Comfort Food, Part II
[Note: If you haven't read Part I, I'd recommend doing that now before reading Part II. Here's the link.]
I could never understand the logic of spray painting warehouse window panes that were ten feet above the ground. While the dark blue prevented very tall people from peering inside, the paint also sealed the windows shut. This wasn’t a problem in the winter but during August heat waves it made the warehouse stiflingly hot. After an hour of carrying boxes from the floor pallets to the truck, then sliding and stacking them into place, my body would be coated with sweat mixed with potato dust. This had a gritty, irritating feel like suntan lotion and beach sand. The potato dust was a year-round problem, worsened by the summer heat. Every Friday at 4:30 AM a fresh delivery of potato dust came along with the fresh baked, packaged and boxed potato chips. The Hippie, the pony-tailed, jeans-and-cowboy-boots trucker, said that the same trailer used to haul potatoes from the field to the factory was used to bring the boxes of potato chips to our Brooklyn warehouse. Often the demands of production and delivery made it impossible to clean out the trailer before loading it up with the boxes.
I wedged in the last boxes of sour-dough pretzels, closed the rear doors of the truck and sat on the bumper: tired, gritty and exhausted. My father gave me the we got everything? signal: a shoulder shrug with palms up as if checking for rain. Mentally I reassembled the jigsaw puzzle: potato chips — regular; barbecue; onion and garlic — at the front of the truck. Pistachio nuts, beef jerky, plantain chips on the shelves. Cheese doodles, corn chips stacked on the wheel wells. Pretzels in the back.
“We got it all, Dad.”
He handed me the car keys.
“Jeffrey. Start the car. I’ll lock up.”
As the cool air muscled its way out the dashboard vents, pushing humid air out the windows and creating a chill through my sweaty body, I rested my head on the car door, absorbing the last of the late afternoon sun and the faint sounds of music. My father emerged from the warehouse and I watched his end-of-day ritual. He patted his right front pocket. The money was there. He tugged on the steel padlocks. The roll down gate was secure. He pulled on the faded blue spray painted side door. The deadbolt was engaged. Everything was locked tight. Nothing was forgotten. And if something was forgotten, the warehouse was only two miles from home, a brisk walk if one was ambitious. But it was in the changed part of the neighborhood, the part that was once filled with average-sized men with larger than average bellies, dressed in drab, ill-fitted work pants and clumsy black work shoes, the day’s toil expressed in hand gestures, accented speech, and tired faces. Now this part of the neighborhood had become brighter, livelier. The men were taller and thinner, dressed in Bermuda shorts and silky tropical shirts of amarillo yellow and deep red and gold. Their hands moved in rhythm to Caribbean sounds coming from an open house window.
My father got into the passenger seat of our car and glanced at them with a Puritan’s sneering disdain for pleasure. We rolled up our windows and he held his palms to the air conditioning vents.
“Aaah. A pleasure.”
Enveloped by the hushed silence of cooled air, we could see their rhythmic movements and the flash of gold-toothed smiles, but we could not hear their laughter or their music. In a moment they would become invisible, leaving our consciousness until we returned the next day.
“Let’s go home, Jeffrey.”
PDF April 16, 2012 Leave a comment
Writing and ADHD
1. Will You Please Just Sit Down And Write?
Last August I started to dedicate much of my writing efforts to writing fiction. I realized that both of my blogs — Jeff’s ADD Mind and The Day’s Rant — still didn’t allow me to fully express myself. I wanted to be able to illustrate how personal and socio-political issues express themselves in our daily life. I shared with a number of trusted friends and relatives what, I believed, was a brilliant first draft of my brilliant, and first, short story. Though I didn’t quit my day job to dedicate myself to my writing, I was sure I would quickly land a major writing contract and cash advance. Then the comments flowed in.
“Three sex scenes in a short story? Really? Are you kidding me?”
“I had to reread some parts over and over to understand what you were trying to do.”
“Please please stop changing tenses mid-sentence.”
I got the hint.
I needed to learn how to write fiction.
And I needed to polish up my grammar skills.
I purchased the five volume set Write Great Fiction and read various posts on the Writer’s Digest website. I learned how a story is crafted and, in the process, learned about myself and my ADHD. Problems that I thought were a result of ADHD were really a result of how hard it is to write good fiction. I was also surprised by the odd things that writers do in order to write. Some pace back and forth (Philip Roth); listen to hard rock (Stephen King); write standing up (Ernest Hemingway); write lying down (Truman Capote). Depending on what I am struggling to write, I may stand in front of my computer, swaying side to side, mindlessly singing to Pink Floyd while repeatedly typing the same sentence, each time with a slightly different structure and a slightly different metaphor. Eventually the sentence does what I want it to do.
I also learned that ideas really do come to you at anytime in any place. While walking the dogs I may be struck with just the right metaphor that had been dogging me — slight pun intended — for a few days. One line in an episode of Fringe, a paragraph in Scientific American Mind, or reading a short story while on the treadmill, may open up a creative window. I’ve typed many paragraphs into my Blackberry while on a treadmill.
