the mothers in the cafe...

I am in a coffee shop (again) while I write this. A few moments back, a number of young mothers came into the cafe. It is a regular meeting place for them. I see them every morning…at least on those mornings that I am here.

They come in with their children…babies, mostly, in strollers and carriers. And, then, after having a coffee or two, they leave again. This morning, I watch them. The first mother pushes her stroller to the door. She fumbles with it. She tries to manage the carriage and her exit at the same time.

I am, of course, a southern boy. I was schooled to be a gentleman. So, even though I know what's coming, I leap to my feet and ask if I can hold the door for her and her baby.

And what I expect duly occurs. She snaps at me. Well, not exactly snaps. Her language is civil, even though her tone is not. "I can manage it myself." The stress is on the final syllable. I have, you see, insulted her by implying that she is not sufficient unto her own being. Alone, remote, distant, perfect.

Her friend, the mother with another carriage behind her, is perhaps embarrassed. She says to me, "I would have let you do it." I nod at her and return to my seat. The stream of mothers passes through the exit, each attempting to manage her child and the door at the same time, each not quite achieving that goal, each evidencing various degrees of discomfort.

They are gone.

So, let us summarize. The woman who spoke to me and refused my aid, what did she accomplish by her uncompromising assertion of self-sufficiency?

Well, she made it more difficult for her own child and her own self to leave the café. She made life slightly more uncomfortable at that moment for each of her friends—depriving them of the small but useful aid I would have given them at the door. By choosing (and it was a choice) to interpret my attempt at a civil gesture as an imposition, she made herself angry, which she did not have to be. And, as a lesser but still pertinent matter, she made me feel bad.

These were her accomplishments.

Sometimes I wonder. At what point does empowerment become self-destruction? Where does independence shade away into masochism?

Press Kits, inertia, history...

When I was young, I'd hear stories of grown children entering the homes of their deceased parents and finding there no end of, well, crap—fifty years of canceled checks, tax returns dating back two generations, sales receipts from purchases made at the corner store when the corner store had not yet been torn down for the filling station.

And I'd wonder how on earth it happened. The parents knew such things were worthless. Yet, they kept them. They kept them for decades.

Ah, but now…

As you know, I'm moving. I've mostly finished cleaning out my office. But, today I put my courage to the sticking place and went into the basement. Box upon box of papers awaited me. Most of these date to the twenty years or so that I was a trade press journalist.

It was astonishing stuff really—press releases, notes I'd taken, rough and second drafts of articles, photos of various computers, a couple of plaques I'd gotten when winning various awards from various press organizations.

As I hauled most of it to the dump (I completely filled the back of my little Ranger pickup with boxes and crates of paper), I asked myself why on earth I'd kept it all…or, indeed, even wanted it. Then, I remembered my motivations. Each time I'd leave a magazine I'd smuggle out my files. The idea was that I'd use the material, the contacts, the notes, the photos in articles I'd write for my new employer…or, if that employer did not prove lasting, for freelancing.

And, in a very, very few cases, that actually happened. But, most of the time, somehow, I never got around to it. I'd mean to take the files into the new office…but, there was the job to learn, there were new subjects to research, new deeds to do and promises to keep. I'd intend to open my notes for all those articles I was going to write freelance…but, there was the boy to raise, the marriage to maintain, a life to lead, and, well, nothing came of it. The boxes never got out of my basement.

Then I understood…the fifty years of canceled checks, the register tapes from 1942. It is human nature. For me to have actually made use of all those boxes of files, I would have had to expend considerable effort. I would have had to sort and organize, shift this and move that, find a place for something else. Easier, easier by far to simply let it sit there.

Thus inertia. It is like gravitation. Seemingly feeble, but given time and mass, irresistible, immovable…mighty beyond measure.


*

Actually, I rather enjoyed going through all the press kits and releases from decades past. It was strange but pleasant to travel there in my personal history, among the things which had seemed so exciting at the time.

All useless now, of course. The companies that mailed the releases and kits exist today only in the memories of former employees. The products they offered are obsolete, as dead as dinosaurs (more so, if you consider birds).

Yet just because it is useless does not mean it is meaningless. All that you do now…the computer in your lap, the phone in your pocket, the router which is your window to the Web … all that, every bit of it, was built upon what was done then. It was pioneering. It was adventure. It was the foundation of your electronic, digital, virtual world.

As such, it is vital. Without it, where would you stand?

addiction

As you know, I'm getting ready for our move to New Mexico. In the process of weeding out my all too copious possessions, I've been selling stuff on Ebay.

