pho­toriffic

I apol­o­gize for what this is going to do to page load times but I’m plan­ning to put a lot of photos up on site over the next few days. It’s my page and I can stroke my own ego if I like. Plus I just had my first “showing” on friday and I wanted to share some of the goodness.

But before I do that, happy birthday’s go out to two friends. Happy birth­day Heather and Aaron… keep livin’ large my friend!

a morass of balls …

after the high drama of yesterday’s entry I thought I’d switch to a little roman­tic comedy (and any­thing involv­ing romance and me is usu­ally comic… usu­ally black). Things have been going really well with Drea (aka Dre aka Dr. Dre aka Andrea). Last night we real­ized it’s been four months since we started seeing each other. Funny, seems like it’s been both a lot shorter and longer at the same time.

So how did we meet, you ask. Well, it was at a bar… now wait, before you imag­ine me in my fine poly­ester suit, rockin’ a line like: “baby are those mir­rors on your clothes ‘cause I can see myself all over you…” it wasn’t like that. I was in the process of recon­nect­ing with some friends after the Ives shows and on a whim I gave my friend Clay­ton a call. He invited me out to see a band called “Red Drum.” “Red Drum,” I thought, “that’s got to be cool play on the Shin­ing. You know: Redrum! Redrum!” No they just had a big red drum.

Actu­ally I almost didn’t go. Really. But I thought it made more sense to go then sit bored at home. Drea was in the same boat, a friend of a friend of Clayton’s out for the night. I got to the bar and there she was. I’m not sure what it was about her, but I was imme­di­ately smitten.

Where did the title of this blog come from you ask? Well that night, just after I got there every­one was play­ing pool and, in response to the lay of the table, Drea said: “Wow, that’s a morass of balls.” That really caught my atten­tion. I mean how many people can work “morass” into a sen­tence with­out bat­ting an eye (I know, I’m weird), so I had to com­ment. And with that, we began to talk and didn’t stop until it was time to go. Of course part of that might have been a vain attempt to drown out Red Drum, which turned out to be a mediocre at best blue­grass cover band (Van Mor­ri­son and Some­where Over the Rain­bow are not meant to be cov­ered blue­grass style… AC\DC how­ever is a-okay).

When it was time to go I asked if I could call her (basi­cally I said “We have way too much in common not to talk again.”). Two days later on Sunday I got up the nerve to call. Unfor­tu­nately while wait­ing to leave a mes­sage on her machine, call interrupting… er wait­ing struck. That beep threw me off, as I wasn’t sure if it was for call wait­ing or for her answer­ing machine. So it took a few moments for me to real­ize once her machine started to record. Then it occurred to me that it had been record­ing for a bit and I was leav­ing a “breath­ing on the answer­ing machine message.” Now even more flus­tered, I man­aged to stam­mer some­thing out about who I was and that she should call me before the machine hung up on me. I con­sid­ered call­ing back, but having seen Swingers, I knew noth­ing good would come of that.

But sur­prise, she called back. And the rest, as they say, is modern history.

the story of my drive home from boston

as alluded to in yesterday’s blog, I had a scary expe­ri­ence on my drive back from Boston. I’m sorta at a point where I feel com­fort­able writ­ing about it, so here goes: The drive itself isn’t too dif­fi­cult, it’s about six and a half hours of thruway dri­ving. How­ever, even on the thruway things happen that are beyond your con­trol. About four and a half hours in, out­side of Rome NY, we (and when I write “we” I mean myself and every­one on that sec­tion of the thruway) were hit by a tor­ren­tial down­pour. We’re talk­ing bib­li­cal pro­por­tions.

Side Note:What I have never been able to under­stand, and this time was no dif­fer­ent, are the people who don’t slow down to a safe speed under these con­di­tions. And based on this expe­ri­ence, I will never again push my luck in adverse weather.

In that rain came across a fresh acci­dent. A van had over­turned on the center median, and was rest­ing on the driver’s side wind­shield. It was clear it had hap­pened moments before I got there. Since I had a car phone I imme­di­ately pulled over and called 911. Having made a rescue call like this before, I knew I needed to have a mile marker to speed things up. I got out of my car in the dri­ving rain to see if I could spot one in the zero vis­i­bil­ity weather.

The two people in the van seemed all right, though it was clear that the one man needed to be cut out of it. A person at the scene was able to pro­vide me with a mile marker. I started to calm people down and get folks mobi­lized. Just as things seemed sta­bi­lized, it hap­pened: Another car veered out of con­trol into the median and hit one of the onlook­ers over the median and almost into oncom­ing traf­fic. As I write this I’m still not sure if I actu­ally saw this happen. I know that I heard the tires squeal, the crash, and saw the man lying on the ground just feet away from the oppo­site lane.

I wish I could write I jumped into action. I didn’t. There was a lot of scream­ing from the people around me. As for me it took me a moment to process what had hap­pened and real­ize that I was still on the phone with 911. I remem­ber watch­ing as the gen­tle­man tried to scram­ble back from the traf­fic. Then, I was back in con­trol, com­mu­ni­cat­ing the second acci­dent to the oper­a­tor, while hoping over the median to help pull this man away from the oncom­ing cars. And all the while I was pray­ing that a car didn’t lose con­trol on that side and hit both of us.

When I got to the gen­tle­man he had already put some space between him and the traf­fic (thank God). One look and it was clear that the impact had dis­lo­cated, if not broken his right knee. His left shoul­der also looked like it was out of the socket and he was bleed­ing from his nose and mouth. I got him calmed down and started to treat him for shock.

