What were you thinking?

Scenario 1:

A couple walks into their house, the woman obviously flustered.  She throws down her purse and flings her jacket at a chair.  The husband meekly follows, locking the door, gingerly hanging up his coat. 

“Ugh!”  She is pacing around the living room wringing her hands.  “How could you be so stupid?  What were you thinking?”

“I’m sorry.  I wasn’t”

Scenario 2:

A group of friends reflects over a late night meal at Waffle House.  They are lounging, full and happy, laughing as they recount the events of earlier in the evening.

“I swear, I thought the guy was going to pull a knife out of his pocket any second and spit us all!”  He lunges at his friend with a leftover straw, and they all laugh some more. 

“I guess I’m just stupid – I thought he really wanted our help fighting the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.  What were you thinking?”  He looks across at Jeff.

“I have to be honest – I knew the guy was messing with us the whole time.  I guess none of you took high school chemistry!”

Scenario 3:

A young man lies on a couch in a cushy office.  In a high-back chair next to him sits a psychologist.  He looks a lot like Steve Martin.  He might even be Steve Martin.  The young man speaks:

“I guess I can see her point. I mean, a blender does suggest a certain... reference to sexual politics, but I swear, it never entered my consciousness at the time.”

“What were you thinking?”

“You know those banana shakes she likes to make, right? Well, that's why I thought she'd like a blender.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“..What?  That she liked banana shakes?  Haven’t I already been telling you what I feel?”

It’s amazing what a little change in emphasis can do to a sentence.  It is said that tone of voice (and I think that this number also includes things like emphasis) provides 38% of communication when speaking.  55% is facial expression, and only 7% is communicated by the actual words you speak.  That is to say, I’m probably communicating basically nothing right now. 

When I was in middle school, written communication was both a blessing and a curse.  Like most young teens of my day, I spent as much time as possible on Instant Messenger.  It was one of the safest ways to talk to girls without embarrassing yourself.  You had as much time as you wanted to think through how to say things.  You could just small talk if all else failed, and you didn’t need to worry about those awkward silences that can come up in real conversations.  Half the time conversations just sort of ended without even having to say goodbye. 

But then there were those moments when the lack of vocal and visual clues would drive me insane.  There I would be, talking to some girl I had a crush on.  We had just started our conversation and she would ask, “So what r u doing tonight?”

My mind would race.  Was that “So…what are you doing tonight?”  Was that a hint?  Was she twirling her finger in her hair as she said that, perhaps raising one of her eyebrows?  Was she asking if I wanted to go out with her?  Or was it “[You’re] so [boring], what are you doing tonight?”  Maybe when she said it in her head, she was completely apathetic, filing her nails as she responded in kind to my “what’s up?”  (I never even considered that she was saying “So what are you doing tonight?” and was actually curious.)

I would debate between “not too much” which would leave the door open to the possibility of actually being available, though I really wasn’t (I couldn’t drive and I wasn’t about to admit to my parents who my crush was), and “pretty busy - tons of homework in math,” which would force me to admit that I knew deep down this girl was not asking me out.  Back and forth, back and forth, and after ten minutes, I would decide it was too late to say anything at all, and I would just give up.

Later that night I would find myself in my room, listening to my traditional melancholy music – Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 – staring out my window as the rain dripped down the panes.  I had lost my chance.  If I had just said something, anything!  But now I would have to hide my face from her tomorrow, or I’d have to come up with some lame excuse about my dog eating the computer wire.  But I don’t have a dog.  So she’ll just think I was ignoring her, which isn’t the greatest way to get the girl. 

Man!  What was I thinking?

Trailing Off

Many great composers had serious problems with self-confidence. Paul Dukas, who composed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, later gaining public renown from its use in Disney’s Fantasia, wrote a considerable amount of music, but he destroyed most of it rather than publish something that, to him, was less than perfect. Anton Bruckner, who composed some of the most grandiose romantic works in the canon, did not seem to trust his own preferences and often revised his work repeatedly to conform to the recommendations of other musicians. To this day some of his works do not have a standard version.