I've discovered, though, that there is a danger in online auction sites. They're addictive. I find myself compulsively checking every few minutes to see if I've gotten any new sales or, at least, if any of my auctions have gotten any new watchers. (In fact, upon completing that last sentence, I did exactly that. I checked Ebay. I was delighted to see that one of my sets of comics has been bid up all the way to $3.75. Ah, the free market system.)

I'm not sure what it is that makes the game so playable. I wonder, though, if the appeal isn't that Ebay is sort of like a puzzle to be solved. How do I list an item? What minimum bid should I set? How do I use Ebay to print out postage and a mailing label?

All things to be ascertained. Like the clues in MYST. Or the telltale signs of unrequited love.


*

The good news, as my son points out, is that if I have gotten hooked on auctions, at least it's in selling rather than buying.

*

The comic books are doing remarkably well on Ebay. Which is a good thing since I have several hundred of them, comics I mean, mostly dating back to the 1960s. Even then, it seems, I was addicted to ink.

So, Scrooge McDuck, Donald and the Boys, Grandma Duck ("and her farm friends"), Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Baby Huey, CARtoons, Hot Rod Cartoons, Chip and Dale, "Millie the Lovable Monster"…these and more I peddle to the world.

Does it reveal anything about me…anything disturbing…that my childhood reading centered on rodents, barnyard fowl, dragons with eyelashes, and very large internal combustion engines presented in precise, photo-realistic, almost loving detail?

*

Most of the comics I'm selling are between thirty and forty years old. But, for various reasons, I do have a few recent pubs. I've even got one — City of Tomorrow by Howard Chaykin (with Michelle Madsen)—that classifies as a "graphic novel."

Strangely, it's the City of Tomorrow that has attracted the least attention. I don't know why. It's got dirty bombs, terrorism, a corrupt American government, lots of high caliber firearms, tons of mostly gratuitous violence, and a sexy robot who dresses sort of like a dominatrix.

I mean, what's not to love?

Q3 Xcargo 1998 -- posted

Well, I got quarter 3 of vintage Xcargo 1998 posted to my site. This one covers Fascism, the British Union of Fascists, and my head exploding.

Xcargo Q3

CARtoons, fate

Still going through my possessions as I prepare to move. Weird the things you discover. I was a great fan of CARtoons magazine when I was a child. I had a stack of them, which my parents mailed me some years ago.

CARtoons were comics for gearheads. Yet, by the time I was actually old enough to drive, the interest had passed. I never learned a fix a car. It was a phase.

I wonder what else would have flowered if the soil had been slightly different. Would I have a been better person if my development had been delayed by about a decade? Or worse? Or would nothing have been different? Are we as fixed in our fates as the worker ant and the moon in its orbit?

Vada a bordo...!

I've learned a new expression today. It is Italian.

"Vada a bordo, cazzo!"

Google it.

I think it should be a new motto for us all...Italians, Americans, Europeans...all of us...

It is what we need to snarl at our supposed leaders...the men and women who have so often betrayed us for their own selfish gain...

1st Quarter of 1998 explosive-cargo

Tonight finished posting the first quarter of 1998's explosive-cargo. This lot's got: depth charges, exit lines, a rerun or two (including Frisky RIP)...

And the story of my son's broken arm when he was very young...

when you are no longer beautiful

I am in a coffee shop in downtown Boston. There is, of course, background music. In particular, what comes from the concealed speakers is a song by a jazz chanteuse—a woman of whom I'm actually a fan. In it, she sings of being intrigued by someone she's just met. She approaches him (her?) in the knowledge that she will not be refused.

This is, of course, a fantasy common to us all. Not one of us living and possessed of hormones has failed to have it. It is the conceit that we might be so perfect, so fair, so beautiful and strong that anyone and everyone will accept our attentions. Or, at least, not turn us away contemptuously.

As I say, it is a fantasy. It is never our actual condition. And, most of us know that. We understand in our heart of hearts that we shall never be so magnetic.

There are, I confess, exceptions to this rule. Some of us are so narcissistic, or so deluded, that we never quite realize that we aren't Adonis or Helen of Troy. But, that's not such a bad thing…for the narcissist. She or he is never vulnerable to enlightenment. And so goes on forever in happy ignorance.

The other exception is far less fortunate. This is the person genuinely born with the seven beauties. Who comes from the womb designed to fascinate and compel even the most recalcitrant stranger.

Ah, but there's the rub. Such beauty is a temporary condition. Eventually it must yield to age and wisdom. But if wisdom does not come…what then? What is the fate of the formerly blessed? When the stranger is no longer charmed and the friend suddenly fair-weather?

When neither, in fact, feels compelled to benevolence?

The death of my journals

Still working my way through my office…throwing away this, compressing that, packing something else.

