Was It A Dream, Or Did I See It Plain

The season and the weather collaborated this morning on a very nice ride to school. When I made the big turn to the left and started pedaling toward the east, the sky was trying to commit to the new day. The very deep purple started to give way to reds and then orange, with spikes of light shooting up into the darkness, prying the lid off of the night.
When I woke up, it was dark. That's often the case around my house. It is also often the case that the first person up in my house is me. It is also quite often the case that that person is wandering around in the dark. This is about morning breaking, and I'm often the one responsible for it.
It's odd to me that this comes with the territory of being the one in the house who sleeps the least. When I miss sleep, I don't tend to make it up. The clock that tells me that it's time to roll out of bed is very insistent. As if I were worried about missing something. Even on the weekends, I feel the pull of dawn and my eyes squint out into what awaits me: that sunrise, another day at work, rain-soaked streets, neighborhood cats crawling back from a night's adventure, the occasional rooster crowing. Sights and sounds available to me because I put myself out in the glorious transition that is the beginning of the day.
This is endlessly fascinating to me, since I seem to run into this collision of night and day all the time. It makes me think of the aboriginal concept of "dream time." Maybe all this time I've been bumping into things by the dawn's early light, I've actually been asleep. This might explain the magnificent display I saw the other day in the eastern sky. Asleep or awake, it was totally worth it.

Sudden Death

"Mister Caven - you mad?" This was the question with which I was assailed on the playground Monday morning. It was the day after the Super Bowl. The day after the Denver Broncos had, once again, set a new record for futility on the World's Biggest Stage: Twelve seconds into the game, the Seahawks scored the first points. That's the fastest that has ever happened. Thank you, Denver Broncos, for providing us with history. Was I mad? In a word, no. In a lot of words, which are not mine: "It hurts too much to laugh, but I'm too old to cry." That is not a quote from Peyton Manning, who had a ball sail past his head on the game's first play. That ball was eventually recovered by his team in his own end zone. A safety. Two points. Fastest ever.
No, I wasn't mad, and apparently neither were the Denver Broncos. They just seemed overwhelmed. All evening long. A steady string of mishaps and misfires kept on coming for the boys in orange and blue. Fumbles, interceptions, missed tackles. When the second half kickoff was returned by the Seahawks for a touchdown, bringing the score to twenty-nine to nothing before the guests at my house had settled back into their seats after the Bruno Mars halftime show. I wasn't mad. I was overwhelmed. I had twenty people in my living room, decked out in various vintages of Bronco gear, eating and drinking orange colored and flavored snacks, and still the Seattle onslaught continued. Denver's only touchdown came after they had been outscored thirty-six to nothing. Nothing.
Was I mad? No, but I felt a little like crying. I had waited for two weeks after Peyton and the boys had taken care of business with the Patriots. I had waited for a year since this same team had been undone by a last second pass by Baltimore Ravens' quarterback, Joe Flacco. I had waited a decade and a half since the last time the Denver Broncos had played in a Super Bowl. I didn't cry. I'm too old for that. But it hurt too much to laugh. 
Monday morning, when I walked out on the playground, wearing the same Denver Broncos jacket that I have been wearing since the beginning of the school year, I fielded a lot of questions from a lot of kids. Many of them had hopped on the Bronco bandwagon after their Forty-niner affiliation had fizzled out in the NFC Championship game. Some of them hopped straight on the hater train. Thankfully, most of them are kids who have a bit of empathy. It's what we're trying to teach them. "Sorry about your Broncos, Mister Caven," came from a number of mouths. Maybe that kid who asked me if I was mad was truly concerned about my emotional health. Was I mad? No. After five months of football? After fifty years of being a Broncos fan? No. I'm not mad. I'm tired.

