Earthquakes happen all the time here, but most are so small that nobody feels them. And in general, Californians don't feel earthquakes unless they're strong enough to rattle dishes. I say this because there have been a few earthquakes that I felt immediately, only to look around my office and see the native Californians typing away as though our desks weren't shaking. Meanwhile, we transplants look at each other with do-you-feel-this surprise, mixing excitement with fear as we wait to see how shaky things will be.
Before moving to California, I'd never experienced an earthquake. Midwesterners worry about floods and tornadoes, but not earthquakes. The New Madrid fault gave off a shudder in 2008, and my parents felt it all the way in Michigan, but its quakes are infrequent. It is a largely impotent seismic villain, so nobody thinks much about it. Here in San Francisco, though, I frequently imagine potential disaster scenarios.
For instance, when I go to the dentist, I am barely in the chair before mild anxiety sets in. Initially, this is because I feel awkward having the handsome dental hygienist scrape tartar from my molars. But as he goes off to look at my x-rays, the paranoid earthquake fantasy strikes, and I imagine all the ways things could go terribly wrong. The office is in an older building, so maybe it hasn't been retrofitted, and what if the quake happens when the dentist is drilling? It would take only one twitch of the fault to make that tiny drill punch a hole through my left cheek. I'm not into body piercing.
Or! I could be at the ob/gyn for the yearly exam. Feet in stirrups, paper cloth over my legs, pap smear in progress. The doctor turns to pick up a swab, and then — get ready to rumble! The lights start swinging, the plastic-uterus visual aid falls off the table, and as my body tenses in panic, it forces the speculum to fly through the air before hitting the poor doctor in the eye. Meanwhile, the ceiling collapses, covering me with dust and debris. Soon, the local action-news reporter is live on the scene. As she describes the valiant rescue efforts going on behind her, a firefighter hears my muffled cries. "Bill, I think they've found another survivor," the reporter will shout as the rescue crew begins digging toward my weak cry for help. CNN picks up the feed, because if there's one thing cable news loves more than disaster, it's a human-interest disaster story. "We've almost got 'er," a rescue guy yells. Cheers all around! The camera zooms in just in time for viewers to watch the rescue team remove the last of the rubble, revealing my spread-eagle pose in high definition for the whole world to see. Later, I am fined by the FCC for indecent exposure.
What? It could happen.
Before moving to California, I'd never experienced an earthquake. Midwesterners worry about floods and tornadoes, but not earthquakes. The New Madrid fault gave off a shudder in 2008, and my parents felt it all the way in Michigan, but its quakes are infrequent. It is a largely impotent seismic villain, so nobody thinks much about it. Here in San Francisco, though, I frequently imagine potential disaster scenarios.
For instance, when I go to the dentist, I am barely in the chair before mild anxiety sets in. Initially, this is because I feel awkward having the handsome dental hygienist scrape tartar from my molars. But as he goes off to look at my x-rays, the paranoid earthquake fantasy strikes, and I imagine all the ways things could go terribly wrong. The office is in an older building, so maybe it hasn't been retrofitted, and what if the quake happens when the dentist is drilling? It would take only one twitch of the fault to make that tiny drill punch a hole through my left cheek. I'm not into body piercing.
Or! I could be at the ob/gyn for the yearly exam. Feet in stirrups, paper cloth over my legs, pap smear in progress. The doctor turns to pick up a swab, and then — get ready to rumble! The lights start swinging, the plastic-uterus visual aid falls off the table, and as my body tenses in panic, it forces the speculum to fly through the air before hitting the poor doctor in the eye. Meanwhile, the ceiling collapses, covering me with dust and debris. Soon, the local action-news reporter is live on the scene. As she describes the valiant rescue efforts going on behind her, a firefighter hears my muffled cries. "Bill, I think they've found another survivor," the reporter will shout as the rescue crew begins digging toward my weak cry for help. CNN picks up the feed, because if there's one thing cable news loves more than disaster, it's a human-interest disaster story. "We've almost got 'er," a rescue guy yells. Cheers all around! The camera zooms in just in time for viewers to watch the rescue team remove the last of the rubble, revealing my spread-eagle pose in high definition for the whole world to see. Later, I am fined by the FCC for indecent exposure.
What? It could happen.
Labels: doom, neuroses, san francisco
A well-lived life is flush with cinematic moments, and usually I love feeling like I'm cruising through celluloid. Not this time. I am moving through days like their events are predetermined; I have no control over the script or direction. I wake up, I go through the motions, I remember little, I respond to less, I have nothing to do but wait for the end.
Since understanding what death is, I have always feared losing my father. Just thinking about his eventual death choked me up, even as a child. And I have always known that I would have to go through that final separation at a relatively young age — an unfortunate side effect of being born when he was 47 years old. That doesn't make it easier. It becomes harder now, with time working against us.
