Left of the Dial

three, it turns out, is not always a magic number

So Top Management walks into the kitchen and starts telling The Rose, The Bean and The Golden Weasel about how when we were kids Pop-Tarts came in a box with 8 Pop-Tarts, 4 pouches with 2 tarts each. And how when there were three kids in the family, this meant the tarts didn’t divide evenly and therefore someone was going to get more than the others. 

And then she says, “this shirt doesn’t fit me.”

And holds out this:

The shriek that instantly erupted from three sets of vocal cords nearly shattered every piece of glass in the house.

wrap around dreams

So we're done watching our nightly television show and are just reading quietly. There's been silence for maybe a minute and a half when suddenly Top Management says, “What?!”

I laugh. "Sweetheart, no one said anything."

Without moving, she says, “The Rose said, ‘I’ll start with the good news: bed bugs’ — bed bugs is not good news." There's a very brief pause before she adds, "Dreams are weird. One part of your brain is telling another part of your brain stories and neither part knows about the other or that it's just a story and not real." 

the toppermost of the poppermost

So I say something almost verging on mildly humorous to Top Management, something fully deserving of the patient and somehow still fond look it consequently receives. 

"Ah..." I murmur, "I'm the best." 

"You are!" the Brawn agrees from the other room. 

"Hey hey! You hear that?" I ask my good lady wife. "Your youngest just said that I'm the best! He thinks I'm better'n you!" 

There's a brief pause, and then the Brawn answers, "Mom's better than the best. I thought that was universally acknowledged." 

I no longer worry about him as much as I used to. 

fanmail for some future flounder

A few days ago, as I got up from the table to go downstairs to my office, I made a sound that slightly alarmed The Brawn. Top Management explained that the sound in question was one grownups make when they have to go to a meeting to which they didn’t wish to go. We said we could pretty much guarantee he’d make the same sound himself someday. He was, understandably skeptical, and suggested we check in with him in 10 or 20 years.

So I just sent email reminders to myself to do just that.

So. If gmail’s still a thing in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years, I’m going to get an email from myself with the subject “Brawn reminder” which simply says

Ask him “did you make the noise grownups make when they have to go to a meeting yet?”

It was really, really trippy to schedule an email for October 25, 2027. But not nearly as trippy as scheduling one for October 25, 2042.

And, of course, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll even be around for all--or even any--of them. Will whoever inherited my email account be surprised to get an email from long-gone me? Will the AI which has long been in command of the earth metaphorically nod, now able to check this one thing off its list? 

much achoo about nothing

[I apologize for that horrible yet wonderful joke]

It really is disconcerting when I sneeze and from a different floor, and two rooms away, Top Management texts me "bless you." 

the lament of the young and belovéd

"I am so strong and capable and if my parents cared about me less I could show it off sometimes." — our poor self-sufficient daughter, suffering under the unbearable weight of helpful parents

 

the best medicine, or just what big pharma WANTS you to think

So Top Management mentioned that she'd read a study which indicated that how often a couple laughs together is an excellent predictor of how long they'll stay together. 

"Well, dammit, there's our problem right there," I say. "So all we have to do is..." 

We look at each other. And burst out laughing. 

"Great," she says. "There's another week." 

Now whenever we laugh at something, one of us says, "Great. Now we have to stay together one more week." 

twist

"Hey," I say, heading downstairs. "It's 8:15, so almost time for the boys to get ready for bed, so I can read. Tonight we get to the part where Strider kills Pippin!" 

From behind me I hear girls shriek "Daddy!" in perfect outraged three-part harmony.

It's the little things. 

hard-earned wisdom

It turns out that walking in on The Rose and The Bean adroitly critiquing online parenting advice columns is one of life's hidden pleasures. 

why couldn't I be laundering money?

There are so many people living in our house that just now I started laundry—all pinks and reds, as I pretty much always have so much to wash that I can very strictly separate out by colors—and thought, huh, small load today…because it "only" contained 7 shirts, in addition to a half dozen pairs of socks and about as many underwears, as well as a hand towel, two washcloths, three cleaning cloths and a kitchen towel. 