Other times, the composers have some great ideas, but they lose steam as the work nears its end. The first two movements of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique are both very “pathetic,” meaning they are full of pathos, but the last movement does not match the emotion of the first two. It seems as if Beethoven had used up all the inspiration he had for the first two movements, and by the third he was just tired, trying to spit something out to complete the required three movement form.

I only work in essays, and at that I am a mere amateur, but I suffer from both of these problems in conjunction. As a writer, it is easy for me to get excited about a topic. Almost anything can hold my interest for awhile, which I think is fairly obvious from the variety of topics I discuss in this blog. I love coming up with bizarre ways to approach a topic, starting somewhere off in the bleachers beyond left field, slowly meandering my way through the crowds, stopping for a hot dog, eventually entering the field over the home team’s dugout, and then puttering my way to home plate, where my topic awaits me. The pursuit of a good introduction is one of my passions.

Unfortunately, the pursuit of a better conclusion is where I should really be focusing. I often feel like a song-writer who has come up with a catchy chorus. You hear it one day on the radio and find it at least agreeable, so you keep listening. After awhile you realize the song should be coming to an end soon or it will pass into the realm of lost novelty, and right on cue, it begins to quiet down. But it’s not leading up to any cadence, any semblance of finality. No, the writer got so caught up in his catchy chorus that he forgot to figure out how to end the song. Luckily, in our studio era, there is an easy way to hide this error – just keep playing that catchy chorus and slowly fade the music out.

So what do those bands do when they have a concert? They obviously can’t just fade out at the end. Rather than face the deafening silence, the bands (or perhaps their more pragmatic producers) come up with some contrived ending that’s forced in where it was never intended to be. They have a quick pause followed by a final ringing chord, or they have a ridiculous build up where the drummer goes berserk until the crowd is roaring. Either way, the band has been forced to awkwardly cauterize their idea, effectively terminating the song but stealing away some of its vitality.

I commiserate with them. When you are pouring all your creative energies into an idea, sometimes you are just too sapped to figure out how to wrap it up. You would rather it hang around, ringing in your ears until everything in the world is better. Nearly every time I write I face this problem, but no amount of interest early on can mask the lack of a conclusion.

Thus I am forced to try. Some of the time I realize that I just told a story with no point whatsoever. Other times I have a point but I’m too bashful to make it forcefully. Like Bruckner I am overly concerned with what others will think. Still other times I know my purpose and write it plainly, but then I come across as pompous and moralizing. And all the while I would rather be back in the first part of the essay, writing another exaggerated story of my duel with a tiny spider. I become frustrated and start looking for excuses to procrastinate. Eventually, after the excitement has left me entirely, I abruptly end the story.

Emergency Books

“Jonathan come here quick oh my gosh Jonathan hurry hurry hurry HURRY!”

Computers careen through the air; chairs helicopter lopsidedly; small tremors shiver through the apartment. I charge upon my invisible steed toward the sound of my damsel in distress one room over. I overshoot my target, since steeds are hard to stop once charging, then back-pedal to find my wife gesticulating wildly toward some dark corner.

“It was HUGE hurry get it before it runs away there it is!”

I swing my mighty battle axe at the fell beast and smite it upon the head repeatedly until it is cloven in two. (Despite being mighty, my battle axe is not very sharp).

“Is it dead let me see.”

Once again I have saved the day. I gather up my wilting battle axe and the beast within and flush them into the toilet’s twirling torrents, never mentioning to my wife that the bug was smaller than my pinky fingernail. Okay, so sometimes I do mention it, but I still kill the foul little creatures. And occasionally they are considerable enough to warrant both my respect and a larger weapon than a tissue.

Though I am generally the more emotional of us, my wife has a more sudden and cataclysmic response to perceived emergencies. Or perhaps my responses are just as intense, but my mind classifies fewer events in the category of emergency. For example, a few minutes into a trip, my wife will sometimes suddenly release the sort of severe gasp that I would reserve for situations akin to the moment when I realized Evelyn Waugh was a man. I respond:

“Where are they? Where?” The gasp indicated to me that a herd of antelope was charging at our car from somewhere outside my line of vision.

