No endangered species here, just some common birds. I stuck the camera in a bird feeder along the trail to Sljeme, the highest peak in the Zagreb region. These are edited highlights; the activity took place over 6 minutes. Camera falls over at end because a Marsh Tit gave it a good karate kick. :-D
Visitors are:
Eurasian Nuthatch | Brgljez | Sitta europaea
Marsh Tit | Crnoglava sjenica | Poecile palustris (the camera is close enough to show details of the bill, considered the most reliable way to differentiate it from the ultra-similar Willow Tit, so this is the first time I could add it to my life list)
Great Tit | Velika sjenica | Parus major (Why must all these birds be saddled with embarrassing English names? Just needed a woodpecker to make this list complete.)
Last bird is a King Pigeon ;-)
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
A Year and a Half in the Motel Hell
Considering living in a motel for a year and a half? Here is everything you need to know.
It was not my intention to spend a year and a half living in an extended stay (i.e., a motel) across the street from the Swinging Richards strip club, but life has a funny way of working out, or not.
The Atlanta, Georgia Northside Drive InTown Suites currently enjoys a composite 2.5 out of 5 stars after five Google reviews. Three Yelp reviewers bestowed a less generous 1.5 out of 5 stars. A few choice quotes from the Yelp reviews:
"This is, undoubtedly, the shadiest place I've ever stayed."
"the $40 cleaning deposit was not returned in full even though the promised house keeping never made an appearance during out [sic] entire stay."
"A guy got murdered while we were there, and the staff lied to us about it, even though there was caution tape, police officers, and blood stained furniture removed from the room and thrown into the dumpster."
(To be fair, as any long-term InTown Suites resident knows, caution tape, police, and bloodstained furniture does not always indicate a murder.)
The Google reviews were a little less interesting, but they had a ring of truth to them. "Bed sheets were dirty and stained and smelled bad," wrote one customer, and I can corroborate the observation as apparent blood stains and cigarette burns appeared on my "fresh" white sheets more than a few times during my stay.
The official web page for the Suites' "Atlanta Central (ZAG)" location features a flattering photograph of the three-story building taken on a cheerful, sunny day. Indeed, in the daytime, InTown Suites looks sturdy and inviting. It resembles a decent budget hotel.
For the most part, it looks like one on the inside, too. Neatly-framed abstract art prints hang on the walls. The floor is carpeted with a dark green material, similar in texture to a pool table top. If you're in a single, a square table and two metal chairs are your only furniture; no sofa could fit in there. Although housekeeping sometimes failed to appear on some weeks, as the Yelp reviewer noted, on most weeks they did, and the powerful smell of their cleaning detergent was reassuring. There were regular insect fumigations (I only saw one roach during my stay, and after bug-bombing my room I never saw another one). The full-sized fridge and two-burner range (one burner of which worked) were handy. There was basic cable on the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall.
I also presume there were semen stains throughout, but you can’t avoid semen stains. Consider that amazing footnote in the official Recommendation for Dismissal for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case regarding the ritzy Sofitel hotel. In addition to the semen stains found in Strauss-Kahn’s room that were proven to be his, "Three other stains on the carpet contained the semen and DNA of three different unknown males, and one other stain contained amylase and a mixture of DNA from three additional unknown individuals. The stain on the wallpaper contained the semen and DNA of a fourth unknown male." If the high-class Sofitel is filled with semen stains, I would have to assume that InTown Suites has a remarkable DNA collection of its own—and probably exceeds the Sofitel for quantities of other bodily fluids.
(Of course, I contributed my own semen stains. If you find that nauseating, then I am deeply offended.)
Its being next door to the Northside Drive Liquor Store is either sketchy or convenient depending upon your fondness for alcohol (the staff at the liquor store was very friendly, and a cool employee there named Natalie enjoyed my nickname for the establishment—"Sin"—since every vice [except sex] was catered to there [and the rumored prostitutes nearby even took care of the sex]).
Across the street from the Northside InTown Suites is Swinging Richard's, a gay male strip club. People who are suspicious of my middle-aged bachelorhood may be surprised by what I’m about to say, but I have never been in there. I did see one particularly buff neighbor of mine crossing the street one evening on his way over there, presumably reporting to work. It makes sense that Northside's InTown Suites would be the top place for a male stripper to stay during a weeklong engagement at Swinging Richard's.
I wound up at InTown Suites after I had returned from a three month European adventure. In order to travel for three months in 2010 in the first place, I broke the lease at my previous apartment, and so I had no place to return to. I wasn't eager to rent again, because the experience of breaking that lease was like being force-fed a log of dog shit. Which reminds me: I also learned from my apartment days that your dog is too damn loud, and you’re never going to do anything about it, even after I complain. No dogs are allowed at InTown Suites.
My original goal was to spend a few months at the Suites, and then return to Europe in order to continue pursuing my writing career (which had been working out a little bit during my 2010 odyssey) and my DJ'ing career (which hadn't worked out so well, so encourage me by listening to my Euro sets here). Unfortunately, due to money issues, six months turned into a year and a half.
The weekly rate is currently $209.99 (a bit more with tax, but the tax is dropped after a few months, at which point you are seen in the eyes of the law as a resident). This rate might seem high for a place where—it is rumored—prostitutes work their magic in the rooms around you, and where—it appears from my admittedly limited powers of observation—drugs are obviously being sold in the parking lot, but consider that the price includes all utilities, cable and wireless internet, and the aforementioned somewhat reliable cleaning service. OK, the Internet speed was the slowest I've experienced since 1995, but it usually worked. When I did the math, I concluded that I was saving a few hundred bucks each month by living there.
But problems with InTown Suites became apparent after a few months. The floors are flimsy, and so if you wind up living underneath an upstairs neighbor, which of course happens often, you are fated to hear every footstep, every drunken stumble, every body slam. I imagined that one of my upstairs neighbors had only one leg, and that she literally rolled out of bed every morning onto the floor with a crash before beginning an interminable series of hops to move about the place (she never left her room, presumably because the stairs were too dangerous for her to navigate). The walls are thin and hollow, so when an overturned dresser hits the floor of the room above during some domestic dispute, the crash literally shakes everything in the room below: ceiling, walls, floor. Because the bed’s backboard is attached to the wall, reading there forces you to concentrate while attempting to ignore a sensation like that of a child striking the back of your head repeatedly with a mallet. Thus, it’s not just the noise that keeps you awake at night (earplugs and noise reduction headphones can shield some of that); it’s the earthquake shocks that rattle your body. Some people are active by day, and others by night, and if your schedules don't overlap then you are fated to experience at least one week of poor sleep. Even if you and your neighbors are synchronized, there is no relief from the constant noise during literally every waking moment spent in the room. It’s awful.
One couple I lived under smashed things until 3 AM on most nights. I know they were fighting, because one time I stood outside their room and listened to their angry voices. I would have said something to them then if they hadn’t already been engaged in a violent, drunken rampage.
So I waited a few nights, then knocked on their door, fearful that I might be shot in the face, because—hey, it’s the InTown Suites, the place where a Yelp reviewer thinks a guy got murdered.