Today I did something I never thought I would do—-I threw away nearly 30 years of my journals.

I've kept diaries of one form or another my whole life…well, so long as I could write. And I had a crate of them in my office. I mean that literally. You know those plastic storage crates that you can buy in office supplies stores? Roughly 10x15x13 inches? I had one full of notebooks. They dated back at least to my days as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. And rather than ship them across country, I took them to the dump and tossed them into the recycling bin. By this time next year, they'll be toilet paper and shopping bags.

A loss? Not really. Oh, yes, I struggled for a moment. Isn't this—-I asked—-a part of my history? Something to be preserved? And I weakened for a moment. But then I looked at them. Read a few pages.

I realized that I use my journals for therapy. They are where I put all the things that are dark and shadowy and disappointing and painful in my life. My movements of shame, embarrassment, failure, hatred, rage, fear…into my journals they go, forever to remain.

There was, in short, very little in that crate that I was eager to keep. And much that I'd rather no one ever knew. So, I will not miss them. Indeed, I will be glad that they are silent. I'd prefer that no heir of mine ever stumble across them.

And rest assured, once I am in New Mexico again, I will purchase another notebook and start another journal. It, too, will be therapy. The difference is that once I fill it, I will not keep it in a box for three decades. I will, instead, toss it quickly and quietly into the trash.

Such is the safest course. And fitting. Like Zen letters to the wind. They should flutter away. Indecipherable. Made harmless.

Last of 1997 -- vintage explosive cargo

Finished the last of 1997's Xcargos. This set includes how to know when you're about to be fired, explosive excrement, and, much more seriously, my time on a jury in a child abuse case.

finished off Q21997

So I finished posting the second quarter of vintage Xcargo 1997. That's a whole half year.

Oy. I had forgotten how much stuff I'd churned out. But, once a week, every week, even if you take a week or two off, that's up to 50 columns a year.

Ah well. This last batch includes Depth Charges and an extended essay or Prozac, Depression, and a mega fender bender...or, as they say it 'round these parts, Fenda-Benda.

Oh, and lest we forget, a science fiction ripoff of Poe's "Masque of the Red Death."

onward and upward.

more vintage Xcargo -- St. Louis

Today I managed to load my 1997 series on St. Louis onto my new Website. It is basically another of my attempts to write like Jan Morris -- i.e., a combination of history, travel writing, and personal experience.

You can see it here St.Louis

Cyprus 1997 -- vintage Xcargo

And here is a link to a group of Xcargos from 1997 -- among other things, it covers Cyprus...and Oxford...and me looking like an ass.

(I also try, and probably fail, to write like Jan Morris...combining history, travel writing, and personal experience.)


https://sites.google.com/site/explosivecargo/home/xcargo1997#TOC-Cyprus-the-Kingdom-of-Jerusalem-and

explosive-cargo: the classics ;-)

So here's my first posting of 2012! (Insert tune of Auld Lang Syne here.) And to celebrate the new-year, I'm going to take a plunge into the past!

To explain, you know that before I did explosive-cargo as a blog, I did it as an ezine -- which was a sort of precursor to social networking. It was a personal publication that went out to anyone who wanted it via email.

And, Explosive-Cargo, a.k.a. "Xcargo," was my ezine. It was sometimes comic, sometimes political, sometimes very personal. It was also relatively successful as ezines went. I had something like 1000 readers, not counting pass-along, by the time I stopped doing it.

But, recently, I decided to take my old Xcargo columns and make them available under the Creative Commons mark. That's partly because I had been asked by readers to do so. And partly because I had started seeing pieces of them appear on the Web, sometimes without attribution. Ergo, I thought I'd better make some effort to control where and how the material was reproduced.

So, I'm gathering the old Xcargos and putting them online on a dedicated site -- specifically at https://sites.google.com/site/explosivecargo/

I haven't got them all yet. Frankly, I haven't had the time or energy to put them in place. (And, sometimes, I have to do a lot of conversation from various obscure file formats. Unfortunately, when I began the thing, so long ago and far away, I was using Apple word processors that are no longer compatible with anything on the planet.)

To date, I've only got the first quarter and part of the second quarter of 1997 posted. You can see them at: https://sites.google.com/site/explosivecargo/home/xcargo1997

I'll be posting the others over time. Or, at least, most of them. Some I decided were so awful that they should never see the light of day again. Others were rather good, and I will be making them available in books that you can or will be able to find on my Amazon author's page at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KI3I6E .

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of these. As I say, they are under a Creative Commons mark, specifically the" Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND" license. This means you can send any of these columns far and wide, but please don't modify them or use them for commercial purposes, and please keep my name on the work.

