9." Nothing. It gave me the creeps to be denied again and again even a shred of information from anywhere out there in the vast Borgesian libraries of cyberspace where most days it seems everything is available if you just know where to look. It was as if this person had disappeared altogether, or was abducted by aliens, leaving no trace on either the earth or in the Internet ethers.
CarrollBlog 08.02
"I know enough about life that I've got the big moves down, sort of. The fine moves are moments you discover as you live life attentively."
Bill Murray
CarrollBlog 08.01
Often while watching films like BEN HUR or TITANIC that have large casts, I single out individuals in crowd scenes and watch their faces. Years ago it struck me that for most of them, this moment on screen was the absolute high point of their acting/movie career. Whether they were on camera for two seconds playing a blue faced warrior in BRAVEHEART charging down a hill with a club in their hand, or one of 30 anonymous reporters besieging Meryl Streep as she left the courthouse, this was what they had always dreamed of-- a part in a major movie. This day would be the pinnacle of their career and nothing that came later would ever surpass it. Dancers in the background of a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie. Even something as cheesy as the 7th thug in a group threatening Jean Claude Van Damme-- that short guy way in the background with the shaved head and large earring.You know, you just know, that these people have a cherished copy of the film and watch their scene over and over again, remembering the day they acted ten or a hundred feet away from Marilyn Monroe.