With or without chevrons, a journey

We set out early. I hadn't slept much for several days, and I know I was still awake about two hours before the phone rang to wake me with the news that Ian was on his way to Chicago. It was about 6:30 am. I blinked, bemused for a long moment, and reminded myself not to be angry with Ian for calling more or less when he was supposed to.

Our destination was a park near a college campus, to embark upon a 22-mile bicycle ride through the city of Chicago on a beautiful morning near the end of summer. Our spirits were high. We were glad to be doing this event, glad to be doing something together. We have been friends since sometime at the latter end of the 1980s: high school students, later bandmates, and now just very close friends who have known one another for a lifetime.

We got our rider numbers, prepared ourselves. Ian told me that he had not been on anything approaching this long a bike ride since perhaps his boyhood days as a scout. I could tell he was a little nervous. I told him that a leisurely ride of this sort of distance was generally far less tiring than even a 3-mile bicycle commute through morning traffic to work, and that he would do fine. I told him that the fact he had not ridden a bike lately would work in his favor, as his muscles would be surprised.

We set out in the third wave of 22-mile riders. Chevrons and an occasional sign would guide us, and we had a paper map of the route as well.

The first half was pretty delightful. We rode at our own pace, allowing the clusters of cyclists to pass us. Sometimes, we could no longer see any other riders from our event. At the halfway mark, we paused at a rest area the organizers had established, to eat bananas, drink water, catch a second wind, and complain to one another that our asses were sore already from the bicycle seats.

Shortly after we reestablished ourselves on the ride, something changed for me. It wasn't that the tease of rain which had felt so refreshing turned into outright rain, chilly and thick. It wasn't that the wind sometimes grew fierce and made our progress require more effort. It was something internal, sparked by something Ian had said. Along the way, we had discussed music, thoughts of the future, the ride itself. And as we skirted alongside yet another park on our journey, Ian said to me that he was really enjoying the feeling of being in the city, rather than driving through it.

I looked around, and I couldn't see what he meant at all. I've long prided myself on my ability to see Chicago as something new each time I move around within her borders. This very blog has at times been stuffed with such observations. But in that moment, it felt as though Chicago had nothing it could do to spark me into finding its hidden beauty. I knew even in that moment that this was temporary, a trick of the light, as it were. Tomorrow, I could go out and find new ways to fall in love all over again.

I also knew, though, that this ride had become the beginning of what feels like a farewell to this city I have lived in for so much of my adult life. I am ready for something new, to be seduced by another city, another town. I will not be leaving anytime soon, so of course my feeling could change, but I feel a new chapter starting, and it is not set here, I don't think.

I said nothing of this to Ian. I don't know why. I think he would certainly have understood it if I tried to vocalize it.

We continued riding, and for some reason, the event organizers had plotted their route so that the second half of the ride took us into the crowded shuffle of the loop. All at once, our leisurely ride took on all the mannerisms of a morning commute. The rain grew somewhat relentless, and we had to become far more vigilant about the increasing number of cars we shared our roads with. They poked at our comfort zones, and edged us toward danger of collision from time to time. At one point, we shared a single lane of traffic with both construction and a city bus, breathing hot exhaust into my face as I moved behind it. I told Ian that he was essentially experiencing the worst form of some sort of Chicago Bicycle Commuter Fantasy Camp, but instead of three to five miles, we had close to ten to go, growing weary from the dozen already under our belts.

Eventually, with some help from the increasingly confusing chevrons, we completed the ride. We both agreed that it was a worthwhile experience, but one we could have easily organized for ourselves for free, choosing our route at whim. We were soaked to the skin, and more than a little exhausted.

And I thought it was fitting that in what I had come to view as the first leg of a farewell tour of my city, Chicago had shown me both its beauty and its frustrations. We had gone through affluent neighborhoods, and ones I might normally grow somewhat uncomfortable with even in my car. We had seen the peaceful side of a Sunday morning on a warm summer day, and the chilly danger of being unprotected in traffic during a heavy rain.

Chicago remains a glittering jewel, with far too many facets to count or experience in a single lifetime. And one day, I might return here with fresh eyes and love it anew. But for now, it feels like it is somehow less mine, and that I am somehow less a part of it.

Before I got home to process some of these thoughts (which are not nearly as negative as I fear I have painted them. I am rusty.), I got one more delight. I stopped at a sandwich shop on the way home to get something to eat. When I asked the kid behind the counter for "lots" of tomatoes, he put what amounted to two whole tomatoes on my submarine sandwich. I love tomatoes, and have never experienced that particular largesse at a chain eatery. That moment served as at least a minor reconnection somehow, and maybe what it indicated was that even though I think I might be ready to leave, Chicago will never stop finding little delights for me to experience. In that, I feel that I can leave on a note of happiness when I finally go: two dear friends shaking hands as they part for what could be a weekend or a lifetime, hoping they have made their mark upon the other in some small way.

*****

I am trying to relaunch this blog. As you may be able to see if you used to read it regularly, I am changed in some ways since the last time I scribbled things here. I hope that my writing will improve again with time, and that I will find my way back to communicating something complicated with a bit more grace than I have now.

Open

Tech week and opening weekend are finally past. I got home last night and promptly fell asleep for many hours. I've been sleeping poorly lately, and I think I really needed a good chunk of slumbery bliss to clear out my head.

The end result is that I woke up in a pretty good mood today. I feel like I'm actually just myself for the first time in days. All the stress and doubt, even from the things that are not show related, seems more manageable right now.

So how did it go, the opening weekend (I pretend to hear you ask)? There was some general clumsiness (physical and mental) on all our parts, a result of feeling a bit under rehearsed, but the feedback seems generally positive. I don't know if there were any reviewers in the audience for either of our performances, but if there were, it seems unlikely that we'd be taken to task for anything major. My personal feeling is that the show is somewhat disjointed, but contains some pretty nice performances by all six of us on stage.

A friend who attended last night, and who had last seen me on stage in 1990, said that he didn't feel I was acting. He sounded a little disappointed. I imagine that he thought I would be playing a 90-year-old British man in one scene, a teenager in another, and so on: that there would be costumes and makeup and some real chameleon work going on. And I can do some of that stuff, but the reality is that most acting roles require an actor to find a way to play it more or less as themselves. The casting process is usually such that they are responding to your personality as much as your monologue, and deciding based on how they perceive you as a person. That's the essence of typecasting. This is especially true with this particular director, who wants every scene to feel natural and unacted. I wish he had been at the table when my friend said that. He would have been pleased.