“Dang it, I forgot to bring my white sweater in the car with me!”

“Your sweater? It’s in your suitcase - are you telling me there are no antelope?”

At this she seems confused, and I emit my own sigh. But I have to give her credit for putting up with what I consider emergencies, particularly issues related to evolution, theology, or Swedish holidays (and their accompanying gastronomy – mmm St. Lucia buns).

Concerning one particular emergency, though, we are ardently united: the travesty of having to wait somewhere for more than five minutes without something to read. And I mean something worth reading, not those awful magazines that befoul countless waiting rooms across the nation. (The least they could do is cancel all their subscriptions to Horse and Hound and pool their funds to get a worthy news periodical like The Economist.)

I might even admit that one of those gasps without warning is justified when one has forgotten her emergency book, and my wife and I have both had this misfortune. My wife is really responsible for helping me establish the habit of the emergency book, and I can no longer imagine life without it. She has had this practice since she was a youth, when she would sometimes even bring books when her family went out for dinner. I never brought a book with me on common errands until I married my wife, but now it is one of the items on the list whenever I go anywhere. And her habit of reading during meals has influenced me as well. It is not uncommon for us to read through meals at home together, and this often greatly improves are conversations later. Rather than just making small talk about the day, we can discuss issues raised by whatever we are reading, whether it is the social consequences of the bubonic plague or the effects of censorship in China, the diction of Shakespeare or the merits of natural food. And I assure you all of these topics have actually arisen.

One of my favorite topics to discuss is Medieval Literature and History. It would not be strange for someone to find my wife and me discussing The Battle of Maldon, Volsunga Saga, and Lord of the Rings in conjunction some night at a coffee shop. This sort of conversation would undoubtedly be enriching for us. While my wife would have been equipped for such a discussion due to her degree, I never would have been able to participate were it not for a day trip when I stole Ashley’s copy of Beowulf as my emergency book. What literary passions I would lack without having encountered Beowulf I cringe to consider.

In a world where conversation often descends to the banality of voyeuristic reality TV shows, there is an easy solution for recapturing quality discussion. Rather than picking up that remote when you’re bored, pick up a book. And if you find yourself so busy that you don’t even have time to be bored, the emergency book is one of the easiest ways to squeeze in some extra time immersing yourself in new (or old) ideas.

Pajama Pants

I was unshowered. My “Let the Big Dawg Eat” hat, which was too small for my head, was tilted upwards so as to cover as much of my oily hair as possible. I had not shaven in several days. I glanced down and saw my pajama pants and flip flops. Then looking back up and stealthily sipping on some Dr. Pepper, my bleary eyes tried to focus on the music projected on the screen at the front of the room. We were discussing falling fifths, a simple but elegant progression often used in classical music.

I dropped my pencil. Leaning over to pick it up, I saw my outfit once more and something clicked in my mind. What was I thinking? Had I no good taste, no sense of decorum or decency? How could I have ever allowed myself to step out of my dorm in such a state? Shame rushed over me as I considered my case. I could see the hard-working faces of my forebears in a field somewhere, laboring from dawn to dusk. How pitiful it was that after all their toil and effort to make a living, to get their children and grandchildren a leg up in life, their progeny would be so miserable and pathetic. I blushed to think what even my living relatives would think if they could see me now.

My face beet red, I knew I must do something. I quietly excused myself out of the back of the class and headed to the restroom. The eyes of passersby caught me, and, though they seemed courteous, I knew they were wondering how such refuse of the earth could actually be in their music building.

Quickly passing by their scrutiny, I arrived at the restroom and went inside to hide. There, finally, I was safe and could do something to fix my sorry estate. I took one look in the mirror and cringed. Eager to fix the problem, I took off my shirt, turned it around, and flipped it inside out. Looking in the mirror again, I found the image much more agreeable. I looked down and no longer saw the tag of my shirt dangling in front of my neck, but rather the shirt’s tasteful front. At that moment, I vowed never again to be so loose with myself as to wear my shirt inside out and backwards to class.

I took one more look at the mirror and still thought something looked off. “Ah yes! My hat.” I donned its gracious cover once again and returned to class, finally put back in order.