The Price You Pay

I've seen the needle and the damage done. That's what Neil Young told us forty-three years ago. Philip Seymour Hoffman was three years old at the time. Was there something set in motion before he was born that made it inevitable that he would end up dead, from an overdose? Were there chemicals in his brain way back then that predisposed him for such a disposition? Or was it something that came about as he grew older? As he became famous, and the choices he could make became at once more varied and more limiting. Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead at forty-six, and there's nothing we can do about it.
He was clean for years, according to reports. He lived most of his adult life in sobriety, but started sliding down that slippery slope back in May. A quick ten-day stint in rehab was good enough to get him back on track, ready for the premiere of his latest film, "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." No more red carpet. Just a black box.
There are plenty of people who ascend to levels of fame beyond Mister Hoffman without falling prey to temptation and demons like drug addiction. He is not the first, nor will he probably be the last. It was David Lee Roth, the once and future lead singer for Van Halen who said, "I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money." Maybe he's got a point, since it was his bandmate, the eponymous Eddie Van Halen who did a stint in rehab.
In 2006, when he won his best actor Oscar, Philip Seymour Hoffman had this to say about his earlier struggle during an interview with "60 Minutes": "I have so much empathy for these young actors that are nineteen and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God. I'd be dead.' You know what I mean? I'd be nineteen, beautiful, famous and rich. That would be it. I think back at that time. I think if I had the money, that kind of money and stuff. So, yeah [I would have died]."
The damage is done. Aloha, Philip Seymour Hoffman. 

Magic Time

The letter reads:

Dear Santa. I need some advice for how to make Pokemon real. Why do I need some advice because I can not get Pokemon out of my mind. I need a very good answer. If you have a answer please send a messag back
From Kinnell

Kinnell is eight years old. He wrote to Mister Claus in anticipation  of his eighth birthday, even though his timing may be a little off. He really wants a Pokemon for his upcoming birthday. It makes some sense, however, when you consider the demands on the toy-making machine at the North Pole at this time of year are probably pretty low. With all those elves rattling around the factory and wrapping facilities, there must be plenty of available alt-manpower available before the real crush begins in another seven or eight months.
And who else could get to the bottom of that whole real versus pretend thing than Santa? The guy who has a team of eight tiny reindeer that fly? The guy who manages to slide down people's chimneys in spite of the fact that he is generally considered to be, shall we say, weight advantaged? The guy who manages to haul all those toys and goodies across the globe in the span of one night? Isn't this the guy who could make anyone's dreams come true?
Then there's the question of obsession. While I can appreciate young Kinnell's honesty, I do wonder if all this confession is truly good for his soul. He's eight. Of course he can't get Pokemon out of his head. It's a head that is not as yet cluttered by Social Security numbers and passwords to dating websites. It is kind of a shame that Kinnell can't rejoice in the fact that his mind is full of Pokemon. There are seven hundred eighteen known species of these pocket monsters, and eight years old is far too young to start wondering whether he should be ashamed of the idea of "Pocket Monsters." When I had an eight year old, he could not get trains out of his head. We tried everything, including making as many connections with real trains, and yet he remained transfixed.
Then one day, we weren't laying track in our living room anymore. All the engines and rolling stock were boxed up and put away. We were able to drive past railroad crossings without having to wait breathlessly for the next train to pass by. Eight years old is a magic time, and I hope Kinnell gets to enjoy it along with his parents as long as he can.