The door opened a crack, and an eye regarded me suspiciously.
"Hello?" a young, sinewy black guy said to me.
"Hey," this middle-aged, beer-gutted white guy replied. "I'm your downstairs neighbor, and I'm really sorry to complain, but there's a lot of noise coming from your room, and I know you probably don't even realize you're making it, because you wouldn't know that unless somebody actually told you. So here I am, and I’m telling you, and I just wondered if you could keep it down a little bit?”
He looked warily around him. His girlfriend, a young woman whose large girth implied guilt in the noise-making, lay on the bed behind him. She regarded me with vague amusement.
"Are you sure it's us?" the fellow said.
"Yeah, pretty sure. I mean, the ceiling is vibrating right over me. I actually put my hands on the ceiling, like this [I raised my arms into the air with palms facing the heavens], and, like, I can feel the ceiling shaking.”
"I don't think it's us. I think it must be the guy living behind us."
This was going nowhere, so I apologized for wasting his time and returned to my room.
A few minutes later there was knocking on my door. I looked through the peephole. It was the guy and his girlfriend. Do I open the door?
"Hey," I said, opening the door.
"That thing about the noise,” the fellow said, shaking his head. “I’m just…confused. Are you sure it's us? Because I don’t think it is."
"Well, I'm not sure-sure. I'm pretty sure, but—"
"I don't think it's us."
"It probably isn't you. The floors here are thin, acoustics do weird things. Sorry to bother you."
“Did you hear the sounds two days ago?”
I couldn’t remember if I had or hadn’t, but I said, “I think I did.”
“Well, then, it can’t be us, because I wasn’t here two nights ago. I was working.”
“Oh, OK,” I said.
Unfortunately, as the weeks rolled by, it became obvious that the smashing and crashing was indeed coming from the couple upstairs. The truth came out one night when a dramatic fight between them spilled out of their room, down the stairs adjacent to my room, and concluded right outside my door, where I carefully observed their yelling match through the peephole.
They moved out eventually. But I didn't. I stayed on.
When times were good, I referred to the Suites as the “Motel Paradise.” When they were bad, I referred to them as the “Motel Hell.” As the months crawled on, the words “Motel Hell” fell more and more frequently from my lips.
Sure, many residents were benign. I think of the foreign families that stayed for a few weeks at a time (I was told some were probably the families of fresh professors transitioning to Atlanta's universities). Sometimes, a group of Mexican laborers would crash in a few rooms; I'd see them hopping into their trucks en masse, presumably toward some construction job. And there were the Lenox cab drivers who have adopted the Suites as their sleeping headquarters. (Never did I see a Checker Cab parked there overnight. I wonder if Checker Cab has its own turf? Also, if a Checker Cab cabbie dared to sleep at InTown Suites Northside, would angry Lenox cabbies destroy his car with hammers?)
But more and more I grew afraid of my neighbors. One time I heard a guy on his cell phone outside my room roaring, "Ain't no way I'm gonna plead guilty to those charges!" And there was the time a woman screamed to a hastily departing man, “Don’t you ever fucking touch my kids again!”
Several residents had a habit of leaning over the railing outside their room, where they surveyed the parking lot for what seemed like hours at a time, no matter how hot the summer day and despite the fact that air conditioning was included in the price of their room. What were they doing? Were they keeping track of who was leaving his room unattended? Hopes of my own blending in were trounced by my vehicle of choice: a black SmartCar with a Romanian license plate affixed to the front. My watchful neighbors always knew when I was in or out. It made me paranoid.
And then there was the night I heard a floor-shaking crash, and when I went outside to look and see what had happened I saw three men stroll into a room—one of them slinging a battering ram. Uh, do you have a license to do that? Is that…normal? Is someone going to use a battering ram on my door tonight?
Every night, in the parking lot, men sat in cars with their engines idling. A Yelp writer says he has been told these are the men who deliver prostitutes to the rooms. I have no way of safely verifying this, but…yeah…why are you idling in the InTown Suites parking lot, sirs?
And good God, after sharing all this, what must readers think about me? What is Andrew up to in those InTown Suites? Is he fucking hookers? Is he doing heroin?
(It should be said that InTown Suites has an impressive security camera network, but all that did was guarantee that my murder would become a potential future viral video.)
Some of the residents were simply crazy. One day I stood in the laundry room near a scruffy, salt and pepper-haired man. I had to unload somebody else's too-long abandoned clothes from a washing machine in order to put mine in. As I plucked out such items as oversized black and green zebra-patterned thongs, I muttered, "Man, I wish people would be a little more considerate about moving their laundry along.”
"SOME FUCKING BLACK BITCH WELFARE QUEEN WITH FIFTEEN FUCKING KIDS PROBABLY LEFT THAT!” roared the man. “TOTALLY DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT AND THINKS THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF HER!"
Gee!
Random horror film observation: The awful ring of the room’s telephone sounded even worse when it went off in the middle of the night. Upon my answering it, the person on the other end always hung up, leaving me with only the sound of the dial tone to keep me company. I unplugged the phone after my first week.
And then there was the ice cream truck, with its creepy carnival music regularly cut off by the canned, tinny recorded sounds of laughing children, which drifted eerily through the parking lot seeking under-aged customers. Make the driver of that truck a circus clown and you’d have a movie rated Too Scary for Anyone.
More and more I slept at my office, or at a friend's place. I began to drink more, reckoning that by being drunk I might be able to tune out my horrible reality and get a decent night of sleep despite the banging, the shrieking, the crying of babies, the shouts of warring couples. But getting drunk only meant I felt worse when I was awakened at 3 AM by some sickening thud, and so I found myself in sorrier and sorrier shape sitting in my office cubicle the next day. I was irritable with co-workers. I frequently trembled with rage and terror. I was falling apart.
Here is how I celebrated my 39th birthday at InTown Suites. While preparing to go to bed, I was startled by a thunderous BANG-BANG-BANG! on my door, followed by another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my window, followed by the sounds of somebody running away. This was followed by another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my window, and another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my door, and more running away. It went on a while.
When the mysterious knocker finally held still long enough outside my door, I opened it.
The woman standing before me looked like a perfectly ordinary young, African-American college student, with nice clothes, hair, and a pleasant smile.
"Hello," I said.
"Oh, sorry, I got the wrong room," she said. Then she ran away.
I shrugged, crawled into bed, and went to sleep.
4 AM. BANG-BANG-BANG! on the window! BANG-BANG-BANG! on the door! And then, a strange whining sound outside, a pleading, "Help me! Please let me in!"
I stumbled in the darkness over to the door and peered through the peephole. The young woman stood there, an eerie silhouette against the harsh backlighting of InTown Suite's bright exterior lights, her face hovering a few inches from the peephole. She had what appeared to be a dark trash bag slung over her shoulder.
"What do you want?" I shouted through the door.
"Please let me in!"
"What do you want?"
"I need to use your telephone!"
"No!" I said.
She made another whining sound to signal her disappointment, and then ran off.
