Weather!: The Musical

Praying for it.

Down with it.

Over it.

Past it.

Ready, Steady, Petty

Detail from George Tooker

Online, we're self-righteous, judgmental, self-satisfied assholes.  In real life, we're pussycats.  I know I am anyway.  It's rare that I can't get along with a person face-to-face.  That's why I was dismayed to be reminded recently that I am capable of enmity.   There was no gestation period, so it felt like something had hatched from within my bosom in a state of full maturity, like a science fiction special effect, when I became aware of it.

The setting is the metropolitan railway system.  There are plenty of annoyances to be found here -- downsized service, upsized fares, an abundance of visiting tourists with uncanny cluelessness about train etiquette who clog escalators and block doors when you're trying to exit the train and board en masse through one door and take up 2 seats to a person as though they're as disinclined to be touched by each other as I am to be touched by them.  My personal favorite peeve: train-dancers.  These are the guys (they're nearly always guys) who can be seen, earbuds firmly plugging their earholes, who cannot contain their need to get visibly into whatever they're listening to.  You can't hear it thanks to your own ear plugging technology and a prohibition from sharing music anywhere within the subway system, but you can tell by the ostentatious expressiveness of the moves and the beatific, shit-eating grin on the train-dancer's face that it blows any paltry muzak that you've got going on in your own earphones clean out of the water.  Question: Do they know how ridiculous they look?  Also: Do they know we can see them?  One morning, I had to clear one dancer on the station platform only to be stuck next to another on the ride in.  I happened to be listening to some renaissance music at the time, which made me want to gavotte right up in the guy's face to find out how he'd like it.  But I digress.

I'm a creature of habit, so I take the same train home at the same time each night.  The first leg of the journey is three stops south on one line where I transfer to another line that will take me the rest of the way east toward home.  At the start of the first leg of my journey, I stand at the bottom of the escalator (to the left so as not to block the way at the bottom of course -- I tell you I'm not an asshole in real life!), and board the train right where it stops.  I cross the aisle and perch at the opposite doors.  These won't open until my transfer connection three stops away, but they will open at a prime spot for accessing the escalators to the line that will take me home.  I thereby yield my choice of seat to whoever needs one, preferring instead to stand ready to turn and exit when the train pulls into the connecting station for my transfer.  Until I get there, my back is close to the doors and I'm holding onto a rail for steadiness.  I've done this time and again, same train, same station every night for 3 years without a problem.  On my ride, I'll review the day's emails, read my book on my phone, and otherwise be at the ready to take down any trench-coated, overly weaponized hooligans who appear about to embark on any malarkey, mischief or other shenanigans (none yet in 30 years of commuting, knock wood!)

One day recently, I'm deep in thought over a passage in my book when I sense the cold and dark manifestation of a shadow crossing my features.  I look up and see that a tall, broad, head-shaven and goateed gentleman who boarded at the next stop has grabbed the same rail I am holding onto and is standing facing me with a dead look in his eyes.  The train is pretty empty.  There are lots of seats about and plenty of standing room for acres on either side of me, but this gentleman picks my pole to stand at and my direction to point himself in?  And close enough that I can't miss the smell of a day's worth of capitalist exploitation from his direction.  Can you blame me for taking an instant dislike?

I can't say I didn't think anything more of it when I exited the train for my transfer at the connecting station.  He after all exited on my heels.  Though he got on a different train than I did downstairs on the platform for the second train line, I did remain galled at being needlessly crowded.  But by my commute the following evening, it was no longer on my mind.  The  next night, the train arrives, I board and stand in my usual spot once again, go deep into my thoughts and moments later, once again, I find myself within that cold, dead unmistakable shadow at the next stop.  So this was how it was going to be now?

One night-- I don't remember if it was that night or the next-- I couldn't contain myself.  I found myself glowering at this towering hulk with boundary issues (with a lanyard-- obviously an IT guy, like myself).  Looking into his eyes I see virtually nothing coming back at me.  A gaping yawning maw of lifeless hell.  But I did manage to detect one tiny morsel of active "non-shit giving" being radiated at me from within the morgue of this man's soul indicating that there was an actor in there perpetrating wanton violation of my personal space.

From that moment, I swore eternal acrimony on this vile, foul demon. What had I done to deserve this kind of treatment?  Been first at the door, that's what.  In my defense, it’s the natural state of things.  The train progresses in a linear fashion, in discrete quantum steps (is it a wave or a particle? It depends on whether you consider its position or its velocity).  I happen to become one with the path it is on closer to the origin of its linear progression; when I do, the prime space is open to me, and therefore I occupy it.  When it reaches him, the space is already occupied by me. 99% of the time a normal person faced with me already in place will choose another advantageous spot accordingly and yet 100% of the time apparently, he chooses to reject my seniority by attrition, ignore my physicality and occupy it too.