The trick, I told my friend later, is being yourself and believable in the scene regardless of how you are actually feeling. There is a scene in the show which ends with me more or less in tears, having kissed, fought, and courted the other actor and finally having confronted some truths inside him. Roughly two and a half minutes later, I take the stage again, in an overtly comic monologue which requires me to be genial and energetic. I have to erase the previous scene and become a completely different aspect of myself in that time period, or the monologue simply does not work. And while both characters contain more than trace elements of my actual self, the work is making both of them believable to an audience in this short span of time.

Anyway, I took my friend's remark as a compliment, however it may have been intended.

It probably helps, for feedback purposes, that I don't really know any actors in real life anymore. One of my friends seemed impressed simply by my not breaking character during the show, which is not the kind of thing another actor would think as occasion for praise. Still, his enthusiasm seemed genuine. I'm lucky to have friends who are so supportive.

The biggest thing about this show, the thing that will last after all the bad luck and problems have become amusing anecdotes, is that I've awakened some part of me that really enjoys acting. I have reminded myself that this was, for quite a while, the only thing I had ever considered doing professionally. This was the art I dropped out of college to pursue, and I think I'm still good enough at it to get some work, even though I suspect I'm no longer as good as I used to be. But that's just rustiness.

*****

Although I've missed two posts, disqualifying myself from NaBloPoMo, I still think there'll be plenty of posts coming up soon. I have some more Ask the Moon questions to answer (keep emailing those in), those pictures I took out at Rich's last weekend, and some stories to tell that now, free from the rehearsal schedule, I may actually have both the time and the inclination to get done. One of them is about the roles of acting and writing in my life, and why combining the two is sometimes difficult. I mention that one specifically so you guys can nag me if I haven't done it by the end of the week.

Summer, summer, so long (part 2)

(The first part of this post is just below, and additional images can be found on my Flickr page, which links via the animated gif at left.)

It is the night I enjoy. This shouldn't surprise anyone who's been reading for a while. It was also no surprise to me that returning to the carnival after sunset felt more like a real experience.

It was the last night of the fair, and technically summer was already over. The actual equinox had been some time in the afternoon. I was trying to feel it, to be in that zone of special attention. I was eager to assign meaning to the carnival, the passing of summer, the dawn of autumn.

It wasn't easy to even feel autumnal, hot as it was. I was forced to spend a certain amount of brainpower thinking about sweat and heat, which knocked me clean out of the atmosphere I was attempting to create within my head.

Still, wandering a carnival alone can be an interesting thing. Immediately I noticed that the sense of people having fun was much greater than it had been during the afternoon. The barkers were busy calling victims to their tents. I don't know if it was because it was the last night, or if they were doing it all along, but I noticed many of them guaranteeing prizes to the children of those with the pursestrings.

"I'll make sure the little one wins," I heard more than one of them say. It struck me us unbearably sweet. Carnivals are, after all, the province of children. That single block and the tiny overflow onto side streets was no doubt an endless new world for some of the children who hurried back and forth beneath the colored lights.

I know that these things always seemed that way to me, when I was young.

I walked and I watched, snapping pictures when the mood struck me.


It occurred to me that I might be able to see the skyline from the heights of the ferris wheel, so I plunked down four dollars to be slowly spun to its apex. The operator was not gentle, though, and each time I reached the top and stopped, I found myself in a wildly swaying basket. With all the motion and my camera's low-light limitations, this is the least blurry shot I was able to get. The others are more...abstract.


I was able, however, to get some general shots of the carnival from up above it.




After the wheel I became camera-shy. I don't know why. I think it had something to do with not being content any longer to merely observe. I wanted to experience something as well. Perhaps the notion that I might have enjoyed the wheel more had I merely looked around rather than fighting with my camera sparked this idea.

I walked up and down the length of the carnival several more times before finally deciding that what I truly wanted to do was get some small slice of the fun I would have had here as a boy. I wanted to be flung and shaken by a great beast of a machine, spun and dizzied and out of my own control. I wanted to tap into something primal with speed and wind and motion.

Another four dollars got me enough tickets to accomplish this feat.

Some of you may know that about five years ago, my chronic stomach problems developed in such a way as to make me carsick. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I kept circling the machine I had chosen, retreating, pondering maybe just riding the ferris wheel again. Here is the ride, which is also in the last post as the example of last year's cell phone photography, what Minx is calling the "red spinny thing."


Eventually, nervous beyond speech, I dared to climb the steps and hand my tickets to the operator. I sat alone in a dangling cab, pulled the enormous bar down over my head and body to secure me within it. Four or five times I nearly raised it up again to exit. I honestly did not know if my stomach could handle it.

The fact that I can debate myself endlessly sometimes meant that I still had not completely made up my mind, stay or go, when the ride let out a metallic groan and began, ever so slightly, to move around its axis. The machine's purpose was to spin and spin until we were lifted into the air and parallel to the ground, then it would tilt and sway us around as we hurtled through space, trying out this angle or that until the operator decided we had gotten our money's worth.

The beginning was tough, the slower part. I focused my eyes on the empty car in front of my to minimize the dizzying effect. Soon enough we were airborne, whirling and hurtling along. I gripped the bar tightly, pushed it down into my leg with enough force that it briefly hurt, and I wondered if I had crushed the cigarettes in my front pocket. I had the thought that I would really want at least one to remain undamaged should I survive my ordeal and walk upright among people again.

People like these sorts of rides for different reasons. For me, I suspect, it is the exhilaration immediately following the ride which makes me love them. My body telling me for the span of the ride that I am in peril, that I might not survive, only to be reassured in a set amount of time by a slowing down and a stopping. A new lease on life, a chance to live again.

And I did feel that exhilaration as I wobbled through the gate and down the steps from the ride. I had not even felt sick once we got moving, had conquered that small part of myself for at least a small moment of time.

I walked down the length of the carnival once more, and back again. Now I was smiling slightly to myself. I was a part of the carnival, I was one of the revelers, there in the dark on the last night of summer.

Summer, summer, so long (part 1)

Last year I told you about an end of summer carnival. I guess by "you" I mean the four people who were reading me, most of whom I knew personally. I don't blame you for not being here yet, Blogreader. There are a lot of blogs.

I inadvertently jumped the gun a little, posting about the event a day or two before the equinox, or on what I am now calling the "prequinox," because it makes it sound like maybe I did it on purpose.

This year the same carnival came through, and I made sure to nip down there to make up for the cell phone images from last year's post. I have to say, though, that some of the images from the phone came out beautiful in ways I have not been able to replicate with the nicer camera.

