On those odd occasions that I get away from my desk, I like to go hang out with the bunch on the operations floor, who tell stories about parasitic infections and getting drunk in public places and video games and movies. You would not believe the movies these guys watch. I don’t know where they go to see these movies, but I’m glad I never go there.
A couple nights back, Stephen Pedersen was hanging out with our bunch, and they started to talk about the books they were reading, and Pedersen, in one of those moments that can only be described as an epiphany, turned to me and asked if I’d ever read any Salinger. The question always brings a broad smile to my face, and I answered that, yes, I certainly did read Salinger. “Have you ever read a story of his called A Perfect Day For Bananafish?” he asked, and the conversation just got better and better from that point.
So the other day, as I was getting dressed for work, my eye, roving along the books in the second-hand shelf alongside my bed, happened to stop on my spare paperback copy of Franny and Zooey. As I finished policing the buttons on my camouflage pants, I slipped the book into the left cargo pocket and buttoned it up. At work, as I was making the rounds to count heads, I took out the book and set it down on the desk next to Pedersen, who was busy at the time but acknowledged the book with his trademarked crooked smile as I walked on.
He stopped by my desk later. “When do you want me to return the book by?” he asked, and I said, “When you’re finished.” And then a very odd thing happened. He’d just finished reading The Laughing Man, and wanted to talk about it. The odd thing was, I couldn’t recall the story, not a single angle of the plot. I say it’s odd because, when another guy I knew found out I was a Salinger fan, I launched into one of my favorite short stories, Down By The Dinghy, and started asking him questions about it. The same thing happened to him; he thought I was talking about a story he’d never heard of before.
I read The Laughing Man this afternoon and, of course, began to recall the story as soon as I read the first two or three pages.
Next, I’m going to pass Pedersen a copy of Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour.
Other than my lovely bride, probably no room mate has had a more profound and long-lasting effect on my life than John Barnes. I was lucky enough to share a ten by ten foot room in Easy dorm with him for a few significant months while we were stationed at RAF Chicksands, in England. I had lived in plenty of dormitories by that time, but I had never delved into the deeper psychological context that explained the motivations of the kind of person who would rather sit in his room and vegetate. John Barnes made that all clear to me.
If it were not for him, I would never have learned how to savor living in a ten by ten box, which we called our cube. By “savor,” I don’t mean to say that it was enjoyable; we rolled in it the way a pig rolls in mud, but that’s not to say a pig likes being dirty. JB was a master of assuming a frame of mind that took in his environment while rejecting it at the same time. I, a sort of young novitiate, could only hope to someday emulate him. So I began to study The Way Of The Cube.
In my studies, I learned that cubing took many forms: It was not merely the zen-like trance, punctuated by an exclamation point of drool from the chin to the lap, that Master Cubers have conditioned themselves to assume with the snap of a finger. It could be expressed through repeated production of loud music, the preparation and presentation of dry snack foods, or the composition of poetry, as in this example from Master Cuber Mike Allen:
To cube, or not to cube
That is the boredom
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind
To suffer the yawns and belches
Of outrageous apathy
Or take arms against a sea of wishiwashiness
And by opposing, go to bed
Once I had embraced cubing as an art, John Barnes taught me to experiment recklessly with it. Possibly the most memorable of our experiments took us to Cambridge - or it might have been Oxford. In any case, it was one of England’s celebrated seats of wisdom, as well as an aesthetically beautiful town, all cut-stone college buildings and wandering cobblestone streets. We closely observed the town’s bountiful intellectual treasures and wide-ranging beauty from the wide picture windows of a Pizza Hut, where we gobbled down a large American-style pizza and drank pails of soda pop. We were in there so long that the waitress finally threw us out for hogging one of her tables, so we cloistered ourselves in a pub across the street, where we drank ourselves insensible before stumbling back to our room at a local Bed and Breakfast for an extended cubing session.
On other occassions, JB showed me how to cube without actually being inside a room, as he demonstrated with a twelve-pack of beer and the patio lean-to behind our dormitory, or - most daring of all - with the top down in his MG convertible on the road between Bedford and Milton Keynes. That sage could do anything.
All things must end. I was stationed at Chicksands for just a short time; JB went on to another assignment as well, and then, the ultimate cuber experience, to Kentucky. He worked for the state government in, I'm sure, an office cube, where I'm sure that to this day he is perfecting The Way Of The Cube. I saw him briefly when he stopped at my apartment on a cross-country business trip. He sat in my kitchen and we drank beer and cubed for old times' sake, a blast from the past.
I still practice The Way on my own from time to time, when family life and my work schedule permit it, but I know that I can only dream of becoming the Master Cuber that JB was. He would have never settled for merely waiting for an opportunity to cube, but would've actively assumed the correct frame of mind to compliment his environment, and attained a state of cubism each day.