It's possible my perspective is ever so slightly skewed.  

homeschooling 601

So we're doing Film Club. We've watched several silent films—The General, City Lights, a few others—and Duck Soup. Now we're starting the Westerns section of Film Club, and this in some ways the key to Film Club, given the importance of the western to the history of American cinema and, for that matter, the American contribution to art in general. We're starting at more or less the beginning—I thought about showing them The Great Train Robbery and might at some point but for all its historical importance, it is one incredibly long 12 minutes—with Stagecoach. Great introduction to John Wayne and John Ford and the western; with the benefit of hindsight, it really is remarkable just how many themes and motifs and tropes and even visual standards are introduced in this early classic (including what I swear is a rough draft of the famous framing shot from The Searchers). 

One of which, of course—though not unique to the western, by any means—is the Hooker with the Heart of Gold. And indeed Claire Trevor is wonderful as Dallas, the woman run out of town at the beginning. There are so many good characters, quickly sketched, superbly acted. And the vistas—good lord, but some of those Arizona panoramas can just rip your heart out with their majesty. 

But there are a lot of characters and the audio was sometimes a wee bit dicey, so I checked in with the youngest two a few times, just to make sure they were following. And with the exception of understandably not knowing what a whiskey drummer was, they did great. 

Except for one key bit. 

"Why are they all being so mean to her?" The Brawn asks. Referring, of course, to Dallas. 

"She's a woman of low reputation," I say. I get a blank look in return. 

"She's a lady of ill repute," I say. More blankness. 

"She a prostitute," I say. 

"Oh," he says. "What's a prostitute?" 

"Someone who has sex for money." 

"Oh," he says. And turns back to the screen. 

Welcome to the Peterson Homeschool. Come for Film Club, stay for Intro to Sex Work 101. 

feeling not so much seen as read

I send this tweet to my good lady wife:

She laughs. "That's funny," she says. 

"Is it?" I ask. "Is it though? Or does being with such a person simply make it impossible for the, say, husband to ever win an argument against, say, his good lady wife? I'm asking for a friend." 

(Editor's note: he has no friends.) 

She smiles. "Oh, I'm sorry. I meant that's fun." 

cymbolic

So the Golden Weasel and I have, on several occasions, watched videos such as this:

Apparently, being in the room while something like this is happening is an astonishing experience, as one feels as much as hears the sound. It's sometimes called a sound bath or, more specifically, a gong bath. We have expressed how very much we'd like to experience something like this in person. 

So when this ad went up on Craigslist the other day, I showed it to her. "I found the perfect present for your next birthday," I said. 

She looked at my phone and gasped. "Yes!" she hissed. 

Naturally, the Brawn was nearby and, naturally, he was intrigued. "What is it?" 

I started to angle my phone so he could see. Before his eyes could even focus, she quickly added, about the hypothetical future gift which is never actually going to be acquired, "you're not allowed to touch it." 

a bit assaulty?

Today I Learned someone in my family apparently has a bit of a battery phobia. 

character identification

So The Brawn and I have been making our way, slowly, through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of several projects the various spawn and I have started as a way to get through the pandemic. We're now up to the greatly underrated Doctor Strange and, as if more proof of his intelligence were needed, The Brawn absolutely loved it, justly reveling in its visual sumptuousness. 

But that wasn't the only thing that resonated with him. During a scene during which the magnificent Chiwetel Ejiofor questions another character's morality, the titular hero argues, "She was complicated."

Beside me, from the darkness, I hear a voice quietly respond, "Aren't we all." 

tear drops rolling down on my face

I grab my cup of coffee and head down to the basement to get to work. The Bean is lying on the sofa, curled up under a blanket, in a shaft of sunlight, reading. It looks so cozy I am moved to say for perhaps the first time in my life, "Bean, I have thought about it, and I think you should know that I love you." 

"Yay!" is the perhaps somewhat expected but still gratifying response. 