I went alone, milling through the people first in the morning and then again at night. In the morning, they were still setting up, and although many of the games and rides were going already, they had not captured that air of breathless fun that a good carnival should possess. My best guess is that this is because there weren't enough packs of children running around yet. That and the barkers at the games were less eager to verbally pull folks off of their path to try and bilk them a dollar at a time of money in exchange for stuffed animals and such.






It was a lazy affair in the morning. The bearded man in the final shot above kept letting that guy and gal throw darts at his balloons more or less for free, possibly out of boredom. It was while standing there taking shots of this trio that a woman came along to upbraid me, claiming that I was simply not allowed to just wander in and take pictures of the games. I could easily have argued with her, as I was standing on a public street at a public event, but I decided to simply leave and return after an interval.

When I told him I had been chased away, my friend Craig suggested it might have something to do with the fact that carnival games are notorious for being rigged, and that they didn't want evidence of this recorded. And the games are rigged, of course, just not, I don't think, in ways that can be easily documented with a camera. They are more subtle than that. The prizes, for instance, generally cost less than the fee for the game.

My return trip to the carnival after the sun had set will be the subject of Part 2, which I should have up in a few hours.

Shorn to be mild

That's right, Blogreader, a double pun, specially designed to induce a groan and a rolling of your eyes. Other possible responses include a sharp sigh, a frown, wondering why you bother to read this blog, or a narrowing of your freshly-rolled eyes. All of these are normal, and should resolve on their own.

I'll give you a moment to forgive my punnery before proceeding.

*****

It does not take a genius intellect to deduce that getting a haircut from someone with whom you do not share a language can sometimes result in a vast discrepancy between the intended haircut and the one on your head as you exit the place, a little bit poorer financially, and with a bemused expression stapled on your face. Often, one will also have an urge to reach up and check the haircut for up to six hours after the event.

In spite of decent scores on several standardized tests, I have found myself in this exact situation on more than one occasion.

I have been contemplating a shearing since October or so, whenever it was that I began injecting "my hair is getting long" into conversations regardless of the topic currently under discussion.

Saturday, as I wandered stickily along Chicago Avenue looking for pictures to take, my hair kept obscuring the viewfinder of my camera, or sneaking into my mouth when a breeze picked up. I have accidentally lit it on fire on several occasions while putting flame to cigarette. I was also sweating heavily. I felt I had had enough when I chanced upon a hair salon which was open and bereft of customers as a result of a street fair which was not yet underway, but which had blocked off all traffic for several blocks to allow the vendors to set up.

I asked the woman nearest the front how much a cut would cost and, deciding it was a reasonable price, walked into the back to have my hair professionally washed. I assumed the first woman would be the one doing the actual cut, and she spoke English well enough, but it turned out that she was far too busy fussing with her own hair to do mine. Instead, the young woman who washed my hair was assigned to follow through to the end.

I was asked how I wanted it cut, and I answered. The woman from the front walked back and asked me again, translating my answer into Spanish for the benefit of my stylist, who nodded and began cutting.

Our path together was a jagged one. She started by cutting too little, and then cut too little again before I said the word "drastic" and she seemed to understand. With that one word, she removed more of less all of my hair as I stared morosely at myself in the mirror four feet away.

I had thought I might get something along the lines of late '65 Beatle, but ended up with Contemporary Bland. Still, I guess it'll be a while before I start moaning about needing a haircut again.

As a side note, my friend Ian called my longer hair, coupled with the blazers I started wearing a lot last fall, my "writer's costume."

So here it is: my freshly shorn locks, in a picture I call "Self-portrait at Bus Stop," taken an hour or so after the cut.


At the Puerto Rican market later that day, Junior's brother told me that every time he sees me I look more and more like "someone who fits in." He cited my formerly purple locks and the long hair I had had earlier in the day. I told him that my work with the CIA demands that I be somewhat flexible about my appearance. I added "and my morality..." under my breath, and his eyes widened and he clearly did not know whether or not I was joking. I enjoyed this. Then he told me I looked like I was putting on weight.

One final note: Blogger's Terms of Service require that all blogs publish at least one post about the blogger's hair, and one about the blogger's children and/or pets every six months. So I am only doing my duty by telling you about all this. I'll probably get the one about my cat out of the way tomorrow.

A cancellation

The Moon Topples Third Fiction Contest, which was scheduled to begin on August 1st, is canceled. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to it, but my heart just isn't in it this time, and running the comp involves too many people and too much time for me to enter into it halfheartedly.

My current thinking is that it will probably return in February and be an annual thing, rather than trying to host it every three months.

If you find yourself itching for a fiction contest, there is still time to enter the one over at Clarity of Night. Deadline for that is August 1st.

Again, my apologies for pulling the plug so close to launch.

Breaking Radio Silence

I've been feeling unusually quiet lately, Blogreader, as you may or may not have noticed from my lack of posts. I've been writing a little, outlining some—thinking and plotting and dreaming a bit in the hopes that I will soon have enough planning done to start my new draft.

I've been staying off the computer more than normal as well.

This isn't depression, this latest batch of quiet. I am familiar with depression, and this is something else. As near as I can tell, it is simply quiet.

It is good to be silent sometimes, I think. Besides, using the standard picture/word ratio, my last post was slightly over 10,000 words. Surely that was enough to last a while.

*****

You guys seem to have continued the tie score as to whether the clouds in the previous post were cotton candy or the impending apocalypse. I suppose I will declare cotton candy the winner on the basis of the earth's continued existence.

*****

We have been having a heatwave here. If you don't understand the cliche about it not being the heat but the humidity, come and spend a summer in Chicago. Sadly, the really bad heat, the kind that actually claims lives, is not due until late this month and throughout August. So there's that to look forward to.

I finally broke down and bought an air conditioner two years ago. Within a few hours I was puzzled at how I had survived for so many years without one. As much as I support energy conservation and the like, there is also a limit to how many hours I am willing to lie in a pool of my own sweat trying to pretend I'm not miserable.

*****

Announcement #1: In case you have forgotten or were not aware, the next GBA(s)FC will be starting August 1st. I imagine it'll run a lot like the last one, except that I will be scaling back the prizes somewhat. I plan to have only a single winner in the Author's Choice and Jury's Choice categories, and possibly an honorable mention or two. This is due to budgetary restraints as well as wanting to make sure that the people who win feel special. A friend also pointed out that a high percentage of winners also can make the people who do not receive an award feel worse. This makes sense to me.