This has been the state of things for weeks.  Here's the thing: more than I like habit, I dislike confrontation, so I've found myself carving out the niche within the spot that is still at the doors but farthest from where he has traditionally chosen to skulk.  I've fantasized about taking action.  I've envisioned everything from a "Now see here, good fellow!" to a shove to the solar plexus.  The pussycat in me even imagined offering a smile, striking up conversation, making him see me as a person worthy of having my boundaries respected.

But it finally occurred to me that I might take the cue from him.  Instead of pretending to ignore him, perhaps I should actually ignore him.  It's not like he's a train-dancer at least.  This might be the exception that proves whether ignoring something will make it go away.  What's the harm?  I can't really control him.  Paying attention to it isn't doing me any good.  By Jove, I think I've hit on the solution.  I'm ignoring him.

Starting now.

E a la e a la

With all the languages in the world, one really has to prioritize vocabulary to learn. I've settled on a few key phrases, but perhaps none is more important than the answer to such questions as: Are you enjoying yourself?  How was your sleep? How do you like our food (our customs, our politics, our country)?  Can you understand our language?  How are you? There are many ways one can be, but only one expression conveys enough shades of meaning to cover nearly any circumstance.  What is needed is a phrase that indicates the most probable honest response to any unsolicited probing about one's mental and physical state-- that the situation while, to be expected, is not ideal, is neither so critical as to cause further concern.  That phrase would be: So so (or if you prefer: so-so.  For the purposes of this exercise, I don't).  The French counterpart is a more elaborate enumeration of the meaning: Comme ci comme ça - like this, like that.  (Like) so (like) so.

The technical term for "so so" and internally rhyming words like it (helter skelter, fiddle faddle, dilly dally) is reduplicative.  Because the rhyme in the phrase is the word itself, you could also say that there's intensifying going on.  But since the second "so" implicitly contradicts the first, let's not.  As the following list will show, a high proportion of counterparts to "so so" in the world's languages are reduplicative— which I would imagine is a reflection of the straddling nature of the concept being expressed. There is even an English synonym for "so so" that fits the pattern: Tol-lol.  This was news to me.

The list follows.  Use with caution and be edified when you're corrected or chastised (with my apologies).  I'll welcome any corrections or additions.  Transliterations or approximate American-centric pronunciations are in Italics. Literal translations are in parentheses where available and interesting.

Albanian: njëfarësoj; çka (chka)
Arabic: نص نص  (nuss nuss) (half and half); مش ولا بدّ (mish wala bodd) (neither one nor the other)
Basque: erdipurdika

Bengali: বিক্ষিপ্তভাবে (bikshiptabhābē)
Chinese: 一般般  (yiban-ban)
Dakota: ahececa
Finnish: niin ja näin (such and thus)
French: comme-ci comme ça.

German: so la-la

Greek: έτσι κι έτσι (etsi ki etsi)

Hawaiian: pela pela

Hebrew: ככה ככה (kákha-kákha)

Hindi: ठीक-ठाक (theek thaak)

Hungarian: is-is; közepesen; talán (s is pronounced 'sh')
Inuit (or more properly Inuttut): unnet 

Italian: così così;

Japanese: まあまあ (maa maa)
Korean: 그저 그래 (geujeo geulae)
Latvian: puslīdz (just thus)
Navajo: tʼáá yédígo (the closest I can get; means 'somewhat')
Portuguese: mais ou menos (more or less)
Romanian: treacă-mearga.  (pass-go);  amestecat (mixed)
Romani: mishto

Russian: так себе (tak syebye) (like myself)

Samoan: e a la e a la
Shona (Zimbabwe): kungodaro daro
Spanish: así así; regular
Swahili: hivi hivi

Swedish: halvbra

Thai: เรื่อย ๆ ครับ/ค่ะ (ruay ruay krab (m); ruay ruay ka (f))

Turkish: şöyle böyle
Xhosa: nege njenge

Yiddish: נישקשה (nishkoshe).

Yoruba: ki-ki

For extra spice, accompany the phrase with a gesture (a shrug, a pained expression,  a hand waver), and for emphasis perhaps an interjection (Eh! Bah! Meh! Mnyeh! Bof!)

I intend to update this list from time to time as I add more equivalents.  Watch this space.