Not only did I feel like I had disgraced my forebears that day, I also felt rather ashamed that my pajama pants had to put up with such a ridiculous counterpart in their ensemble. But they are gracious and forgiving, my pants, and I do not think they begrudged it me or the shirt. The pants were the most comfortable I have ever owned, though they had humble beginnings. I found them in a clearance heap at Walgreen’s one day. They were purple and blue plaid and roomy in the legs. In fact, they still are so, for I have not forsaken them to this day though I have had them since high school.

They have seen many a college classroom, many a midnight walk around the quad, and untold hours of lounging here and there as my whims dictated. But recently I have grown concerned, for I can tell the pants are losing some of their earlier vitality. The elastic waistband is now visible atop the pants, some frays have developed, and they are generally feeling their age. I have already been through one difficult separation with a pair of pajama pants. I bought them at about the same time, and they too were blue and comfortable. I wore them regularly along with my current pair, but they did not last as well, and before long there were significant tears on these pants. It came to the point that I had to shear off large portions of the legs as the tears crept up like ivy. When they were more like capris or even shorts than pants, I decided it was time to end my bigamous relationship and settle for only one pair of pajama pants. I said adieu to the much amputated pants, and ever since I have been a monogamous pajama wearer.

I do fear what will happen when my current pair descends to the grave, though. All the younger types these days lack the depth of character I so relish in my current pair. The younger ones are fickle and flighty, prone to faithlessness at the most inopportune times (like just before a vacation, when a small piece of home works wonders on your ability to sleep).

And so in anticipation of the period ahead, I have a small poem to dedicate to my pajamas.

One pant, two pant, three pant, four,

Hie thee not out of my door.

Five pant, six pant, seven pant, eight,

I fear I’ll mourn thee ere too late.

I wish you all long relationships with your pajamas.

Suburban Regalia

I don’t exactly have a backyard. In fact, I definitely don’t have a backyard. Nonetheless, this very day I discovered a wonderful place in my own backyard. It’s really the sort of thing I should have known about years ago, and I know I had the opportunity to do so. I knew the name of the location, and I knew that it had a place to do some rock climbing. But it remained vague and distant until today.

Vickery Creek and its accompanying trails comprise this wonderful place. Not two miles from my current dwelling lies a small wooded area containing a few miles of scenic trails. These trails criss-cross the wood and follow the creek as it twists its way toward the Chattahoochee River. I would have never ventured into this realm had I not learned a vital fact – there is a waterfall along the trail.

Water has always been a key inspiration for me to go hiking. Forests are pleasant, but they lack the vitality of waterfalls or even creeks and streams. And there exist few boys who do not enjoy getting wet on a warm day.

So when I found out about the waterfall, I pledged my loyalty to the trails even before I had seen them. And I woke this morning eagerly anticipating my day’s planned adventure, right in my own backyard. Sometime around 11 o’clock I gathered up my small hiking knapsack and filled it with a water bottle, a sandwich, a small pad, and a pen for I intended to lunch and reflect during the hike.

I drove over to the trailhead and began to tromp up the trail. (I never merely “hike.” Tromping is much more invigorating.) Not two minutes later I encountered a long entourage of middle-aged hikers and realized reflection might be a little more difficult than expected on a beautiful day like today. But they passed rather quickly and I let them get ahead a bit to at least create the illusion of solitude in the woods. I presently forgot how near humanity was and relished the sylvan atmosphere.

About ten minutes later I came back in sight of the creek and started to hear what I believed to be the waterfall. The thrill of being outdoors in simulated seclusion, breathing the fresh air, feeling the dirt beneath me, greatly lifted my spirit. I began to see myself like some conquering hero, ruling over the path before me like an Olympian god. Tromping can do that to a fellow. Then I tripped over a protruding root, and my hubris came a’tumblin down like Icarus. Fortunately, metaphoric falls do not often kill.

My pride back in check, I could now tell that I was very near the waterfall. Then the beauteous vision burst through the thick February foliage of bare tree limbs – the falls themselves, tumbling over a mighty precipice into a bottomless abyss, churning and flinging up mist in such quantity as to instantly drench anyone who dared venture near this manifestation of mighty Nature.