The next morning I dropped by the front desk of the InTown Suites. Two employees in their regulation uniforms of Navy blue InTown Suite polo shirts greeted me. (I would like to take a moment to compliment the InTown Suites staff. They were courteous, responsible, responsive, and surprisingly good-natured considering the weirdness and dysfunctionality they must endure at their jobs every day.)
"Last night this chick was banging on my doors and windows," I said to them. Which sounds vaguely sexual.
"She was arrested."
"Ah," I said.
"Anything else?"
"No. That's it. Thanks."
In truth, the InTown Suites are a good concept. There is a growing need for more affordable, no-strings-attached housing, not just because of our troubled economic climate, but also because of our increasingly mobile lifestyles. If InTown Suites could guarantee a good night of sleep (which would require a substantial architectural re-think), and keep rates around their current $200 a week, business travelers who work multiple days in a location far from home might be more tempted to become regulars, holding onto their rooms for half the price of, say, four nights in a hotel—and enjoying the ability to stock their refrigerators in order to create a place that feels a little more like home.
Since you pay each week in advance, you can leave the Suites whenever you'd like. You don’t even have to tell anyone. No one will call you after your departure to complain that you didn't clean the oven to their specifications. Considering that it's the sort of place where a body with a heroin needle dangling from an arm must occasionally be disposed of, a ketchup stain in the refrigerator is always forgiven. Breaking off relations with InTown Suites is as simple as parting with a prostitute after a night at…InTown Suites. It's an ideal arrangement.
And so I spent last week gathering all my possessions from my home for the last 1.5 years.
I have headed off to Zagreb, Croatia, which is why I invited all my black readers to join me there earlier in this narrative. It’s a crazy venture. I’ll be pursuing that writing and DJ'ing thing. It's a big move. Yeah, it might sound like a scary gamble, but for some reason I'm not so terrified by the thought of living there.
It was not my intention to spend a year and a half living in an extended stay (i.e., a motel) across the street from the Swinging Richards strip club, but life has a funny way of working out, or not.
The Atlanta, Georgia Northside Drive InTown Suites currently enjoys a composite 2.5 out of 5 stars after five Google reviews. Three Yelp reviewers bestowed a less generous 1.5 out of 5 stars. A few choice quotes from the Yelp reviews:
"This is, undoubtedly, the shadiest place I've ever stayed."
"the $40 cleaning deposit was not returned in full even though the promised house keeping never made an appearance during out [sic] entire stay."
"A guy got murdered while we were there, and the staff lied to us about it, even though there was caution tape, police officers, and blood stained furniture removed from the room and thrown into the dumpster."
(To be fair, as any long-term InTown Suites resident knows, caution tape, police, and bloodstained furniture does not always indicate a murder.)
The Google reviews were a little less interesting, but they had a ring of truth to them. "Bed sheets were dirty and stained and smelled bad," wrote one customer, and I can corroborate the observation as apparent blood stains and cigarette burns appeared on my "fresh" white sheets more than a few times during my stay.
The official web page for the Suites' "Atlanta Central (ZAG)" location features a flattering photograph of the three-story building taken on a cheerful, sunny day. Indeed, in the daytime, InTown Suites looks sturdy and inviting. It resembles a decent budget hotel.
For the most part, it looks like one on the inside, too. Neatly-framed abstract art prints hang on the walls. The floor is carpeted with a dark green material, similar in texture to a pool table top. If you're in a single, a square table and two metal chairs are your only furniture; no sofa could fit in there. Although housekeeping sometimes failed to appear on some weeks, as the Yelp reviewer noted, on most weeks they did, and the powerful smell of their cleaning detergent was reassuring. There were regular insect fumigations (I only saw one roach during my stay, and after bug-bombing my room I never saw another one). The full-sized fridge and two-burner range (one burner of which worked) were handy. There was basic cable on the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall.
I also presume there were semen stains throughout, but you can’t avoid semen stains. Consider that amazing footnote in the official Recommendation for Dismissal for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case regarding the ritzy Sofitel hotel. In addition to the semen stains found in Strauss-Kahn’s room that were proven to be his, "Three other stains on the carpet contained the semen and DNA of three different unknown males, and one other stain contained amylase and a mixture of DNA from three additional unknown individuals. The stain on the wallpaper contained the semen and DNA of a fourth unknown male." If the high-class Sofitel is filled with semen stains, I would have to assume that InTown Suites has a remarkable DNA collection of its own—and probably exceeds the Sofitel for quantities of other bodily fluids.
(Of course, I contributed my own semen stains. If you find that nauseating, then I am deeply offended.)
Its being next door to the Northside Drive Liquor Store is either sketchy or convenient depending upon your fondness for alcohol (the staff at the liquor store was very friendly, and a cool employee there named Natalie enjoyed my nickname for the establishment—"Sin"—since every vice [except sex] was catered to there [and the rumored prostitutes nearby even took care of the sex]).
Across the street from the Northside InTown Suites is Swinging Richard's, a gay male strip club. People who are suspicious of my middle-aged bachelorhood may be surprised by what I’m about to say, but I have never been in there. I did see one particularly buff neighbor of mine crossing the street one evening on his way over there, presumably reporting to work. It makes sense that Northside's InTown Suites would be the top place for a male stripper to stay during a weeklong engagement at Swinging Richard's.
I wound up at InTown Suites after I had returned from a three month European adventure. In order to travel for three months in 2010 in the first place, I broke the lease at my previous apartment, and so I had no place to return to. I wasn't eager to rent again, because the experience of breaking that lease was like being force-fed a log of dog shit. Which reminds me: I also learned from my apartment days that your dog is too damn loud, and you’re never going to do anything about it, even after I complain. No dogs are allowed at InTown Suites.
My original goal was to spend a few months at the Suites, and then return to Europe in order to continue pursuing my writing career (which had been working out a little bit during my 2010 odyssey) and my DJ'ing career (which hadn't worked out so well, so encourage me by listening to my Euro sets here). Unfortunately, due to money issues, six months turned into a year and a half.
The weekly rate is currently $209.99 (a bit more with tax, but the tax is dropped after a few months, at which point you are seen in the eyes of the law as a resident). This rate might seem high for a place where—it is rumored—prostitutes work their magic in the rooms around you, and where—it appears from my admittedly limited powers of observation—drugs are obviously being sold in the parking lot, but consider that the price includes all utilities, cable and wireless internet, and the aforementioned somewhat reliable cleaning service. OK, the Internet speed was the slowest I've experienced since 1995, but it usually worked. When I did the math, I concluded that I was saving a few hundred bucks each month by living there.
