San Diego, California...where I currently sit writing this little blog post.
I grew up here. Well, at least in a way I did.
Escondido (the Spanish word for 'hidden'), is a small suburb of San Diego where I spent the majority of my early childhood.
I remember the weather being a constant, mild 70-something degrees most the time. The people here were always sun-soaked, happy and carefree and they lived that way.
That much hasn't changed since I left here 20 years ago.
Now that I'm back on this business trip, I notice that the little city I remember as a kid has grown into a sprawling metropolis with all the sophistication and allure of Chicago and the young, hip, cultural magnetism of Seattle.
It really is a magical place.
The Gaslamp district is a cute little spread of restaurants and shops. I just polished off a meal at one of the Italian places there and now that I'm on my way home, I'm a bit sad.
I'll always have a piece of my heart here. It's not going anywhere and I'm happy to reunite with it whenever I find my travels taking me here.
I love you, San Diego. :)
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Through Glass Eyes [A short story]
People often underestimate the annoyance they cause in reading over another’s shoulder.
To thwart this, simply open up a word processing program on your laptop while on a plane, for example, and type the above sentence.
Problem solved.
Now that my privacy has returned to me, I’ll get to the meat of this. I’m on a plane from Oahu to Chicago, where I’m going to be taking yet another flight to Sioux City, Iowa – a city located in a state known more for its corn production than anything else. If I had half the amount of brain cells and the same number of empty hours on my hands, I might have a regular reason for going there.
But no. Of course not. Nothing in my life is normal. That would be too much to ask for.
What brings me here is the death of a friend.
His name was Troy. 38, single, childless and driven by a life-long obsession with optical lens grinding. He had me convinced 10 years or so ago, when we first met while working for the same company, that he was going to be introducing the world to the most flawless method for manufacturing convex crystal lenses, ever.
What a weirdo, I thought at the time. Who spends their twenties so god damned concerned with glass that they’d forego things like dating and personal hygiene? Aside, of course, from barefoot hippie pipe-makers in West Virginia. I knew one of those once. He was equally as odd.
Anyway, Troy confided in me for some reason. Maybe it was because I was a social sore thumb without an inkling of concern with following any traditional roadmap for growing up. However it was that Troy came to trusting me, I didn’t mind it. If nothing else Troy was entertaining. He’d often sit down with me and ask bizarre questions related to his craft.
“How many times do you think you’d have to throw a piece of saucer-shaped diamond against a brick wall before you broke through it, Tim?”, he once asked me.
“Fuck if I know. A million? Two million?”
What planet was this guy from?
Troy ended up quitting his job on a whim and moving to Hawaii. A few years later he persuaded me to do the same, but by the time I had committed to the move he had yet again relocated. This time his travels took him to Chile to work on a long-term project with some observatory under construction at the time. I still moved anyway. I had heard great things about the grass skirt-laden backsides of the female islanders there.
I was not disappointed when I arrived. Hawaiian ass is indeed fucking exquisite.
A few months after I got a job and a stable residence I heard from Troy. An e-mail from him informed me that he had created something that the world was simply not ready for: A lens capable of bending light in such a way that a ‘self-contained photonic vortex’ was generated.
“What the fuck is a self-contained photonic vortex? What the hell does it have to do with me?”…I asked Troy in an e-mail back to him.
I never did get a response to my questions.
In fact I didn’t hear anything at all from him until weeks later when I received a letter in the mail from the Chilean observatory where he had been working. It actually concerned me a great deal – Troy told me he didn’t have more than a few days to live and that he was counting on me to guard his life’s work until ‘the world was ready for the next generation of light manipulation’.
Man, I don’t know what the fuck I’m even doing. All I know is that there is a package of lenses that is right now sitting in a safety deposit box in a community bank located in a tiny ass town called Cresco, a few hours outside of Sioux City.
I do have some instructions. Troy told me in his last letter that some people were after him; apparently he had trusted his invention to some unsavory people who had ill intentions. He didn’t go in to much detail here, but what he did make clear was that I needed to complete a final step that he didn’t have the time to complete, himself.