*****

Announcement #2: I will be quitting smoking on Monday, July 16. Tuesday at the latest (depending on when I finish off my current stash). This will not be my first attempt to quit smoking, but I hope it'll be my last. So wish me luck with that, and send me candy if you wanna. Well, e-candy, I guess. I expect I'll try to blog when things get rough, so you can expect some posts about how I'm feeling terrible. What fun!

The Breakfast Club at the Tivoli

The Tivoli Theater opened in Downers Grove, Illinois in 1928, three days before my grandmother was born. Downers Grove would later give the world the band Styx and Denise Richards, but I always think of the Tivoli as being the real treasure of the city (close on its heels are a certain used bookstore and a record store where I bought quite a few Beatles albums).

We started going to the Tivoli in the early 80s, after moving north to Naperville. There were plenty of closer places to see a movie, but I tend to think that the classic atmosphere and decor were why my mother drove the extra miles to sometimes catch a flick at the Tivoli. It seemed like more of an event than just popping into the nearest darkened room to watch the releases of the day.

Which is not to say that the films were always worthy of the architecture. I can recall seeing Splash there, and Footloose, among others. I also saw The Return of the Jedi there.

Later, we moved to Woodridge, much closer to the Tivoli, and it became our primary film venue. During this time, it was the second Indiana Jones flick, Beverly Hills Cop and The Breakfast Club that I watched here for the first time.

It was The Breakfast Club that got me thinking about the Tivoli this morning. I woke up with David Bowie's "Changes" stuck in my head for some reason, and somehow followed the song into its usage in that movie, where they display the quote about how the children are quite aware of what they're going through.

Watching it in the theater, it struck me as the first time a film seemed to be speaking directly to me, to people my age who were not necessarily cool or popular. And the quotation burned itself into me.

At the time, as a sixth-grader, the lyrics and the song were much the same as the Tivoli to me: something from before I had consciousness. Things of any vintage at all were somehow either timeless (if they had any relevance to me) or merely old (if they did not). The Tivoli and the song were timeless to me. David Bowie, in that moment, may as well have been Shakespeare or Poe.

Now that I am older I can place things in context. The theater, with its art deco stylings and its 1400 fairly comfortable seats, truly was timeless. The song was, at the time the film came out, less than 15 years old. While it would perhaps prove itself timeless in due course, in 1985 it was merely a hit from the previous decade.

I imagine that somewhere in a darkened theater right now, and 11-year-old is watching a film which uses some song from the mid-90s and having the same response. And then I realize that there really aren't any movies out there which are trying to speak to this younger generation in the way that The Breakfast Club tried to speak to mine. Certainly, no one seems to be making any money doing so. All the 11-year-olds are undoubtedly out seeing Transformers, if they're in a cinema at all.

File under "birthday comma happy"

Six months from today will find us in the year 2008, no doubt tooling around with jet packs and flying cars. We are at the year's spongy midsection, where it has begun to show its love handles.

On this date in 1858, Darwin read his paper on evolution to the Linnean Society. Four years later, the battle of Gettysburg began. One hundred and one years later, both the zip code and "She Loves You" were rolled out to the public. Not too many years later, the Walkman was introduced on this day. And somewhere in there I was born, on this date in 1973. Don't even get me started on "Canada Day" which has plagued my birthday on calendars for as long as I can remember.

Thirty-four. I kind of miss the years where there always seemed to be some sort of significance an impending birthday. In the teenage years, each new number seemed to bestow some new duty or privilege, exciting things like driving and voting and finally being allowed to see all the "R"-rated films I'd been watching all along.

In America, at least, once they allow you to drink (at age 21) this is pretty much over. I think at 25 is when most car companies will rent to you, but that's about it for magical powers bestowed by virtue of age until 59 and a half, when the retirement fund I do not have can be drawn from without penalty. Demographically speaking, I suppose being in the final year of the 18-34s holds some sort of significance. Soon I will be less valuable to marketers.

It was this day last year that I made the decision to write. Will I epiphanate epiphanize reach some sort of big decision this year as well? I kind of doubt it. The decision to seriously try to write was a pretty big step down a path I don't see myself leaving anytime soon. I'll probably take stock at some point today, see where my first year of writing has led me, aside from the obvious boon of having this blog, and all the lovely friends I've made here.

I share my birthday with Willie Dixon and William Strunk; with Dan Aykroyd, Debbie Harry and Princess Diana. I very nearly share it with my good friend Ian as well, who was born about 12 hours after I was, and who will always (ALWAYS!) be younger than me, and should never forget that I am the elder and deserving of reverence.

Anyway, yeah, it's my birthday. Don't have anything big planned to mark the date. I'll probably just check to see if my driver's license has expired and call it a day.

My huckleberry friend...

The ice cream truck has pulled up outside house, once again playing it's maddening medley. At the moment, it is playing "Moon River" for some reason.

It'd be a lot easier not to think of it as primarily a drug front if it showed up before ten at night, or stayed outside my building for less than 90 minutes. Still, they do have a decent soft-serve, and I once got a sundae from them that was pretty yummy as well.

Imagine how good the drugs must be.

*****

Back out to the burbs today to return the new Mahtmobile my grandmother's car. Hopefully, it'll be mine before too long. My old ride feels pretty crappy in comparison, plus I'm terrified that it'll require me to pump some dollars into it before too long. Ah, well.

*****

I am going to take my bicycle in for a tune-up next week, with an eye towards riding it to the lake periodically while the weather is nice. I used to do this more often, and lately I've just been feeling like getting out of my house more is a good idea. For some reason, I can spend all of winter inside and not feel particularly stir-crazy, but summer is something else entirely.

I could use some sunshine as well. I am as pale as a sea creature. Well, a very pale sea creature.

*****

Spam mail of the day: although I did not read it, I was inordinately fond of the subject line "Humidify Bear," which showed up in the inbox of one of my email addresses today.

Cicada

“I do not at all know what to think of your extraordinary case of the Cicadas.”

—Charles Darwin, in a letter to Benjamin Walsh of Rock Island, Illinois, October 31, 1868

They came in the summer of my birth, and returned just before and senior year of high school. Every seventeen years billions of them burst forth from the ground in the Chicagoland area. They are estimating 5 billion this year, in our region alone. These numbers make up Brood XIII.

They cannot hurt you. They do not bite or sting, and are not classified as a pest. They make an awful lot of noise, though: their mating calls can reach 106 dB, louder than a jet engine. This makes them the loudest insects in the world, thanks to their unique muscle drums. They are not locusts. They are vegetarians.

An adult cicada is called an imagine.

They have developed this seventeen year cycle to keep from falling into step with predators with a shorter life cycle. Seventeen, being prime, ensures that nothing relies on the cicada for food.