But problems with InTown Suites became apparent after a few months. The floors are flimsy, and so if you wind up living underneath an upstairs neighbor, which of course happens often, you are fated to hear every footstep, every drunken stumble, every body slam. I imagined that one of my upstairs neighbors had only one leg, and that she literally rolled out of bed every morning onto the floor with a crash before beginning an interminable series of hops to move about the place (she never left her room, presumably because the stairs were too dangerous for her to navigate). The walls are thin and hollow, so when an overturned dresser hits the floor of the room above during some domestic dispute, the crash literally shakes everything in the room below: ceiling, walls, floor. Because the bed’s backboard is attached to the wall, reading there forces you to concentrate while attempting to ignore a sensation like that of a child striking the back of your head repeatedly with a mallet. Thus, it’s not just the noise that keeps you awake at night (earplugs and noise reduction headphones can shield some of that); it’s the earthquake shocks that rattle your body. Some people are active by day, and others by night, and if your schedules don't overlap then you are fated to experience at least one week of poor sleep. Even if you and your neighbors are synchronized, there is no relief from the constant noise during literally every waking moment spent in the room. It’s awful.
One couple I lived under smashed things until 3 AM on most nights. I know they were fighting, because one time I stood outside their room and listened to their angry voices. I would have said something to them then if they hadn’t already been engaged in a violent, drunken rampage.
So I waited a few nights, then knocked on their door, fearful that I might be shot in the face, because—hey, it’s the InTown Suites, the place where a Yelp reviewer thinks a guy got murdered.
The door opened a crack, and an eye regarded me suspiciously.
"Hello?" a young, sinewy black guy said to me.
"Hey," this middle-aged, beer-gutted white guy replied. "I'm your downstairs neighbor, and I'm really sorry to complain, but there's a lot of noise coming from your room, and I know you probably don't even realize you're making it, because you wouldn't know that unless somebody actually told you. So here I am, and I’m telling you, and I just wondered if you could keep it down a little bit?”
He looked warily around him. His girlfriend, a young woman whose large girth implied guilt in the noise-making, lay on the bed behind him. She regarded me with vague amusement.
"Are you sure it's us?" the fellow said.
"Yeah, pretty sure. I mean, the ceiling is vibrating right over me. I actually put my hands on the ceiling, like this [I raised my arms into the air with palms facing the heavens], and, like, I can feel the ceiling shaking.”
"I don't think it's us. I think it must be the guy living behind us."
This was going nowhere, so I apologized for wasting his time and returned to my room.
A few minutes later there was knocking on my door. I looked through the peephole. It was the guy and his girlfriend. Do I open the door?
"Hey," I said, opening the door.
"That thing about the noise,” the fellow said, shaking his head. “I’m just…confused. Are you sure it's us? Because I don’t think it is."
"Well, I'm not sure-sure. I'm pretty sure, but—"
"I don't think it's us."
"It probably isn't you. The floors here are thin, acoustics do weird things. Sorry to bother you."
“Did you hear the sounds two days ago?”
I couldn’t remember if I had or hadn’t, but I said, “I think I did.”
“Well, then, it can’t be us, because I wasn’t here two nights ago. I was working.”
“Oh, OK,” I said.
Unfortunately, as the weeks rolled by, it became obvious that the smashing and crashing was indeed coming from the couple upstairs. The truth came out one night when a dramatic fight between them spilled out of their room, down the stairs adjacent to my room, and concluded right outside my door, where I carefully observed their yelling match through the peephole.
They moved out eventually. But I didn't. I stayed on.
When times were good, I referred to the Suites as the “Motel Paradise.” When they were bad, I referred to them as the “Motel Hell.” As the months crawled on, the words “Motel Hell” fell more and more frequently from my lips.
Sure, many residents were benign. I think of the foreign families that stayed for a few weeks at a time (I was told some were probably the families of fresh professors transitioning to Atlanta's universities). Sometimes, a group of Mexican laborers would crash in a few rooms; I'd see them hopping into their trucks en masse, presumably toward some construction job. And there were the Lenox cab drivers who have adopted the Suites as their sleeping headquarters. (Never did I see a Checker Cab parked there overnight. I wonder if Checker Cab has its own turf? Also, if a Checker Cab cabbie dared to sleep at InTown Suites Northside, would angry Lenox cabbies destroy his car with hammers?)
But more and more I grew afraid of my neighbors. One time I heard a guy on his cell phone outside my room roaring, "Ain't no way I'm gonna plead guilty to those charges!" And there was the time a woman screamed to a hastily departing man, “Don’t you ever fucking touch my kids again!”
Several residents had a habit of leaning over the railing outside their room, where they surveyed the parking lot for what seemed like hours at a time, no matter how hot the summer day and despite the fact that air conditioning was included in the price of their room. What were they doing? Were they keeping track of who was leaving his room unattended? Hopes of my own blending in were trounced by my vehicle of choice: a black SmartCar with a Romanian license plate affixed to the front. My watchful neighbors always knew when I was in or out. It made me paranoid.
And then there was the night I heard a floor-shaking crash, and when I went outside to look and see what had happened I saw three men stroll into a room—one of them slinging a battering ram. Uh, do you have a license to do that? Is that…normal? Is someone going to use a battering ram on my door tonight?
Every night, in the parking lot, men sat in cars with their engines idling. A Yelp writer says he has been told these are the men who deliver prostitutes to the rooms. I have no way of safely verifying this, but…yeah…why are you idling in the InTown Suites parking lot, sirs?
And good God, after sharing all this, what must readers think about me? What is Andrew up to in those InTown Suites? Is he fucking hookers? Is he doing heroin?
(It should be said that InTown Suites has an impressive security camera network, but all that did was guarantee that my murder would become a potential future viral video.)
Some of the residents were simply crazy. One day I stood in the laundry room near a scruffy, salt and pepper-haired man. I had to unload somebody else's too-long abandoned clothes from a washing machine in order to put mine in. As I plucked out such items as oversized black and green zebra-patterned thongs, I muttered, "Man, I wish people would be a little more considerate about moving their laundry along.”
"SOME FUCKING BLACK BITCH WELFARE QUEEN WITH FIFTEEN FUCKING KIDS PROBABLY LEFT THAT!” roared the man. “TOTALLY DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT AND THINKS THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF HER!"
Gee!
Random horror film observation: The awful ring of the room’s telephone sounded even worse when it went off in the middle of the night. Upon my answering it, the person on the other end always hung up, leaving me with only the sound of the dial tone to keep me company. I unplugged the phone after my first week.
And then there was the ice cream truck, with its creepy carnival music regularly cut off by the canned, tinny recorded sounds of laughing children, which drifted eerily through the parking lot seeking under-aged customers. Make the driver of that truck a circus clown and you’d have a movie rated Too Scary for Anyone.
More and more I slept at my office, or at a friend's place. I began to drink more, reckoning that by being drunk I might be able to tune out my horrible reality and get a decent night of sleep despite the banging, the shrieking, the crying of babies, the shouts of warring couples. But getting drunk only meant I felt worse when I was awakened at 3 AM by some sickening thud, and so I found myself in sorrier and sorrier shape sitting in my office cubicle the next day. I was irritable with co-workers. I frequently trembled with rage and terror. I was falling apart.
Here is how I celebrated my 39th birthday at InTown Suites. While preparing to go to bed, I was startled by a thunderous BANG-BANG-BANG! on my door, followed by another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my window, followed by the sounds of somebody running away. This was followed by another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my window, and another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my door, and more running away. It went on a while.