I take a few more steps and then hear: "I'll get back to you on how I feel." 

one of these things is not like the others

I am luckier than most parents in that most of my kids are pretty unpicky when it comes to foods. The problem is that there are so many of them, so that some will love a given meal, some are okay with it and at least one dislikes it. And because I am the most sensitive of souls, I try to avoid making my children unhappy. I fail. I fail every single day, many times. But I try. (I just hide that I try.) 

Which inevitably leads to scenes such as this:

I like to think it's a bonding moment. Because what brings kids together like sneering at a sibling who's being good? 

when in Rome

Top Management and I step outside the house for our daily walk, or our Daily Staff Meeting, as we refer to it. (And which it kinda is.) It's a lovely day, mid-50s, cloudy, only the tiniest hint of a breeze. 

Suddenly, the clouds disappear and we find ourselves in blazing full-strength sunlight, not a shadow in sight. 

"What the hell's with the sun?" I say, shocked. 

Top Management laughs. "That's the most Portland thing I've ever heard." 

so THAT's where she got it

Top Management sighs the sigh of the deeply and justifiably exhausted. 

"Man," she says. "I ate so many frogs today. I ate all the frogs today." 

I look over at her. "What?!" I say, not unreasonably. 

She looks surprised that I'm surprised. "You know, the Mark Twain thing." 

"What?!" I again say, still not unreasonably. 

"You know, his thing about how if you're served a plate full of things you have to eat and you like all of them except there's also a frog there and you have to eat it, you should eat it first?" 

I start laughing. "This explains so much," I say. 

Matamoros Banks

aBy the time of 2005's Devils & Dust, Bruce Springsteen was solidly back on (or at least near the) top. His seventh #1 album, a solo album sorta kinda fitting into a trilogy with Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad almost, it was something of a grab bag of songs, with many of them going back a decade or more. Some of them were brilliant (the title track, "Reno," the "Rosalita" sequel "Long Time Comin'"), some were...not, even if well-intentioned ("Black Cowboys," "Silver Palomino") and some were simply enjoyable if surprisingly lightweight love songs ("Leah," "Maria's Bed," "All the Way Home," "All I'm Thinkin' About"). The album shared Tom Joad's exploration of the southwestern area of the United States, as well presaging his next LP's meditation on the Iraq War, while also continuing Springsteen's obsession with familial bonds and religion. Kind of a lot for a hodgepodge of old and new songs, all of which were newly recorded with producer Brendan O'Brien.  

"Matamoros Banks," the LP's closing song, is one of the album's strongest, and one of Springsteen's sweetest—albeit of a decidedly bittersweet nature—since his commercial revival. An admitted sequel of sorts to Tom Joad's "Across the Border"—itself a tribute to Ry Cooder's "Across the Borderline"—it bookends the opening title track with its ambiguity, religious questions and focus on death and love, but with a markedly more upbeat tone (if not tempo). Given that the song opens with the narrator's dead body being eaten by wild animals, this is no mean feat. 

Matamoros Banks

For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound

Opening with the flat assertion that the river holds you down is probably not meant as an in-joke, per se, but when dealing with a writer of Springsteen's nature and calibre, it's unlikely it wouldn't have occurred to him. But more than that, it's an upending of the more common view of a river in literature, which is as a giver of life, and bringer of civilization. Meanwhile, the second half of the sentence will come to assume more significance a little later on. 

Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes so they lay open to the stars

These lines are a remarkable study in contrast, with the pleasant, youthful connotation of the playgrounds immediately juxtaposed against the derelict train yards. But the next sentence ups the ante considerably, as the corpse's eyelids are eaten by animals, allowing them to view the stars without obstruction. The first line is delightful and grim in one sentence, but the second half of the couplet combines brutality and effulgence. Such a horrible thing, and yet here it's portrayed as almost a boon. Sure, you were eaten by eaten by wild animals. granted. but in a glass half-full kind of way, they were, you know, kinda cute wild animals. and hey! now you can see the stars all the time—isn't that nice? look, I'm not going to come right out and say you're better off this way...but... And, amazingly, it's not presented with any sort of ironic tone.