They grow slowly underground over the years, drinking sap from tree roots and biding their time. Once their year arrives and the ground temperature reaches 60°, they construct an exit tunnel and emerge into the world once more.

In 1990, when they last emerged, people began eating them in great quantities. Eating cicadas will not hurt you, and they are rich in protein, but I have no plans to eat any myself.

I feel somehow kindred to these creatures. As I said, they sang at my birth. When they came back and sang again, I was just beginning a hugely rewarding period of my life as an actor. Now they return as I work on my novel. While this is coincidence it is also perhaps not coincidence. There are cycles in life, and the 17-year cycle is one I think I know.

Most of these creatures—who will outnumber all of the humans on Earth in our little region—emerge in a single night, perhaps tonight. They will swarm and swarm, perhaps even on me when I go outside. I have no sap, so I am not afraid.

So much has changed since I heard them last. How much will have changed before they return?

Blathering on (again)

I seem to have given some of you the impression that I have toiled and toiled, doing Daywork my whole life, and have given it up only yesterday for the life of the pen. In the interest of honesty, I feel compelled to rectify these impressions.

I have worked mostly from home for the past three years. I am sometimes lured from my domicile by a nearby company, where I once ran the department in which I now occasionally serve. I didn't work out as the manager. I fought a lot with my superiors, and when I got tired of fighting, I became lax in fulfilling my obligations.

That is all water under the bridge.

GoodThomas suggested that I point out that I have never worked. This is also not true, and he better have been kidding when he said that.

As for the writing, I made a promise to myself last July to give this a legitimate shot. I hadn't written in paragraphs much for more than a decade before that. My promise took the form of a five-year plan, in which the goal for the first year was simply to write and write and not worry about publishing or anything else.

I felt I needed at least a year to to remember how to make words rub against one another in such a way as to cause meaning to spill forth.

I'm sure when my year is up, I shall feel I could really use another year to remember these things. I'm pretty sure I'll always be working on that particular problem.

I was considered a "natural" writer when I was in school, and somewhere in there, my teachers failed to impart to me any of the discipline I am now trying to create for myself. This is not the fault of the teachers, at whom I sneered and scoffed as much as I could get away with. I hardly ever completed the assignments they set in front of me. Where the fault lies with them, it is only that they did not fail me more often. The rest is all on me. I am well aware that I robbed myself of a pretty good education.

So now I set assignments for myself. I've been at least mediocre with my follow-through. I completed a novel in November as a participant in NaNoWriMo. Before that, I had no way of knowing if I could write about something and sustain even my own interest in a single set of characters and ideas for that many pages, for that long a time. While I am not exactly enamored with the output from that exercise, I do think that I learned a lot. Not the least of which is that I can, indeed, write a novel-length piece, however turgid and excruciating.

Completing the Daywork has me thinking about all of this all over again. Now is my time to write, to put my money where my mouth is, as it were. Or my something where my something else is.

I've been trying to reawaken my more playful mind, and am giving myself a week to decompress before I start expecting any sort of real output on the novel.

But, listen: I wrote a short story today. It is bad, but it is a first draft. First drafts do not need to sparkle. I hadn't really intended to do even this much, but I'm happy I did.

In my adult life, I have been an actor, a musician, a graphic artist and many other things. I was even an accountant. I have expressed myself creativity since I can remember.

I finally stopped acting about seven years ago, because my band had become infinitely more interesting to me. I stopped being in a band because it had started to feel like Dayworking. Writing is my Last Big Dream, and the only one I have never really followed. It is also the one in which I can most easily see where I am succeeding and where I am failing. Each art I have discarded (I don't think I've really discarded any of them forever) has been in pursuit of the more challenging option at the time.

There is nothing more challenging, to my mind, than grabbing a stranger and making him or her feel things with nothing more than the alphabet. To take someone on a ride with such meager tools is an accomplishment indeed, and I salute all of the writers who have taken me on such journeys. This list will undoubtedly include some of you Blogreaders, those of you with blogs, anyway. I had thought blogs were a bit silly right up to (and a little past) the point where I started one myself as a writing exercise. Thank you for proving me wrong.

See how quickly I lose the point? I came here to tell you that I was only a Dayworker for about three months this time, and all my crowing about being unshackled and free may as well be the sound of the wind blowing. My present circumstances and freedom to write are merely the product of circumstance and luck, whose unwitting pawn I shall ever be.

Kurt is up in heaven now

Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. I can think of no person who has had a greater impact on my writing, my mind, my life. Certainly, there is no one among people I have never met who could claim as much influence. No other author has provided me with as much reading pleasure while haunting me for years afterward with the deeper thoughts he wrapped so carefully into his seemingly breezy novels and essays.

I participated in an online interview with Mr. Vonnegut in 1998, around the time Timequake was released. His message to us, over and over, was for those of us who had enough regard for him to take part in such an exercise to please, please, turn our computers off and go create something.

He was 84, which is the same age that his fictional alter-ego Kilgore Trout lived to (going by the Timequake version of events).

When we were deciding band names in what was to become map of july, I suggested "Kilgore Trout." I suggested a number of other Vonnegut-based names, and I thanked him by name in the liner notes to our first album. I am still thanking him.

Aside from pleading with us to turn off our damn computers, Kurt Vonnegut really wanted, simply ached for people to simply be nice to one another. He loved people, loved dogs, loved writers, loved children of all sorts. He was once called a "bitter-coated sugar pill," which is a lovely thing to be called.

The first time I tried to write a novel was when I was nineteen years old. It was, more or less, the same story I have returned to, which some of you have read extracts from recently. The original draft, more than a decade old, was clearly an attempt on my part to write not only a novel but a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

I still find certain rhythms in my speech and my writing that I know I learned from him. I still find myself aping him shamelessly whenever I think I can get away with it.

I used to reread all of his books each year. I fell out of that habit at some point, and it is time for me to read again. I have never read one of his books without finding something new hidden within. This is a testament to him as a writer, and also says something about how I am slow-witted sometimes.

The title of this post is a small joke, and was the first thought to pop into my head when I read of his death this morning. Caveblogem beat me to the punch for using the joke on a blog, but here's a quote that explains it anyway. He's talking about humanism and the death of Isaac Asimov.

"Being a humanist means that you try to behave as decently, as honorably, as you can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. When we had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, I spoke at it and said at one point, 'Isaac is up in heaven now'. It was the funniest thing I could think of to say to an audience of humanists. Believe me, it worked - I rolled them in the aisles. If I should ever die, god forbid, I hope people will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now'. That's my favorite joke."

