Saturday Mournings

I don't know why this happens on Saturday mornings when I'm alone. I'll be sitting at my computer, surfing, playing Scrabble on Facebook. Inevitably, I'll go to iTunes and try to hunt down a new song that I discovered the week before that I can't live without. This week it's "Sing" by Peter Joback and Kate Pierson (of B-52s fame) - I think it's a cover of an old 60s song. I'll play the song and all these memories and thoughts of people who have died will fill my mind. Anne, Matt, my Uncle Saverio, my grandmother, images of them in my head, like grainy old film. Anne's preoccupied scowl on Melrose Avenue. Riding on the back of her motorcycle. The way she hung upside down on the jungle gym when we were seven while I practically wet my pants. Matt's freckles. Matt's cackle. Matt lying in his coffin with too much lipstick. My uncle's voice on the phone the day before he died. His beard. His smile. The way he rubbed his teeth with the plastic wrapper from his cigarette box when he was done eating. My grandmother's bear hugs. The ten dollars I got from her every birthday. The indecipherable half-English, half-Italian scrawl she wrote in my birthday card. Her pizzelli she made herself and wrapped in tinfoil and fed us whenever we'd come to visit. How we'd have to have my father translate half the things she said because we couldn't understand a word.

I'll think of how they're all gone too early, how their lives ended. How they're not here anymore, how I miss them. How my parents will, one day too soon, not be here anymore. And I'll get profoundly, immeasurably sad.

Life sometimes seems quite pointless, doesn't it? Death makes it so. What do we all live for, what's the purpose of it all when inevitably, there will come a day when it's all over and we're not here anymore? When the writer puts a period at the end of our sentence? We try to find meaning for our lives in our jobs, our children, our families, our pastimes, but in the end, the reality we cobble together for ourselves disappears like a mirage that was never really there.

On Saturday mornings, when I don't have a certain someone and her dog to keep me company, that's how it sometimes feels to me. I don't say this because I'm depressed, so don't get all squirrely on me and advise me on the merits of Prozac. I'm fine. I'm just telling you about a feeling I sometimes get. Instead of letting it pass like a bad fart, I thought I'd examine it for a change. Problem is, the second I try to do that, it's gone. It's like trying to dissect a zen koan. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Already, even as I type these words, it's floating away, away, away, into the air. The sad feeling never lingers long. It comes upon me like a wave and rolls away just as quickly. I guess I'd compare it to an emotional orgasm. It's short, quick, and cathartic. Once I squeeze a few tears out, I instantly feel better. But why Saturday mornings? And why is it music, a certain kind of heart-tugging song that brings it all out, if ever so briefly? That unconscious, she is a strange bird!

Here's the song and video I was talking about.



The song is beautiful, to me, anyway. A guy, his girl, and their dog, driving through the Arizona or Utah desert, encountering the angry, the frustrated, the dispossessed, and changing their reality in the simplest of ways. It's a choice they make. And it all starts with a song. It's a simple thought: Just Sing. Singing is I am here. Singing is I exist. The connections we make, the people who touch us, whether they are alive or not. There's a purpose to it all, even if we have no idea what it is while we're here. They keep driving, all the way to New York, all the way to Brooklyn. The exhaust coming out of their car is a happy green and blue. You see how loud and angry it is, how mean the people are to each other. A dog gets squirted on. But a song and people change. Even in the Big City. It ends with a Hark the Herald Angels trumpet player, a man on his apartment roof blasting it out while his cat watches. Mission accomplished, our protagonists drive back West, towards the desert.

If only we were capable of that kind of patience and love. Maybe that's why we keep ourselves so busy all the time. Easier to go to work, write that brief, clean the apartment, make lists, check them twice, plan playdates, drive kids to karate, go antiquing, meet that deadline, go shopping, have a glass of wine, zone out to Survivor, or read People magazine to see what hijinks Lindsay Lohan has gotten herself into. A busy mind is an occupied mind, n'est-ce pas? And an occupied mind frets not, at least on the surface.