When the mysterious knocker finally held still long enough outside my door, I opened it.
The woman standing before me looked like a perfectly ordinary young, African-American college student, with nice clothes, hair, and a pleasant smile.
"Hello," I said.
"Oh, sorry, I got the wrong room," she said. Then she ran away.
I shrugged, crawled into bed, and went to sleep.
4 AM. BANG-BANG-BANG! on the window! BANG-BANG-BANG! on the door! And then, a strange whining sound outside, a pleading, "Help me! Please let me in!"
I stumbled in the darkness over to the door and peered through the peephole. The young woman stood there, an eerie silhouette against the harsh backlighting of InTown Suite's bright exterior lights, her face hovering a few inches from the peephole. She had what appeared to be a dark trash bag slung over her shoulder.
"What do you want?" I shouted through the door.
"Please let me in!"
"What do you want?"
"I need to use your telephone!"
"No!" I said.
She made another whining sound to signal her disappointment, and then ran off.
The next morning I dropped by the front desk of the InTown Suites. Two employees in their regulation uniforms of Navy blue InTown Suite polo shirts greeted me. (I would like to take a moment to compliment the InTown Suites staff. They were courteous, responsible, responsive, and surprisingly good-natured considering the weirdness and dysfunctionality they must endure at their jobs every day.)
"Last night this chick was banging on my doors and windows," I said to them. Which sounds vaguely sexual.
"She was arrested."
"Ah," I said.
"Anything else?"
"No. That's it. Thanks."
In truth, the InTown Suites are a good concept. There is a growing need for more affordable, no-strings-attached housing, not just because of our troubled economic climate, but also because of our increasingly mobile lifestyles. If InTown Suites could guarantee a good night of sleep (which would require a substantial architectural re-think), and keep rates around their current $200 a week, business travelers who work multiple days in a location far from home might be more tempted to become regulars, holding onto their rooms for half the price of, say, four nights in a hotel—and enjoying the ability to stock their refrigerators in order to create a place that feels a little more like home.
Since you pay each week in advance, you can leave the Suites whenever you'd like. You don’t even have to tell anyone. No one will call you after your departure to complain that you didn't clean the oven to their specifications. Considering that it's the sort of place where a body with a heroin needle dangling from an arm must occasionally be disposed of, a ketchup stain in the refrigerator is always forgiven. Breaking off relations with InTown Suites is as simple as parting with a prostitute after a night at…InTown Suites. It's an ideal arrangement.
And so I spent last week gathering all my possessions from my home for the last 1.5 years.
I have headed off to Zagreb, Croatia, which is why I invited all my black readers to join me there earlier in this narrative. It’s a crazy venture. I’ll be pursuing that writing and DJ'ing thing. It's a big move. Yeah, it might sound like a scary gamble, but for some reason I'm not so terrified by the thought of living there.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Death
The end is nearer than you think. Unless we achieve the singularity soon, it's likely that anyone and everyone around you will be dead in a hundred years. (The average human lifespan may be increasing, but the maximum life-span isn't). Why don't we feel this reality more? Why aren't we more motivated by it?
Death is not what it used to be. More than half of Europe's population may have been wiped out by the Black Death around 1350; plague memorials remind the living today. Lynching, a form of real-life torture porn that was watched by men, women, and children with blithe amusement, claimed between 100 and 200 lives a year during the 1890s in the United States, and continued into recent decades. The first half of the 20th century saw wars that killed millions of people; today, by contrast, America blanches when fewer than 5,000 soldiers die in combat in Iraq (the slaughter of over 60 million people during World War II, including over 400,000 Americans, was during a time when both the U.S. and the world populations were 1/3 what they are today)
On a more pastoral note, in small towns like Spring Valley, Minnesota (a real life "Lake Wobegon" where my mom grew up) everybody knew everyone, and so every passing was discussed and deconstructed. Today, in a world where we don't know the people living two doors down, death usually drifts unnoticed through our communities.
The old used to die in their own homes. Today's seniors move to retirement condos like Goodwin House, an upscale apartment complex I recently visited in Northern Virginia. It's a self-contained community with a fitness center, a library, and conversation parlors. But Goodwin House also represents the recession of the awareness of death for the rest of us; the sons and daughters of its residents are now most likely to learn about the end of a parent's life via a telephone call or an email. I imagine that soon it will be a "Last Tweet" that notifies us of the passing of a parent, auto-sent when a bracelet worn by the departed fails to detect a pulse. One could customize the Last Tweet months in advance, when of sounder mind and body, allowing one to publicly bid farewell with a cheery, "I'm outta here!" designed to elicit a smile and inspire us, the living, with positivism about how said parent faced the end ("She was so inspiring!").
There was a time when people who died during a bitter winter were laid in sheds for burial after the spring thaw. Today, we have the technology to put bodies into the ground in any weather, rushing them that much more rapidly out of sight and mind.
The casket is open if the mortician can do something; it's closed if he or she cannot, and so whenever we see a closed casket we momentarily shiver and wonder in what horrible physical state the deceased must have been. A man who dies peacefully in his sleep gets an open casket; a woman whose body was ravaged by cancer gets a closed one. The decision to open or close the casket is essentially based on whether or not the deceased makes effective propaganda for the peacefulness of death.
In the 1800s, the dead were sometimes photographed dressed and sitting up in arranged settings—sometimes with other family members.
The pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail knew that their quest for a better life might instead result in an early death. A makeshift gravesite alongside the trail served as a chilly warning to the next family who passed by.
We have never been more sheltered from death than we are today. We don't think we're immortal, but neither do we seem to absorb the ultimate and inescapable reality, that motivational memento mori that used to fascinate writers and philosophers who noted, as Samuel Johnson did, that "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent"; or, as Laurence Sterne wrote in The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen, "Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return..." Where has the urgency gone?
Cancer, which seems to be prominently featured in a New York Times article every day, has become death's leading bogeyman in the American imagination. It is popularly treated as a bully and a thing to be defeated, which fits our fighting spirit. Facebook friends post cut-and-pasted status updates imploring us to "write a letter to cancer," and thousands participate in breast cancer awareness marches. Diseases that seem more preventable get less sympathy in America. While breast cancer marches are commonplace, lung cancer marches are non-existent, though lung cancer kills four times as many people in the United States. In all of this we see an avoidance of the understanding of our imminent mortality; we try and "beat" cancer, but we talk as if in doing so we will certainly live forever. The fact is, as a disembodied voice explains to us on Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky," "We all have to go sometime."
"Our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor," said Theodore Roosevelt. "The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests which men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all that they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world."
America seems to have become a land of "swollen, slothful ease," averse to any hazarding of life. The world faced by the pioneers on the Oregon Trail has been replaced by our race to be the first on Facebook to post a status update announcing acquisition of the latest iPhone. The idea of literally risking life in order to advance (whether via the silliness of a duel or a cause more noble) has become quaint. Death, which, amidst the world's growing population operates within increasingly closer proximity, recedes further from our minds. With that recession, we have lost much of our motivation. We no longer imagine, as our ancestors once did, that terrible skeleton charging towards us on an emasculated steed, scythe raised in the air, the Great Equalizer. Memento mori.
