Free-verse meetings

I'm a big lover of language. I think my course of studies in college (American Literature) and my profession (editor/journalist) are a dead give-away of that. Also my narcissistic obsession with things I've said and thought of, but that's neither here nor there.

The English language gets a bad rep a lot of times. What with its frustrating spelling and grammar rules, and the thing where any word can be any form of word. For example, just verbize some letters to have a new English word.

But language is great, and can be very poetic if you're willing to hear it. I just finished reading Bill Bryson's biography of Shakespeare (which was fascinating and incredibly entertaining), which combined with my discussion with Derek on the matter, has me ready to share with the world some of my poetry.

What I often do is, while in meetings at work (it actually started years ago in Ramona Silver's philosophy class), take notes as people talk. Most meeting attendees will do this, I'd imagine, but I don't do it to remember ideas or project dates (frankly, I rarely care) - I write down snippets, word-for-word, of what people say, usually as fast as I can keep up. Since people talk faster than I can move my hand, I end up missing some key words but the results of my selective editing are sometimes profound, often pretty and always fun.

I may one day publish a book of my collected poems, which I have tentatively titled "Meeting Poetry," (kind of a pun, and kind of direct) but I'm sure I'll think of something better after a career of not paying that much attention to what the bosses are saying. [edit: how about "Bored Room"?]

Here's two untitled poems from the summer I spent at Ascend Media (before I quit and went to Europe). I don't now know what the speaker's point was, but I've made them my own, and I know what they mean to me.

Early in the meeting
and then slow time

the strategy i have

how to fit that in?

what kind of cycle is he?

try to fit that all in

you're getting down
what kind of process

to stimultate and create
a limited commitment
tell them what I'm looking for

Later, in that same meeting
I’ve had success introducing myself
Even if its not that person
Sometimes I struggle
The attendees look
Pretty much everything

[Please note that I wanted readers to take away from this post the thought that I am kind of a bad employee and not that I'm super-creative. It's fun to do, you should try during your next meeting.]

Clap if you believe in ferries

So, more on my job. I mentioned briefly that after seven months of glorious unemployment and further racking-up of credit card bills, I finally found a job that appealed to me (and who also wanted me). I am a Web editor for a business-travel magazine in Sausalito. Sausalito is a small burg located 35 miles away from my current home, but only about 10 hopefully from my soon-to-be-living-in home.

I started in late June, and after two months of commuting 45 minutes in each direction, I decided to give mass transit a try. As a big proponent and lover of trains and metros, the idea greatly appealed to me, despite the numerous transfers and doubling of the time it takes to drive.

From the East Bay, I took BART to San Francisco's Embarcadero station (added benefit was that I rode with my sister, who lives across town from me and works in Union Square). I left Athena before her stop and walked from the station to the Ferry Building to sit in the queue for the Sausalito-bound ferry. I boarded the vessel and took the half-hour boat ride mostly in awe of the beauty that is the Bay. I also read some because really, you can only appreciate beauty for so long. From the ferry stop in Sausalito, I hopped a bus down the street to my office and sat down early for the first time all week.

After work (Fridays during the summer are half-days, so I left at a little before 1:00) my boss said that if I walk through the shipyard, I would hit the shoreline park and could follow it all the way to the ferry stop. The roughly 2-mile trek was on a gorgeous day and I submit to you the photos of my commute, taken with my new cellphone (which, in an aside, may actually be quite broken/faulty).

Some of the highlights not captured on film include: the hippies sitting in the grass by the water's edge; the poetic metaphor of a black dog and a white dog playing in the waves; the conversations overheard in German, Portuguese and accented English while waiting to hop on the ferry back to the city; and the recently wed gay couple who were wearing matching white linen suits and tuba rose leis, toasting with champagne on the ferry ride back to the city.

The Ferry Building, roughly 7:30 am. My boat would leave at 7:45.

Five minutes into the ride. Stern of the boat and one of my 8 co-commuters.


Random stone shop in the Sausalito shipyards.


Part of the shoreline.


This is the kind of thing you can't help but think the artist thinks is famous/renowned.


Random gazebo where perhaps the gay couple was married. But probably not.


White pants? Check. White sweater tied around his neck? Check. Aviators? Check. Unshaved? Check. Pink polo with collar popped? Check. Ladies and gentlemen, we've found "that guy."

A trip that never happened and a flight that was bound to eventually

When we were about 19 or 20, Nick and I were talking about going to London for a couple of months. Not really though, because we'd only really be there for a few weeks, but the trip would take a few months. The plan we worked out was to take a few weeks to drive across the U.S., stopping off in cool locations like Denver, Chicago, and New York. We'd then hop a steamer (or cruise, but it's just more fun and old-timey to say steamer) from New York to London and stay there for a few weeks seeing sights, visiting Paris and Scotland by train, developing accents, and listening to British girls speak with their accents.

At the end of our trip we'd fly back to New York and drive the Southern Route home. This was a prospect that made a then non-drinking Nick say he'd need to get "fall-down drunk." For you see, Nick has never flown before.

The trip never happened of course. The logistics of such a trip (and we looked into all of it), to say nothing of the expense, kept us from living out our dream and Nick from facing his fear.

It wasn't always a fear. He was the sixth kid of seven, a recipe for not a lot of long-distance family travel. I think it started to dawn on him in his late teens that he'd probably be afraid of flying and he just went with it. He would say there was nothing that would get him on a plane except a lot of alcohol. This morning he was proved wrong. Money, it seems, will do it too.

I took him to the airport on my way to work this morning so he could fly to Indiana for his work. He wasn't nervous at all at the prospect of flying, though he did ask me for any tips I could offer. I told him to not worry about noises cause planes are always loud, and he waved it off, clearly having realized he's not actually scared to fly.

Still, I felt like it was his first day of school and I want the little guy to have a good time. It's important to point out that, though I say "little guy," Nick is about a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than me.

I'm excited that this might open up the prospect of him flying other places, potentially with me. Though I imagine an airplane is going to be a very uncomfortable ride for a guy his size. I'm average height and I find planes tight. Good luck with the leg room buddy.