He wrote:
“In the box in Cresco you’ll find two manila envelopes. One contains 4 lenses. They are labeled A1, A2, B1 and B2. DO NOT LET THEM TOUCH ANYTHING. Even your fingers. These lenses are coated with a plasma that will degrade if you so much as cough on them. In the second envelope there are two spectacle frames. They’re constructed of a special scandium alloy the formula for which I stole from the observatory. Take special care in handling the frames – they’re well-built but certainly not bulletproof. They should fit your face.”
I have a copy of the e-mail with me as I type this, just in case I have to refer to it later.
Basically, I need to insert the lenses into the eyeglass frames.
That’s right – I’m flying to Iowa to build two pairs of mother fucking eyeglasses that a friend of mine was murdered over. Like I said earlier, normalcy in my life would be way too much to ask for. This little science project is going to require some special equipment that isn’t in Cresco…Troy provided me with a somewhat difficult shopping list but apparently I should be able to get this stuff from a jewelry repair store. Troy did some research for me and it looks like I’ll have to make a stop in Davenport – another few hours’ drive from Cresco - before all is said and done.
Some Pakistani guy runs a luxury watch repair joint there that carries the stuff I need to get this done.
Joy.
I’ve only got about 15 more minutes before I have to return the seatback in front of me to its upright and locked position, so I’m going to have to tie this up. After I get off this plane, I’m going to the nearest Kinko’s, printing out this memo, and placing in my breast pocket. It should give some context to whoever might find my dead body if something should happen to me en route to Cresco.
I don’t know what else to say here, really. If I had a family, a job I cared about…heck, even a dog, I might think twice about endeavoring to do this.
But I don’t. So who cares, and here goes nothing.
Oh – one last thing.
Troy claimed that these special glasses are completely useless 364 days out of the year. There is only a single 12-hour period during which they can actually do anything. Something about atmospheric concentration of solar insolation.
That date is on a slip of paper I should find in the second envelope, with the two frames.
So if I understand all this correctly…my dead friend left me instructions for assembling two super-secret pairs of eyeglasses to be worn in sequence on a special day of the year.
Why? Why would someone want to do this, you might ask?
Well…in Troy’s words:
“My invention has but a single purpose. To see God.”
Plane’s descending now so I gotta get off this computer. This is going to be interesting.
Signing off…
Tim Cherrud
To thwart this, simply open up a word processing program on your laptop while on a plane, for example, and type the above sentence.
Problem solved.
Now that my privacy has returned to me, I’ll get to the meat of this. I’m on a plane from Oahu to Chicago, where I’m going to be taking yet another flight to Sioux City, Iowa – a city located in a state known more for its corn production than anything else. If I had half the amount of brain cells and the same number of empty hours on my hands, I might have a regular reason for going there.
But no. Of course not. Nothing in my life is normal. That would be too much to ask for.
What brings me here is the death of a friend.
His name was Troy. 38, single, childless and driven by a life-long obsession with optical lens grinding. He had me convinced 10 years or so ago, when we first met while working for the same company, that he was going to be introducing the world to the most flawless method for manufacturing convex crystal lenses, ever.
What a weirdo, I thought at the time. Who spends their twenties so god damned concerned with glass that they’d forego things like dating and personal hygiene? Aside, of course, from barefoot hippie pipe-makers in West Virginia. I knew one of those once. He was equally as odd.
Anyway, Troy confided in me for some reason. Maybe it was because I was a social sore thumb without an inkling of concern with following any traditional roadmap for growing up. However it was that Troy came to trusting me, I didn’t mind it. If nothing else Troy was entertaining. He’d often sit down with me and ask bizarre questions related to his craft.
“How many times do you think you’d have to throw a piece of saucer-shaped diamond against a brick wall before you broke through it, Tim?”, he once asked me.
“Fuck if I know. A million? Two million?”
What planet was this guy from?
Troy ended up quitting his job on a whim and moving to Hawaii. A few years later he persuaded me to do the same, but by the time I had committed to the move he had yet again relocated. This time his travels took him to Chile to work on a long-term project with some observatory under construction at the time. I still moved anyway. I had heard great things about the grass skirt-laden backsides of the female islanders there.
I was not disappointed when I arrived. Hawaiian ass is indeed fucking exquisite.
A few months after I got a job and a stable residence I heard from Troy. An e-mail from him informed me that he had created something that the world was simply not ready for: A lens capable of bending light in such a way that a ‘self-contained photonic vortex’ was generated.