Rockin' In The Free World

Compared to a crew-cut, I'm sure the haircuts worn by the Beatles were a shock and an annoyance to the general viewing public fifty years ago. These young men from Liverpool had bangs, for goodness sake. You could scarcely see their eyes. What were these foreigners (four inners) doing on our soil? Were they here to throw our carefully crafted American lifestyle by the wayside and make a mockery of all those things we held true?
No. Not exactly. They were here to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was part of a promotional tour arranged by their management to conquer the world, and sell millions of records. They did the second part for certain, "Meet The Beatles" has sold more than five million copies since it was first released half a century ago. As for the world domination part, they may not have been quite as successful. The public response to their continuing presence on the scene lead to much debate and consternation, shining a light on what we all began to know as "The Generation Gap." Those who scoffed and fussed the most may have contributed to their success, owing first of all to the tenet that other long-hair from England set forth: "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." Secondly, those angry mobs who crushed and burned their Beatles records had to buy them in the first place, so thank you offended public.
It was a magic time. It was also a healing time. These drug-addled hipsters from across the sea showed up just about the time that America was fraying on the edges. I know, because this is the world into which I was born. I am grateful that I have spent my life in a world that includes The Beatles. As the years passed, my parents and I didn't always agree on everything, but we did agree on The Beatles. It was their music that we could all listen to in the car, and we could even play our Beatles records on the family Hi-Fi.
Thank you, John, Paul, George and Ringo for coming to America and giving us something to talk about. And thank you for being fab.

Rhymes With Orange

I really wanted to be a poet. About the time that I graduated from college, after I had spent countless hours in writing workshops carefully crafting both my skills and my persona. I had all of these thoughts that could only find expression through very specific blank verse. I described love and loss and worlds that only someone in their twenties could possibly experience. These were my salad days, back when I ate a steady diet of frozen pizza and Hungry Man TV Dinners.
I didn't need to rhyme. All that convention was what I learned in school. It was what I was throwing off to prove just how expressive I could be. And I suppose it could be said that at this point in my life I was showing off. I was a bit of a tortured artist. At least that's how I thought of myself. A good deal of what I put myself through was in the service of creating that image of The Poet. For me, being a novelist or short story writer didn't have nearly the appeal of being known for those endlessly quotable lines. It also served my fondness for brevity. I've never been much of a long-form kind of guy.
The other thing I discovered, more upon reflection, was that poetry was for me very connected to that other great passion in my life: jokes. So many of my "best works" are a ramble toward what at times was an inevitable punch line. These days when I find myself composing a holiday ode or a birthday rhyme, I find it easier to think in terms of that funny bit at the end.
Back in the dark old days, the endings weren't generally as amusing. Instead I took it upon myself to shine a light on the misery and pain experienced by a post-adolescent white kid from suburban Colorado. I like to believe for that particular demographic that I was the voice of my generation. In some parallel dimension, I'm sure that I probably was published more than just the once in the literary magazine that paid off in souvenir copies of that literary magazine. Maybe I even became the rock and roll lyricist that I always imagined myself to be.
Instead you're stuck here in the now with me. No paragraph breaks, and the occasional lilting phrase. I may not be a poet, but I was apparently born to blog.

It

How did I get to be "it?" Perhaps I was the slowest to raise my hand. Maybe I wasn't listening when someone counted off, "One, two, three, not it!" Or it could be that when I went out for a job interview for a teaching position seventeen years ago, my prospective employer asked if I knew anything about computers. My confident answer, "Yes," was enough to get me my position and a room full of Mac LCIIs connected to a bunch of tractor-fed dot matrix printers. That I know what these terms mean now is a testament to how quickly I learned. I had come from a five year stint as a warehouse manager where I had worked with a room full of computer experts, some of whom had started out on the warehouse floor and found their way to the relative comfort of their office in the back, amidst a sea of servers, wires, and random hardware on its way to being part of our system or the dumpster.
Years later, I have become "one of them." The wrinkled khakis. The furrowed brown whenever someone can't distinguish between a VGA cable and an Ethernet cord. When someone calls my room and tells me their computer is broken, I try not to roll my eyes. What is the problem, specifically? Could you be just a hair more precise? Is the box making funny noises? Do you see pretty lights? Has your computer fallen on one of the children and now they can't get up?
I have lost my patience, but I try and remember what it is to be an end user. Forgetting passwords and not knowing which of those wired leads to the mouse-thingy is what they are supposed to do. I am supposed to show up with all my worldly knowledge and set things right. I am the IT guy. Making those broken computers work is my job. And if the coffee maker stops working, I'll probably get to take a look at that too.