Your clothes give way to the current and river stone
'Till every trace of who you ever were is gone
And the things of the earth they make their claim
That the things of heaven may do the same

Again with the contrasting imagines of water and stone, heaven and earth, leading to an interesting assertion, that clothes are evidence of who you were—an echo of the well-known phrase "the clothes make the man," a saying that goes back at least as far as Mark Twain—setting up and in some ways seemingly refuting the earth/heaven balancing of the next couplet, while that couplet at the same time echoes the belief that only by giving up one's earthly possessions can one enter the kingdom of heaven. 

That's the opening verse—a corpse, desecrated by animals, bobs to the surface of the water in which the singer died, and it leads to the chorus, simpler than the plainest hymn:

Goodbye, my darling, for your love I give God thanks
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Fascinating and instantly arresting as the opening verse is, the second verse ups the emotional ante by taking a step backwards in time, to when the narrator was just starting out on his journey. 

Over rivers of stone and ancient ocean beds
I walk on sandals of twine and tire tread
My pockets full of dust, my mouth filled with cool stone
The pale moon opens the earth to its bones

That Springsteen so liberally uses such elemental images—river, stone, ocean bed, dust, moon, bone—is not accidental. He is breaking things down to their most essential essences, performing an autopsy of sorts on not the man this verse but the man's journey, and even the planet itself over which he's making his trek. 

We immediately get a sense of who this man is and what he's doing. That he's attempting to cross over the Rio Grande is obvious, but his footwear—sandals either made of recycled tires, held together with twine, or at least repaired with those materials the best he can—leaves no doubt as to his station, nor any question as to whether or not he's got calves the size of cantaloupes, as some unhinged, hateful, reprehensible specimens would gleefully imagine. His pockets are full of dust and on his feet are the same garments worn by Jesus, and the odds that that's a coincidence are virtually nil. The narrator is, if not literally Christ, certainly one of followers, both metaphorically and literally, making a journey not unlike that described in the bible. 

The interconnectedness of the writing in this song is exquisite, as the final line of the verse ties in, once again, to the heavens/earth dichotomy first introduced in the opening verse, even as the first line continues the river imagery, albeit in this case long dried up. 

I long, my darling, for your kiss, for your sweet love I give God thanks
The touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Then we get the third verse, and we move forward in time again, albeit not quite as far as the first verse. 

Your sweet memory comes on the evenin' wind
I sleep and dream of holding you in my arms again
The lights of Brownsville, across the river shine
A shout rings out and into the silty red river I dive

The man is exhausted, thirsty, after making this long, arduous, dangerous journey...and yet he's able to keep moving thanks to the dreams of his beloved; so deeply in love is he that even the wind carries her memory to him. Across the river, he can view that long cherishd Springsteen staple, the promised land: and true to form, he can see it in the distance, but he cannot quite get there. In fact, he doesn't entirely plan on making it all the way there, at least not alone: he's urgerly her to meet him on the Matamoros banks, the southern side of the river—a river which is already red, even before it's further stained with his blood, as it's soon to be—so they can cross over together...or perhaps because he plans to return to her, and his home, for good. Or perhaps because he knows that he cannot make it to the promised land alone, that without her, it cannot possibly be the promised land. 

The religious symbolism is the song is nearly unmissable, even if you're not aware of just how often Springsteen has peppered his songs with biblical allusions. But it's chilling to get to the end of this lovely, gentle song and see how it was all set up in the opening couplet, as he rises to the light—both literal and metaphorical. 

The structure is fascinating in that Springsteen doesn't just tell the story in reverse. Instead, he jumps around in time. He starts at the end—or arguably a bit past the ending—then goes back to the beginning, and then jumps forward again, but not quite all the way to the end, instead filling in the middle bit. The only other song I can think of that jumps around in time like this Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue," although in that masterpiece the timeline is even more jumbled, so it can be difficult to tell just where you are in the story—or even in time—at any given point of the song. Here there's no such ambiguity. The man is dead at the beginning, and then we go back and see what led up to his death. 

But what that is is both clear-cut and ambiguous. It's his dive into the river, as he attempts to escape. But as Springsteen himself put it, when introducing the song on the Devils & Dust tour: 

"a man makes the same journey and is fuelled by the same hopes and love for his partner and his family, his children, in search of something a little bit better." 