I wish that I could eulogize him more properly. This post will have to do for now.



[Edit: Basest has reminded me of a wonderful quote from Sirens of Titan:

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

And on my fridge I still have a printout of the following disclaimer, which he used in Timequake:

"All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental."]

This blog has been sold

After my recent post about the relative worth of this blog in dollars, I was as surprised as anyone to find that people would actually take me up on this idea. Negotiations began via email, although I thought it wise to bring in an attorney before too long. We reached an agreement last night, and signed the paperwork today. I have not been permitted to discuss the matter with anyone until this evening, now that the contracts are signed. I am relieved to be able to tell you all about it now.

Proving, perhaps, that money means far less to those who have it, Wayne MacAvoy of St. Petersburg, FL has officially acquired the rights to the Moon Topples Blog—and selected writings that have appeared here—for the sum of $86,500. Rights to all fiction remains my copyright, as do most of the other pieces. Mr. MacAvoy does not, for instance, share my opinions about Michael Penn or Robyn Hitchcock. He was not in map of july, and has no plans to write a novel. From what I gather, he plans to use the blog to promote his real estate company, which has done very well already, but which he thinks could be better. He has hired me, under separate contract, to do some brochures for houses he has to sell.

Really, all this means is that I have to find another blogging home until I can launch something new. In the meantime, I will be writing guest posts on some of the blogs I have befriended over the past seven months.

Initially, I thought this was all some sort of joke: an email offering me money for something I got for free. Mr. MacAvoy had to work pretty hard to convince me his offer was legitimate. That's when negotiations began in earnest, and I'm proud to say I was able to get a lot more than the initial offer from Mr. MacAvoy.

Looks like those blog worth predictors are not to be dismissed quite so easily.

For those of you who think I am "selling out," I suppose I am. I suppose what I am doing is the exact definition of the term. But my artistic vision is not compromised in the process. In fact, this only frees me up to create more work without having to worry so much about the origin of my next paycheck.

Other longtime readers will, I expect, understand my decision, and wish to know only where they can go to find me once the dust settles and I am posting online again. I don't know yet. I'll probably set up a real website somewhere, of which a blog will be a part.

Or maybe I'll just flit from blog to blog. Tomorrow I am scheduled to do a guest post in Britain, and the day after that on the West Coast. Perhaps I can become merely a guest voice on many blogs. I suspect this would be fun for a while, but would then grow pretty tiresome. I'd start wanting an outlet of my own before too long. So, yeah, I'll have another blog before too long.

Look for updates on Wayne MacAvoy's blog, which he has permitted me to use until I get set up somewhere else. Click the link above to read about the acquisition from his viewpoint. He takes control of the blog in less than twenty-four hours, and midnight EST, or the start of April 2nd. Thanks so much for reading me, and I hope to see you all soon at my new blog.

Much ado about nothing

The news I alluded to in my previous post is nothing big. I'm sorry if y'all thought it was gonna knock your socks off. Just a couple of things I've decided lately that mean something to me, but which aren't likely to impact your lives at all.

The first piece of news is I have decided to return to London for a week in early May. This isn't exactly official yet, but I worked out a budget (factoring in how badly I'd like to return) and I think I can swing it. I didn't get to do all the things I wanted to last time, and just loved the city so much that I thought it would be a nice treat after all the work I've been putting in lately to take a small vacation (with my new camera) and wander those unfamiliar streets once more. For those of you who live there, I'll be the gloomy-looking American with the notebook and camera, sipping a cafe mocha in the sun or asking you if this is really the right tube to my destination. Or I'll be the one crouched down to get a close-up of something rusty or broken while 40 other tourists are taking a picture of something noteworthy.

Again, not exactly official. I should make my final decision by the end of the week, though.

The second bit of news concerns my writing, and the pursuit thereof. I feel like I've gotten my writing to an acceptable level overall, but think I still need work on my storytelling skills. To that end, and bearing in mind how difficult it has been to get any real work done on the novel lately (while working full time, and often nights as well) I have decided to concentrate on a couple of short stories. My plan is to polish a handful of tales into what I would consider worthy of publication, and submit them to some of the bigger fiction journals. I'm guessing I won't get anything published, but I thought it would be nice to find out, and possibly get some editorial feedback as well. And on the off chance that something is accepted, well, that's just a bonus.

This is a bit frightening for me. I've never submitted my writing anywhere. This more or less includes assigned work in school, which I tended to shirk unless absolutely necessary to avoid failing or when a rare assignment came along which captured my interest. I've written for publication before, but never without knowing my piece would be published (or not caring if it would be), and never fiction.

I think I'm up for the challenge. It's probably high time I started putting myself out there into the world at large to see what there is to see. I'm quite certain that I will share any successes or failures here.

The last bit of news involves your writing, Blogreader. I had initially planned to host a second fiction contest at the beginning of May, as that would put me on track to do about four a year. As I will likely be gone during that time (did I mention? to London!) I'm guessing I'll either do one later in May, or at the beginning of June. I was so happy with how you guys responded the first time that I know I want to do it again. There will be some changes to the rules for this one. I'm still working out the kinks and figuring out how to do this stuff.

Incidentally: we have two days left in our faux-spring before the needle dips back into the blue, and I was out enjoying the weather with my camera again. 22 new shots made the cut onto my Flickr page, if you wanna check it out. I appreciate the comments you guys gave me about the last round of pics. It's really a good feeling to be able to share my city (or my view of my city) with you.

Rebel, rebel

The Canon Digital Rebel XTi. My new happy SLR camera.

I've been drooling over this thing since last November, when I cheekily added it to my cart on Amazon and began to wonder when I would be able to complete the purchase.

I logged in earlier this week and discovered that they had not only knocked $50 off of the price, but were throwing in a photo printer for free, so I felt that I couldn't wait any longer. I cannot really afford it yet. I'll have to be pretty frugal for a while to make up for this extravagance.

Still, when I think about all of the pictures I took in England, and how often I was fighting against the limits of my camera, I'm very excited to have this to play with. I've really started to love taking pictures, and since it's digital, I can snap all I want while I figure out how to use the increased power and the lenses and everything.

I was a bit nervous having it delivered to work, since this place is a photo studio, and there is no lack of higher-end equipment all over the place. I didn't want my new camera to feel bad, and I didn't want the photographers to tell me bad things about it. So far, though, everyone's been nice.

Anyway, this is the special thing I mentioned I was expecting. Seems a crime to have to photograph it with my phone. Maybe I'll use it later to take a picture of my phone, and we can see what sort of differences there are...

