Category Archives: Life

The Math of Living

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I’m heading down the home stretch of what’s been an intense writing project. It’s rearranged my routines, including writing (like blogging), reading, and my usual Monday through Friday regimen. Then, I’ve also inherited additional assignment deadlines for my class, too. I’m very busy.

Speaking of routines (and rhythms): taking a few minutes every morning to read some poetry is a great way to start the day. I’m grateful to poetry.org for delivering a poem to my email inbox every morning.

As I mentioned, April is National Poetry Month. Because I’m keen to this block of 30 days where I’m a bit more focused on writing I don’t normally read enough of, I’ve tried to be more intentional in taking time to slow down enough each 24-hour sweep of the clock to let a poem or two wash over me.

Today’s spoke to me. Robin Coste Lewis captures life’s randomness, and the injustice inherent in living, especially if you aren’t one of the the “special” people that America seems to bless, while cursing many of the others. Continue reading →

Ghost in the City

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Back from another rock and roll-oriented trip to Boston. This was the third trip in less than a month. Monday night, I saw Teenage Fanclub, one of a handful of mid-90s post-punk bands still making meaningful music.

Live Teenage Fanclub (Paradise Rock Club/Boston)

The show was at the Paradise, near BU. I looked for something relatively affordable and ended up at a Residence Inn by Marriott, not much further away than a strong Dwight Evans’ right field howitzer to the plate from historic Fenway Park. My seventh floor room offered views of one of MLB’s oldest and revered diamonds, as well as the iconic Citgo sign. It was a mile walk to see the show and I could hop on the Green Line back, afterwards. Continue reading →

Fashionable and Fickle

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Some music videos for today and a little bit of context. This is the best I can do on this post-Oscar Monday, with two articles blasted out the door this morning (that I worked on all weekend), a paper due for my history class on Friday, and the usual other suspects from this thing called “life.”

Basically, I was looking for an excuse to post this video, from a favorite Canadian musician of mine, Joel Plaskett. Here’s to fashionable people.

Back when I was still able to light myself on fire so others could watch me burn with enthusiasm for things like writing, and urging others forward, drawing on my own journey of reinvention, I’d often share a snippet from Seth Godin’s wonderful Poke the Box. It was about a Canadian band of over-achievers called Hollerado. Yes, they were a literal band.

I’d read the section in the book about how they released their first record, called Record in a Bag. Yes, that was the record’s actual title.

Godin obviously was impressed about these four Canadian rockers and their will to overcome adversity. Like booking their first American tour, or better: simply getting in a van and driving as far away from their home town of Manitock, Ontario, and showing up at venues where a show was happening and telling a fib about having a gig lined up down the street that fell through and asking, “Would you guys mind if we played a short set here tonight?” They ended up playing a shit-ton of shows with this ploy. There’s all kinds of other motivation, fo-shizzle.

Today, for whatever reason, I thought, “I wonder what Hollerado’s up to these days?” They’re breaking up after 10 years of striving. That’s life, and even those who are willing to Poke the Box can’t always clear every hurdle. Not sure what the circumstances are—perhaps it’s as simple as wanting to do something other than log thousands of miles in a van and deal with the fickle nature of success. Continue reading →

Thai for Lunch

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Life will always try to make you run, even if your preference is for a steady trot. I say this, but much of our stress I think, is self-inflicted. Put your phone down, get off Facebook and Twitter, and you’ll be in a better state of mind.

My own life’s rhythms ebb and flow. For public schools, this is vacation week, so no sub assignments to consider. I’m tutoring at night because the private school nearby where I work has a different calendar than the one followed by their public counterparts.

While no fill-ins as a guest educator, I do have two articles I’m on deadline for. I continue writing for National Oil & Lube News. If you’ve never read any of my work for them, the February cover feature is mine, highlighting how no industry is immune from the reach of Donald Trump’s tentacles and tariffs.

