I once wrote this upon finding and re-reading an old favorite book:
Opening its cover and reading the words was like entering a room of smiling friends and being welcomed into their conversation.
I found that book again during our recent move.
I think it’s time to check in on the conversation between its covers.
From 2004: A Room of Smiling Friends
Today was moving day.
The first order of business was to empty our storage unit.
Two college-age guys met me at the storage facility. We introduced ourselves, shook hands, grabbed a few moving carts, and piled into the elevator.
On the way up, right in front of me, I saw this scratched into the elevator door:
I pointed to it, laughed, and said to the fine young men on either side of me: “Looks like someone had a bad moving experience.”
The one called Jake responded: “Look! There’s an ‘F U’ as well!”
At that, I declared: “Well, fuck us all then!”
This reminded me of Holden Caufield finding “Fuck yous” written on walls in The Catcher in the Rye. This passage in particular came to mind:
I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another “Fuck you” on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn’t come off. It’s hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world. It’s impossible.
Well, little did I know how prophetic my “Fuck us all” comment was. It took 12 hours to move everything. That included two trips to our new place, about 75 miles of driving.
But I tell you, the fine work of art pictured below was probably an omen that we were about to get fucked hard:
A penis etched into an elevator door takes it up a level. It goes beyond the run-of-the-mill “Fuck you.”
What would Holden Caufield have said?
**ADDENDUM – 2/1/16**
You’ve had a hard day. How about a happy ending? A little something from Jay and Silent Bob will do the trick.
Holden Caufield: “You know what I’d like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?”
Phoebe Caufield: “What? Stop swearing.”
“You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? I’d like – ”
“It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’!” old Phoebe said. “It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.”
“I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.”
She was right, though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though.
“I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,'” I said. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know It’s crazy.”
Sam Snyder: “That’s not crazy in my book, Holden. Not crazy at all.”
The Complete Romances of Voltaire… Fuehrer approved.
One of the wonders of modern technology is an item we refer to as a “cell phone.” What a misnomer! This gadget is slim and light enough for me to carry while I run. Not only does it give me the ability to make a phone call while out running, if need be, it also has the ability to track the course of my run, record my pace, show me my distance, and calculate the calories I burned. I can communicate via text message when I’m feeling lonely out there. I can post to Facebook. And I can even read a book on my Kindle app if I get bored while trudging through mile four! (Yes, I have done it. I have found motivation in the pages of “Eat and Run” by Scott Jurek while running.)
One of the features I love the most about my phone is its high quality digital camera. Its 8 megapixels produce photos that blow away the photos from the 1.4 megapixel Sony Mavica which I paid $500 for a dozen years ago! That camera used floppy disks and could hold about 20 pictures on each disk. It’s hard to run with a pocket full of floppies and a 50 pound camera hanging from one’s neck!
All that being said, here are some photos from the last few days.