Insomnia

Abstract Illustration of the Human Eye, At Night (detail) - David Gifford

I worked as a sleep lab technician for a few years when I was younger.   The lab where I worked was both a medical clinic and a research facility.  I was the one who attached electrodes to patients and research subjects and then monitored the EEG equipment while they slept, marking notable events on the printouts and sharing impressions with the doctor in the morning.  I had always been a creature of the night, so the position seemed like a perfect opportunity for me when it came my way.  I slept during the day and worked all night, ten hours a night, 4 days a week.

To my surprise, I did not take to the reverse schedule automatically when I first started.  Perhaps being paid to be awake raised the stakes to the point at which sleep was the reward I could not get out of my head while on the job.  I adapted.  Always a bit of an insomniac I sometimes suffered with it in the reverse in my sleep lab days, lying awake for hours in the stillness of the afternoon when my wife had left for her real job.

My sleep lab training taught me a few tricks and tips about how to get to sleep:

• Don't drink yourself to sleep; alcohol disrupts the architecture of sleep-- the progression through stages of deeper and deeper sleep until the all important, restorative Stage 5 (REM or dream sleep) is reached.
• Don't use exercise too close to bedtime to wear yourself out. It will actually get your heart pumping and keep you awake.
• Stick to a routine 7 days a week.
• Beds should only be for sleeping and sex.  Don't read in bed or lie awake, stewing things over, tossing and turning.  If you start to panic, that is your cue to get up and read elsewhere until you're tired.   Condition yourself to associate proneness under the covers with sleep.
• My own advice to hardcore insomniacs who want to make a change: focus on getting up.  If you're compulsive about rising, sleep will assert itself.

I could advise the sleepless, but I could not heal myself. Being awake when you want to be asleep is painful, especially when you're young.  As a very small child it was less interest in being awake than fear of what would happen when I was asleep that drove things.  On more than one occasion, I would defy the natural order and see if I could endure a night without sleep.  The night to me was as the Antarctic was to Byrd.  I celebrated my first successful all-nighter at 10 with dry heaves in the morning.

As I got older, it was a combination of antipathy to bedtime and an inability to turn off worry about tomorrow.  For years I had trouble with it.  It was always worst when you needed sleep most, usually on those nights when rising early was called for.   I was very familiar with the agony of sleeplessness: the helplessness of knowing that while time seemed endless while I lay awake in the dark, it was not limitless; that I was in fact using it up in infinitesimal increments; that it would be gone by the time I needed it in order to sleep.

Tellingly, the terms that describe the 2 types of individuals when it comes to the sleep wake cycle concentrate on the wakeful state.  Morning people are people who are active in the earliest moments of the normal human day.  Night owls are active at the remote edges of the clock dial and they are forest predators.  Society looks more kindly on morning people.

The difference between a night owl and a morning person is the adverb modifying the transition between wakefulness and sleep, which is to say between being in or out of bed.  A morning person goes to bed eagerly and rises eagerly.  A night owl transitions between activity and rest only reluctantly on both ends of the cycle.  The difference between the types is the difference between eagerness and reluctance-- to turn in, to get up, to yield, to behave, to comply.

Sometime after my daughter was born, years after the sleep lab, I realized I was getting less sleep than ever, but also that I seemed to need it less.  I used the extra time to advantage, but I also noticed that while there was much more time lying awake and conscious in bed in the middle of the night, there was also far less anxiety about it.  I was finding myself both a night owl and a morning person, relishing both the hours in the middle of the night and those early in the morning.  At some point the period between night and day became smudged.  Sleep managed to happen somehow but there was a continuity between day and night, sleep and wakefulness that was not burdened by dependence on there being any distinction between them.

That was the state of affairs for many years until a doctor prescribed a medication that had a side effect of enforcing 8 hours of sleep. It was a period of my life marked by dissatisfaction in many ways, except for my attitude about sleep, so I started the medication only very reluctantly.  From a pharmaceutical standpoint, it had the desired effect.  Sleep became a balm.

Once again satisfied with my life, I came off the meds about a year ago and suddenly started seeing parts of the night I had forgotten about.  Once again I found myself awake for long stretches.  I had not lost the calmness about it.  Now the doctor who prescribed the sleep enforcing drug was fine with my quotidian rhythms if I was.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows in the middle of the night.  Much as in my 20s, there are thoughts that keep me from closing my eyes.  Then the thoughts were existential and solipsistic.  Now they are global.  Many a night, I find myself awake only to become conscious of the flashing of my phone disrupting the dark on the nightstand with some horrible new headline about the latest whimsical unilateral, unprovoked, elective cataclysm or tweet.

In this age it's clear that my childhood self, trembling alone in the dark, was right all along.  There are reasons to be awake.  That goes for all of us.  We want to sleep but we mustn't.

We must stay restless.  We must rise up.