Because I’m out during what are post-dinner hours for most people, I prefer not to have the standard American dinner, traditionally the largest meal of the day. For me, for much of my work week, I’ll whip-up something at lunch that is really my dinner. I make enough so that I leave a meal for Mary when she makes it home from work, or one of her after-labor fitness classes.

I don’t know where my culinary skills fall on any kind of continuum. I know my way around the kitchen, am quite capable of dicing and chopping, and I’ve mastered some of the basics of food preparation. I’m sure in our culture of fast food, or if you’re a foodie—eating most of your meals at a restaurant where the food is overprices and in my estimation—often underwhelming, then food prep might be foreign to you. Then, factor in the continued avoidance by many in the culinary world of moving away from meat to more plant-based meals, and cooking at home is almost always preferable to paying someone else to feed me.

Pad Thai for Two (maybe three or four)

Today’s Thai for Two packet presented an option that was fairly simple in terms of assembly. I had to soak my rice noodles for 25 minutes, so there was a time commitment involved. However, while my noodles were setting up, I diced my scallions, mushrooms, and then, timed my stir-fry requirement so that when the noodles were done soaking, all I had to do was add them, stir them around with the packet of Pad Thai Sauce (which was enclosed) and “voila!” I had dinner. I even steamed some broccoli because I love it and cruciferous vegetables are a good thing.

Cooking is cool.

Continue reading →

The Masses

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Years ago, I worked with a guy named Ken. Ken was world-weary and cynical. We hit it off.

We’d both landed at a company with a dubious past during a transitional time in our lives. I was in a cycle of dead-end jobs. Ken had his own issues he was trying to create distance from.

For whatever reason, he saw things about me that I hadn’t yet realized—namely that I had more talent than I gave myself credit for. He was always telling me not to sell myself short. Back in 1996, no one else was offering anything positive in terms of building me up. Coming from him—someone who had no truck with fools—this meant a great deal to me.

He and his live-in girlfriend didn’t have children. They took a real shine to Mark. I’ve learned to read how people relate to young children (and animals) as a sign of their intrinsic worth. Ken had two mastiffs that he loved like children.

Ken had some legal issues and eventually, he disappeared. He called me late one night a year after I’d lost touch with him. He was living in Oregon at the time, working at Home Depot. We talked for about 35-40 minutes. It was the last time I heard from him.

I often wonder what became of him. I don’t know how to get in touch with him. In a world of digital bread crumbs, he made sure not to leave any. He also burned his personal bridges. A man who basically became invisible.

Ken had a favorite saying about people: he’d look at me, frustrated with the managers at the piddling water treatment firm we were both doing sales with and say, “Baumer, the masses are asses.”

The past few months, I’ve heard him in my head saying, “Baumer, the masses are asses.” I can’t disagree with him.

Lonely Like the Blues

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For the past two summers, I’ve felt like a ghost. Sitting alone at home for long periods of time, forgotten and lonely. Invisible, really.

I just read two books about loneliness. When you are lonely, what better thing to do than study the state that you are immersed in? Or, maybe not.

Well, the first one, by Johann Hari, dealt with depression, but it delved into the roles of loneliness (and trauma), rather than the chemicals in our brains, for causing so many to be depressed. I won’t argue for or against his premise. His book has caused a shitstorm in certain circles, mainly those places where pushing pills for every malady is the solution. My reaction after reading it was, “meh.”

The second book, by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, had more resonance with me. This was mainly due to the state of loneliness that I regularly find myself in.

In 2014, after a break-up with his girlfriend at the time, Mark went through a period of loneliness. I’ve pieced some of this together after his death. It was why, I think, that he made such a push the last years of his life to get out and engage with others. He even recognized the importance of doing this from a health perspective, which is what Cacioppo and Patrick spend time unpacking in the book. Their findings indicate that prolonged bouts of loneliness can be as harmful to health as smoking or obesity. They also demonstrate the therapeutic aspects of social connection. Continue reading →

A Year From Now

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People love making plans. Dreaming can be fun, and looking ahead might be “the American pastime.” If not, it’s something that most of us do, like we’re guaranteed a future pregnant with certainty.