His death is brought about by hope and his love for his partner and family, his children, for the deep-seated need to give them a better life. How beautiful and terrible. 

It's all on a musical bed which is an incredibly simple harmonic structure—just the same I-IV-V chords Springsteen has used in dozens and dozens of his songs, including many of his very best, but with the lovely touch of subtle Mexican coloring in the actual guitar playing. 

I long, my darling, for your kiss, for your sweet love I give God thanks
A touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

This album closer could not be further from The Rising's gospel closer. And yet at the same time it feels like its twin brother from a different mother, one who was born on just the other side of the border. The now empty vessel which had once been a man may no longer make a sound, but Springsteen is here to still give him voice. 

made for her

Top Management and I are watching the second season of a very good show. It's near the end of the first episode and so far it's good, maybe even very good. We're both intrigued and up for continuing. 

Until the end of the episode. When there's a twist and Top Management suddenly sits up straight. 

"Wait a second," she breathes. "Is this...is that place...a cult?!" 

And suddenly "intriguing" just morphed into Must See TV.

Sometimes I wonder about the various Roads Not Taken. And sometimes I'm very, very glad they weren't took. 

guilty as charged

It's a weekend morn and we've been lazing in bed, reading. And for an hour, we've been going back and forth, saying we need to get up, it's time to get up, we're hungry, we're starving, we should really get up. 

Finally, after an hour my very deep need for coffee gets the better of me and I roll out of bed and shamble towards the door. 

I catch a glimpse of my good lady wife and there's a look of utter betrayal on her face. 

"Traitor," she says in disbelief. 

perfectly imbalanced

It's something they never tell you ahead of time. Or maybe they do and you just can't really understand it until you experience it for yourself. How sometimes you'll be looking at your kids and your heart will physically hurt from how much you love them, how lucky you feel you are, how undeserving. 

And then other times they'll do or say something—or many somethings—and you think, yeah, that guy had a point. 

busted

I've finished reading the bedtime story to the three youngest—my fourth, I think, and final time through The Lord of the Rings, he said sadly—and I finish with the family ritual my late, great brother John introduced me to, which is asking each of the kids to say something good about their day; Johnny had his boys list three things each, I believe, but I've got way more kids, and their lives are apparently exponentially less rich, because they sometimes struggle to come up with a single good thing about their day. (To be fair, if I allowed The Brawn to list video game-related stuff, he'd never have any problem listing a dozen good things about his day.) 

They each cough up a good thing about their day, and then Max—who's taken to sitting in on our evening's reads–adds hers. I call into the blue room (which isn't blue) to ask Bean for her good thing about the day, as usual, and she chimes in. I don't bother asking the Rose, because although I can't see her, she's always got headphones on at this time of night and can't hear us anyway. 

As we're wrapping up, the Brawn does something that annoys the Golden Weasel. "Please don't," she says, the words polite, the tone sharp, and although I didn't see what happened, I saw her twist her body in a way that would indicate he'd probably poked her in the back with a toe. 

It's late, I don't feel like getting into it, since I'm heading downstairs and he's about to sleep and she's going to sweep the first floor, so I push the parental guidance off for a future date, another day, hopefully when his mother's on duty. But without even really thinking about it, I find myself humming the bassline to MC Hammer's best-known song (said bassline, of course, having been...let's say "borrowed" from Rick James). 

Suddenly, from the blue comes a surprising voice yelling "Can't touch this!" 

There's a stunned silence as we process what just happened. 

Then I yell at the Rose, "You can hear us?!" 

There's another pause, briefer this time, then she bursts laughing. "Four years of pretending I couldn't hear you so I didn't have to come up with a good thing of the day down the drain! 'Can't Touch This' is just too powerful!"

for the record, she was eating the chips I'd just bought

ME: Why are you smiling like that? 

THE ROSE: Because you're being mean to me. 

ME: How'm I being mean to you? 

THE ROSE: You just said I was terrible!

ME: That's not being mean. That's just stating a fact.