“What the fuck is a self-contained photonic vortex? What the hell does it have to do with me?”…I asked Troy in an e-mail back to him.
I never did get a response to my questions.
In fact I didn’t hear anything at all from him until weeks later when I received a letter in the mail from the Chilean observatory where he had been working. It actually concerned me a great deal – Troy told me he didn’t have more than a few days to live and that he was counting on me to guard his life’s work until ‘the world was ready for the next generation of light manipulation’.
Man, I don’t know what the fuck I’m even doing. All I know is that there is a package of lenses that is right now sitting in a safety deposit box in a community bank located in a tiny ass town called Cresco, a few hours outside of Sioux City.
I do have some instructions. Troy told me in his last letter that some people were after him; apparently he had trusted his invention to some unsavory people who had ill intentions. He didn’t go in to much detail here, but what he did make clear was that I needed to complete a final step that he didn’t have the time to complete, himself.
He wrote:
“In the box in Cresco you’ll find two manila envelopes. One contains 4 lenses. They are labeled A1, A2, B1 and B2. DO NOT LET THEM TOUCH ANYTHING. Even your fingers. These lenses are coated with a plasma that will degrade if you so much as cough on them. In the second envelope there are two spectacle frames. They’re constructed of a special scandium alloy the formula for which I stole from the observatory. Take special care in handling the frames – they’re well-built but certainly not bulletproof. They should fit your face.”
I have a copy of the e-mail with me as I type this, just in case I have to refer to it later.
Basically, I need to insert the lenses into the eyeglass frames.
That’s right – I’m flying to Iowa to build two pairs of mother fucking eyeglasses that a friend of mine was murdered over. Like I said earlier, normalcy in my life would be way too much to ask for. This little science project is going to require some special equipment that isn’t in Cresco…Troy provided me with a somewhat difficult shopping list but apparently I should be able to get this stuff from a jewelry repair store. Troy did some research for me and it looks like I’ll have to make a stop in Davenport – another few hours’ drive from Cresco - before all is said and done.
Some Pakistani guy runs a luxury watch repair joint there that carries the stuff I need to get this done.
Joy.
I’ve only got about 15 more minutes before I have to return the seatback in front of me to its upright and locked position, so I’m going to have to tie this up. After I get off this plane, I’m going to the nearest Kinko’s, printing out this memo, and placing in my breast pocket. It should give some context to whoever might find my dead body if something should happen to me en route to Cresco.
I don’t know what else to say here, really. If I had a family, a job I cared about…heck, even a dog, I might think twice about endeavoring to do this.
But I don’t. So who cares, and here goes nothing.
Oh – one last thing.
Troy claimed that these special glasses are completely useless 364 days out of the year. There is only a single 12-hour period during which they can actually do anything. Something about atmospheric concentration of solar insolation.
That date is on a slip of paper I should find in the second envelope, with the two frames.
So if I understand all this correctly…my dead friend left me instructions for assembling two super-secret pairs of eyeglasses to be worn in sequence on a special day of the year.
Why? Why would someone want to do this, you might ask?
Well…in Troy’s words:
“My invention has but a single purpose. To see God.”
Plane’s descending now so I gotta get off this computer. This is going to be interesting.
Signing off…
Tim Cherrud
Caretaking.
I gave up my dream of becoming a professional violinist a long, long time ago.
For many years I harbored this surreal fantasy of earning the respect of orchestral musicians the world over, leveraging my decades of arduous practice to impress even the most discriminating of them.
Like with any other overblown expectation, reality stepped in and bitch slapped me like an incensed pimp owed 3 weeks of back pay.
It reminded me of my ineptitude with every arthritic bolt of pain and with every moment of confusion over how exactly to complete the perfect chromatic run. I sold any aspiration I had of being a professional musician and opted for this life, instead.
Sadly, I didn't make much of a profit.
Things aren't so bad, though. Not as bad as they could have been, I guess.
Sometimes when the pressures of conforming to your own standards becomes too much, the best thing to do is to plainly stop giving a fuck. I remember the first time this happened - I was dating a woman who worked the Sephora counter at the local mall, giving free make up lessons to insecure, clueless hags with way too much time on their hands and absent husbands who wouldn't care if their wives looked prettier, anyway.