Death is not what it used to be. More than half of Europe's population may have been wiped out by the Black Death around 1350; plague memorials remind the living today. Lynching, a form of real-life torture porn that was watched by men, women, and children with blithe amusement, claimed between 100 and 200 lives a year during the 1890s in the United States, and continued into recent decades. The first half of the 20th century saw wars that killed millions of people; today, by contrast, America blanches when fewer than 5,000 soldiers die in combat in Iraq (the slaughter of over 60 million people during World War II, including over 400,000 Americans, was during a time when both the U.S. and the world populations were 1/3 what they are today)
On a more pastoral note, in small towns like Spring Valley, Minnesota (a real life "Lake Wobegon" where my mom grew up) everybody knew everyone, and so every passing was discussed and deconstructed. Today, in a world where we don't know the people living two doors down, death usually drifts unnoticed through our communities.
The old used to die in their own homes. Today's seniors move to retirement condos like Goodwin House, an upscale apartment complex I recently visited in Northern Virginia. It's a self-contained community with a fitness center, a library, and conversation parlors. But Goodwin House also represents the recession of the awareness of death for the rest of us; the sons and daughters of its residents are now most likely to learn about the end of a parent's life via a telephone call or an email. I imagine that soon it will be a "Last Tweet" that notifies us of the passing of a parent, auto-sent when a bracelet worn by the departed fails to detect a pulse. One could customize the Last Tweet months in advance, when of sounder mind and body, allowing one to publicly bid farewell with a cheery, "I'm outta here!" designed to elicit a smile and inspire us, the living, with positivism about how said parent faced the end ("She was so inspiring!").
There was a time when people who died during a bitter winter were laid in sheds for burial after the spring thaw. Today, we have the technology to put bodies into the ground in any weather, rushing them that much more rapidly out of sight and mind.
The casket is open if the mortician can do something; it's closed if he or she cannot, and so whenever we see a closed casket we momentarily shiver and wonder in what horrible physical state the deceased must have been. A man who dies peacefully in his sleep gets an open casket; a woman whose body was ravaged by cancer gets a closed one. The decision to open or close the casket is essentially based on whether or not the deceased makes effective propaganda for the peacefulness of death.
In the 1800s, the dead were sometimes photographed dressed and sitting up in arranged settings—sometimes with other family members.
The pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail knew that their quest for a better life might instead result in an early death. A makeshift gravesite alongside the trail served as a chilly warning to the next family who passed by.
We have never been more sheltered from death than we are today. We don't think we're immortal, but neither do we seem to absorb the ultimate and inescapable reality, that motivational memento mori that used to fascinate writers and philosophers who noted, as Samuel Johnson did, that "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent"; or, as Laurence Sterne wrote in The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen, "Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return..." Where has the urgency gone?
Cancer, which seems to be prominently featured in a New York Times article every day, has become death's leading bogeyman in the American imagination. It is popularly treated as a bully and a thing to be defeated, which fits our fighting spirit. Facebook friends post cut-and-pasted status updates imploring us to "write a letter to cancer," and thousands participate in breast cancer awareness marches. Diseases that seem more preventable get less sympathy in America. While breast cancer marches are commonplace, lung cancer marches are non-existent, though lung cancer kills four times as many people in the United States. In all of this we see an avoidance of the understanding of our imminent mortality; we try and "beat" cancer, but we talk as if in doing so we will certainly live forever. The fact is, as a disembodied voice explains to us on Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky," "We all have to go sometime."
"Our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor," said Theodore Roosevelt. "The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests which men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all that they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world."
America seems to have become a land of "swollen, slothful ease," averse to any hazarding of life. The world faced by the pioneers on the Oregon Trail has been replaced by our race to be the first on Facebook to post a status update announcing acquisition of the latest iPhone. The idea of literally risking life in order to advance (whether via the silliness of a duel or a cause more noble) has become quaint. Death, which, amidst the world's growing population operates within increasingly closer proximity, recedes further from our minds. With that recession, we have lost much of our motivation. We no longer imagine, as our ancestors once did, that terrible skeleton charging towards us on an emasculated steed, scythe raised in the air, the Great Equalizer. Memento mori.
Monday, October 31, 2011
If You Search for and Replace These Words, Your Writing Will Improve by 200%
The following is a list of words and phrases you probably don't need to use. If you search for these words and phrases, and then delete them outright (or, in a few of the examples below, replace them with other words), your writing will improve. I have only recently compiled this list, so don't be surprised if, in my earlier blog entries, I didn't practice what I'm preaching. ;-D
Of course, all of these words and phrases have their time and place. The best writers know not only to avoid most of these words most of the time, but also when to use them. But if your goal is more modest—to go from being a bad writer to a fair one—you probably won't go wrong just banishing these phrases outright. Hey, it's a start. :-)
immediately - "I immediately noticed…" would be better as "I noticed," unless, of course, the timing of your noticing something is important to the narrative.
extremely - "I am extremely happy." "I am happy" is snappier. This word falls under a category I call "Quantifying the unquantifiable." What is the difference between "extremely happy" and "happy"? If you cannot distinguish between those gradations of happiness, best to drop the word that expresses the amount of happiness.
very - Another quantifier that's usually lazily applied. "I was very impressed." How much more impressed is that than "impressed"?
somewhat - "I was somewhat amused." Before you write that, ask yourself, "Really? Or was I amused?" The word does work in some instances (a "somewhat reliable" employee is not the same as a "reliable" one), but often it seems to be appended as if by bad habit. In addition to quantifying the unquantifiable, it also falls under the category of hedging terms—those that suggest a strange reluctance on the part of the speaker to emotionally commit. It's as if the writer is afraid to admit that he or she is amused and finds it cooler to profess being only "somewhat amused."
"a bit" is another sort of hedger. "I disagree a bit with this guy." Do you disagree or don't you?
rather - Ever since I heard a comedian say, "I think I'm rather smart—because I use words like 'rather,'" I search for this word in my writing and almost always delete it.
quite - Similar to the previous. "I was quite pleased." Usually unnecessary.
really - "I was really amazed," as opposed to being "figuratively amazed." Just say, "I was amazed." This is one of several "stating that the real is real" words.
"actually" is another one of those. You actually don't actually have to use the word "actually" as often as you actually seem to actually think you do.
truly - Same deal. You wouldn't tell me something "untruly." "Untruly, I loved the potato salad."
incredibly - "I was incredibly amused." Just, "I was amused," please. This one is even worse than the others because "incredibly" has a meaning that, in this context, makes no sense (the incredible is that which is not readily credible; by that definition "incredibly amused" is nonsense).