But is an occupied mind really living, or just passing through? Getting to life's core and purpose means opening up and exploring your guts. It means making yourself a little vulnerable. People don't like to do that. Too much exposure. Too much downside. That's probably why the world is the way it is. No one really knows who they are and why they're here. No one really understands why our priorities are so fucked up in the short time we spend here and we spend so much precious time going through the motions of life. And if we stop the blur for a second, if we bother to think about who we are and what we're doing, the amount of time that's already passed and what we've lost and missed can induce a stark melancholy.

That's why some of us have Saturday Mournings.

Pig Paranoia

This swine flu insanity is driving me batshit. Seriously, I can't take it any more. People running to drug stores and emptying them of Tamiflu and antibacterial soap, mind-numbing news "updates" about where the swine flu is, where it's going, how long it will take to get there, debates over whether it's an epidemic or a pandemic (Do YOU know the difference? Bet you don't.), stock footage of old epidemics that killed hundreds of thousands of people, reach stories lamenting the death of a single toddler in Houston (He visited a MALL dontchyaknow! Hundreds could be infected!), more stories about who's gonna die and when, shots of a Mexican kid who had the first known case -- they now call him "Patient Zero," foreign countries limiting travel to the U.S. and Mexico, school closings in Queens and Brooklyn regardless of whether any students were actually infected, a Vice President saying he wouldn't be taking any subways or planes right now, oh, there's a retraction, hundreds of pigs slaughtered in Egypt, which hasn't had a single case, offended Jews and Muslims who want the name changed from swine flu to something else, racists who want to call it the "Mexican flu," people who aren't eating pork even though eating pork doesn't cause swine flu, and last but not least,

THE PIGS, THE POOR, FUCKING PIGS!

Blamed for a virus they did not, could not, create by themselves. A virus that could just as easily be blamed on birds and the biggest a-holes on the planet: human beings, who bring birds, pigs, and humans together to cause these airborne plagues. Humans are the real culprits here. So why not call it the human being flu? Or the homo sapien flu? No, instead, they blame cute little piggies, who were minding their own business the whole time, eating whatever they were fed and frolicking in mud and pig doody. Have we sunk so low that now we're going to scapegoat the Charlottes and Piglets of the world for this virus? FOR SHAME!

The hysteria is comical. I mock it. I've been mocking it on Facebook and I'm mocking it here. People are freaking out over nothing. It's the flu and a fucking mild version at that. You get it, it makes you shit like the dickens for a few days, maybe you puke a few times, get a fever if it's a nasty slice, and eventually you feel better. For the average person, this is no worse than the common flu that kills X many people each year. But because it's NEW and it comes from SWINE, we're supposed to worry, panic, and run around like chickens with our heads cut off. Sorry, I'm not buying it. I'm doing what I always do. I ride the subway, I hold the pole, I wash my hands when I get to work, I napkin bathroom doorhandles and don't shake the hands of gross-looking people, which is about 2/3 of New York City. That's just common sense. I don't need CNN to scare me out of my Calvins to use the brain that God gave me, for goodness sakes.

This kind of silliness has happened before you know. It happens every time the media tells us to be afraid, but courtesy of the website Freewilliamsburg, which I link to on the right there -----> I found this gem from the 70s that made me LOL heartily. Take a gander.



Poor Betty. Or was it Dottie? "Hey, I play golf every weekend!" Love those ominous sound effects too. Fortunately they're all actors and likely died of something else.

The point here is, the media sensationalism is worse than the virus. It's designed to make money and scare the shit out of people so they'll keep reading newspapers and watching the news and buy Tamiflu and batteries and water and Cipro and whateverelse. Be not afraid. Be smart instead. Take a deeeeeep breath. Relax. You're going to be okay. Chances are you won't get it, and if you do get it, you'll survive. The alternative is far worse. You could make yourself sick with worry and weaken that immune system of yours. Then you'll probably get it and don't say I didn't warn you.

Trust me, when Ebola or a reasonable facsimile someday goes airborne and your eyes, hair, and skin are literally falling off and you're begging for it all to be over, THEN you'll have something to worry about. For now, it's just the fucking flu. Get over it.