I ate raw fish. I still don’t know why; it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
The hotel staff served it to us at dinner last night, and they put out such a good-looking spread that it seemed a shame to just turn my nose up at it, although the kids didn’t have to think twice; they knew they didn’t want any part of that. They didn’t much care for the soups, tempura, or anything else that came our way, either, most of which was seafood. Sean hates most seafood. My lovely bride and I love just about all kinds of seafood, but I drew the line at eating the raw shrimp. I don’t mind eating boiled sea bugs, but I’m not eating them raw. The raw fish at least looks a bit more abstract, and with a little wasabi, I think I could eat just about anything raw. Except sea bugs.
After the dinner, we sat around and got social, which means that somebody had to crank up the karaoke machine. Too bad just about the whole play list was in Japanese, or we might have heard a bit more karaoke than just three or four songs. Sean was certainly up for it, but just shook his head after trying his darnedest to decipher the play list. As it was, we got about a half-dozen numbers at the most before the crowd packed it up and a circle began to form around the Jack Daniels bottle to play a drinking game that I was completely unequipped to play on account of my severe inability to tolerate large amounts of alcohol, large amounts being anything more that three glasses of wine. A couple shots of Jack Daniels and they would have had to pick me out of the tatami mat with a tweezer. My lovely bride felt the same way. Instead, we shared a bottle of wine and endeavored to hold an old-fashioned conversation with some of the club members before turning in at the indecently early hour of ten o’clock, while the party was still very young.
The occasion of this little party was the Mogul Mashers ski trip to Hachimantai, where we passed the first day on the slopes of Hachimantai Resort and the second day skiing Shimokura. The weather on both days was perfect for skiing: Clear skies with lots of sunshine, but still cold enough that the powder didn’t turn to slush, then freeze up into a carpet of ice slick enough to kill absolute novices like me. I think that, on the whole, the O-folk liked Hachimantai Resort the best; it was sort of like bunny hills all over, very long, wide runs that were not too hard for those of us who are still learning how to stand upright on skis, or too dangerous for those of us who are trying to break the sound barrier by skiing as fast as they possibly can. When Tim goes into a tuck and heads straight down the hill, I get emergency-room flashbacks.
In the evening on both days we returned to the Hachimantai Royal Hotel for the customary after-skiing party with drinks, snacks, and a dip in the hot bath. After the first day’s skiing, we stayed overnight in the hotel. This was a new experience for us, and for a lot of the Mogul Mashers as well, because apparently the Japanese will customarily change into robes after checking into a hotel and walk around everywhere as if wearing bathrobes to dinner were perfectly normal. A lot of the Americans didn’t know how to feel about that, so some of them wore their robes over a t-shirt and jeans, and some of them just gave up trying to figure it out and wore regular clothes.
Well, I’m just a little sore all over today. I alternated between skiing very slowly and cautionsly down the runs with Barb, and taking off on my own, up to the top of the hill, and blasting down all the runs as fast and as daring as I could, which is not really all that impressive. Compare me to some of the young hot dogs, and I look like a broken-down old man. In the afternoon, though, I was getting daring enough to venture off into the power, and I enjoyed it a lot, until the tip of my right ski went under and I hit the snow like a sack of wet cement. I was going fast enough that, even though I braked to a stop on my face, I dug a trench about ten feet long. We made just one more run after that, and I retired to the lodge to dry out and warm up.
Tim tried out a pair of ski blades. He loved them. He found he had lots more control, which gave him the confidence to try new things such as ski backwards and grab some air off the jumps. Thank god we got him that helmet.
Sean said he was out boarding, but we didn’t see him all day. We think he sat in the lodge and ate curried rice, then went out and rolled in the snow for effect.
The ski runs at all the places I’ve been to in Japan are wired for sound. Bullhorns top each of the chairlift towers, and they pump Japanese pop music through them all day long. If you ever made the mistake of thinking that pop music could never get any worse than rap, you haven’t heard Japanese rap.
I would like life a whole lot more if they’d turn off the background music. When did management geeks decide that every place you went had to be filled with an overpowering sound track? The hallways in the building I work at are filled with the same pop tunes day after day. When I checked into it, I found that the music was coming from one of those CD players that you can fill with 200 CDs, punch the button marked “random,” and walk away from as it plays one song after another. The sociopath who loaded the CD player at work had either an unmatched love of Neil Diamond, or had received an ultimatum from his spouse that either the Neil Diamond CDs had to go, or she would.