Thank­fully, a DEC State Trooper pulled over to the acci­dent scene. Addi­tion­ally, a girl, who appeared from rather another vehi­cle, was a life­guard and had first aid train­ing. She took over for me as I check on the people in the second crash (who were fine) and ran back to see if anyone had any­thing to keep the man warm. By this point, the man’s wife, who had been trav­el­ing with him, made her way over to be with her hus​band.After a long ten min­utes, state troop­ers and para­medics appeared on the scene. By that point the life­guard had done a ter­rific job of sta­bi­liz­ing the man. I gave the wife my cell phone to make calls.

Within forty-​five min­utes I was back on the road, soaked to the bone and shaken from the expe­ri­ence. I left my phone and address with the woman; she needed them far more than I did. I couldn’t help but think what would have hap­pened if the car had hit him three feet fur­ther. I was angry with myself for not react­ing faster. Also for hes­i­tat­ing out of fear of being hit. I was also upset that I didn’t imme­di­ately have him lower his head in order to main­tain the flow of blood (I had been more inter­ested in get­ting him to calm down and not try to stand and hadn’t even thought of it). But I also know that I had done a lot of good and helped keep every­one at the scene calm until the troop­ers showed up.

More than any­thing else, I couldn’t help but see every­thing around me as frag­ile. I’ve had many reminders of that in my life; of how quickly things can change in a moment. These days we all have. I didn’t need another one. I wish I could say at the time it made me feel spe­cial about things. How every­thing is impor­tant. It didn’t. Instead every car I saw was a threat to my get­ting home. Every moment was fleet­ing, ready to be taken from me in a single vio­lent action. With a few days per­spec­tive that view has faded. I accept this is some­thing that we all live with, fair or not. And we all know it isn’t fair.

One thing is for sure; I’m upgrad­ing the supply kit I keep in my car (I didn’t have any flares with me). I had planned to make that Mark, James and myself (at the least) all take the Red Cross First Aid and CPR courses as part of open­ing the Mar­tial Arts School opened. Now there’s no ques­tion in my mind that needs to happen.

[Author’s note: I’ve been star­ing at this for a bit, trying to figure out how to end it and I can’t. There’s no major rev­e­la­tion, no earth shat­ter­ing change to my life (other than to drive more care­fully and defen­sively). I got to wit­ness a bad sit­u­a­tion turn worse. I thank­fully got to see some­one get very lucky (in a rel­a­tive sense). I guess I’m the better for it. I don’t feel that way. I hope every­thing turned out ok for every­one involved. I hope I get my phone back. That’s about it.]

I’m back from a long week­end. I was off first in Port­smith, New Hamp­shire attend­ing my friend Shaun’s wed­ding. Then from there I went to Boston to stay with Mike, a col­lege room mate, and got the chance to meet his won­der­ful girl­friend Alli­son. I returned yes­ter­day and had a pretty scary adven­ture on the way back, which I’ll blog about later. Today is ded­i­cated to catch­ing up with a number of things.

look ma!

I’m the kodak.com Pic­ture of the Day… which I guess would be more impres­sive if I didn’t work for them ;-). But it’s a good shoot, take a look:

get­ting things going

here are some shot’s I’ve taken over the last couple night of us work­ing to start to pre­pare the new home of Renais­sance Mar­tial Arts. As you can see, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Thank­fully, a lot of it is being han­dled by the landlord/professionals.

This is a view of the inside look­ing toward the entrance. This was taken while the drop ceil­ing was still up. A half wall will go in by the door and the office and dress­ing rooms will be located at that end.

This is look­ing toward the back left corner of the room. When we’re fin­ished most of this area will be matted for grap­pling classes.

The back right corner. The land­lord still has to finish the wall on the right. This will even­tu­ally be the main class area. Once the wall is fin­ished then mir­rors will be going up on it.

Our res­i­dent bruiser, Brian, care­fully remov­ing tiles. The masks were just to pro­tect us from the dust and fiber­glass insu­la­tion.

Pat’s work­ing to take the ceil­ing down with a rattan staff. How’s that for con­tem­po­rary use of train­ing?

“We also have men who are will­ing to die for an idea.” – New York Jour­nal­ist Katie Roiphe writ­ing about those who laid down their lives over a year ago help­ing save friends, family, and strangers in New York, Wash­ing­ton D.C. and over Pennsylvania.

thoughts? I’ve got lots of ‘em. None that I want to share right now. The cyn­i­cal ones I don’t want to share out of respect for the dead. The pro­found ones aren’t that pro­found. So instead I’ll retread some­thing I included in a post a year ago along with a pic­ture I sketched of a man I saw in Canada, hold­ing an Amer­i­can Flag stand­ing over the QEW.

“There are moments in your life that make you, that set the course of who you’re gonna be. Some­times they’re little, subtle moments, some­times they’re not. Bottom line is, even if you see em coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. Nobody asked for their life to change, but it does. So what are we? Help­less pup­pets? No. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that, it’s what you do after­wards that counts. That’s when you find out who you really are.”

Finally, Neil Gaiman, who has become one of my favorite authors over the course of the last year, wrote this short poem (repro­duced here with­out autho­riza­tion from Marvel Comic’s memo­r­ial Heroes… sorry Neil), to com­mem­o­rate both the dead and the surviors:

The Song of the Lost

I’ll take the touch of his lips, she said

I’ll take the touch of his hair.

But all she has is pho­to­graph of an unsus­pect­ing stare;

So she pins it up by the lampposts

And she tells her­self he’s lost;

For this is the price of destruction;

– This is the hell of the cost.

We cannot forget our loved ones

We do not forget our friends

Till time itself be over and every friend­ship ends.

I will always hold on to hope, she says,

And never give in to despair.

But she misses the touch of his lips, his smile,

She misses the smell of his hair.

— Neil Gaiman, 2001