adrian is rad

I just wrote a poem:

I was all excited because I saw I’d gotten an email
but it was from me
the one I just sent
sad

Menlo Park is dead at 10pm on a Sunday.

[personal thoughts, ramblings after the jump]

(more…)

I think the Coudal Partners’ Field Tested Books Series is pretty interesting so I thought I’d try one of my own.

Roald Dahl’s Omnibus field tested by yours truly at Schloss Emlau, outside of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany. Early August 1995.

I was in Germany with my second cousins and their parents (my dad’s cousin, her husband and children), the Fuesers. I’d just finished 8th grade and was going to be starting high school in about a month. The Fuesers lived in Solingen near Koeln and Duesseldorf and the like. It was my first trip far away from my immediate family (I’d gone to London and Amsterdam with my brother the previous year) and my German was spotty from three years of slow and substandard German education. Part of the reason to go, I think, was to improve my German. I was nervous and shy about my German skills. I’d think for ten minutes about how to ask someone to pass the chocolates only to have them offer before I asked. Eventually I gave up trying and that turned into a refusal as the trip went along. The Fuesers all spoke English fairly well—they spoke English better than I spoke German certaintly—but it was obvious my refusal to speak German was a strain on them.

After about two weeks in Solingen, we left for the south of Germany, for Schloss Emlau, more of a nice hotel than a castle (Schloss = castle, palace). It was perhaps sometime during the car trip, or perhaps only after I arrived at the Schloss Elmau that I started Omnibus. Most people know Roald Dahl for his children’s stories, but the Omnibus included many of his short stories, including those that he contributed to Playboy. I was no longer a kid and I was reading “adult” stories.

There was a dance in the grand ballroom at Schloss Elmau. I didn’t want to dance. (I wasn’t much of a rebelious teenager, but I say that this German trip landed smack dab in the middle of my three months of rebelion.) Instead, I would go up to the balcony overlooking the ballroom, dressed up in my flannel greys and shirt and tie (because, my aunt decided doggoneit, even if I wasn’t going to dance, I had to be dressed in case I changed my mind) and read the story about a family feeding their weak baby royal jelly only to see it start turning into a bee. Roald Dahl has a way with characters and stories. They’re not subtle or overly complex, but they’re good.

I’d also read at night. My bed was across the room from the son’s, Justus’, and I’d read with the light on while he was asleep. My innocent fourteen year mind absolutely exploded a story about two buddies trading wifes (without their knowledge) for a night. This story is quite possibly less graphic than what ones sees on prime time TV and definitely less graphic than what one sees in any R-rated movie, but my young mind was sent reeling and I had to contend with a funny feeling in my pajama pants.

I read it quite quickly. It was good and I was lonely. All my communications were strained so I withdrew.

On the last day at Schloss Elmau, I made a concession: I went to a class to learn the Schloss Elmau dance with the daughter, Olga, and we danced it at the dance that night in the ballroom. I’d learned all the steps well but it went into a freeform waltz portion at the end, during which I repeatedly stepped on Olga’s feet. We decided to sit down instead of dance that part.

I saw the Motorcycle Diaries tonight at Flicks. It’s a movie about the young Ernesto “Che” Guevera and his friend Alberto Granando taking a 12000km trip through South America, initially by motorcycle and later by foot, boat, hitch-hiking and whatever other means were necessary. It’s a very interesting movie. The two main characters are interesting and the story is subtle, but engrossing.

Thoughts, in three:

• there are a lot of movies based on real life, because real life is interesting. leading to…
• I should write more about my life, particularly a memoir of my time at MIT and the quasi-autobiographical road trip screenplay that I started
• I really should learn Spanish. If you’re in the Bay Area, you’d understand. I’m not naturally gifted at languages, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t work at Spanish (and later: Zulu and Afrikaans).

My life is a movie. A perfectly scripted movie. I have come to an obstacle and fallen, only to persevere and be rewarded in the end.

Pittsburgh-Las Vegas-San Francisco. Easy enough. I can do that. Easy. Nothing to it. The first flight was at 8:45am. I arrived at the airport at seven am. I waited outside in the cold, the twelve degree cold. You do not make up a temperature like twelve degrees; you make up a temperature like nine or sixteen. I saw the line inside. It was long, too long. The line outside was shorter, but still long. Maybe a third the inside. I’ll wait outside. It’ll take forty minutes. Maybe forty-five. An hour tops. You must check in half an hour ahead of time. Relieved! It was eight twelve when I handed my driver’s license to the skycap. SFO via Las Vegas, thanks. Woo. That was close. Twenty minutes and I’ll be through security. It’ll be tight, but I did it.

Expletives! Expletives under my breath! Expletives muttered aloud! They thought it was past eight fifteen! It’s not! Can you not see my watch! Do you see a five or a six or a seven in that time! No, you see a three at the end so it is clearly not quarter past! You are clearly mistaken. My computer has shut that flight down; I can’t do anything about it. First one locked out of the flight.

Seconds! Missed it by mere seconds. Perhaps many seconds, perhaps one hundred or two hundred, but not five hundred. Not one thousand.

Another line. My feet are warming up at least. My feet are freezing. Blocks of ice! Another forty-five minutes in line. I was on the Las Vegas flight, eventually to SFO. Oh, you won’t be able to get there till tomorrow. Tomorrow? I work tomorrow I’m being picked up today! I am being picked up at half past two today! Don’t you see?

I’ll see what I can do.

Minutes past. Where is she? I think she’s eating breakfast. Surely she cannot be working on my flights still. She cannot be still seeing what she can do. I look around for commiserating glances from people in line, people at neighboring check-in counters. I only get blank stares ahead. Everyone is tired, exhausted.

My supervisor wants to put you on the ten fifteen Charlotte and the evening flight to SFO. You’ll get there at eight fifty-one. Tonight. I can do tonight. Maybe Dave can still pick me up, maybe not, but I’ll get there tonight.

Standby.

Still on standby. Bischoff, there’s one seat on the flight if you want it, unless you want to give up your ticket for a voucher and another ticket. No no, I’ll go now. I’ll go now. Thanks.

I’m that guy. I’m the last guy on the plane. I’m the guy that everyone stares at. Where were you? they burn at me with their eyes. Sorry. I’m sorry. I wanted to be here earlier. They wouldn’t let me on. I was standing out there ready but they were not ready for me. I have a guilty look on my face, but I can’t help it; it’s not actually my fault.

But do you see? But do you see where I am now? (This is where the rewarding for perseverance comes in.) I have been rewarded. I am four hundred miles from San Francisco and seven miles off the ground and I have leg room. I can put my ankle of one leg on the knee of the other right in front of me. Do you want to see me do it? Did you see that?! It was great. I’m done doing it now though because I am typing and that is not comfortable for typing. I did it just to show you I could. I just ate my third snack—cashews, chocolate-covered wafers, pretzels—and I’m on my fourth drink—heiniken, coke, water, coke. Do you know what the people had for dinner in coach? Nothing. I had stuffed chicken with and excellent salad and an impressive, but not untoppable, pecan pie.

You cannot make up a story like this—you can actually and people did and then people stopped because they thought it was too far fetched, too cliché. This is it though. It happens. Persevere. Persevere and be rewarded.