Her name was Lori. She expected a lot from me, probably because her ex boyfriend was a Special Forces operative who could maker her cum with barely a hard stare. Nearing 40, she convinced herself that I was her way to an effortless lifestyle of working part time and getting to blow ten grand a month of my money on whatever trivial bullshit her cramped brain could convince her she needed.
She asked me once, "David, how long until I can move in with you and make you breakfast every morning?", to which I responded, "I don't know Lori, when could you afford your share of my three thousand dollar a month mortgage?".
I guess that was kind of a callous response...but it set a precedent.
Lori left me because she thought I didn't care enough for her. Bullshit. I cared plenty. What I didn't care for was encroachment with an ulterior motive more obvious than the crows feet on the faces of what Lori called her 'clients'.
Sure. 'Clients'.
I haven't played a violin in months. I can't be bothered, really. I have more pressing engagements. Since relieving myself of the dream of performing Mozart's Concerto Number 5 in A for international audiences, I've moved on to something a lot easier to master.
Selling black tar heroin.
Now I get up around 6 am, go for a swim, put on a pot of coffee and wait for my phone to ring. My home phone. Not a cell phone. Cell phones are why lesser dealers get nabbed and canned.
If it's 'blue', pickup is at 2pm. Reds are noon. If it's 'equipped', it's sealed in waterproof tape. If it's 'cornered' it's intentionally light on weight so whoever is reselling it can cut for profit. If it's 'dog tired', there won't even be a pickup and the call is simply a ploy.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I stuck with drawing a bow for a living. Or if I let Lori further invade my life.
Or if I switched from Raisin Bran to Rice Chex.
Whatever. Life is better now. It has to be.
Gotta go.
Phone's ringing.
For many years I harbored this surreal fantasy of earning the respect of orchestral musicians the world over, leveraging my decades of arduous practice to impress even the most discriminating of them.
Like with any other overblown expectation, reality stepped in and bitch slapped me like an incensed pimp owed 3 weeks of back pay.
It reminded me of my ineptitude with every arthritic bolt of pain and with every moment of confusion over how exactly to complete the perfect chromatic run. I sold any aspiration I had of being a professional musician and opted for this life, instead.
Sadly, I didn't make much of a profit.
Things aren't so bad, though. Not as bad as they could have been, I guess.
Sometimes when the pressures of conforming to your own standards becomes too much, the best thing to do is to plainly stop giving a fuck. I remember the first time this happened - I was dating a woman who worked the Sephora counter at the local mall, giving free make up lessons to insecure, clueless hags with way too much time on their hands and absent husbands who wouldn't care if their wives looked prettier, anyway.
Her name was Lori. She expected a lot from me, probably because her ex boyfriend was a Special Forces operative who could maker her cum with barely a hard stare. Nearing 40, she convinced herself that I was her way to an effortless lifestyle of working part time and getting to blow ten grand a month of my money on whatever trivial bullshit her cramped brain could convince her she needed.
She asked me once, "David, how long until I can move in with you and make you breakfast every morning?", to which I responded, "I don't know Lori, when could you afford your share of my three thousand dollar a month mortgage?".
I guess that was kind of a callous response...but it set a precedent.
Lori left me because she thought I didn't care enough for her. Bullshit. I cared plenty. What I didn't care for was encroachment with an ulterior motive more obvious than the crows feet on the faces of what Lori called her 'clients'.
Sure. 'Clients'.
I haven't played a violin in months. I can't be bothered, really. I have more pressing engagements. Since relieving myself of the dream of performing Mozart's Concerto Number 5 in A for international audiences, I've moved on to something a lot easier to master.
Selling black tar heroin.
Now I get up around 6 am, go for a swim, put on a pot of coffee and wait for my phone to ring. My home phone. Not a cell phone. Cell phones are why lesser dealers get nabbed and canned.
If it's 'blue', pickup is at 2pm. Reds are noon. If it's 'equipped', it's sealed in waterproof tape. If it's 'cornered' it's intentionally light on weight so whoever is reselling it can cut for profit. If it's 'dog tired', there won't even be a pickup and the call is simply a ploy.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I stuck with drawing a bow for a living. Or if I let Lori further invade my life.
Or if I switched from Raisin Bran to Rice Chex.
Whatever. Life is better now. It has to be.
Gotta go.
Phone's ringing.
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