I'm a little sad because after a week of warmer weather, the temperature is set to plummet and the snow is set to resume, which means I cannot traipse about taking pictures all weekend as easily as I might have liked. I suppose it's for the best, though. I have other things I'm supposed to do this weekend.

Coffee and the Cobbler: another fiction excerpt from NaNo

Sorry to do this to you two days in a row, folks, but I'm unbearably tired, and thought posting another excerpt would be a good excuse to give you an idea of what the book was supposed to be about. As well as saving me from trying to be clever and interesting in a new post at 2:30 in the morning.

The basic premise is that Will, a guy in his early thirties, has made an ambitious list of twelve things to change about himself in order to feel that he has a better life. This list has manifested as a set of New Year's resolutions, and when we meet him shortly after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day, he has already broken eight of his resolutions. The novel follows his attempts, over the course of a year, to change his life. Yesterday's excerpt was from a part where he joins a gym.

Man, that plot sounds cheesy. I should point out that this is not really something I'm planning on whipping into a legitimate manuscript. This novel was written in November with no previous preparation or outline and remains unedited, except for some minor deletions below where the characters reference a story not contained within the excerpt. It was also largely written extemporaneously, and I often had no idea what was going to happen next, which was nice as an exercise, but not really where I want to live as a writer. This is from Chapter Four.

I'm posting these excerpts not because I believe them to be awesome, but because I kind of like them, and thought maybe I should post some fiction before sponsoring a fiction contest.

Like the last one, this segment features a character dropping the F-bomb. Consider yourself disclaimed.

I swear I'll post something new tomorrow.

* * * * * * * *

Their waitress approached; young, blonde and a little plump. Will guessed she was a new hire from the menu she carried with her as she approached the table, and from the way her eyes darted nervously around the room.

“Do you guys know what you’d like?” she asked. Her voice was much higher pitched than Will would have guessed.

“I’m ready to order,” Greg announced. “Coffee and the cobbler.”

“Wasn’t that a detective show from the 80s?” Will asked.

“What?” The waitress looked a little flustered.

“Coffee and the Cobbler. Nevermind.”

“I think it was on CBS,” Greg said.

“And for you?” She looked at Will, focused on getting their order so that she might sooner escape to her perch behind the counter, where she felt safe.

“Coffee and I think maybe some of the cheesecake,” Will said.

She took their menus and retreated.

“Coffee and the Cobbler,” Greg mused. “I think William Conrad was in that.”

“Jake and the Fatman. Although it’s probably fair to say that William Conrad probably had coffee and a cobbler from time to time.”

“I notice you didn’t say some cobbler.”

“Well, he was the Fatman.” Will stirred cream and sugar into his coffee. Greg left his black and took a long drink.

“So you’re working out. Quit smoking? Or your job? Dating anyone new?”

“Uh...no, no and no,” Will patted the cigarettes in his breast pocket. “I made a profile at a dating site, and I’ve traded a few emails.”

The waitress brought the coffee and desserts.

“Thanks. Can I also get a bread pudding to take home?” Will was planning to return to work on the non-profit group’s anti-smoking posters when he got home, and thought he might be up late working on it. He like to have something sweet for the middle of the night. The waitress walked away without responding. They watched her go.

“Did she hear me?” Will asked.

“Maybe she thought it was yet another hilarious comedy bit. Or you’ve failed yet again to make a new friend. So is Stacey officially gone yet?”

“No,” Will said slowly. “The thing with Stacey is...ah, fuck it. Nevermind.”

“Aw, c’mon. The thing with Stacey is...?”

"Ah. Fuck it. Nevermind," Will repeated. "Just forget it.”

“Sure, friend,” Greg said, narrowing his eyes and stretching out the words. “Consider it forgotten.”

Blatant self-promotion

A very nice comment from Caroline seems to indicate that some of you were unaware of some of my other corners of this big, wonderful web we call the, uh...well, I guess we call it the web. Sometimes I wish I were clever.

To that end, I thought I'd quickly mention my MySpace page, where you can hear me warble a couple of tunes, accompanied by the good folks who used to comprise map of july, which was my band for almost a decade. Fellow blogger Craig appears on all of the tracks, and can be heard calling me a "nervous Nellie" at the beginning of the track from which this blog derives its name. And yes, I'll likely be your "friend" if you are on there too and ask me.

Also of potential interest is my Flickr page, which features some of my photography. The vast majority of the shots were taken in London. Some of them I quite like, and maybe you'll like them as well. Stranger things have happened. And if you like gravestones, well, you're in luck there as well. I took a lot of pictures at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, GA.

The other thing I want to mention is that I'm considering sponsoring a short fiction contest like the one that just wrapped at The Clarity of Night. I didn't find out about it until it was over, but I truly love the idea, and am stealing it. I have no idea what form this contest might take, but the formula will be more or less what he's got going on, as I've already established that I'm not very clever. I'll think up a topic or an image, give y'all a time limit and maximum length, and we'll go from there. There'll be prizes and what-not.

If any of you have any ideas for some general parameters, leave me a note in the comments or send me an email and let me know what they are. The biggest problem I foresee is getting prizes for international submissions, and the mailing or sending of these. I don't want to exclude anyone.

"Join us..."

Things started to go badly almost as soon as I left my house for my first day of daylight and working on-site.

Apparently, other people were trying to get somewhere on the roads as well, and oftentimes they seemed to have the impression that if they were occupying the same physical space as my vehicle, that this would solve their problems. The other cars had horns, and were swervy. They stopped for no reason and parked even in places where there were signs telling them not to, along parts of streets where parking eliminates an entire lane of traffic. Many of them seemed inordinately angry.

Still, I knew I had to cover six whole miles, so I persevered, gripping the steering wheel tightly and attempting to navigate through the river of dangerous lunatics.

I made it through the gauntlet and to the building unscathed, parking my car in the lot and walking to the entrance. This walk was longer than the distance from my apartment to the Puerto-Rican market on the corner. It felt like it was longer than the distance from my apartment to the building I was to work in.

I entered at the building at ten, placing my bag on the floor and hanging my jacket on a nearby hook. I called out greetings to some of the workers I saw passing by, but they largely ignored me. I can understand that. I am sometimes less attentive of my cat while I am working. Some of them looked as though they had already been at work for an hour or more. I wondered aloud if they were trying to catch up on some stuff or leave early, and was icily informed that most of them start working each day between eight and nine. In the morning! Can you imagine? I shrugged this information aside. People always haze the new guy, tell stories to test gullibility.