I went home last weekend. I spent hours at the nursing home, trying to record as much of my father as my mind and heart would allow. I felt an urgent need to keep him. Then I finally understood why years ago, my mother kept all of my baby teeth in a small box next to the china. The desire to preserve a moment — or who a person is in that moment — becomes frantic when such a time will never repeat itself. Most of our time slips by unrecorded, and even the important events don't always reveal themselves until they're long over. But when we know what's in the future, whether it's a child growing up or someone we love dying, every minute is weighted with significance. You can't help but mentally document each small gesture, each sentence, because it might be the last time it happens.
So last week, while watching my father nap, that instinct supplied me with a fleeting flash of grotesque thought: Could I keep part of him? I'm ashamed and somewhat repulsed to admit that I considered clipping his fingernails or snipping a lock of his cottony hair. My eyes scanned his whole body before I snapped back into the world of non-crazy. (Then, I laughed at knowing that at its morbid best, that would leave me with only the parts that were already dead.) Still, with the naive desperation of a child, I wanted souvenirs of my father. I wanted to sleep in his old shirts, to know what his favorite movie was, to record, record, record.
We still have some time together, and for that I'm grateful. But I keep looking back, recording in the present, and avoiding the inevitable for as long as we can.
It is painful to watch newspapers die, not only because they're dying, but because they're dying so awkwardly. Readers aren't picking up the newspaper anymore, so what does the Chronicle do? It adds more colored ink — not more relevant, localized reporting — to its pages and makes that the big selling point. That's akin to NBC rolling out a set of commercials touting its color teevee. (Would have been smarter to invest in revamping the 2001-era style website in the way the NYT has created a fantastic online presence.)
And then, in a facepalm marketing moment, the paper does a big ad campaign featuring "full, vibrant color" photos of its... white columnists. When I look at the ad, I see more of the same yawn-inducing, passionless, who-cares headlines that keep me reading the NYT instead of local newspapers. (It's also an ineffective ad because those headlines are obtuse. Nothing about "For a good time, skip the first item" commands attention or explains what the column is about.) I also see a bunch of white, middle-class people, and while there's nothing wrong with being a WMCNPerson, I keep wondering how other people see themselves and their experiences reflected in the paper.
Sometimes when I can't sleep, I think about what I'd do if I were in charge of a newspaper. Right after shitting my pants in fear, I'd make radical editorial changes. Here's the thing: The people who don't buy newspapers are not going to buy newspapers. The people who do buy newspapers do so for the news. So why do many papers go after the American Idol crowd instead of going after the NPR crowd? It makes no sense. Pour fewer assets into celebrity "news" and hire smart, hungry reporters who crave community-focused journalism. Hire highly opinionated, love-them-or-hate-them columnists. (It's not expensive. Journalists are paid a pittance.)
If you have fascinating stories, relevant articles, must-read op-eds, then the readers will come. Maybe even some of the Idol crowd, if you're good at it. When your paper is dying, you might as well set it on fire. I understand the daunting situation editors and publishers are in, but I don't understand why more don't take risks as their product suffers. Playing it safe hasn't worked. Time to rage against the dying of the light. (Yes, I know I'm rambling.)
Labels: doom
For the past six months or so, I've been a lurker on a doom-and-gloom message board. I don't know how it started, but now it's become a regular stop on my daily internet cruise. There's something odd about watching so many people read doom into every news story, in some cases barely holding back glee at the prospect of financial collapse. They're convinced that it's only a matter of time before riots break out, before we run out of food, before a great die-off goes down.
I wouldn't say I'm a doomer — you won't find me stockpiling MREs and freeze-dried meals — but then again, last time I was at Target, I feverishly stocked up on maxi-pads and razors. (My priorities are dubious, I know.) This week's New Yorker has a meaty story on doomers, and while it provides a healthy contrast to the message board posts, I can't help but wonder if the doomers have it partly right. Last night, my hamster bladder sent me searching for a bathroom, and so I was walking around the mall. (I know, how Valley Girl.) The place was nearly deserted, most stores were empty, 90% off signs decorated the shoe store. Total consumerist dystopia.
I keep wondering if this shift is temporary, or if we're looking at a fundamental change in our economy. I suspect the latter, and that's not just the babydoomer in me speaking.
I wouldn't say I'm a doomer — you won't find me stockpiling MREs and freeze-dried meals — but then again, last time I was at Target, I feverishly stocked up on maxi-pads and razors. (My priorities are dubious, I know.) This week's New Yorker has a meaty story on doomers, and while it provides a healthy contrast to the message board posts, I can't help but wonder if the doomers have it partly right. Last night, my hamster bladder sent me searching for a bathroom, and so I was walking around the mall. (I know, how Valley Girl.) The place was nearly deserted, most stores were empty, 90% off signs decorated the shoe store. Total consumerist dystopia.
I keep wondering if this shift is temporary, or if we're looking at a fundamental change in our economy. I suspect the latter, and that's not just the babydoomer in me speaking.
Labels: doom