Related to "incredibly," we find people turning nearly any "strong" word into an emphasis word. For example:
shockingly entertaining - Unless one is being entertained by electric shocks, or by, more metaphorically, a horror movie that uses "shock" effects to entertain, one should not use the word "shockingly" here. There is really no end to this list of corrupted words used as emphasizers ("Amazingly profound," "Ridiculously good," etc.). Find your own bad habits and then search and replace them.
the opportunity to... - "This learning camp gives students the opportunity to explore biofuels." - Rewrite as: "In this camp, students explore biofuels." "the opportunity to" is usually wasteful language because "the opportunity" is self-evident if (as in this example) the students are doing that thing.
I found myself - "I found myself reading a book" "I found myself at the movies." "I found myself talking to a learned man." The phrase "I found myself" usually indicates a startling moment of self-awareness, an awakening to a reality that one had overlooked previously (see the lyrics to Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," which correctly captures this bewilderment). But to use it all the time recalls a senile person staggering semi-lucidly through life. "I found myself at the movies," for example, suggests that the individual might have "come to" while in a movie theater. You expect a serial abuser of this phrase to excitedly wonder, "I keep finding myself in interesting places! I wonder where I will find myself next?" It's silly.
Usually, you can replace "did become" or "had become" with "became." There are many other such phrases one could search for in this same vein; find the ones you abuse the most and then add them to the list.
It is apparent that… - when this phrase is used to indicate something that is obvious, delete it.
specific - "I asked a specific question." "We had specific goals." Sometimes a necessary word, but often inserted out of laziness and reflex.
What are some other words or phrases that, if deleted, would result in crisper writing?
Of course, all of these words and phrases have their time and place. The best writers know not only to avoid most of these words most of the time, but also when to use them. But if your goal is more modest—to go from being a bad writer to a fair one—you probably won't go wrong just banishing these phrases outright. Hey, it's a start. :-)
immediately - "I immediately noticed…" would be better as "I noticed," unless, of course, the timing of your noticing something is important to the narrative.
extremely - "I am extremely happy." "I am happy" is snappier. This word falls under a category I call "Quantifying the unquantifiable." What is the difference between "extremely happy" and "happy"? If you cannot distinguish between those gradations of happiness, best to drop the word that expresses the amount of happiness.
very - Another quantifier that's usually lazily applied. "I was very impressed." How much more impressed is that than "impressed"?
somewhat - "I was somewhat amused." Before you write that, ask yourself, "Really? Or was I amused?" The word does work in some instances (a "somewhat reliable" employee is not the same as a "reliable" one), but often it seems to be appended as if by bad habit. In addition to quantifying the unquantifiable, it also falls under the category of hedging terms—those that suggest a strange reluctance on the part of the speaker to emotionally commit. It's as if the writer is afraid to admit that he or she is amused and finds it cooler to profess being only "somewhat amused."
"a bit" is another sort of hedger. "I disagree a bit with this guy." Do you disagree or don't you?
rather - Ever since I heard a comedian say, "I think I'm rather smart—because I use words like 'rather,'" I search for this word in my writing and almost always delete it.
quite - Similar to the previous. "I was quite pleased." Usually unnecessary.
really - "I was really amazed," as opposed to being "figuratively amazed." Just say, "I was amazed." This is one of several "stating that the real is real" words.
"actually" is another one of those. You actually don't actually have to use the word "actually" as often as you actually seem to actually think you do.
truly - Same deal. You wouldn't tell me something "untruly." "Untruly, I loved the potato salad."
incredibly - "I was incredibly amused." Just, "I was amused," please. This one is even worse than the others because "incredibly" has a meaning that, in this context, makes no sense (the incredible is that which is not readily credible; by that definition "incredibly amused" is nonsense).
Related to "incredibly," we find people turning nearly any "strong" word into an emphasis word. For example:
shockingly entertaining - Unless one is being entertained by electric shocks, or by, more metaphorically, a horror movie that uses "shock" effects to entertain, one should not use the word "shockingly" here. There is really no end to this list of corrupted words used as emphasizers ("Amazingly profound," "Ridiculously good," etc.). Find your own bad habits and then search and replace them.
the opportunity to... - "This learning camp gives students the opportunity to explore biofuels." - Rewrite as: "In this camp, students explore biofuels." "the opportunity to" is usually wasteful language because "the opportunity" is self-evident if (as in this example) the students are doing that thing.
I found myself - "I found myself reading a book" "I found myself at the movies." "I found myself talking to a learned man." The phrase "I found myself" usually indicates a startling moment of self-awareness, an awakening to a reality that one had overlooked previously (see the lyrics to Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," which correctly captures this bewilderment). But to use it all the time recalls a senile person staggering semi-lucidly through life. "I found myself at the movies," for example, suggests that the individual might have "come to" while in a movie theater. You expect a serial abuser of this phrase to excitedly wonder, "I keep finding myself in interesting places! I wonder where I will find myself next?" It's silly.
Usually, you can replace "did become" or "had become" with "became." There are many other such phrases one could search for in this same vein; find the ones you abuse the most and then add them to the list.
It is apparent that… - when this phrase is used to indicate something that is obvious, delete it.
specific - "I asked a specific question." "We had specific goals." Sometimes a necessary word, but often inserted out of laziness and reflex.
What are some other words or phrases that, if deleted, would result in crisper writing?
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Posterity Letter: 19 October 2011
When Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to an individual which, in tone, clearly and amusingly betrayed his own awareness that said letter would likely enter the public record one day, his friends and family jokingly referred to it as a "posterity letter." Here is my posterity letter to my mother and sister.
Greetings, Kathy and Mom. I would have discussed this with you in person a week ago, but I was still working on the many details, and I hate to waste people's time with hypothetical chit-chat. Also, there are far too many specifics to address than I possibly can in an already too-long email, so I send this to you knowing full well that I haven't addressed all your likely questions and concerns.
I will be heading off to Croatia on November 1, and once again have successfully made arrangements to continue to work for my organization for a three-month period while I am over there, with the condition being that the organization and I will re-evaluate the situation at the end of that time in order to determine 1) whether to continue with that arrangement (unlikely), 2) whether I need to return to Atlanta in order to stay continuously employed, or 3) whether I apply for a leave of absence. It is worth noting that the cost of living in Croatia will be lower than that in Atlanta; I have also saved up a good amount of money to cushion me.
The point is to make a concerted drive to transition into another career as a journalist. There is no guarantee of success; perhaps there is a greater likelihood of failure. But I don't think that the words carved in stone at the Theodore Roosevelt memorial reading, "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed," express a mere platitude. Nor was Steve Jobs trying to craft a hollow bumper-sticker slogan when he said, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." The fact is, with 40 looming large I ever more acutely realize that this is the only life I'll ever have, and it would be tragic to waste it frozen into my cowardly inaction over my current employment situation by a struggling economy that shows no sign of improvement in the near future.
The other, more positive fact is that in Europe I feel invigorated, energized, and driven. The positive energy I feel over there is why I am taking this sort of a gamble, and why I think there is at least some chance of success. It's a risk--if success were guaranteed, then obviously it wouldn't be a risk--but one I must attempt.