The break room had coffee ready. I selected a pristine cup from a stack of styrofoam, licking my lips with anticipation. Then I was informed that they had apparently run out of cream (no doubt due to all the workers coming in early that morning) and that I would have to use a powdered substitute. It had the consistency of very fine sand, and roughly the same ability to dissolve into coffee. I stirred and stirred until it had either evaporated or fled to the bottom of the cup. I added a bit of sugar and took a sip.

It would have been rude to spit it out, Blogreader, but this is exactly what I wanted to do. It tasted awful. My first thought was that it had been brewed by people who had seen pictures of coffee but never tasted it. Alas, I was running on frightfully little sleep, so I had no choice but to consume it.

I returned to my workstation, where I learned that attempting to light the lamp situated on the desk had only two possible results: nothing at all, or the bulb would illuminate at the cost of a severe electric shock. I left it alone.

Having forgotten to bring my spare trackball, I woke up the screen on the computer they provided with a standard mouse. It felt awkward in my hand. Navigating the screen was like trying to do calligraphy with a pen clasped in your fist. And the computer was Not Mine. The settings were strange. The keyboard was elderly, and from a different generation than the computer itself.

After installing some system software updates and rebooting the system, the machine emitted a hissing sound like an untuned AM radio. I rolled my uncomfortable chair away from it, fearing an explosion. Thankfully, it was a false alarm. My guess is that the noise is produced because the computer appears to be steam-powered.

I was relieved to find 90GB of music on the hard drive, left there by none other than myself last May. Things were looking up. And after the first cup of "coffee," my tastebuds were deadened enough that I found I could drink another cup without wincing.

After a while, I found myself in a conference room. This was the "meeting" which I had been asked to attend. People sat around a table reading to each other from handouts we all had in front of us. I was not asked to read, which hurt a little, but I guessed it was because I had not prepared any of the handouts. Next time I'll prepare something, I thought. I have always liked reading aloud. When someone finished reading, we would then all discuss the passage. It was a little like eighth grade English.

At one point, many people in the meeting were talking about some work which it turned out was merely hypothetical. They were debating workflow and problem-solving for a project that it seemed none of us might ever be involved with. The novelty of the meeting atmosphere was wearing off.

A voice broke through from the speaker in the phone, announcing that there was cake in the break room. I looked around at my fellows excitedly. At last! Here was the free food I had in mind when I agreed to leave my house in the first place. And it was cake! To get such a perk in my usual setting requires me to buy or bake a cake myself.

But nobody acknowledged the announcement. They continued the meeting as though nothing had happened. I was about to speak up and see if they had not heard that there was cake for free not fifty feet away, when the voice broke through and repeated the announcement. The worker nearest the phone reached out and flipped a switch to mute further announcements.

These people seriously intended to continue the meeting. They had weighed meeting versus cake in their minds and meeting won. My mouth was hanging open as I looked around the room. Who were these people? What kind of values do they have?

A couple more people read things aloud and then the meeting was adjourned. Since the speaker had been silenced after the second announcement of cake, I have no way of knowing if the other workers also got fajitas, were entertained by a professional magician, or experiences some other free wonders denied to those of us trapped in the meeting. A couple of them had balloon animals, though, so I know I missed out on something.

For the most part, the people I saw shuffling from task to task today seemed tired and dispirited. When I caught a gleam in on of their eyes, it never seemed to be joy. And after what I saw today, I'm not surprised. They kept me there for nearly seven hours. And they are expecting me to return for perhaps as many as four days next week, presumably for the same amount of time each day (I even heard someone say that eight is what is normally expected of a worker, unless they are busy, when ten or twelve hours is not considered uncommon). Now I have no problem working that many hours at home. I do it all the time, on my machine, in my chair. Nobody distracts me or puts me in meetings. I do not travel six miles. The coffee is hot and fresh and the cream is plentiful if I haven't forgotten to buy it.

The drive home was much the same as the drive in, except there were even more cars everywhere, and it was dark outside. And raining.

I wondered several times today how these people could live these lives and not go mad. Eventually, it dawned on me that they couldn't. Suddenly the driving and the listlessness and even the indifference to cake came into focus. These people are slowly going insane. And essentially, they've asked me to join them. I am being indoctrinated in a cult of madness, bound to keep returning day after day until I inevitably join them in their despair. Soon I will be oblivious to cake, driving like a maniac, and unable to taste the difference between coffee whatever they had in those carafes in the break room.

Still, the money's pretty good.

Dayworker 2: The Rejobbening

I was just trying to think of how working on-site during the day will impact my life. I made the following lists:

The negative:

1. According to my "supervisor," wearing pants at all times is mandatory. They say this is a dealbreaker.
   
2. If I get bored, I can no longer wander off and catch a movie or take a nap. Unless I pretend to remember a "doctor's appointment."
   
3. Going to bed at dawn will likely leave me quite tired. Apparently, they weren't kidding about the whole "daytime" part. They meant a.m. when they said "9 or 10."
4. I shall have to leave the building to smoke.
5. Probably cannot catch up on television shows while I am working. Likewise, I will have to wear headphones in order to listen to music at a freakishly high volume.
6. Seeing another person unexpectedly does not necessarily indicate the presence of an intruder. I should make sure before calling the police.
7. My cats will likely think I am never coming back. They will turn feral while I am gone.
8. Cannot make googly eyes or practice juggling during meetings, as the others in the meeting can probably see me.
9. Alcohol is for after work. They seem to find this important.
10. The work itself is not any less tedious than my home projects.
    
11. Garbage tornadoes in the parking lot/smoking area. I'll try to remember to take a picture of this phenomena for you.

The positive:

1. I'll probably only have to make coffee if I finish the pot. No doubt I will be looking around for a cashier my first couple of times in the break room.
2. Vending machines. I really should get some for my home, though.
3. Running out of an essential work item does not mean I have to run out to an office supply store.
4. Someone might hear the various sarcastic, witty things I say during the day.
5. If I am there, even if they've run out of work for me to do, I am getting paid. My plan is to hide there for several months after the assignment is completed.
   
6. Since I still have a fairly full workload at home in addition to the on-site stuff: if I complain about work, I'm not likely to get the eye roll I tend to get these days.
7. Sometimes there is free food.
8. Vitamin K, which comes only from sunlight, is considered essential for some reason.
9. Getting a phone call at 2 p.m. does not mean I am being roused from sleep by a ringing telephone.
10. I'll get to see some folks I genuinely like and haven't seen in a while.
11. Garbage tornadoes. They're quite beautiful. OK, not really. But they tend to win the "my office sucks because..." contest when debating with people.
    

So it's a tie. Guess I'll show up after all.