So it turns out that many of the problems I’ve had with my writing are the problems that every writer faces. My solutions — pacing; listening to music, etc. — are the solutions used by many writers. The one difference is that my problems might be made worse by ADHD.
continue reading »
February 10, 2012 4 Comments
Buy A Dictionary. It’s the Healthy Choice.
Buy a dictionary.
Really?
Really, I mean it.
If you use words to communicate (as opposed to pointing and grunting) then you should buy yourself a big, bulky, paper-based dictionary like the new American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.
Get real. I can Google a definition faster than I can look it up in a paper-based dictionary.
That’s quite true. But I’m telling you to buy and use a paper-based dictionary, not for the sake of productivity, but for your health.
Now please stop laughing.
Let me explain.
My dictionary is on the right-side return of my desk. To use the dictionary I have to turn my body, flip through the pages, refocus my eyes, find the definition I need, memorize it, then turn back to the computer to make sure I’ve used the word correctly. Within the span of two minutes I have exercised my torso, given my fingers a needed rest (and provided an alternate exercise), flexed my eye muscles and engaged my memory cells. All this exercise costs less than $60.00 dollars. That’s a one-time payment. Not monthly, like your gym membership or your internet access. Just one simple, affordable payment for a lifetime of health.
So make the right choice.
Make the healthy choice.
Buy a dictionary.
January 19, 2012 Leave a comment
Comfort Food
It could happen during a Saturday morning ‘mow and trim’ of the front lawn, or during The Feast of Roast Pork Lo Mein (a regular Sunday ritual), or even during the workday drive across Brooklyn in a smoke-belching delivery truck. These events were like moments of sunshine, openings in the clouds, offering temporary relief from the darkness. Inevitably the moment would come to an end and the darkness would roll back in, casting a gray tint on everything and everyone. Rarely did we speak of the darkness itself. The details were kept from us for many years. But we knew what it was. It was part of the social grammar shared between Holocaust survivors and their children, the mortar that held it all together.
My father, like many others, had a story to explain why he survived. It acknowledged the darkness in as few words as possible. (It was painful to discuss in any detail.) Despite the meager description, the darkness served as the backdrop for the remainder of the story. It began with his arrival in America wearing pants made from his mother’s old skirt, then onto tales of business and wealth (more wealth than a half-starved Polish Jew could ever imagine) and wrapping it up with a description of his innate superiority. This was the key to the story. It explained why he survived and why he was so much smarter than the amerikanische schmucks who, despite their education, could never achieve what he achieved in America. This story was his mental comfort food, defining his relationship to his newly adopted country and helping to explain why he survived when others did not.
Because he was smarter.
Because he was not a schmuck.
December 31, 2011 Leave a comment
A Guy Can Only Take So Much
After a quick meal at my favorite Mulberry Street restaurant, I went back up to the office. A guy can only take so much noise and then he wants to shoot someone. I like the quiet. I like when everyone has gone home to their wives — then it’s just me, my work and my Bourbon.
It happened about 8 o’clock. The ringing jangled my nerves. Maybe it was the way it woke me out of a sweet Jimmy Beam slumber, or maybe it was the way it broke into my dream like a stupid dame walking into the middle of a smoky card game when I’m about to cash in a full house. But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that this call changed my life and that’s why I’m sharing this story with you. There could be a lesson here, I don’t really know. You be the judge of that. But what I do know is that the next time some dame is calling me late at night, I’ll think twice about picking up that phone. A guy can only take so much and, after meeting with this dame, I don’t know if I can handle much more.
She sounded nervous, a bit unsure of her words, like someone was standing next to her, telling her what to say. It was a bad connection and, for all I know, the operator was listening in, making it even harder for me to get her name. I got the Dorothy part but her last name, I don’t know. Maybe Scribner. Maybe Scrivener. That was it, I figured to myself. Dorothy Scrivener. I tried to get her to speak clearly but she was jumbling up her words. All I could make out was that she was mixed up in some sort of business I never heard of before, something she called “word processing.” I thought she was scamming me but no way some dame is going to get over on old Sam Margate. I figured we best meet in person. Then I can figure out if she’s on the level.
“Can you be outside of Shanty’s Clam Bar at 10 o’clock?”
A strange place for a classy dame to suggest for a meeting, being that half the customers at Shanty’s are a bunch of drunken do-nothings.
“Can you do that Mr. Margate?”
“Sure.”
Anything for a dame.
I was probably on my fifth Camel when she finally showed. Good thing. I didn’t think I could take much more of the cold rain and I needed a drink and more smokes. I looked her up and down. The street lights were dim but I could still tell that she was quite a looker. I bet the silhouette of her legs would make a dead wolf howl. She motioned me to follow her into the clam bar. I kept my wits about me. I didn’t know if this was a trap.
December 6, 2011 5 Comments