Finally, if you wish to cite my material, I prefer the following form of attribution: "Michael Jay Tucker, Name of article, Explosive-Cargo, date, URL." However, so long as you get my name right, I'll probably be happy.

Onward and upward.

mjt

Bibliophila's reward

Hauled *another* load of books to the "used book superstore" (non-profit) up in Burlington today. When I say "load," I mean the back of my little Ford Ranger pickup was pretty well full.

This makes about eight such loads I've taken.

And it's just the tip of the iceberg. Before we head to New Mexico, I'll have several more such trips to make. And there will be an equal number of books with which we will not be able to part.

Bibliophilia given 30 years free rein is a terrifying thing.


*


And while we're on the subject, I've always loved this painting. I can relate ;-)

The Bookworm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Spitzweg_021.jpg#file

Bridge Of Sighs

I cannot imagine what world it is that she finds herself now—that place which is somehow beyond stroke. I know only that the therapists tell us if she is to return, we must somehow find ways around the damage. They, for example, suggest that the parts of brain that deal with music and emotion are unaffected and urge us to work with her accordingly.

So, every day, we have a session of, well, call it nursing home Karaoke. My father brings his recently purchased boom box and we play her everything from bluegrass to Vivaldi. I sit or sometimes kneel beside her bed and sing along, half aloud and half in whispers, songs of her youth or which she simply liked…Amazing Grace, Scarborough Fair, Frère Jacques, Silent Night, And Bingo Was His Name-O…

And thus we call her back, or try to, from that other place…with memory and mumbles, songs and snatches…across a gossamer bridge of hope.

Hope…unwarranted. Incandescent. Indestructible.

INFJ counselor

I hadn't given much attention to the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" tests until I took one and discovered that I am (supposedly) an "INFJ counselor." I am not quite sure what that is supposed to mean. However, I confess that on reading descriptions of the "type" I felt much that resonated with me, and rather powerfully at that.

My problem is that I am by nature a wary beast. I distrust ideas that are complete unto themselves, and so are easily digested, for fear they might be poison.

And so I wonder if the real underlying principle is not that we come in predefined types, and know so from our innate resonations, but rather that the human brain is built to find things with which to powerfully resound.

at the Shooting Star

So, once again I'm at the Shooting Star Café in Albuquerque, NM. Once again, the sky is a featureless gray. Once again, I'm just a wee bit exhausted. The only difference from yesterday is that today I'm here shortly after the local high school, Eldorado, has released its classes. I'm now surrounded by a great many teenagers who chatter and flirt, and regard me with an expression that says clearer than words that they suspect me of being an escapee from the nursing home at which I just spent several hours.

Not that I blame them. If I look a thing like I feel right now, the wonder is that someone hasn't tried to bury me.

On leaving Cambridge College

Just finished teaching what will probably be my last ever class at Cambridge College. I was surprised (and yet not surprised) by how sad that made me feel. To leave the building and know that I would probably never be in the place again was, well, rather a melancholy thing.

It is a good school and I've met good people there. I will miss them.

Still, there will be other classes. I will teach in other places. Or, so, at least, I trust.

I apologize to you and the universe… And to you FOR the universe.

As you know, I've been sorting through all my worldly goods in preparation for my move to New Mexico. This means going over a great number old papers, which, in turn, means reviewing many memories—not all of them pleasant. They include encounters with people who, for whatever reason, caused me genuine injury.

And I found myself doing what we all do in such situation, i.e., reviewing my wounds and taking that strange satisfaction which comes from considering exactly what extractible b*stards one's enemies truly are.

But that's a dangerous thing because, eventually, it leads you to consider what evils you, yourself, might have done and those people you, yourself, might have done them to.

It's unsettling to remember such individuals—people I've offended, by design or (worse) by accident…people I've yelled at in moments of depression or ill-temper…people I've failed…people to whom I've been rude…

So, on reflection, I've decided to apologize to them all…everyone I've ever offended for whatever reason. And since I've no idea who you are, you who read this, maybe that includes you. Maybe I've hurt you somehow, knowingly or not-knowingly, in ignorance or bliss.

Ergo, to everyone, whether I know you or not, please accept my apology for whatever I have done. It is heart-felt. I truly regret my transgressions.

But saying that has led me to another observation. To wit, we are all of us subject to insult and injury, to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and such is the nature of the cosmos that it does not feel concern for its offenses. Rather, it careens along, in its vast and chill indifference, leaving our mangled bodies in its wake.

Therefore, I decided to cover that one, too.

You will never receive an apology from the universe. Therefore, please accept one from me in its stead.

For all its sins, I'm heartily sorry.


Michael Jay Tucker
12/02/2011