I came into work one night and was immediately assaulted by the live version of “Song Sung Blue” again, which seemed to be much louder than usual. I went back to the department where they keep the CD changer, found a technician, and did everything but get down on my knees to get the guy to turn the music down, if not off, at least for the evening. He didn’t feel he was far enough up the food chain to make decisions like that on his own, though. We were stuck with the loud, bad pop music for yet another night.
And it’s like that everywhere I go. Not just management, but everybody seems to think that, without some kind of background noise, life isn’t happening. One of the most wonderful benefits of the ski club we belong to is the bus ride, and ironically the only detestable thing I can think of is the en route movie. It seems no bus ride is complete without it. We can’t be left to talk to one another, or listen to our own CD players, or read books, or just gaze out the darned window at the passing scenery. No, a few people want to watch Adam Sandler’s latest allegedly comic psychopathic episode, so we all have to.
The worst thing about watching videos on buses or planes is that, even if it was a movie that I wanted to see, squinting at it on a tiny, distant television screen is not the way I would like to see it, and cranking the volume all the way up so at least the loudest parts can be heard over the engine noise is not the way I would like to listen to it. Watching videos on these ski trips is the worst, though, because I never get to see the end; just about all the ski hills are less than a two hour drive from here. It’s one of the most frustrating movie experiences anywhere.
That said, they do occasionally play ski videos, the kind that feature maniacs jumping from helicopters to ski straight down sheer, snow-covered cliff faces. These generally last a half-hour or so and aren’t the kind of thing that’s ruined if you miss the smart-aleck comments or the music is too loud, perfect for a bus ride while you’re eating a bagel for breakfast and glancing out the window every so often. But these are generally the exception, rather than the rule.
Maybe I’m just getting touchier as I get older, but I don’t think so. I think I’ve always been a grumpy old man. I remember being annoyed when the guy in the seat next to me on the bus turned his walkman up loud enough that I could make out the words, so probably this is all just me, and we were meant after all to listen to pop music all the time, blasted into public places on bullhorns. I spend a lot of time wondering, though, about a parallel universe, one were the general public isn’t forced to listen to bland, repetitive jingles all the time, where bus passengers make good use of the picture windows, and where Adam Sandler is safely locked in a padded room, where he belongs.
I was over at a buddy’s house today. He was togged out in his 5-year old jeans and a t-shirt, and when he bent over to clean up a mess on the floor, I got a view of what should have been a coiled dragon wreathed in fire and smoke.
“I hope you don’t think I’m getting too personal,” I told him, “but I noticed you don’t have a tattoo on your butt, which is quite a relief. I was beginning to think I’m the only person on earth who doesn’t have a tattoo on his backside.” He probably did think that was too personal, but he laughed anyway. We’re both about the same age, and he felt the same way I did about tattoos. Most of the people we work with are about twenty years old, and they’ve all got at least one tattoo, more often several.
A surprising number of their tattoos are visible. It surprises me because a majority of the tattoos I see are no longer the military man’s traditional semipornographic depictions of women in luscious come-hither poses. No, the preferred tattoo these days seems to be bugs. I’m serious about this. Scurrying roaches, centipedes wrapped around arms and legs, vicious-looking spiders rearing in anger with fangs bared to bite venomously. It rather alarms me to see a grotesquely twisted maggot peering at me from under somebody’s shirt collar, but it hardly gets a second look from most people. They’re quite blasé about it.
Probably the most popular place they get tattooed is right under the beltline, over their butts. It’s usually a coiled dragon, breathing fire, stretching from side to side and done in the brightest greens, reds and yellows I’ve ever seen. And I get to see it pretty often, since fashion these days tends towards low-slung pants and t-shirts that end above the midriff.
If the person wasn’t in the mood to stay with the Asian theme, the Celtic knot also seems to be very popular, as well as more European. When neither the Asian or European avenue seems appropriate, I’ve seen a kind of random jagged pattern that looks like American graffiti, the very colorful kind that appeared on bridge abutments and viaducts in the last dozen years or so. It’s all angular and looks as though you should be able to read it, but no matter how long you stare at it, it never makes sense. Well, that’s what some of these young men and women seem to have tattooed on their butts, except it’s not as colorful. In other words, and I hope I’m not unfairly characterizing the situation, they paid the tattoo artists of Japan to vandalize their butts.
Barb asked me the other day, "Would you please get me the thing?"
"The thing?" I shot back after a pause, hoping for ... just ... a ... little bit more.
"You know. That thing. Next to your thingie. The red one."
Careful what you wish for.
This is not at all an unusual request from Barb. She has asked me questions like this, indeed has attempted whole conversations with me, that contain no more description of objects, actions, or people, than "that thingie." Heavy sigh. "You know." For a woman who has not only a tremendous gift for writing, but a devoted love of literature and words, Barb can be a trifle vague at times.