I tripped again and decided to keep my romantic side in more control for the remainder of my tromp. In reality, the falls were only about twenty five feet tall, flowing over the remains of the old dam that I believe helped power the Roswell mill in days of yore. Though the scene could not compare to the splendor of natural beauty elsewhere, the eroded dam and the falls were a very pleasant sight in the midst of suburbia. I climbed down a little closer to the water and sat on some rocks to eat my sandwich.

The group of hikers I had seen earlier seemed to have taken a different route than I had, and presently I saw them appear up the trail and come down to look at the waterfall. They lingered for a few minutes and moved on. A troop of boy scouts followed shortly thereafter, and their leaders diligently kept them from the water’s edge. They too lingered briefly and then passed by.

But it was the opposite side of the creek that really kept my attention. There was another path across the way, a paved trail that led down from the mill and the historic part of Roswell, and there was a steady flow of walkers there as well. In fact, there were many more on that side than on mine. That didn’t surprise me much; their side was paved and flat; it had nice viewing areas, and it was only a few hundred yards from parking, shops, and restaurants.

And yet, nearly every walker carried a burdensome load of hiking gear. Many had backpacks stuffed to the brim; most had some form of walking stick, and all looked as if they had been working very hard so far. At first I thought they must have crossed over the creek further down (where there is a bridge) and had been hiking on my side beforehand, but this proved an untenable belief as I watched group after group come down from the parking lot, take off their sacks to view the falls for a few minutes, and head right back up to their cars, leaning heavily on their walking sticks. And even if they were hiking on my side of the river, the gear could not be justified; I doubt there is more than three or four miles of trail in total. I couldn’t help but laugh at one man in particular who had the complete outfit – a steel-framed hiking backpack completely full, two walking sticks, a hat brimmed all the way around, and a variety of other objects dangling from carabiners on his pack.

Such is the regalia of many suburbanites (or, perhaps more accurately, super-urbanites, for Roswell is north of Atlanta). We love to show off our fancy gear amongst our neighbors, even if it is completely unnecessary. And we justify it as preparedness. After all, you never know when you’ll be walking a quarter mile and fall, breaking your face, desperately needing gauze, Neosporin, and a nice side of roast beef with roasted parsnips while you wait for extraction. This desire for security carries over into other parts of our lives all the time.

Risk is always unnecessary; there is insurance for nearly everything. From our health to our lives to our jewelry to our cars to our luggage to our mail to our weddings to our dogs, if we spend money on it, we can buy insurance for it. And we often do. And when there is no insurance available (or even when there is), we have intruder alerts, credit checks, car alarms (which have woken me two nights in a row and never seem to prevent robbery), background checks, smoke alarms, personal references, carbon monoxide detectors, warranties, good faith agreements, never-ending return polices (or just take it to Wal-Mart), rain checks, and – if all else fails – you can always sue.

These same litigious folk have taught us well how to travel. It all comes down to planning. First you plan for the travelling portion of the trip, because it comes first, and we are a people most concerned with the here and now. So break out the entertainment: the computer with a multitude of DVDs, the ipod, the Kindle, the Blackberry, and your portable satellite radio (for sports), and of course you will need a charger for each device.

Next consider your clothing and toiletries. Fortunately, there is a useful volume formula:

(Number of Travelers)(Number of Nights Spent Away + 3) = Bags Needed

For example, if my wife and I are going to Savannah for three days, we would need

(2)(3+3) = (2)(6) = 12 bags!

So fill them up! You just never know when you will need a safari shirt or a ski mask.

I understand that it is a fundamental human need to feel safe. Life does not flourish without security. But I would also argue that some risk and uncertainty is equally important. It pushes us to new achievements; it keeps us motivated; it reveals our weaknesses and hones them into assets. Even the most protected person will one day encounter something completely unexpected and frightening. If they have spent their lives only trying to be safe, they will stumble and fall. But the one who has shunned the secure regalia of suburbia to face reality from time to time will stand beneath the pressure.