I know you will worry, and let me assure you that you have company there. I've been waking up every night between 3 and 5 AM contemplating these enormous questions for several weeks. (Incidentally, magnesium supplements are good for treating the symptoms of stress, my doctor friends told me after I described my ordeal with worry-induced insomnia. Just a tip.) On the positive side, the fears and paranoia I entertain are also motivators to keep me moving forward. Obviously, I don't want to fail, so I will be working harder than I have my whole life to find success. This email is a contract to you pledging the application of such vigorous energy. This will not be a vacation.
I have already arranged what appears to be a nice apartment in Zagreb for three months which has an internet connection, so we can Skype and stay in touch, including over the holidays. I have been warned that in Zagreb winter is "cruel and sharp," which, as a veteran of Kiev in January, sounds intriguing.
We can discuss all this soon (I will be busy tonight cleaning out my extended stay room, so tomorrow night might be a good time to chat).
I am always glad to be of service in giving you things to talk about. Be good, don't worry, and take care!
Andrew
Mom's reaction? Positive!
Greetings, Kathy and Mom. I would have discussed this with you in person a week ago, but I was still working on the many details, and I hate to waste people's time with hypothetical chit-chat. Also, there are far too many specifics to address than I possibly can in an already too-long email, so I send this to you knowing full well that I haven't addressed all your likely questions and concerns.
I will be heading off to Croatia on November 1, and once again have successfully made arrangements to continue to work for my organization for a three-month period while I am over there, with the condition being that the organization and I will re-evaluate the situation at the end of that time in order to determine 1) whether to continue with that arrangement (unlikely), 2) whether I need to return to Atlanta in order to stay continuously employed, or 3) whether I apply for a leave of absence. It is worth noting that the cost of living in Croatia will be lower than that in Atlanta; I have also saved up a good amount of money to cushion me.
The point is to make a concerted drive to transition into another career as a journalist. There is no guarantee of success; perhaps there is a greater likelihood of failure. But I don't think that the words carved in stone at the Theodore Roosevelt memorial reading, "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed," express a mere platitude. Nor was Steve Jobs trying to craft a hollow bumper-sticker slogan when he said, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." The fact is, with 40 looming large I ever more acutely realize that this is the only life I'll ever have, and it would be tragic to waste it frozen into my cowardly inaction over my current employment situation by a struggling economy that shows no sign of improvement in the near future.
The other, more positive fact is that in Europe I feel invigorated, energized, and driven. The positive energy I feel over there is why I am taking this sort of a gamble, and why I think there is at least some chance of success. It's a risk--if success were guaranteed, then obviously it wouldn't be a risk--but one I must attempt.
I know you will worry, and let me assure you that you have company there. I've been waking up every night between 3 and 5 AM contemplating these enormous questions for several weeks. (Incidentally, magnesium supplements are good for treating the symptoms of stress, my doctor friends told me after I described my ordeal with worry-induced insomnia. Just a tip.) On the positive side, the fears and paranoia I entertain are also motivators to keep me moving forward. Obviously, I don't want to fail, so I will be working harder than I have my whole life to find success. This email is a contract to you pledging the application of such vigorous energy. This will not be a vacation.
I have already arranged what appears to be a nice apartment in Zagreb for three months which has an internet connection, so we can Skype and stay in touch, including over the holidays. I have been warned that in Zagreb winter is "cruel and sharp," which, as a veteran of Kiev in January, sounds intriguing.
We can discuss all this soon (I will be busy tonight cleaning out my extended stay room, so tomorrow night might be a good time to chat).
I am always glad to be of service in giving you things to talk about. Be good, don't worry, and take care!
Andrew
Mom's reaction? Positive!
Saturday, October 1, 2011
A Congregation of Creatures Great and Small
Another non-Euro blog entry. I'll be back on theme soon enough, but for now, enjoy another report from Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
"During my sermon I ask that there be no talking or barking," joked Pastor Jeff Meyers to an audience of about 50 humans seated on folding chairs, who in turn were surrounded by about 30 dogs (plus at least one cat and a stunningly colorful parrot named "Hector"). All had gathered that Saturday morning on the North Avenue Presbyterian Church parking deck for the Blessing of the Pets, an activity that will also take place Sunday in many other churches here in Atlanta and across the country.
The sight of a pastor crouched on the ground as he pets and prays for dog after dog might strike some as unusual, but the pastors exuded a self-aware cheeriness that prevented the scene from inviting any "Daily Show"-type irreverence. And it's a scene that may become increasingly normal to witness; the Blessing of the Pets has been growing rapidly in popularity, says Pastor Meyers.
The origins of the event extend back to the activities of a 13th century friar and animal lover, St. Francis of Assisi, explained Tim Rogers-Martin, Executive Associate Pastor for Equipping Ministries, who chatted while he cradled his own dog, "Sunday," a stray who had been found at a church on that day of the week over 15 years ago. St. Francis's feast day falls on October 4, and so the first weekend of that month is a natural time to celebrate the value of animals.
Explained Pastor Meyers, "These services developed out of Roman Catholic tradition, especially the Anglican and the Episcopalian tradition…Four or five years ago we started doing our own at North Avenue."
In the five years that Pastor Meyers has been employed at North Avenue, he has seen attendance at the blessings swell. "I think it was All Saints [Episcopal] that first did the blessing of the animals [in Midtown Atlanta]," he says, gesturing in the direction of that church. "Then, we started doing it, and then the Lutheran church down the street started doing it. A lot of different churches are doing it--not only for the congregation members, but for the community. And in five years…that's a lot of blessing of the animals!"
Some animals in attendance could use a little hope. Scott and Solange Han-Barthelemy arrived with their "torby" (part tabby, part tortoiseshell) cat, Penny, in a carrier. Penny is 12 years old and faces surgery for cancer in the coming days.The sermon began with Psalm 148, which makes much mention of animals as part of the creation, including "Creeping things and flying birds." Pastor Meyers then said, "We have caused the animal kingdom needless suffering."
In an interview afterward, he expatiated on that theme. "I wouldn't say this as an employee at North Avenue," he explained, "but for me, personally, I'm a vegetarian. I believe people need to take into consideration the sentience of animals--the fact that animals can feel suffering." He explains that as animals are a part of God's creation, and that our treatment of the natural world comes back around to impact us, essentially a "Blessing of the Animals" is a blessing for all of creation.
The issue of whether or not animals have souls, and therefore whether or not pets and their human owners will be reunited in Heaven, is one that has been debated for centuries. Does the bestowing of blessings on pets suggest belief in an afterlife for Fido?
"God has not given us access to these answers," Pastor Meyers says. "We do know that in the eschatological vision of the end of all things, there seem to be animals there symbolizing peace. Now is that just metaphorical, or is that literal? I don't know. But I know that it's there, and that God does care about animals a lot. They are part of his creation. I am more concerned about the ethical treatment of animals here, and I leave the questions of the afterlife to faith."
Faith has already guided Charlotte Carmichael to an answer. While her border collie, Sada, played energetically around her feet, she said, "I believe all dogs go to heaven. And cats. All of them." She paused. "Except maybe snakes," she concluded with a laugh.
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