This weekend I read a story on the war that most of us have forgotten about in Afghanistan. I empathize with the soldiers and their sense that this war seems to lack a purpose or an end game. I also thought about those forced to live, waiting for a bomb to fall on their heads, or to having soldiers kick in the door under the guise of looking for “the enemy.” I’m pretty sure that for both the soldiers and the natives, planning for the future seems like a moot point. Life for them simply becomes an act of survival.

What Does the Future Hold?

I know a bit about what happens when one’s life gets flipped upside-down. One thing that goes away is the certainty (and a certain arrogance) that you actually control the ability to look out into the future. The present is affected, too. Then, there’s the tendency to hearken back to the past and the preference to “live” there. Continue reading →

Ambition

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Sufjan Stevens once set out to record 50 albums about all 50 U.S. states, at least he made an announcement about his intent. According to an interview, this was all a “promotional gimmick,” a joke of sorts, and one he didn’t have any inclination of completing. He did finish two of them.

The first time I heard about Stevens’ ambitious proposal was from Mark. Stevens may have been the genesis of his own ambitious plan to publish “50 books in 50 weeks” project. He actually completed his.

Project success, or not, I still like Stevens as an artist. I think Illinois (2005) is one of my favorite discs in my collection. “Casimir Pulaski Day” is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. It’s even sadder, now.

From the Bible of the music world I live in, Pitchfork, Stevens’ music is described this way, from a review of his latest records, “Carrie & Lowell” (the names of his mother and stepdad),

Stevens has always written personally, weaving his life story into larger narratives, but here his autobiography, front and center, is itself the grand history. The songs explore childhood, family, grief, depression, loneliness, faith, rebirth in direct and unflinching language that matches the scaled-back instrumentation. There are Biblical references, and references to mythology, but most it is squarely Stevens and his family.

Maybe the reason I like his music is because it’s about life.

Oh, and Pitchfork gave it a 9.3 (on a scale of 10). Others like narratives drawn from life, too.

Poets

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I wish I was better-versed in how to read and understand poetry. Part of that longing emanates from a place of loss and grief—Mark was a poet—as well as being an activist, a performance artist, and one special human being always in search of his better self. His writing and poetry was part of his process.

The Tragically Hip had a song called “Poets.” When I was thinking about this post while making like a fish in the pool this morning, the song was in my head (and has been much of the day). I’m sad to say that we lost another poet and always-evolving human when Gord Downie “shuffled off this mortal coil” a few weeks back.

I was stricken with The Hip the first time I heard the opening chords to “New Orleans is Sinking.” Then, I went to Canada, their homeland where they were rock gods. Mark was probably five at the time. Downie’s poetic ruminations, framed by a rock and roll backbeat captivated me for more than a decade. So maybe I was more familiar with poetry than I thought. Perhaps Gord and Mark are somewhere reading together. Continue reading →

Could You Be The One?

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Back when life was simpler and a lot less sad, I went out to see bands because I thought music might save my life. Music as a life saver? Please do tell.

Lot’s been written about Mark by me and others. In death, there is a tendency to enlarge one’s life, or attribute qualities to people in the dead person’s life that may or may not have been present. In Mark’s case, he was the real deal. I did my best as a dad and things turned out pretty well until last January.

In 1986, I was simply a father and husband with a three-year-old son. We were living on a dead-end street in Chesterton, Indiana.

Mark had a tricycle and was making a few friends in the neighborhood. I worked at a prison and Mary had just started working breakfast at Wendy’s prior to me heading off to the med room at Westville Correctional Facility.

Mark and dad playing in the snow [1986]

Things were looking up for our little family, trying to scrape together enough money to return to Maine. I also had aspirations of being something more than an hourly wage slave. It would take me another 15 years to recognize that the writing muse was calling. Unable to recognize its beckoning however, caused considerable frustration and angst in my mid-20s. Continue reading →